But Zorzi was not to be confronted with any of these witnesses:  neither with the soldiers who would tell the Council strange stories of devils with blue noses and fiery tails, nor with Giovanni, whose letter called him a liar, a thief and an assassin, nor with Beroviero nor Pasquale.  The Council never allowed the accused man and the witnesses for or against him to be before them at the same time, nor to hold any communication while the trial lasted.  That was a rule of their procedure, but they were not by any means the mysterious body of malign monsters which they have too often been represented to be, in an age when no criminal trials could take place without torture.

Zorzi waited on his bench, listening to the tread of the guards.  As many trials occupied more than one day, his case would come up last of all, and the witnesses would all be examined before he himself was called to make his defence.  He was nervous and anxious.  Even while he was sitting there, Giovanni might be finding out some new accusation against him or the officer of archers might be accusing him of witchcraft and of having a compact with the devil himself.  He was innocent, but he had broken the law, and no doubt many an innocent man had sat on that same bench before him, who had never again returned to his home.  It was not strange that his lips should be parched, and that his heart should be beating like a fuller’s hammer.

At last the footsteps ceased, the key ground and creaked as it turned, and the door was opened.  Two tall guards stood looking at him, and one of them motioned to him to come.  He could never afterwards remember the place through which he was made to pass, for the blood was throbbing in his temples so that he could hardly see.  A door was opened and closed after him, and he was suddenly standing alone in the presence of the Ten, feeling that he could not find a word to say if he were called upon to speak.

A kindly voice broke the silence that seemed to have lasted many minutes.

“Is this the person whom we are told is in league with Satan?”

It was the Doge himself who spoke, nodding his hoary head, as very old men do, and looking at Zorzi’s face with gentle eyes, almost colourless from extreme age.

“This is the accused, your Highness,” replied the secretary from his desk, already holding in his hand Giovanni’s letter.

Zorzi saw that the Council of Ten was much more numerous than its name implied.  The Councillors were between twenty and thirty, sitting in a semicircle, against a carved wooden wainscot, on each side of the aged Doge, Cristoforo Moro, who had yet one more year to live.  There were other persons present also, of whom one was the secretary, the rest being apparently there to listen to the proceedings and to give advice when they were called upon to do so.