The Bravo (53 page)

"It will be seemly to send letters of congratulation to the cardinal
secretary, on the union of his nephew with so rich an heiress of our
city," said the Inquisitor of the Ten, as the door closed on the
retiring group. "So great an interest as that of the Neapolitan should
be propitiated."

"But should he urge the state's resistance to his hopes?" returned the
Signor Soranzo, in feeble objection to so bold a scheme.

"We will excuse it as the act of a former council. These misconceptions
are the unavoidable consequences of the caprices of liberty, Signore.
The steed that ranges the plains in the freedom of nature, cannot be
held to perfect command, like the dull beast that draws the car. This is
the first of your sittings in the Three; but experience will show you
that excellent as we are in system, we are not quite perfect in
practice. This is grave matter of the young Gradenigo, Signori!"

"I have long known his unworthiness," returned his more aged colleague.
"It is a thousand pities that so honorable and so noble a patrician
should have produced so ignoble a child. But neither the state nor the
city can tolerate assassination."

"Would it were less, frequent!" exclaimed the Signore Soranzo, in
perfect sincerity.

"Would it were, indeed! There are hints in our secret information, which
tend to confirm the charge of Jacopo, though long experience has taught
us to put full faith in his reports."

"How! Is Jacopo, then, an agent of the police!"

"Of that more at our leisure, Signor Soranzo. At present we must look to
this attempt on the life of one protected by our laws."

The Three then entered into a serious discussion of the case of the two
delinquents. Venice, like all despotic governments, had the merit of
great efficiency in its criminal police, when it was disposed to exert
it. Justice was sure enough in those instances in which the interests of
the government itself were not involved, or in which bribery could not
well be used. As to the latter, through the jealousy of the state, and
the constant agency of those who were removed from temptation, by being
already in possession of a monopoly of benefits, it was by no means as
frequent as in some other communities in which the affluent were less
interested. The Signor Soranzo had now a fair occasion for the exercise
of his generous feelings. Though related to the house of Gradenigo, he
was not backward in decrying the conduct of its heir. His first impulses
were to make a terrible example of the accused, and to show the world
that no station brought with it, in Venice, impunity for crime. From
this view of the case, however, he was gradually enticed by his
companions, who reminded him that the law commonly made a distinction
between the intention and the execution of an offence. Driven from his
first determination by the cooler heads of his colleagues, the young
inquisitor next proposed that the case should be sent to the ordinary
tribunals for judgment. Instances had not been wanting in which the
aristocracy of Venice sacrificed one of its body to the seemliness of
justice; for when such cases were managed with discretion, they rather
strengthened than weakened their ascendency. But the present crime was
known to be too common, to permit so lavish an expenditure of their
immunities, and the old inquisitors opposed the wish of their younger
colleague with great plausibility, and with some show of reason. It was
finally resolved that they should themselves decide on the case.

The next question was the degree of punishment. The wily senior of the
council began by proposing a banishment for a few months, for Giacomo
Gradenigo was already obnoxious to the anger of the state on more
accounts than one. But this punishment was resisted by the Signor
Soranzo with the ardor of an uncorrupted and generous mind. The latter
gradually prevailed, his companions taking care that their compliance
should have the air of a concession to his arguments. The result of all
this management was, that the heir of Gradenigo was condemned to ten
years' retirement in the provinces, and Hosea to banishment for life.
Should the reader be of opinion that strict justice was not meted out to
the offenders, he should remember, that the Hebrew ought to be glad to
have escaped as he did.

"We must not conceal this judgment, nor its motive," observed the
Inquisitor of the Ten, when the affair was concluded. "The state is
never a loser for letting its justice be known."

"Nor for its exercise, I should hope," returned the Signor Soranzo. "As
our affairs are ended for the night, is it your pleasures, Signori, that
we return to our palaces?"

"Nay, we have this matter of Jacopo."

"Him may we now, surely, turn over to the ordinary tribunals!"

