SCENE III. - The Court of the Ducal Palace; the outer gates are shut against the people. The DOGE enters in his ducal robes, in procession with the COUNCIL OF TEN and other Patricians, attended by the Guards, till they arrive at the top of the "Giant's Staircase" (where the Doges took the oaths); the Executioner is stationed there with his sword. On arriving, a CHIEF OF THE TEN takes off the ducal cap from the Doge's head.

Doge. So now the Doge is nothing, and at last

I am again Marino Faliero:

This was the actual reply of Bailli, maire of Paris, to a Frenchman who made him the same reproach on his way to execution, in the earliest part of their revolution. I find in reading over (since the completion of this tragedy), for the first time these six years, "Venice Preserved," a similar reply on a different occasion by Renault, and other coincidences arising from the subject. I need hardly remind the gentlest reader, that such coincidences must be accidental, from the very facility of their detection by reference to so popular a play on the stage and in the closet as Otway's chef-d'œuvre.

["Still crueller was the fate of poor Bailly [Jean Sylvani, born September 17, 1736], First National President, First Mayor of Paris. It is the 10th of November, 1793, a cold bitter drizzling rain, as poor Bailly is led through the streets.... Silent, unpitied, sits the innocent

old man..

The Guillotine is taken down is carried to the riverside; is there set up again, with slow numbness; pulse after pulse still counting itself out in the old man's weary heart. For hours long; amid curses and bitter frost-rain! 'Bailly, thou tremblest,' said one. 'Mon ami, it is for cold,' said Bailly, 'C'est de froid. Crueller end had no mortal." - Carlyle's French Revolution, 1839, iii. 264.]

But recollect the people are without, Beyond the compass of the human voice.

Doge. I speak to Time and to Eternity, Of which I grow a portion, not to man. Ye Elements! in which to be resolved I hasten, let my voice be as a Spirit Upon you! Ye blue waves! which bore my banner,

30 Ye winds! which fluttered o'er as if you loved it,

And filled my swelling sails as they were wafted To many a triumph! Thou, my native earth, Which I have bled for! and thou,

And sold, and be an appanage to

those

Who shall despise her! She shall

stoop to be

A province for an Empire, a petty

town

Make their nobility a plea for pity; Then, when the few who still retain a wreck

Of their great fathers' heritage shall fawn

I

[In his reply to the envoys of the Venetian Senate (April, 1797), Buonaparte threatened to prove an Attila to Venice. If you cannot," he added, "disarm your population, I will do it in your stead your government is antiquated - it must crumble to pieces." -Scott's Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1828, p. 230.]

Should the dramatic picture seem harsh. let the reader look to the historical of the period prophesied, or rather of the few years preceding that period. Voltaire calculated their "nostre bene merite Meretrici" at 12,000 of regulars. without including volunteers and local militia, on what authority I know not; but it is, perhaps, the only part of the population not decreased. Venice once contained two hundred thousand inhabitants: there are now about ninety thousand; and THESE!! few individuals can conceive, and none could describe, the actual state into which the more than infernal tyranny of Austria has plunged this unhappy city.

3 The chief palaces on the Brenta now belong to the Jews; who in the carlier times of the republic were only allowed to inhabit Mestri. and not to enter the city of Venice. The whole commerce is in the hands of the Jews and Greeks. and the Huns form the garrison.

Youth without Honour, Age without respect,

Meanness and Weakness, and a sense of woe

'Gainst which thou wilt not strive, and dar'st not murmur,1

Have made thee last and worst of peopled deserts,

Then, in the last gasp of thine agony, Amidst thy many murders, think of mine!

