hope that he would now be
permitted to seek those of whose fate he was still ignorant, but in whom
he felt so deep an interest. Not so, however. The individual who had
addressed him in the cathedral was, apparently, in waiting, and knowing
the uselessness as well as the danger of remonstrance, where the state
was concerned, the Carmelite permitted himself to be conducted whither
his guide pleased. They took a devious route, but it led them to the
public prisons. Here the priest was shown into the keeper's apartment,
where he was desired to wait a summons from his companion.

Our business now leads us to the cell of Jacopo. On quitting the
presence of the Three, he had been remanded to his gloomy room, where he
passed the night like others similarly situated. With the appearance of
the dawn the Bravo had been led before those who ostensibly discharged
the duties of his judges. We say ostensibly, for justice never yet was
pure under a system in which the governors have an interest in the least
separated from that of the governed; for in all cases which involve the
ascendency of the existing authorities, the instinct of
self-preservation is as certain to bias their decision as that of life
is to cause man to shun danger. If such is the fact in countries of
milder sway, the reader will easily believe in its existence in a state
like that of Venice. As may have been anticipated, those who sat in
judgment on Jacopo had their instructions, and the trial that he
sustained was rather a concession to appearances than a homage to the
laws. All the records were duly made, witnesses were examined, or said
to be examined, and care was had to spread the rumor in the city that
the tribunals were at length occupied in deciding on the case of the
extraordinary man who had so long been permitted to exercise his bloody
profession with impunity even in the centre of the canals. During the
morning the credulous tradesmen were much engaged in recounting to each
other the different flagrant deeds that, in the course of the last three
or four years, had been imputed to his hand. One spoke of the body of a
stranger that had been found near the gaming-houses frequented by those
who visited Venice. Another recalled the fate of the young noble who had
fallen by the assassin's blow even on the Rialto, and another went into
the details of a murder which had deprived a mother of her only son, and
the daughter of a patrician of her love. In this manner