"As you may decide, Signori; is this your pleasure?"

Both the others bowed assent, and the usual preparations were made for
departure.

Ere the two seniors of the Council left the palace, however, they held a
long and secret conference together. The result was a private order to
the criminal judge, and then they returned, each to his own abode, like
men who had the approbation of their own consciences.

On the other hand, the Signor Soranzo hastened to his own luxurious and
happy dwelling. For the first time in his life he entered it with a
distrust of himself. Without being conscious of the reason, he felt sad,
for he had taken the first step in that tortuous and corrupting path,
which eventually leads to the destruction of all those generous and
noble sentiments, which can only flourish apart from the sophistry and
fictions of selfishness. He would have rejoiced to have been as light of
heart as at the moment he handed his fair-haired partner into the
gondola that night; but his head had pressed the pillow for many hours,
before sleep drew a veil over the solemn trifling with the most serious
of your duties, in which he had been an actor.

"Art thou not guilty! No, indeed, I am not."
ROGERS.

The following morning brought the funeral of Antonio. The agents of the
police took the precaution to circulate in the city, that the Senate
permitted this honor to the memory of the old fisherman, on account of
his success in the regatta, and as some atonement for his unmerited and
mysterious death. All the men of the Lagunes were assembled in the
square at the appointed hour, in decent guise, flattered with the notice
that their craft received, and more than half disposed to forget their
former anger in the present favor. Thus easy is it for those who are
elevated above their fellow-creatures by the accident of birth, or by
the opinions of a factitious social organization, to repair the wrongs
they do in deeds, by small concessions of their conventional
superiority.

Masses were still chanted for the soul of old Antonio before the altar
of St. Mark. Foremost among the priests was the good Carmelite, who had
scarce known hunger or fatigue, in his pious desire to do the offices of
the church in behalf of one whose fate he might be said to have
witnessed. His zeal, however, in that moment of excitement passed
unnoticed by all, but those whose business it was to suffer no unusual
display of character, nor any unwonted circumstance to have place,
without attracting their suspicion. As the Carmelite finally withdrew
from the altar, previously to the removal of the body, he felt the
sleeve of his robe slightly drawn aside, and yielding to the impulse,
he quickly found himself among the columns of that gloomy church, alone
with a stranger.

"Father, thou hast shrived many a parting soul!" observed, rather than
asked, the other.

"It is the duty of my holy office, son."

"The state will note thy services; there will be need of thee when the
body of this fisherman is committed to the earth."

The monk shuddered, but making the sign of the cross, he bowed his pale
face, in signification of his readiness to discharge the duty. At that
moment the bearers lifted the body, and the procession issued upon the
great square. First marched the usual lay underlings of the cathedral,
who were followed by those who chanted the offices of the occasion.
Among the latter the Carmelite hastened to take his station. Next came
the corpse, without a coffin, for that is a luxury of the grave even now
unknown to the Italians of old Antonio's degree. The body was clad in
the holiday vestments of a fisherman, the hands and feet being naked. A
cross lay on the breast; the grey hairs were blowing about in the air,
and, in frightful adornment of the ghastliness of death, a bouquet of
flowers was placed upon the mouth. The bier was rich in gilding and
carving, another melancholy evidence of the lingering wishes and false
direction of human vanity.

Next to this characteristic equipage of the dead walked a lad, whose
brown cheek, half-naked body, and dark, roving eye, announced the
grandson of the fisherman. Venice knew when to yield gracefully, and the
boy was liberated unconditionally from the galleys, in pity, as it was
whispered, for the untimely fate of his parent. There was the aspiring
look, the dauntless spirit, and the rigid honesty of Antonio, in the
bearing of the lad; but these qualities were now smothered by a natural
grief; and, as in the case of him whose funeral escort he followed,
something obscured by the rude chances of his lot. From time to time
the bosom of the generous boy heaved, as they marched along the quay,
taking the route of the arsenal; and there were moments in which his
lips quivered, grief threatening to overcome his manhood.

