Perhaps the rapidity with which their design was framed,
tended much to its concealment. Scarcely a little month had elapsed
since its first projection, and now the following day was to destroy the
constitution of Venice, to deluge her streets with patrician blood, and
to pluck up all her ancient stocks from their very roots, without a
suspicion of the approaching calamity having glanced across the intended
victims.--Either the Council of X could not yet have obtained its
subsequent fearful and extraordinary ubiquity, or the conspirators must
have exhibited a prudence and self-control rarely, if ever, paralleled
by an equally large body of men, engaged in a similar attempt. To their
minor agents, their ultimate design had not been revealed; and even in
the end, the discovery arose not from treachery, nor from incaution, but
from "a compunctious visiting" of one framed of stuff less stern than
his associates, and who shrank from the murder of a benefactor. The part
played by Tresham in that yet more bloody conspiracy, which the Papists,
in after days, framed against the three estates of England, was but
a repetition of that now enacted in Venice by Beltramo of Bergamo.
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