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.
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