ation
having been renewed without any more favourable result, Bedemar, justly
apprehensive for his safety, seized a pretext for withdrawing, till a
successor to his embassy was appointed. Meantime, considerable doubts
were entertained, not only by the resident foreign ministers,--
especially by that of France, better informed than his brethren through
the possession of Pierre's minutes,--but by the Venetian senators
themselves, also, whether any conspiracy whatever had really existed.
Nevertheless, in spite of these misgivings not obscurely expressed, it
was not till the expiration of five months that the X presented a report
to the Senate, detailing the information which they had received and the
views upon which they had acted. That report however is so manifestly
contradicted in many very important instances by Pierre's depositions,
that it must be considered as drawn up and garbled solely with the
intention of _making a case_; and therefore as revealing only so much
truth dashed and brewed with a huge proportion of falsehood, as it
suited the interests of the magistrates to exhibit to public view. All
mention of the denouncements of Pierre during the long period of ten
months is carefully suppressed, and yet no fact in history is more
distinctly proved than that he did so communicate. The first intimation
of the plot is there said to have been given but a few days before it
was to have been executed, by two Frenchmen, Montcassin and Balthazar
Juven, whom Pierre had endeavoured to seduce. "Look at these Venetians,"
said the daring conspirator one day to his apparent proselytes, "they
affect to chain the lion; but the lion sometimes devours his master,
especially when that master uses him ill." According to their further
evidence, some troops despatched by the Duke d'Ossuna were to land by
night on the _Piazzetta_ and to occupy all the strong holds of the city;
numerous treasonable agents already within the walls were to master the
depots of arms; and fire, rapine, and massacre were to bring the
enterprise to consummation.

The papers abovementioned, together with a few letters from the Doge to
the Venetian ambassador at Milan, and one or two other not very
important documents contained in the archives of Venice, all printed by
Comte Dam, are the sole authentic vouchers for this conspiracy now known
to exist; and it must be confessed that they are insufficient for its
elucidation. The Abbe St. Real, who for a long tim