light fell across the alley. Swiftly, the masked one had passed
them by, and as they were now walking closely past him, he peered
with a keen look at both of their faces from behind a pillar. The
features of the secretary of the inquisition emerged clearly for a
moment out of the darkness. The voice of the old man had also
been heard in the chamber of the secret tribunal. He had told
Andrea Delfin to his face that he was a Candiano.
"Now, go back," the old man concluded the conversation, "and take
care of this matter without delay. The Grand Captain is busy at
San Rocco, as you know; but a small detachment of his men will be
enough to arrest both of them. You'll impress upon them that it
has to be done without any noise. You'll have to conduct the
first interrogation right away, for I'll hardly be back before
midnight. If you'll have something urgent to report, you'll find
me at my brother-in-law's place, as soon as the mass is over."
They parted, and the old man walked through the lonely passage
between the pillars towards the square of San Rocco. Just now,
the music in the church fell silent, and everybody's eyes were
turned to the pulpit, to which an old man with hair as white as
snow, the papal nuncio, with the help of two younger priests,
ascended with some difficulties, in order to talk to the assembled
aristocracy and common people of Venice. No sound was uttered any
more; the feeble voice of the old man began, widely audible, to
pray that the Lord would look down in His grace and grant, from
the treasure of his eternal wisdom and mercy, comfort and
enlightenment to the saddened spirits, that He would bring light
to the darkness, which is shielding the guilty and insidious ones
from the eyes of worldly justice, and foil the work of darkness.
The echo of the "amen" had hardly faded, when from the portal the
noise of a low murmur rose up and proceeded lightning-fast through
the nave of the church and reached the seats of the nobili, to
make the huge gathering instantly waver and surge like a lake in a
storm. In the first instant, they all peered helplessly to the
threshold, over which the horror had entered. Torches could now
be seen through the main portal, wandering hastily across the dark
square, and while they were all holding their breath and listening
to what was happening outside, suddenly, many voices shouted into
the church: "Murderer! Murderer! Save yourself, if you can!"
An unparallelled turmoil, a confusion, as if the arches of the
church were in immediate danger of collapsing, followed this
exclamation. Commoners and patricians, clerics and laymen, the
singers up in the choir, the guards of the catafalque, men and
women crowded blindly towards the exits, and only the old man up
in the pulpit looked down on the frightened bustle with unwavering
dignity and only left his seat when there was nothing but the
black catafalque left in the middle of the empty church, to remind
him of his sermon, which had been cut short thus abruptly.
But outside, the horrified crowd pushed towards that spot, where a
few torches had difficulties in fighting against the wind and the
rain. The sbirri who had rushed to that spot, lead by the Grand
Captain, as soon as the first indications of the event had started
to stir, had found a motionless body in the darkness of the side
alley, who had still blood gushing out of his side. When the
torches came, a dagger with a cross-shaped handle of steel was
seen in the wound, and the engraved words were read: "Death to
all inquisitors of the state!", which were passed on through the
stunned crowd in low voices from one mouth to the next.
The first jolt of an earthquake, though constituting a terrible
warning that one would be standing on volcanic ground, does not
stir up people's minds in their depths, yet. The horror is too
vividly intermixed with surprise and indignation; indeed,
wherever the effects do not persist in a too tangible manner,
people, swiftly striving back to their usual routine, prefer to
believe that their senses had been deceived for the sake of their
peace of mind. Only the repetition of the destructive,
inescapable, and merciless event disproves any kind of belief in a
misinterpretation, any hope that only random coincidences could
have brought on the event. The return of the danger brings on
everlasting fear and points to a series of horrifying events with
no end in sight, against which neither courage nor cowardice can
provide even the slightest protection.
