CHAPTER XXVIII.

“There the prisoners rest together;
they hear not the voice of the oppressor.” 
Job.

The manner in which the Council of Three held its more public meetings, if aught connected with that mysterious body could be called public, has already been seen.  On the present occasion there were the same robes, the same disguises, and the same officers of the inquisition, as in the scene related in a previous chapter.  The only change was in the character of the judges, and in that of the accused.  By a peculiar arrangement of the lamp, too, most of the light was thrown upon the spot it was intended the prisoner should occupy, while the side of the apartment on which the inquisitors sat, was left in a dimness that well accorded with their gloomy and secret duties.  Previously to the opening of the door by which the person to be examined was to appear, there was audible the clanking of chains, the certain evidence that the affair in hand was considered serious.  The hinges turned, and the Bravo stood in presence of those unknown men who were to decide on his fate.

As Jacopo had often been before the council, though not as a prisoner, he betrayed neither surprise nor alarm at the black aspect of all his eye beheld.  His features were composed, though pale, his limbs immovable, and his mien decent.  When the little bustle of his entrance had subsided, there reigned a stillness in the room.

“Thou art called Jacopo Frontoni?” said the secretary, who acted as the mouth-piece of the Three, on this occasion.

“I am.”

“Thou art the son of a certain Ricardo Frontoni, a man well known as having been concerned in robbing the Republic’s customs, and who is thought to have been banished to the distant islands, or to be otherwise punished?”

“Signore—­or otherwise punished.”

“Thou wert a gondolier in thy youth?”

“I was a gondolier.”

“Thy mother is——­”

“Dead,” said Jacopo, perceiving the other paused to examine his notes.

The depth of the tone in which this word was uttered, caused a silence, that the secretary did not interrupt, until he had thrown a glance backwards at the judges.

“She was not accused of thy father’s crime?”

“Had she been, Signore, she is long since beyond the power of the Republic.”

“Shortly after thy father fell under the displeasure of the state, thou quittedst thy business of a gondolier?”

“Signore, I did.”

“Thou art accused, Jacopo, of having laid aside the oar for the stiletto?”

“Signore, I am.”

“For several years, the rumors of thy bloody deeds have been growing in Venice, until, of late, none have met with an untimely fate that the blow has not been attributed to thy hand?”

“This is too true, Signor Segretario—­I would it were not!”