Part 18

I put on the toga belonging to my new station (he continues), and it is the same as that of the Patricians; I smothered my head in an enormous wig and impatiently awaited the day of my presentation in the Palace. The novice must have two assistants who are called in Venice Compari di Palazzo [‘Palace godfathers’]. The young man chooses them amongst those of the old lawyers who are most friendly to him....

So I went between my two sponsors to the foot of the grand staircase in the great courtyard of the Palace, and for an hour and a half I made so many bows and contortions that my back was broken and my wig was like a lion’s mane. Every one who passed before me gave his opinion of me; some said, Here is a youth of good character; others said, Here is another Palace sweeper; some embraced me, some laughed in my face. To be short, I went up the stairs and sent the servant to find a gondola, so as not to show myself in the street in such a dishevelled state, naming as a place of meeting the Hall of the Great Council, where I sat down on a bench whence I could see every one pass without being seen by any one. During this time, I reflected on the career I was about to embrace. In Venice there are generally two hundred and forty lawyers entered on the register; there are ten or twelve of the first rank, about twenty who occupy the second; all the others are hunting for clients; and the poorer Procurators gladly act as their dogs on condition of sharing the prey....

While I was thus alone, building castles in the air, I saw a woman of about thirty approaching me, not disagreeable in face, white, round, and plump, with a turned-up nose and wicked eyes, a great deal of gold on her neck, her ears, her arms, her fingers, and in a dress which proclaimed that she was a woman of the common class, but pretty well off. She came over and saluted me.

‘Sir, good day!’

‘Good day, Signora!’

‘Will you allow me to offer you my congratulations?’

‘For what?’

‘On your entrance into the Forum; I saw you in the courtyard when you were making your salaams. Per Bacco! Sir, your hair is nicely done.’

‘Isn’t it? Am I not a handsome young fellow?’

‘But it makes no difference how your hair is done; Signor Goldoni always cuts a good figure.’

‘So you know me, Signora?’

‘Did I not see you four years ago in the land of the lawyers, in a long wig and cloak?’

‘True; you are right, for I was then in the house of the Procurator.’

‘Just so; in the house of Signor Indrie’ [Goldoni’s uncle].

‘So you know my uncle too?’

‘In this part of the world I know every one, from the Doge to the last copyist of the Courts.’

‘Are you married?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a widow?’

‘No.’

‘Oh--I do not dare ask more!’

‘All the better.’

‘Have you any business?’

‘No.’

‘From your appearance I took you for a well-to-do person.’

‘I really am.’

‘Then you have investments?’

‘None at all.’

‘But you are very well fitted out; how do you manage to do it?’

‘I am a daughter of the Palace, and the Palace supports me.’

‘That is very strange! You say you are a daughter of the Palace?’

‘Yes, sir; my father had a position in it.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He listened at the doors and then went to take good news to those who were expecting pardons, or verdicts, or favourable judgments; he had capital legs and always got there first. As for my mother, she was always here, as I am. She was not proud, she took her fee, and undertook some commissions. I was born and brought up in these gilded halls, and, as you see, I also have gold on me.’

‘Yours is a most singular story. Then you follow in your mother’s footsteps?’

‘No, sir. I do something else.’

‘That is to say?’

‘I push lawsuits.’

‘Push lawsuits? I do not understand.’

I am as well known as Barabbas. It is very well understood that all the lawyers and all the Procurators are my friends, and a number of people apply to me to obtain advice for them and counsel for defence. Those who come to me are generally not rich, and I look about amongst the novices and the unemployed [lawyers] who want nothing but work in order to make themselves known. Do you know, sir, that though you see me as I am, I have made the fortunes of a round dozen of the most famous lawyers in the profession. Come, sir, courage, and if you are willing, I shall make yours too.’

It amused me to listen to her, and as my servant did not come, I continued the conversation.

‘Well, Signorina, have you any good affairs on hand now?’

‘Yes, sir, I have several, indeed I have some excellent ones. I have a widow who is suspected of having occultated her monkey; another who wishes to prove a marriage contract got up after the fact; I have girls who are petitioning for a dowry; I have women who wish to bring suits for annulment of marriage; I have sons of good families who are persecuted by their creditors; as you see, you need only choose.’

‘My good woman,’ I said, ‘so far I have let you talk; now it is my turn. I am young, I am about to begin my career, and I desire occasions for showing myself and obtaining occupation; but no love of work nor fancy for litigation could make me begin with the disgraceful suits you offer me.’

‘Ha, ha!’ she laughed, ‘you despise my clients because I warned you that there was nothing to earn; but listen! My two widows are rich, you will be well paid, and shall be even paid in advance, if you wish.’