The news of the second murderous assault against an inquisitor of
the state had a similar effect in Venice. For that the wounded
man had been nothing less, the insiders had not been able to keep
a secret. Nobody could deny that the boldness, with which this
second blow had been struck, was surely just incited once again
and encouraged to proceed on the course of violence by the
successful execution of the crime. Though the dagger had not
struck a deadly blow this time, deflected by a silken
undergarment, the wound was nevertheless life-threatening and
caused, at any rate, a standstill in the activities of the secret
tribunal, which was not allowed to proclaim a sentence without the
unanimous consent of its three members. Thus, its rule was
paralysed for the moment, and, what was more important, the
unpenetrated secret surrounding the hostile power destroyed the
belief in the omniscience and omnipotence of the triumvirate and
finally had to undermine the self-confidence and the unscrupulous
energy of its members.
After all, what precautions were still left, and which means of
secret investigations had not been exhausted yet? Had they not,
in the Council of Ten, vowed to each other with a solemn oath to
keep most silent about the election of the new, third inquisitor?
And nevertheless, a few days afterwards, the blow had been struck
as surely as if it had come from heaven against no one but the
newly elected one. With distrustful looks, they all looked at
each other. The thought was forcing itself upon them that among
the rulers themselves, treason was building its nest, that the
tyrants had, in a suicidal way, assaulted their own power. The
secretary of the inquisition was arrested, who had been the last
to talk to the wounded man shortly before the attack. He was
questioned thoroughly and threatened with a cruel death. This
was also, of course, unsuccessful.
And what had been the benefit of increasing the numbers of the
secret police, the massive recruiting of new spies from among the
servants of the nobili and the foreign ambassadors, in the inns,
in the arsenal, even in the barracks and monasteries? One half of
Venice was payed to spy on the other half. A sizable amount of
money was supposed to be the reward for even the slightest news,
which would help them to get on the trail of the conspiracy. Now,
it was tripled. But, since the conspiracy was presumed to be
among the aristocracy, they had little hopes to get results from
these measures, which were only targeted at the poorer people.
Quite generally, they did a lot of things to preserve the
appearance that they were not idle, though what they did was idle.
Strict orders were issued that the inns and taverns had to be
closed at nightfall; wearing masks and weapons of any kind was
banned with a severe punishment; all night long, the steps of the
patrols echoed through the allies, and they were heard calling out
to the gondolas, which were passing by the guard-posts on the
canals. Nobody who wanted to leave Venice received a passport,
and at the entrance to the harbour, there was a large guard-ship,
stopping every vessel, and even the officials of the republic were
asked for the password, before they were allowed to pass.
Far across the Terraferma, the rumour of these frightening
conditions was spreading, as usual increasing with the distance.
Whoever was planning to travel to the city, postponed it. Whoever
had been planning to engage into a business connection with a
Venetian house, preferred to wait until the confusion was over,
which was threatening to revolutionise the structure of the
republic in its foundations. The resulting effect was soon
evident in a desolation of the city, where everything seemed to
have come to a standstill. The nobili only left their palaces in
cases of extreme emergency, locking themselves in against any
visitor, to avoid getting unknowingly in contact with one of the
conspirators. Nobody knew precisely what was going on outside,
and the most outrageous rumours of arrests, torture, and inflicted
punishments reached the closed doors, entered into the frightened
families. Even the common people, though they felt clearly that
they were not the ones who were primarily suffering under these
conditions, and though they watched gloatingly how the noble men
gave each other squinting looks in panic and fear, could still not
fight off an uneasy feeling in the long run. It was definitely a
nuisance to abandon cards and wine at nightfall, to be searched
for concealed weapons by every guard who felt like it, and not to
be save for a single moment from the treachery of false
accusations, in spite of having the best conscience in the world.
Among the few whose lives and activities seemed to be unaffected
by the stifling atmosphere, which depressed all spirits, was also
Andrea Delfin. The morning after the crime, he had, like all the
other secret spies, been interrogated by the successor of that
unfortunate secretary who had put him on the payroll, concerning
his observations at the hour of the crime, and had presented him
the fairy-tale of a trip to the lido, on which he had the
intention to investigate how the fisherman thought about all this.
