(Continued from page 206.)

Such is Sanuto’s brief narrative of the origin of this conspiracy; and we have nothing more certain to offer.  It is not easy to say whence he obtained his intelligence.  If such a conversation as that which he relates really did occur, it must have taken place without the presence of witnesses, and therefore could be disclosed only by one of the parties.  It is far more likely that the chronicler is relating that which he supposed, than that which he knew; and, as it must be admitted that the interview with the admiral of the Arsenal occurred, and that, immediately after it, the doge was found linked with the daring band of which that officer was chief, there is no violation of probability in granting that some such conversation took place, and that the train was ignited by this collision of two angry spirits.  Whether the plot was in any degree organized beforehand, or arose at the moment, it is manifestly impossible for us to decide, without information which cannot now be obtained.

Bertucci Faliero, a nephew of the doge, and Filippo Calendaro, a seaman of great repute, were summoned to conference immediately.  It was agreed to communicate the design to six other associates; and, during many nights successively, these plebeian assassins arranged with the doge, under the roof of his own palace, the massacre of the entire aristocracy, and the dissolution of the existing government.  “It was concerted that sixteen or seventeen leaders should be stationed in various parts of the city, each being at the head of forty men, armed and prepared; but the followers were not to know their destination.  On the appointed day, they were to make affrays amongst themselves here and there, in order that the duke might have a pretence for tolling the bells of San Marco, which are never rung but by the order of the duke; and at the sound of the bells, these sixteen or seventeen, with their followers, were to come to San Marco, through the streets which open upon the Piazza; and when the nobles and leading citizens should come to the Piazza to know the cause of the riot, then the conspirators were to cut them in pieces; and this work being finished, my Lord Marino Faliero the Duke was to be proclaimed Lord of Venice.  Things having been thus settled, they agreed to fulfil their attempt on Wednesday, the 15th day of April, in the year 1355.  So covertly did they plot that no one ever dreamed of their machinations.”

As a previous step, in order to arouse popular feeling against the Great Council, it was determined to practise a singular stratagem.  Parties of the conspirators paraded different quarters of the capital in the dead of night, and having stopped at the windows of some citizens of the middle and lower classes, and there insulted the women of the family by scandalous and unseemly propositions, they retired with rude bursts of laughter, calling each other loudly by the names