Antoine Jaffier, a French captain, is there made chief evidence against Pierre and Renault, who are employed by d’Ossuna, as he vaguely states, to surprise some maritime place belonging to the republic.  This informer was rewarded with four thousand sequins, and instructed forthwith to quit the Venetian territories; but having, while at Brescia, renewed communications with suspected persons, he was brought back to the Lagune and drowned.  The minute particularities of Jaffier’s depositions, and the motive which prompted him to offer them, (the latter, as we have already shown, resting on a gross anachronism,) are, we believe pure inventions by St. Real; and Otway has used a poet’s license to palliate still farther deviations from authentic history.  Under his hands, Pierre,—­whom all accounts conspire in representing to us as a foreign, vulgar and mercenary bravo, equally false to every party, and frightened into confession,—­is transformed into a Venetian patriot, the proud champion of his country’s liberty; who declaims in good, set, round, customary terms against slavery and oppression; and who, in the end, escapes a mode of execution unknown to Venice, by persuading the friend who has betrayed him, and whom he has consequently renounced, to stab him to the heart, in order “to preserve his memory.”  The weak, whining, vacillating, uxorious Jaffier, by turns a cut-throat and a King’s evidence; now pawning, now fondling, and now menacing with his dagger an imaginary wife; first placing his comrade’s life in jeopardy, then begging it against his will, and finally taking it with his own hand, is a yet more unhappy creation of wayward fancy; and it is only in the names of the conspirators, in the introduction of an Englishman, Eliot, (whom he has brought nearer vernacular spelling than he found him,—­Haillot,[15]) and in the character of Rainault, that Otway is borne out by authority.  The last-mentioned person is described by the French ambassador as a sot, a gambler, and a sharper, whose rogueries are well known to all the world; in a word, therefore, as a fit leader of a revolutionary crew wrought up, “without the least remorse, with fire and sword t’ exterminate” all who bore the stamp of nobility; and not as the most fitting depository in which Belvidera’s honour might be lodged as a security for that of her irresolute husband.

    [15] Nani, iii. p. 169.  He was to have commanded the naval part
    of the enterprise.

Whatever hypothesis may be adopted, be this conspiracy true or false, there is no bloodier, probably no blacker page in history than that which records its development.  Were it not for the immeasurable weight of guilt which must press upon the memory of the rulers of Venice if we suppose the plot to have been altogether fictitious, we should assuredly admit that the evidence greatly preponderates in favour of that assertion.  But respect for human nature compels us to hesitate in admitting a charge so monstrous.  Five months after the commencement of the executions, either a tardy gratitude or a profane mockery was offered to Heaven; and the Doge and nobles returned thanks for their great deliverance, by a solemn service at St. Mark’s.