What he could tell them about what was going on in the hotel of
the Austrian ambassador and the palace of the countess -
meaningless facts, which the tribunal already knew for a long time
- at least proved his zeal to familiarise himself with his new
task. His friend Samuele did not fail to inform against the
striking familiarity he had found between the man from Brescia and
the secretary of the embassy. Calmly, Andrea explained himself,
and the old acquaintance from Riva could only be advantageous for
the intentions of the tribunal.
Thus, almost no day passed by, when he would not, after he was
done with his work for the notary, call on his German friend, to
whom, being cut off from other company, the conversations with the
grave man, clouded by secret grief, became, by and by, a
necessity. He had developed an unlimited trust in Andrea, and
when he avoided political topics with him, it was more because he
could not hope that they would understand each other on account of
their different nationalities, than for a concern that Andrea
might abuse his openness. He even told him with a laughing face
that he had been warned against him being a spy of the tribunal.
The carelessness with which he crossed the shunned threshold of
the foreign ambassador every day would, of course, catch people's
attention.
"I'm no nobile," replied Andrea with a calm face. "The ten men
will realise that I don't seek any diplomatic connections here;
they didn't even think me worthy of a warning up to now. But I've
come to like you, and it would pain me to forgo forcing my
unpleasant company on you from time to time, for I'm a perfectly
lonely man. Even my kind landlady, who in the past used to
shorten the time for me with her proverbs for an hour or so,
doesn't enter my room any more. She's ill, and what made her ill
is Venice and pale shadows haunting this city."
This was indeed true. After the second assault against the
inquisition of the state, Signora Giovanna had been walking around
in deep thoughts for one day, and as the night fell, an ever
growing excitement had come upon her. She was now firmly
convinced that her Orso's spirit had been the perpetrator; for
only a bodiless shadow would be able to escape for a second time
the thousand spying eyes which were guarding Venice. She put on
her best clothes and decided, since she was expecting nothing less
than a visit of her departed husband, to be ready to receive him,
spending the entire night at the top of the stairs. In a touching
confusion of these concepts, she had prepared a favourite dish of
her husband, laid the table with three armchairs by its side, and
could not be persuaded to eat a bite of it herself. In this
state, she sat awake for the larger part of the night. Only after
the small lamp in the corridor had gone out, Marietta, calling
Andrea to her aid, succeeded in bringing the poor woman back to
her room and to bed. A fever broke out, not dangerous, but strong
enough to render her unconscious for several hours a day. Andrea
watched all of this with deep sympathy, and the moving words the
ill woman uttered in her delusions tormented him a lot. He had to
admit to himself that he was to blame for the confusion of this
good soul, and Marietta's sad looks depressed him more heavily
than all the bloody secrets he carried around with him.
With this burden, Andrea strolled past the Doges' Palace one
afternoon and, for a long time, stood by the narrow canal which
flows along under the high arch of the Bridge of Sighs. Whenever
he started to waver in his decisions and he began to doubt in the
moral justification of the office of a judge which he had taken
on, he fled to this place and confirmed his determination by
looking at these ancient walls, behind which thousands of victims
of an irresponsible power had sighed and gnashed their teeth,
believing in the righteousness and the necessity of his mission.
The sun shone with blinding rays through the mists of September,
rising up from the water. This quay, which had at other times
been swarming with people, was unsettlingly quiet. The gloomy
looks of the soldiers, marching noisily up and down under the
arcades of the palace, were liable to scare away the loud
cheerfulness of the people passing by. Andrea could hear clearly
that from a gondola, which was just arriving at the Piazzetta, his
name had been called. He recognised his friend, the secretary of
the ambassador from Vienna.
"Do you've got time?" the young man called out at him, "If so,
come on board for a while, and join me for a stretch of my way.
I'm in a hurry, but would still like to talk to you once more."
Andrea entered the gondola, and the other man shook his hand
particularly cordially. "I'm very happy, my dear Andrea that I
happened to meet you here. I would have disliked leaving you
without a farewell, and yet, I didn't dare to visit you or to sent
for you, since this would undoubtedly have caught someone's
attention."
"You're taking a journey?" Andrea asked almost perplexed.
