[Footnote 140:  A.G.  Campbell’s Life of Sarpi, p. 174.]

[Footnote 141:  Sarpi’s Letters, vol. i. pp. 231, 239.]

[Footnote 142:  Ibid. pp. 220, 222, 225.]

[Footnote 143:  Vita del Padre F. Paolo Sarpi, Helmstat, per Jacopo Mulleri, MDCCXXXXX.]

The first definite warning that his life was in danger came to Sarpi from Caspar Schoppe, the publicist.  Scioppius (so his contemporaries called him) was a man of doubtful character and unsteady principles, who, according as his interests varied, used a fluent pen and limpid Latin style for or against the Jesuit faction.  History would hardly condescend to notice him but for the singular luck he had of coming at critical moments into contact with the three chief Italian thinkers of his time.  We know already that a letter of this man is the one contemporary testimony of an eye-witness to Bruno’s condemnation which we possess.  He also deserves mention for having visited Campanella in prison and helped to procure his liberation.  Now in the year 1607, while passing through Venice, Schoppe sought a private interview with Sarpi, pointed out the odium which Fra Paolo had gained in Rome by his writings, and concluded by asserting that the Pope meant to have him alive or to compass his assassination.  If Sarpi wished to make his peace with Paul V., Schoppe was ready to conduct the reconciliation upon honorable terms, having already several affairs of like import in his charge.  To this proposal Sarpi replied that the cause he had defended was a just one, that he had done nothing to offend his Holiness, and that all plots against his liberty or life he left within the hands of God.  To these words he significantly added that, even in the Pope’s grasp, a man was always ’master over his own life’—­a sentence which seems to indicate suicide as the last resort of self-defense.  In September of the same year the Venetian ambassador at Rome received private information regarding some mysterious design against a person or persons unknown, at Venice, in which the Papal Court was implicated, and which was speedily to take effect.[144] On October 5 Sarpi was returning about 5 o’clock in the afternoon to his convent at S. Fosca, when he was attacked upon a bridge by five ruffians.  It so happened that on this occasion he had no attendance but his servant Fra Marino; Fra Fulgenzio and a man of courage who usually accompanied him, having taken another route home.  The assassins were armed with harquebusses, pistols and poniards.  One of them went straight at Sarpi, while the others stood on guard and held down Fra Marino.  Fifteen blows in all were aimed at Sarpi, three of which struck him in the neck and face.  The stiletto remained firmly embedded in his cheekbone between the right ear and nose.  He fell to the ground senseless; and a cry being raised by some women who had witnessed the outrage from a window, the assassins made off, leaving their victim for dead.  It was noticed