I saw my servant coming in the distance; I rose and answered the chattering woman in a fearless and resolute tone.

‘No, you do not know me, I am a man of honour....’

Then she took my hand and spoke gravely.

‘Well done! Continue always in the same mind.’

‘Ah!’ I exclaimed, ‘you change your tone now?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘and the tone I take now is much better than the one I have been using. Our conversation has been somewhat mysterious; remember it and see that you speak to no one about it. Good-bye, sir. Always be wise, be always honourable, and you will be satisfied with the result.’

She went away, and I was left in the greatest astonishment. I did not know what all this meant; but I learned later that she was a spy and had come to sound me; yet I never knew, nor wished to know, who sent her to me.

XIII

THE LAST SBIRRI

It is worth while to glance at the agents of the police, of the Council of Ten, and of the Inquisitors of State

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico._]

at the end of the Republic. The two Councils had six in their service, called the Fanti de’ Cai, the footmen of the Heads, and one of them was at the beck and call of the Inquisitors. This particular one was the famous Cristofolo de’ Cristofoli, whose name is connected alike with all the tragedies and the comic adventures of the last days.

He was a sort of general inspector of freemasons, rope-dancers, circus-riders, antiquaries, bravi, and gondoliers, and he exercised in his manifold functions all the civility of which a detective can dispose. He was a giant in body, a jester and a wit by nature, a combination certainly intended for the stage rather than the police.

His especial bugbear was freemasonry, together with all the secret societies which were then largely in the pay of France, employed by her to promote general revolution. A manuscript preserved in the Museo Correr gives an account of the first discovery of a Lodge.

A patrician named Girolamo Zulian, says this document, when returning one night from a meeting of the Lodge left upon the seat of his gondola a piece of paper on which were drawn certain incomprehensible signs. The gondoliers found the paper, and supposed that the symbols were those of some kind of witchcraft. One of the men took the scrap to a monk he knew and begged him to decipher the signs, or at least to give his advice as to what should be done with the thing, as it might be fatal even to destroy a spell of black magic. The monk told the gondolier to take it to the Inquisitors of State. The man did so, and one of them kept him in a garret of his house, to protect him against any possible vengeance on the part of the secret society, and Cristofolo de’ Cristofoli was commissioned to clear up the mystery. On the following night he raided the house indicated by the gondolier with thirty Sbirri, and found there assembled a large meeting of the brethren, one of whom had the presence of mind to throw into the canal the heavy register containing a complete list of their names. Cristofoli took a quantity of papers, however, together with the paraphernalia of the Lodge, and he afterwards, says the manuscript, dictated from memory the names of the persons he had seen at the meeting. But he must have made mistakes, since several of the persons he designated are known to have been absent from Venice on foreign missions at the date of the raid, May sixth, 1785.

Another manuscript, published by Dandolo, gives a different account of the affair, under the same date. It was copied by the famous Cicogna, and is amusing for its language:--

It was the anniversary of the feast of the principal Protector of this most serene dominion, Saint Mark the Evangelist, April the twenty-fifth, 1785, when it was discovered that the public Arsenal of Venice had been treacherously set on fire; the fire was eventually discovered by a certain woman, who was rewarded for life [_i.e._ with a pension] by the public munificence; and by the discovery of it, a fire was prevented which might have been fatal to a large part of the city, and which was not to have broken out till the night following the twenty-fifth, but which showed itself after noon on account of an extraordinary wind which had temporarily arisen from the east and which blew with fury all day.

Such an accident, as fatal as its prevention by the Evangelist

Saint Mark was miraculous, not only moved the public vigilance to guard that public edifice under more jealous custody, but also [to watch] all the quarters of the city; to this end multiplying watchmen and spies, in order to discover, if that

might be possible, the perpetrators of such an horrible and terrifying felony.

