Provided with the keys in question, Gelsomina took a lamp and passed upwards from the mezzinino in which she dwelt, to the first floor of the edifice, instead of descending to its court.  Door was opened after door, and many a gloomy corridor was passed by the gentle girl, with the confidence of one who knew her motive to be good.  She soon crossed the Bridge of Sighs, fearless of interruption in that unfrequented gallery, and entered the palace.  Here she made her way to a door that opened on the common and public vomitories of the structure.  Moving with sufficient care to make impunity from detection sure, she extinguished the light and applied the key.  At the next instant she was on the vast and gloomy stairway.  It required but a moment to descend it, and to reach the covered gallery which surrounded the court.  A halberdier was within a few feet of her.  He looked at the unknown female with interest; but as it was not his business to question those who issued from the building, nothing was said.  Gelsomina walked on.  A half-repenting but vindictive being was dropping an accusation in the lion’s mouth.  Gelsomina stopped involuntarily until the secret accuser had done his treacherous work and departed.  Then, when she was about to proceed, she saw that the halberdier at the head of the Giant’s stairway was smiling at her indecision, like one accustomed to such scenes.

“Is there danger in quitting the palace?” she asked of the rough mountaineer.

“Corpo di Bacco!  There might have been an hour since, Bella Donna; but the rioters are muzzled and at their prayers.”

Gelsomina hesitated no longer.  She descended the well known flight, down which the head of Faliero had rolled, and was soon beneath the arch of the gate.  Here the timid and unpractised maid again stopped, for she could not venture into the square without assuring herself, like a deer about to quit its cover, of the tranquillity of the place into which she was to enter.

The agents of the police had been too much alarmed by the rising of the fishermen not to call their usual ingenuity and finesse into play, the moment the disturbance was appeased.  Money had been given to the mountebanks and ballad singers to induce them to reappear, and groups of hirelings, some in masks and others without concealment, were ostentatiously assembled in different parts of the piazza.  In short, those usual expedients were resorted to which are constantly used to restore the confidence of a people, in those countries in which civilization is so new, that they are not yet considered sufficiently advanced to be the guardians of their own security.  There are few artifices so shallow that many will not be their dupes.  The idler, the curious, the really discontented, the factious, the designing, with a suitable mixture of the unthinking, and of those who only live for the pleasure of the passing hour, a class not the least insignificant for numbers, had lent themselves to the views of the police;