"Perhaps it would be difficult to conceive any thing more abhorrent
to the soul and body of man, than the time, manner, and place, of
death, distinguishing those executions which have rendered the
gulfs of the Canal Orfano immemorably infamous.

"To me, the element, in its most serene and smiling state, wears a
look of furtive menace; and I am free to confess, that even when
gliding on a mid-summer night over that sweetest Lake of
Derwentwater, beneath the shadows of its moonlit isles and fair
pavilions, I have not been without a certain sensation of
uncomfortable awe. But what must have been the feelings of the
victim, whether criminal or innocent, who, from this accurst
Maranna, cast around him his last straining look of agony, and
uttered his last cry of supplication or despair! The conviction
that his family, parent, wife, or son, were at that hour of horror
in profound ignorance _sometimes_ of his very absence, _often_ of
its cause, or at least, only perplexed with conjecture, and
_always_ unconscious of its horrible event, must have constituted
no trifling pang in that mortal hour. Then that old familiar,
though melancholy, water, more terrible to his feelings than the
dreariest wilderness of ocean! For, girdling the dusky horizon,
could he not see the domes and campaniles of Venice, perhaps the
very lamps in his own palace windows, from whose festal saloons he
had just been decoyed; just distant enough to be beyond the reach
of help? but too, too near for that despairing gaze that recognized
and bade adieu for ever at the same glance? There too were not
those nestling lovely islands, each with its convent tower gleaming
to the moon, and from which the sonorous bells were tolling, the
sacred Anthems swelling for the last time on his ear! Alas! those
chaunted masses were not for _his_ conflicting soul; yea, it would
have a strange comfort to feel that passing bell was proclaiming to
the world that his spirit was parting from its scarcely worn weeds!
But no! even that miserable solace was prohibited to _him_; he was
to be obliterated from society, and his inexorable judges had
decreed that society was not to know that he was gone. No grave for
his dust; no monument for his name, to palliate his faults and
perpetuate his virtues. The ghas