In the inquiries, it was observed by trustworthy spies on the night of the [date omitted in the original] May, that a certain palace situated in Riomarin, in the parish of San Simon Grande, was entered from time to time after midnight by respectable-looking persons, for whom the door was opened at the simple signal of a little tap. Information of this being given to the Supreme Tribunal, the latter ordered the most circumspect inquiries; when, on the same morning, information was given to the Secretary of the said Supreme Magistracy by a certain ship’s carpenter that having, on commission of N. N., finished making a large wardrobe, he inquired of that cavalier where he was to bring it in order to set it up properly; and that he had been told to bring it to a certain palace in Riomarin and to leave it in the entrance (gateway) of the same, and that he would be sent for later to place it where it was to go; that seeing several days go by without receiving that notice, and yielding to curiosity, he stole near in the night to see if the wardrobe were still in the entrance of the palace, where he had placed it, and he convinced himself that it had been taken elsewhere; and being displeased with this, because some other workman might have handled his work, and guessing from a hint of the gentleman’s that the wardrobe had been intended to be placed against the windows of a balcony, and observing in this palace a balcony of just about the length of the wardrobe made by him, he tried to get into the apartment above the one where the balcony was [let to some one], explaining to the people who lived in that house that his suspicion induced him to ask their permission to make a hole with a gimlet, in order to see whether his wardrobe had been put up where he guessed it must be; and that he had obtained consent to this request, because the lodgers in that second apartment had conceived some curiosity to know who the persons might be who met there only at night time; that therefore he betook himself to that dwelling on the night of the fourth of May, having previously made a hole, and stopped there till the first-floor apartment was opened, and he saw that after midnight a hall was lighted up which was hung with mourning and furnished with a throne covered with blue cloth and with other symbols of death, and here and there were disposed small lanterns, and persons also sitting here and there, dressed in black robes; so that at this horrid sight he was terrified, and he heard him who sat on the throne say these very words: ‘Brethren, let us suspend our meeting, for we are watched’; and in that room he saw indeed his wardrobe placed against a balcony.

And that he left the lodgers in that second apartment in consternation, and he himself, full of amazement and terror, and still surprised by the novelty of the things, and supposing, in his simplicity, that witchcraft was practised there and the works of the devil, he was scandalised, and went to the parish priest of San Simon Grande, his confessor, and that having told him all he had seen, heard, and observed, he (the priest) advised him to quickly lay before the government all that he had chanced to see and hear.

The good man did so, and told all to the Secretary of the Inquisitors of State. A warrant was therefore issued on that same morning of the sixth of May by the Supreme Tribunal to its own officer Cristofoli, to go thither (to Riomarin), accompanied by the Capitan Grande and twenty-four men. Having entered that apartment, where he surprised a nobleman who guarded the place, he (Cristofoli) discovered a lodge of freemasons.

Emanuele Cicogna [the distinguished historian] copied this on the twenty-fourth of August 1855, from two codices existing in his collection.

On the following day, the Inquisitors publicly burned the black garments, the utensils, the ‘conjuring books,’ as they are described, and

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]

all the booty Cristofoli had confiscated, while the populace, believing that it was all a case of witchcraft, danced round the fire and cheered for Saint Mark.

The persons implicated were treated with the greatest indulgence, and Malamani observes that in the whole affair it was the furniture that got the worst of it.

About the same time Cristofoli made a vain attempt to arrest the notorious Cagliostro.

This man, whose real name was Giuseppe Balsamo, was born in Palermo on the eighth of June 1743. His youth was wild and disreputable. He tried being a monk, but soon tired of it, and threw his frock to the nettles, as the French say, in Caltagirone, in Sicily; after that he lived by theft, by coining false money, and by every sort of imposture. In Rome he married a girl of singular beauty, Lorenza Feliciani, who became his tool in all his intrigues.

The French freemasons made use of the singularly intelligent couple to propagate the doctrines of the revolution. Pretending to change hemp into silk, and every metal into gold, and selling marvellous waters for restoring the aged to youth and beauty, the two got into many excellent houses, changing their names and their disguises whenever they were compromised.

Balsamo arrived in Venice in 1787 or 1788, under the name of Count Cagliostro, and began an active revolutionary campaign, to the great annoyance

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 31._]

of the Inquisitors, who fancied they had suppressed the whole movement when Cristofoli had discovered the famous Lodge. He was less fortunate this time. He tracked the Count everywhere, but could get no substantial evidence against him, till he suddenly came upon positive proof that the impostor had stolen a thousand sequins from a rich merchant of the Giudecca. And then, at the very moment when the great policeman was sure of his game, the man disappeared as into thin air and was next heard of beyond the Austrian frontier.

The chief of the Sbirri had better luck when he raided the Café Ancilotto, which was a favourite place of meeting for the revolutionaries. They

[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Ancilotto.’_]

tried to open a reading-room there, furnished with all the latest revolutionary literature, but Cristofoli got wind of the plan, called on the man who kept the café, and informed him that the first person who entered the ‘reading-room’ would be invited to pay a visit to the Inquisitors of State. After that, no one showed any inclination to read the French papers. In connection with Cristofoli, we also come upon the curious fact that he arrested, at the Café

[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Caffetero.’_]

of the Ponte dell’ Angelo, a number of Barnabotti, who were preaching suspicious doctrines. As usual, the poor nobles were the class most easily bribed and most ready to betray their country.

Cristofoli was occasionally entrusted with missions more diplomatic than the arrest of revolutionaries. He was sometimes sent to present his respects to great nobles who did not guess that they had attracted the eyes of the police.