"I guess, I'll have to. Here, read this letter from my dear
mother, and tell me whether I'm still allowed to hesitate after
this."
He pulled the letter out of his pocket and gave it to his friend.
The old lady implored her son that, if he wanted her to ever be
able to get but one hour of sleep again, he should travel to her
without delay. The rumours from Venice, the position he held
there and which put him into more danger than others, the fact
that less than a third of all of his letters would reach her, -
she would not know who was to blame for this, - all of this was
eating away at her peace of mind, and her physician would not
vouch for anything, unless she would be comforted and calmed down
by a visit of her son. There was a tone of unlimited motherly
devotion and deep grief in all of these line, so that Andrea could
not read them without being moved.
"And yet," he said, returning the letter, "and yet, I almost wish
you wouldn't leave now out of all times, though I know that your
mother is counting the hours. Not because, once you'll be gone,
I'll be left behind here, completely abandoned and like a
walking corpse, but rather because it is not advisable to leave
Venice at this time, since the suspicion will follow you on your
heels that you were leaving as a precaution. Didn't they give you
any trouble, when you were asking for a leave?"
"None at all. How could they, since I'm working for the embassy?"
"If that's so, be twice as cautious. Many a door has already been
opened accommodatingly in Venice, because stepping over the
threshold meant plunging into an abyss. If you'd follow me in
this, you wouldn't show yourself thus openly and without a
disguise here in the city during the last hours before your
departure. You wouldn't be able to know what measures they might
take to prevent it." - "But what shall I do?" asked the young
man. "You know that masks are illegal."
"Then stay at home, and rather let the dignitaries of the republic
wait for your farewell visit in vain. - And when will you leave?"
"Early tomorrow at five o'clock. I'm planning to stay away for a
month, and hope that by then my mother will have calmed down, so
that I'll be able to leave her. Now that it has been irreversibly
decided that I shall sever my ties, I'm almost at ease with this
violent cure, though it cuts into my life rather deeply. Perhaps,
once I'll have broken out of the circles of my enchantress, I'll
succeed in shaking off her spell for ever more. But will you
believe it, my friend, that the separation makes me shiver, as if
I wouldn't be able to survive it?"
"If that's so, the best remedy is to part with her right away."
"You mean, not to see her again before the journey? What you're
asking is inhuman."
Andrea seized his hand. "My dear friend," he said with a
heartfelt emotion, which at other times he had always been able to
control, "I have no right to ask you for even the slightest
sacrifice. The feeling of cordial affection, which has brought me
together with you from the start, is ample thanks by itself, and I
do not dare to ask you for anything in the name of this friendship
of mine. But by the image of that noble woman, whose loving words
you've just let me read, I implore you: Don't enter the house of
the countess any more. More than anything I know of her, what
even you don't deny, my premonition is warning you, that it will
be your doom, if you don't avoid her in these last hours. Promise
it to me, my dearest friend!"
He extended his hand to him. But Rosenberg did not take it.
"Don't demand an unbreakable promise," he said, gravely shaking
his head, "be content with my firm intention to follow your
advice. But if the daemon would be stronger than I and would run
down everything I've put in his path, then I would have the double
grief to have become unfaithful to both me and you. But you don't
know what this woman can achieve, when she puts her mind to it."
After this, they were silent and cruised for a while, lost in
thought, together through the lifeless waters, receding listlessly
like a swamp as the gondola's keel ploughed through them. Near
the Rialto, Andrea wished to get out. He asked the young man to
give his regards to his mother and inscrutably shrugged his
shoulders when being asked whether he could still be found in
Venice one month from now. They held each others hand for a long
time, and when the gondola landed, they parted with a cordial
embrace. Once more, the intelligent and trusting face of the
young man looked through the hatch of the black canopy and nodded
to his friend, who had stopped on the stairs leading down to the
water, lost in his thoughts. For both, the farewell felt more
painful than they could explain.
