bishop during
the celebration of a holy solemnity. We hear of a fiery temper,
accustomed to command, elated by success, and in which, on the
confession of Petrarch, who was personally well informed regarding it,
valour predominated over prudence. These are the unsettled elements upon
which the Tempter best loves to work; but the insanity and extravagance
with which we must charge Faliero, if we suppose his attempt to
overthrow the government of which he was chief, arose solely from an
outrageous desire of revenge for a petty insult, are entirely
gratuitous, and belong altogether to the poet. Madness of another kind,
however, that of ambition, is clearly ascribable to him; and, if we take
this as our key, much of the obscurity attendant upon a catastrophe
which has been imperfectly and inadequately developed will be cleared
away; we shall obtain a character little indeed awakening our sympathy,
but yet not wholly at variance with our judgment; and although we may be
astonished at, and recoil from the motives which prompted his crime,
they will not be altogether of a class which sets our comprehension at
defiance.[6]

At a banquet, which it was customary for the doge to celebrate in his
palace, after the bull-hunt, on the Carnival Thursday, a squabble had
arisen from some too pressing familiarity offered by one of the young
gallants of the court to his mistress. Michele Steno, a gentleman of
poor estate, was enamoured of a lady in attendance upon the dogaressa;
and, presuming upon her favour, he was guilty of some freedom which led
the doge to order his exclusion.--This command appears to have been
executed with more than necessary violence; and the youth, fired by the
indignity which disgraced him in the eyes of his mistress, sought
revenge by assailing Faliero in that point in which he conceived him to
be most vulnerable. He wrote on the doge's chair, in the council
chamber, a few words reflecting upon the dogaressa: "Marino Faliero,
husband of the lovely wife; he keeps, but others kiss her."[7] The
offence was traced to its author; it was pitiful and unmanly; yet it
scarcely deserved heavier punishment than that which the XL adjudged to
it--namely, that Steno should be imprisoned for two months, and
afterwards banished from the state for a year. But, to the morbid and
excited spirit of Faliero, the petty affront of this rash youth appeared
heightened to a state crime; and the lenient sentence with which his
treason (f