"
"Thou wert a gondolier in thy youth?"
"I was a gondolier."
"Thy mother is----"
"Dead," said Jacopo, perceiving the other paused to examine his notes.
The depth of the tone in which this word was uttered, caused a silence,
that the secretary did not interrupt, until he had thrown a glance
backwards at the judges.
"She was not accused of thy father's crime?"
"Had she been, Signore, she is long since beyond the power of the
Republic."
"Shortly after thy father fell under the displeasure of the state, thou
quittedst thy business of a gondolier?"
"Signore, I did."
"Thou art accused, Jacopo, of having laid aside the oar for the
stiletto?"
"Signore, I am."
"For several years, the rumors of thy bloody deeds have been growing in
Venice, until, of late, none have met with an untimely fate that the
blow has not been attributed to thy hand?"
"This is too true, Signor Segretario--I would it were not!"
"The ears of his highness, and of the Councils, have not been closed to
these reports, but they have long attended to the rumors with the
earnestness which becomes a paternal and careful government. If they
have suffered thee to go at large, it hath only been that there might
be no hazard of sullying the ermine of justice, by a premature and not
sufficiently supported judgment."
Jacopo bent his head, but without speaking. A smile so wild and meaning,
however, gleamed on his face at this declaration, that the permanent
officer of the secret tribunal, he who served as its organ of
communication, bowed nearly to the paper he held, as it might be to look
deeper into his documents.
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