It was the business of the Inquisitors to watch over the artistic treasures of the capital. During the last year of the Republic a number of nobles sold precious

objects to strangers, such as paintings and statues, of which the government much regretted the loss to the city. A few measures were passed for preventing this dispersion of private collections, but it happened only too often that priceless things were suddenly gone, leaving no trace of their destination, except in the pockets of the former owners.

The Grimani family possessed some magnificent statues and a wonderful library of rare books, inherited from Cardinal Domenico Grimani, who died in 1523. Shortly before the fall of

[Sidenote: _Statue of M. Agrippa; Museo Correr._]

the Republic a foreigner bought the statue of Marcus Agrippa; the boat which was to take it on board an outward bound ship was at the door of the palace, and the men who were to take it down from its pedestal and box it were ready, when Cristofolo Cristofoli appeared at the entrance, gigantic and playful.

He walked straight to the statue, took off his cap to it and bowed gravely before he delivered his message to the marble: ‘The Supreme Tribunal of the Inquisitors, having heard that you wish to leave this city, sends me to wish a pleasant journey, both to you and his Excellency Grimani.’

‘His Excellency Grimani’ did not relish the idea of exile; the workmen disappeared, the boat was sent away, and the statue remained. It was destined to be left as a gift to the city by another Grimani, less avaricious than ‘His Excellency.’

In spite of his good-humour, Cristofoli inspired terror, and his mere name was often

[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Studi e Ricerche._]

used to lend weight to practical jokes. It is related, for instance, of the famous Montesquieu, the author of the _Esprit des Lois_ and the friend of King Stanislaus Leczinski, that when he was making notes in Venice his friend Lord Chesterfield managed to cause a mysterious message to be conveyed to him, warning him to be on his guard, as the Chief of the Ten employed spies to watch him, and Cristofoli was on his track. And thereupon, says the story, the excellent Montesquieu burned all his most compromising notes, and fled straight to Holland with the remainder of his manuscripts.

The Council of Ten and their Sbirri had not yet done with the Bravi. They were numerous in the provinces, and when they were caught they were tried and hanged in Venice. The ‘Signorotti’--the rich landowners, who were not Venetian nobles, but called themselves ‘knights’--were many and prosperous, and were the professional murderers’ best clients. Indeed, the Venetian mainland provinces and much of Lombardy presented a case of arrested development; at the end of the eighteenth century they had not emerged from the barbarism of the early fifteenth.

The lordlings entertained Bravi, and when there was no more serious business on hand, they laid wagers with each other as to the courage of their hired assassins. A bet of this kind was made and settled in 1724 between an Avogadro and a Masperoni, two country ‘knights’ who lived on their estates in the province of Brescia. One evening the two were discussing the character of a ruffian whom Masperoni had just taken into his service. His new master maintained that the fellow was the bravest man in the ‘profession.’ Avogadro, on the other hand, wagered that he would not be able to traverse the road between his master’s castle and Lumezzane, which belonged to Avogadro. Masperoni took the bet, and explained the situation to the man. The latter, feeling that his reputation was at stake, started at once, carrying on his shoulder a basket of fine fruit as a present from Masperoni to his friend, and he took his way across the hills of Valtrompia. When he was a few miles from Lumezzane he was met by two well-armed fellows, who ordered him to turn back, but he was not so easily stopped. He set down his basket, and in the twinkling of an eye killed both his adversaries, after which he quietly pursued his journey.

Avogadro was very much surprised to see him, and asked with curiosity what sort of trip he had made.

‘Excellent,’ he answered. ‘I met a couple of good-for-nothings who wanted to stop me, but I killed them, and here I am.’

Avogadro, filled with admiration, gave him a purse of gold and sent him back to Masperoni with a letter of congratulation.

[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Banditi, 289._]

Incidents of this kind occurred long afterwards, even after the fall of the Republic. The name of Cristofoli is associated with that of Count Alemanno Gambara in a story which could not be believed if the documents that prove it were not all preserved in the various archives, and principally in those of the Inquisitors.

The Gambara family was of Lombard origin, and had always been very influential in the neighbourhood of Brescia. The race had produced fine specimens of all varieties--soldiers, bishops, cardinals, murderers, and one woman poet, besides several bandits, traitors, and highwaymen. In the late sixteenth century two brothers of the family, Niccolò and Lucrezio, had a near relative, Theodora, an orphan girl of fourteen years and an heiress, who was in charge of a guardian. On the twenty-second of January 1569 the two brothers went to the guardian and ordered him to give up the girl. On his refusal they threw him down his own stairs, wounded his people who tried to defend him, broke down the door of the girl’s room, and carried her off.