Especially Andrea, who had thought for a long time that he was
free from all those ties with which one person would tie himself
to another, who seemed to be dead to all those small reasons for
living due to that one, fearful goal which he had set out for
himself, was astonished at how much the thought of having to make
do without that young man for several weeks did pain him. But
soon, the wish forced itself upon him that he would never meet him
here again, before he had not succeeded in his work. He was
resolved to write a letter to the mother and to urge her with
mysterious warnings not to consent to her son's return to Venice.
Once he had made this decision, he was relieved of a great burden.
He instantly went home, in order to carry out his plan.
But in his gray room, where no ray of sunlight ever entered and
the barren wall of the alley inhospitably stared at him through
the iron bars, he was seized by such a violent restlessness and
uneasiness that he, whenever sat down to write, threw away the pen
and paced to and fro like a predator in its cage. He felt
perfectly certain that this feeling did not rise from the depth of
his conscience, that not the fear of being found out and being the
subject of vengeance was partially disturbing his soul. Just this
very morning, he had again come face to face with the secretary of
the tribunal and could see for himself how completely at a loss
the tyrants were. The wounded inquisitor of the state was still
between life and death. The longer this state of uncertainty
lasted, the more the existence of the triumvirate itself was
questioned. Another successful strike against the shaky building,
and it would be in ruins for ever. Andrea did not doubt for a
moment that providence, having guided his hand up to now, would
also allow him to succeed in his final effort. At no time, he had
doubted in his mission. And when today, the indistinct
premonition of a great tragedy made him restless, his own actions
and plans had no part in it.
It was already getting dark, when he heard a quiet cough on the
other side by Smeraldina's window, the agreed sign that the girl
wished to talk to him. Lately, he had neglected her pretty much
and was rather inclined to continue the acquaintance today,
partially to escape his own thoughts, partially to keep his access
to the tribunal by means of news from the palace of the countess,
and perhaps even to get to one of the inquisitors. Swiftly, he
stepped to the window and greeted her. The chamber-maid received
him with cold condescension.
"You've been avoiding me," she said; "it seems as if you had made
other acquaintances in the meantime, whom you prefer to your
neighbour."
He assured her that his feelings for her were unchanged.
"If it's true," she said, "then, I'm willing to put you back in my
grace. Today, there's a particularly good opportunity to have
another undisturbed chat. My countess is gambling with several
guests tonight, half a dozen young gentlemen. They would hardly
leave before midnight, and until then, the two of us can also be
together, and I'll get all we need from the kitchen and from the
wine table."
"Has the German been invited, about whom you've told me that the
countess is seeing him so often at her place?"
"Him? What are you thinking! He's so jealous that he wouldn't
cross the threshold when he senses that he would have company
here. And besides, he's leaving. We wouldn't be mortally sad for
that."
Andrea sighed in relief. "At ten o'clock, I'll be here by the
window," he said; "or shall I come to the portal?"
She thought about it. "You'd better do the latter," she said.
"After all, you're well acquainted with the porter, and your
landlady would surely give you the key. Or are you playing the
role of a virtuous man before little Marietta? Do you know that I
seriously started to get jealous of that insignificant creature?"
"Of Marietta?"
"She has a crush on you, or else I'd have no eyes in my head.
Just look at her. Doesn't she walk about like a changed person
and doesn't sing any more, while at other times I had to cover my
ears? And how many times have I seen her, while you were gone,
sneaking to your room and searching through your things!"
"She's reading my books; I've permitted her to do so. The reason
for her not singing any more is that her mother has fallen ill."
"You only want to make excuses for her, but I know enough, and if
I should find out that she had been talking badly about me, in
order to get you away from me, I'll scratch her eyes out, that
envious witch."
Vigorously, she slammed the window shut, and he could not help
thinking about her words for a long time. In the old days, the
idea that the charming girl cared for him would have made his
blood throb faster. Now, the only thing occupying his mind was
which way he would have to take in order to avoid crossing the
calm paths of this innocent soul in the future. Thinking back, he
became aware of many small things which supported Smeraldina's
opinion. Individually, he had ignored them. But he had to accept
their sum. "I must leave this place," he said to himself. "And
yet, where am I as safe and as sheltered as in this house?"