Still not a tear wetted his cheek, until the body disappeared from his
view. Then nature triumphed, and straying from out the circle, he took a
seat apart and wept, as one of his years and simplicity would be apt to
weep, at finding himself a solitary wanderer in the wilderness of the
world.

Thus terminated the incident of Antonio Vecchio, the fisherman, whose
name soon ceased to be mentioned in that city of mysteries, except on
the Lagunes, where the men of his craft long vaunted his merit with the
net, and the manner in which he bore away the prize from the best oars
of Venice. His descendant lived and toiled, like others of his
condition, and we will here dismiss him, by saying, that he so far
inherited the native qualities of his ancestor, that he forbore to
appear, a few hours later, in the crowd, which curiosity and vengeance
drew into the Piazzetta.

Father Anselmo took boat to return to the canals, and when he landed at
the quay of the smaller square it was with the hope that he would now be
permitted to seek those of whose fate he was still ignorant, but in whom
he felt so deep an interest. Not so, however. The individual who had
addressed him in the cathedral was, apparently, in waiting, and knowing
the uselessness as well as the danger of remonstrance, where the state
was concerned, the Carmelite permitted himself to be conducted whither
his guide pleased. They took a devious route, but it led them to the
public prisons. Here the priest was shown into the keeper's apartment,
where he was desired to wait a summons from his companion.

Our business now leads us to the cell of Jacopo. On quitting the
presence of the Three, he had been remanded to his gloomy room, where he
passed the night like others similarly situated. With the appearance of
the dawn the Bravo had been led before those who ostensibly discharged
the duties of his judges. We say ostensibly, for justice never yet was
pure under a system in which the governors have an interest in the least
separated from that of the governed; for in all cases which involve the
ascendency of the existing authorities, the instinct of
self-preservation is as certain to bias their decision as that of life
is to cause man to shun danger. If such is the fact in countries of
milder sway, the reader will easily believe in its existence in a state
like that of Venice. As may have been anticipated, those who sat in
judgment on Jacopo had their instructions, and the trial that he
sustained was rather a concession to appearances than a homage to the
laws. All the records were duly made, witnesses were examined, or said
to be examined, and care was had to spread the rumor in the city that
the tribunals were at length occupied in deciding on the case of the
extraordinary man who had so long been permitted to exercise his bloody
profession with impunity even in the centre of the canals. During the
morning the credulous tradesmen were much engaged in recounting to each
other the different flagrant deeds that, in the course of the last three
or four years, had been imputed to his hand. One spoke of the body of a
stranger that had been found near the gaming-houses frequented by those
who visited Venice. Another recalled the fate of the young noble who had
fallen by the assassin's blow even on the Rialto, and another went into
the details of a murder which had deprived a mother of her only son, and
the daughter of a patrician of her love. In this manner, as one after
another contributed to the list, a little group, assembled on the quay,
enumerated no less than five-and-twenty lives which were believed to
have been taken by the hand of Jacopo, without including the vindictive
and useless assassination of him whose funeral rites had just been
celebrated. Happily, perhaps, for his peace of mind, the subject of all
these rumors and of the maledictions which they drew upon his head, knew
nothing of either. Before his judges he had made no defence whatever,
firmly refusing to answer their interrogatories.

"Ye know what I have done, Messires," he said haughtily. "And what I
have not done, ye know. As for yourselves, look to your own interests."

When again in his cell he demanded food, and ate tranquilly, though with
moderation. Every instrument which could possibly be used against his
life was then removed, his irons were finally and carefully examined,
and he was left to his thoughts. It was in this situation that the
prisoner heard the approach of footsteps to his cell. The bolts turned,
and the door opened. The form of a priest appeared between him and the
day. The latter, however, held a lamp, which, as the cell was again shut
and secured, he placed on the low shelf that held the jug and loaf of
the prisoner.