f-repenting but
vindictive being was dropping an accusation in the lion's mouth.
Gelsomina stopped involuntarily until the secret accuser had done his
treacherous work and departed. Then, when she was about to proceed, she
saw that the halberdier at the head of the Giant's stairway was smiling
at her indecision, like one accustomed to such scenes.

"Is there danger in quitting the palace?" she asked of the rough
mountaineer.

"Corpo di Bacco! There might have been an hour since, Bella Donna; but
the rioters are muzzled and at their prayers."

Gelsomina hesitated no longer. She descended the well known flight, down
which the head of Faliero had rolled, and was soon beneath the arch of
the gate. Here the timid and unpractised maid again stopped, for she
could not venture into the square without assuring herself, like a deer
about to quit its cover, of the tranquillity of the place into which she
was to enter.

The agents of the police had been too much alarmed by the rising of the
fishermen not to call their usual ingenuity and finesse into play, the
moment the disturbance was appeased. Money had been given to the
mountebanks and ballad singers to induce them to reappear, and groups of
hirelings, some in masks and others without concealment, were
ostentatiously assembled in different parts of the piazza. In short,
those usual expedients were resorted to which are constantly used to
restore the confidence of a people, in those countries in which
civilization is so new, that they are not yet considered sufficiently
advanced to be the guardians of their own security. There are few
artifices so shallow that many will not be their dupes. The idler, the
curious, the really discontented, the factious, the designing, with a
suitable mixture of the unthinking, and of those who only live for the
pleasure of the passing hour, a class not the least insignificant for
numbers, had lent themselves to the views of the police; and when
Gelsomina was ready to enter the Piazzetta, she found both the squares
partly filled. A few excited fishermen clustered about the doors of the
cathedral, like bees swarming before their hive; but, on that side,
there was no very visible cause of alarm. Unaccustomed as she was to
scenes like that before her, the first glance assured the gentle girl of
the real privacy which so singularly distinguishes the solitude of a
crowd. Gathering her simple mantle more closely about her form, and
settling her mask