Thou den of drunkards with the blood of Princes! 2

If the Doge's prophecy seem remarkable, look to the following, made by Alamanni two hundred and seventy years ago: "There is one very singular prophecy concerning Venice: 'If thou dost not change,' it says to that proud republic, thy liberty, which is already on the wing, will not reckon a century more than the thousandth year.' If we carry back the epocha of Venetian freedom to the establishment of the government under which the republic flourished, we shall find that the date of the election of the first Doge is 697: and if we add one century to a thousand, that is, eleven hundred years, we shall find the sense of the prediction to be literally this: Thy liberty will not last till 1707.' Recollect that Venice ceased to be free in the year 1796, the fifth year of the French republic; and you will perceive that there never was prediction more pointed, or more exactly followed by the event. You will, therefore, note as very remarkable the three lines of Alamanni addressed to Venice; which, however, no one has pointed out: -

'Se non cangi pensier, l'un secol solo Non conterà sopra I millesimo anno Tua libertà, che va fuggendo a volo.' Sat., xii. ed. 1531, p. 413. Many prophecies have passed for such, and many men have been called prophets for much less." P. L. GINGUENÉ, Hist. Lit. d'Italie, ix. 144 [Paris Edition, 1819].

Of the first fifty Doges, five abdicated five were banished with their eyes put outfive were MASSACRED -- and nine deposed; so that nineteen out of fifty lost the throne by violence, besides two who fell in battle: this occurred long previous to the reign of Marino Faliero. One of his more immediate predecessors, Andrea Dandolo, died of vexation. Marino Faliero himself perished as related. Amongst his successors, Foscari. after seeing his son repeatedly tortured and banished, was deposed, and died of breaking a blood-vessel, on hearing the bell of St Mark's toll for the election of his successor. Morosini was impeached for the loss of Candia; but this was previous to his dukedom, during which he conquered the Morea, and was styled the Peloponnesian. Faliero might truly sav,

Thou den of drunkards with the blood of princes!"

- September 11, 1354. Early in the following spring at a State banquet which I followed an annual bull-hunt, a certain noble youth named Michele Steno, who was enamoured of one of the ladies of the Court, behaved himself unseemly, and, by the Duke's orders, was kicked off the solajo or dais. Incensed at this contumely he had his revenge by scrawling on the Ducal chair a libellous jest, to the effect that the Doge, who was well-stricken in years, was a wittol, that his fair young duchess played him false. Inquisition was made, and the culprit discovered. But Steno was of noble birth, and the Forty, unwilling to exact the full penalty on one of their own order, inflicted a light punishment, namely imprisonment for two months, and banishment from Venice for a year. The Doge was furious, but nursed his wrath in silence. Ere long another young spark, a choleric gentleman named Barbaro, insulted and struck the Admiral of the Arsenal, Israel Bertuccio, a man of plebeian origin, but of a great spirit, who, without more ado, sought out the Doge and appealed for support and redress. 'What can I do,' said the Doge, 'I who cannot avenge my own ignominy on Michele Steno?' 'Much,' replied Bertuccio. 'You can throw in your lot with the people, put the arrogant nobles to the sword, and proclaim yourself Lord of Venice!'

"Faliero caught at the bait, and lent himself to a treacherous conspiracy against the republic. Sixteen or seventeen ring-leaders were to place themselves at the head of gangs of forty men, who without being let into the secret were to make affrays among themselves, and, so, afford the Doge a pretext for ringing the bell of San Marco. The sound of the bell would bring the nobles into the streets, and the conspirators would cut them in pieces. The Doge might have won the day, if a halfhearted conspirator, Beltramo, Bergamasco, had not relented towards his patron Ser Niccolo Lioni, and warned him of impending danger. The plotters were out plotted and met with a

shameful end. On Friday, the 16th of April, the 'Ten' passed sentence on the Doge, 'that he should have his head cut off on the landing-place of the stone staircase, where the Dukes take their oath when they first enter the palace.' 'On the following day, the 17th of April, 1355, the doors of the palace being shut, the Duke had his head cut off about the hour of noon.' According to a chronicle he was buried in the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, but his body now rests in a coffin of stone in the middle of the little Church of Santa Maria della Pace. . . . 'And they did not paint his portrait in the hall of the Great Council, but in the place where it ought to have been you see these words: "Hic est locus Marini Faletro, decapitati pro criminibus."""]