his employer, and revealed to the Inquisitors a plot which they well knew to be feigned:  and, lastly, that when the ambitious plans of d’Ossuna, partially discovered before their time by the Spanish government, might have compromised Venice also if they had been fully elucidated; in order to blot out each syllable of evidence which could bear, even indirectly, upon the transaction, so far as she was concerned, it was thought expedient to remove every individual who had been even unwittingly connected with it.  So fully was this abominable wickedness perpetrated, that both the accused and the accusers, the deceivers and the deceived, those either faithless or faithful to their treason, the tools who either adhered to or who betrayed d’Ossuna, who sought to destroy or to preserve Venice, were alike enveloped in one common fate, and silenced in the same sure keeping of the grave.  Some few, respecting whose degree of participation a slight doubt arose, were strangled on the avowed principle that all must be put to death who were in any way implicated; others were drowned by night, in order that their execution might make no noise.[13] Moncassin, one of the avowed informers, was pensioned, spirited away to Cyprus, and there despatched in a drunken quarrel; and if it be asserted that his companion Balthazar Juven was permitted to survive, it is because he is the only individual concerning whose final destiny we cannot pronounce with certainty.[14]

[13] Laurent Brulard, concerning whose fate much discussion arose, was strangled par beaucoup de considerations et par une suite du parti qu’on avrait pris de mettre a mort tons ceux qui etaient impliques dans cette affaire.  The brothers Desbouleaux were drowned by night in the Canale Orfano, pour ne point ebruiter l’affaire; and the instructions sent to the Admiral who was to drown Pierre were to fulfil his commission avec le moins de bruit possible.  Accordingly that ruffian, and forty-five of his accomplices, were drowned at once sans bruit. Interrogatoire des Accuses, translated by Daru, vol. viii. sec. x.

    [14] It is believed that Balthazar Juven, and a relation of the
    Marechale de Lesdiguieres, who is stated to have escaped
    punishment, are one and the same person.

Of one personage who holds an important station in St. Real’s romance, and yet more so in Otway’s coarse and boisterous tragedy, which, by dint of some powerful coups de theatre, still maintains possession of the English stage, we have hitherto mentioned but the name; and, in fact, even for that name we are indebted only to the more than suspected summary of the Interrogatories of the Accused.