“A thousand thanks, excellent Sir,” returned the deposed guardian.  “You have taken a load from my mind, and restored some of the freshness and elasticity of youth!  The claim of Don Camillo now is no longer urgent, since it is your pleasure to remove the lady for a season from the city.”

“’Twere better to hold it in deeper suspense, if it were only to occupy his mind.  Keep up thy communications as of wont, and withhold not hope, which is a powerful exciter in minds that are not deadened by experience.  We shall not conceal from one of our number, that a negotiation is already near a termination, which will relieve the state from the care of the damsel, and at some benefit to the Republic.  Her estates lying without our limits greatly facilitate the treaty, which hath only been withheld from your knowledge by the consideration, that of late we have rather too much overloaded thee with affairs.”

Again the Signor Gradenigo bowed submissively, and with apparent joy.  He saw that his secret designs had been penetrated, notwithstanding all his practised duplicity and specious candor; and he submitted with that species of desperate resignation, which becomes a habit, if not a virtue, in men long accustomed to be governed despotically.  When this delicate subject, which required the utmost finesse of Venetian policy, since it involved the interests of one who happened, at that moment, to be in the dreaded council itself, was disposed of, the three turned their attention to other matters, with that semblance of indifference to personal feeling, which practice in tortuous paths of state-intrigue enabled men to assume.

“Since we are so happily of opinion concerning the disposition of the Donna Violetta,” coolly observed the oldest senator, a rare specimen of hackneyed and worldly morality, “we may look into our list of daily duties—­what say the lions’ mouths to-night?”

“A few of the ordinary and unmeaning accusations that spring from personal hatred,” returned another.  “One chargeth his neighbor with oversight in religious duties, and with some carelessness of the fasts of Holy Church—­a. foolish scandal, fitted for the ears of a curate.”

“Is there naught else?”

“Another complaineth of neglect in a husband.  The scrawl is in a woman’s hand, and beareth on its face the evidence of woman’s resentment.”

“Sudden to rise and easy to be appeased.  Let the neighborhood quiet the household by its sneers.—­What next?”

“A suitor in the courts maketh complaint of the tardiness of the judges.”

“This toucheth the reputation of St. Mark; it must be looked to!”

“Hold!” interrupted the Signor Gradenigo.  “The tribunal acted advisedly—­’tis in the matter of a Hebrew, who is thought to have secrets of importance.  The affair hath need of deliberation, I do assure you.”

“Destroy the charge.—­Have we more?”

“Nothing of note.  The usual number of pleasantries and hobbling verses which tend to nothing.  If we get some useful gleanings by these secret accusations, we gain much nonsense.  I would whip a youngster of ten who could not mould our soft Italian into better rhyme than this?”