t all; but sets
his prisoners to work upon the roads, public buildings, &c., where
they labour in their chains; and where, strange to tell! they often
insult passengers who refuse them alms when asked as they go by; and,
stranger still, they are not punished for it when they do." ...

The lover sacrificing his reputation, his liberty, or his life, to
save the fair fame of his mistress, is not an unusual event in
fiction, whatever it may be in real life. Balzac, Charles de Bernard,
and M. de Jarnac have each made a self-sacrifice of this kind the
basis of a romance. But neither of them has hit upon a better plot
than might be formed out of the following Venetian story:

"Some years ago then, perhaps a hundred, one of the many spies who
ply this town by night, ran to the state inquisitor, with information
that such a nobleman (naming him) had connections with the French
ambassador, and went privately to his house every night at a certain
hour. The _messergrando_, as they call him, could not believe, nor
would proceed, without better and stronger proof, against a man for
whom he had an intimate personal friendship, and on whose virtue he
counted with very particular reliance. Another spy was therefore set,
and brought back the same intelligence, adding the description of his
disguise: on which the worthy magistrate put on his mask and bauta,
and went out himself; when his eyes confirming the report of his
informants, and the reflection on his duty stifling all remorse, he
sent publicly for _Foscarini_ in the morning, whom the populace
attended all weeping to his door.

"Nothing but resolute denial of the crime alleged could however be
forced from the firm-minded citizen, who, sensible of the discovery,
prepared for that punishment he knew to be inevitable, and submitted
to the fate his friend was obliged to inflict: no less than a dungeon
for life, that dungeon so horrible that I have heard Mr. Howard was
not permitted to see it.

"The people lamented, but their lamentations were vain. The
magistrate who condemned him never recovered the shock: but Foscarini
was heard of no more, till an old lady died forty years after in
Paris, whose last confession declared she was visited with amorous
intentions by a nobleman of Venice whose name she never knew, while
she resided there as companion to the ambassadress. So was Foscarini
lost! so died he a martyr to love, and tenderness for female
reputation!"

The Mendicanti was a