rrived all fuming
with excitement, and cried out: "To whom the devil have you let your
house in such-and-such a street?" "To a certain Domenico Bianchi, the
gondolier of the Colombo family, whose wife was on the point of being
confined." "What Domenico Bianchi? What Colombo? What gondolier? What
wife?" exclaimed he in still greater heat. "The fellow keeps a
disorderly house; and she is one of his hussies. When they came to you,
she had a cushion stuffed beneath her clothes. They sell wine, draw all
the disreputable people of the quarter together, and are the scandal of
my parish. If you do not immediately get rid of the nuisance, you will
be guilty of a mortal sin." I calmed him down, and made him laugh by the
account I gave him of my interview with the _soi-disant_ married couple.
Then I promised to dislodge the people on the spot.

This was sooner said than done. I first applied to the Avvogadori, who
washed their hands of the affair. Then I begged the priest to lay an
information before the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia.[12] He positively
refused, telling me that loose women were only too powerfully protected
at Venice, and that he had already burned his fingers on a previous
occasion by proceeding against a notorious evil-liver. It was no
business of his, and I must get out of the scrape as well as I could.

To cut the story short, I was eventually relieved by my friend Paolo
Balbi, who applied the following summary but efficacious remedy. "I
informed Messer Grande of your affair,"[13] said Balbi, while explaining
his proceedings: "he, as you are well aware, commands the whole tribe of
constables and tipstaves; and I begged him to find some way of ousting
the _canaille_ from your house. Messer Grande dispatched one of his
myrmidons, one who knows these hussies, to tell them, under the pretext
of a charitable warning, that the chief of the police had orders to take
them all up and send them handcuffed to prison. In their fright, the
nest of rogues dispersed and left the quarter." After laughing heartily
over the affair, and thanking my good friend, I walked home, reflecting
deeply on red tape in public offices, perversions of legal justice, and
the high-handed proceedings of that generous and expeditious judge,
_Messer Grande_.[14]

XXXVII.

_A review of the origin and progress of the literary quarrels in which I
was engaged.--Also of the foundation of the Accademia Granellesca.--A
diatribe on prejudice.--F