ss this bridge, they say," she added tremulously, "and enter the
world again; and yet thou dost not even ask why we are here, Carlo!"

There was a transient gleam of distrust in the hasty glance of the
Bravo, as he shot a look at the undisturbed eye of the innocent being
who put this question. But it scarcely remained long enough to change
the expression of manly interest she was accustomed to meet in his look.

"Since thou wilt have me curious," he said, "why hast thou come hither,
and more than all, being here, why dost thou linger?"

"The season is advanced, Carlo," she answered, speaking scarcely above
her breath, "and we should look in vain among the cells."

"I understand thee," he said; "we will proceed."

Gelsomina lingered to gaze wistfully into the face of her companion, but
finding no visible sign of the agony he endured she went on. Jacopo
spoke hoarsely, but he was too long accustomed to disguise to permit the
weakness to escape, when he knew how much it would pain the sensitive
and faithful being who had yielded her affections to him with a
singleness and devotion which arose nearly as much from her manner of
life as from natural ingenuousness.

In order that the reader may be enabled to understand the allusions,
which seem to be so plain to our lovers, it may be necessary to explain
another odious feature in the policy of the Republic of Venice.

Whatever may be the pretension of a state, in its acknowledged theories,
an unerring clue to its true character is ever to be found in the
machinery of its practice. In those governments which are created for
the good of the people, force is applied with caution and reluctance,
since the protection and not the injury of the weak is their object:
whereas the more selfish and exclusive the system becomes, the more
severe and ruthless are the coercive means employed by those in power.
Thus in Venice, whose whole political fabric reposed on the narrow
foundation of an oligarchy, the jealousy of the Senate brought the
engines of despotism in absolute contact with even the pageantry of
their titular prince, and the palace of the Doge himself was polluted by
the presence of the dungeons. The princely edifice had its summer and
winter cells. The reader may be ready to believe that mercy had dictated
some slight solace for the miserable in this arrangement. But this would
be ascribing pity to a body which, to its latest moment, had no tie to
subject it to the weakne