"Repeat your aves and go to sleep, Bella Gelsomina," concluded the
sub-keeper, "for the fishermen have left off shouting to say their
prayers. Per Diana! The bare-headed and bare-legged rascals are as
impudent as if St. Mark were their inheritance! The noble patricians
should give them a lesson in modesty, by sending every tenth knave among
them to the galleys. Miscreants! to disturb the quiet of an orderly town
with their vulgar complaints!"
"But thou hast said nothing of the friar; is he with the rioters?"
"There is a Carmelite at the altar--but my blood boiled at seeing such
vagabonds disturb the peace of respectable persons, and I took little
note of his air or years."
"Then thou failedst to do the errand on which I sent thee. It is now too
late to repair thy fault. Thou canst return to thy charge."
"A million pardons, Bellissima Gelsomina, but indignation is the
uppermost feeling, when one in office sees his rights attacked by the
multitude. Send me to Corfu, or to Candia, if you please, and I will
bring back the color of every stone in their prisons, but do not send me
among rebels. My gorge rises at the sight of villany!"
As the keeper's daughter withdrew, while her father's assistant was
making this protestation of loyalty, the latter was compelled to give
vent to the rest of his indignation in a soliloquy.
One of the tendencies of oppression is to create a scale of tyranny,
descending from those who rule a state, to those who domineer over a
single individual.
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