anything like a
public exhibition. I might have resisted, for the soldiers were unarmed,
and I would not have been taken up, this sort of arrest not being legal
in Venice, but I did not think of it. The 'sequere deum' was playing its
part; I felt no reluctance. Besides, there are moments in which a
courageous man has no courage, or disdains to shew it.

I enter the gondola, the curtain is drawn aside, and I see my evil
genius, Razetta, with an officer. The two soldiers sit down at the prow;
I recognize M. Grimani's own gondola, it leaves the landing and takes the
direction of the Lido. No one spoke to me, and I remained silent. After
half-an-hour's sailing, the gondola stopped before the small entrance of
the Fortress St. Andre, at the mouth of the Adriatic, on the very spot
where the Bucentaur stands, when, on Ascension Day, the doge comes to
espouse the sea.

The sentinel calls the corporal; we alight, the officer who accompanied
me introduces me to the major, and presents a letter to him. The major,
after reading its contents, gives orders to M. Zen, his adjutant, to
consign me to the guard-house. In another quarter of an hour my
conductors take their departure, and M. Zen brings me three livres and a
half, stating that I would receive the same amount every week. It was
exactly the pay of a private.

I did not give way to any burst of passion, but I felt the most intense
indignation. Late in the evening I expressed a wish to have some food
bought, for I could not starve; then, stretching myself upon a hard camp
bed, I passed the night amongst the soldiers without closing my eyes, for
these Sclavonians were singing, eating garlic, smoking a bad tobacco
which was most noxious, and drinking a wine of their own country, as
black as ink, which nobody else could swallow.

Early next morning Major Pelodoro (the governor of the fortress) called
me up to his room, and told me that, in compelling me to spend the night
in the guard-house, he had only obeyed the orders he had received from
Venice from the secretary of war. "Now, reverend sir," he added, "my
further orders are only to keep you a prisoner in the fort, and I am
responsible for your remaining here. I give you the whole of the fortress
for your prison. You shall have a good room in which you will find your
bed and all your luggage. Walk anywhere you please; but recollect that,
if you should escape, you would cause my ruin. I am sorry that my
instructions are to g