"Councillor Rizzi," said he, "is the most obstinate of them all, and has
led astray the rest with his sophisms. But do you send me in a memorandum
shewing that the alteration will have a much better effect on the large
commerce of Trieste than on the comparatively trifling trade of Udine. I
shall send it into the Council without disclosing the authorship, but
backing it with my authority, and challenging the opposition to refute
your arguments. Finally, if they do not decide reasonably I shall
proclaim before them all my intention to send the memoir to Vienna with
my opinion on it."

I felt confident of success, and wrote out a memoir full of
incontrovertible reasons in favour of the proposed change.

My arguments gained the victory; the Council were persuaded, and Count
Wagensberg handed me the decree, which I immediately laid before the
Venetian consul. Following his advice, I wrote to the secretary of the
Tribunal to the effect that I was happy to have given the Government a
proof of my zeal, and an earnest of my desire to be useful to my country
and to be worthy of being recalled.

Out of regard for me the count delayed the promulgation of the decree for
a week, so that the people of Udine heard the news from Venice before it
had reached Trieste, and everybody thought that the Venetian Government
had achieved its ends by bribery. The secretary of the Tribunal did not
answer my letter, but he wrote to the consul ordering him to give me a
hundred ducats, and to inform me that this present was to encourage me to
serve the Republic. He added that I might hope great things from the
mercy of the Inquisitors if I succeeded in negotiating the Armenian
difficulty.

The consul gave me the requisite information, and my impression was that
my efforts would be in vain; however, I resolved to make the attempt.

Four Armenian monks had left the Convent of St. Lazarus at Venice, having
found the abbot's tyranny unbearable. They had wealthy relations at
Constantinople, and laughed the excommunication of their late tyrant to
scorn. They sought asylum at Vienna, promising to make themselves useful
to the State by establishing an Armenian press to furnish all the
Armenian convents with books. They engaged to sink a capital of a million
florins if they were allowed to settle in Austria, to found their press,
and to buy or build a convent, where they proposed to live in community
but without any abbot.

As might be expected the A