Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 482, March 26, 1831», страница 3

THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

MARINO FALIERO

(Continued from page 206.)

Such is Sanuto's brief narrative of the origin of this conspiracy; and we have nothing more certain to offer. It is not easy to say whence he obtained his intelligence. If such a conversation as that which he relates really did occur, it must have taken place without the presence of witnesses, and therefore could be disclosed only by one of the parties. It is far more likely that the chronicler is relating that which he supposed, than that which he knew; and, as it must be admitted that the interview with the admiral of the Arsenal occurred, and that, immediately after it, the doge was found linked with the daring band of which that officer was chief, there is no violation of probability in granting that some such conversation took place, and that the train was ignited by this collision of two angry spirits. Whether the plot was in any degree organized beforehand, or arose at the moment, it is manifestly impossible for us to decide, without information which cannot now be obtained.

Bertucci Faliero, a nephew of the doge, and Filippo Calendaro, a seaman of great repute, were summoned to conference immediately. It was agreed to communicate the design to six other associates; and, during many nights successively, these plebeian assassins arranged with the doge, under the roof of his own palace, the massacre of the entire aristocracy, and the dissolution of the existing government. "It was concerted that sixteen or seventeen leaders should be stationed in various parts of the city, each being at the head of forty men, armed and prepared; but the followers were not to know their destination. On the appointed day, they were to make affrays amongst themselves here and there, in order that the duke might have a pretence for tolling the bells of San Marco, which are never rung but by the order of the duke; and at the sound of the bells, these sixteen or seventeen, with their followers, were to come to San Marco, through the streets which open upon the Piazza; and when the nobles and leading citizens should come to the Piazza to know the cause of the riot, then the conspirators were to cut them in pieces; and this work being finished, my Lord Marino Faliero the Duke was to be proclaimed Lord of Venice. Things having been thus settled, they agreed to fulfil their attempt on Wednesday, the 15th day of April, in the year 1355. So covertly did they plot that no one ever dreamed of their machinations."

As a previous step, in order to arouse popular feeling against the Great Council, it was determined to practise a singular stratagem. Parties of the conspirators paraded different quarters of the capital in the dead of night, and having stopped at the windows of some citizens of the middle and lower classes, and there insulted the women of the family by scandalous and unseemly propositions, they retired with rude bursts of laughter, calling each other loudly by the names of the principal noblemen. Perhaps the rapidity with which their design was framed, tended much to its concealment. Scarcely a little month had elapsed since its first projection, and now the following day was to destroy the constitution of Venice, to deluge her streets with patrician blood, and to pluck up all her ancient stocks from their very roots, without a suspicion of the approaching calamity having glanced across the intended victims.—Either the Council of X could not yet have obtained its subsequent fearful and extraordinary ubiquity, or the conspirators must have exhibited a prudence and self-control rarely, if ever, paralleled by an equally large body of men, engaged in a similar attempt. To their minor agents, their ultimate design had not been revealed; and even in the end, the discovery arose not from treachery, nor from incaution, but from "a compunctious visiting" of one framed of stuff less stern than his associates, and who shrank from the murder of a benefactor. The part played by Tresham in that yet more bloody conspiracy, which the Papists, in after days, framed against the three estates of England, was but a repetition of that now enacted in Venice by Beltramo of Bergamo. Beltramo had been brought up in a noble family, to which he was closely attached, that of Nicolo Lioni, of San Stefano; and, anxious to preserve his patron's life, he went to him on the evening before the rising, and entreated him to remain at home on the morrow. The singular nature of the request excited surprise, which was increased to suspicion by the ambiguous answers returned to farther inquiries which it suggested. By degrees, every particular of the treason was revealed; and Lioni heard of the impending danger with terror, and of the hands by which it was threatened, with astonishment and slowly-accorded belief. Not a moment was to be lost; he secured Beltramo, therefore, and, having communicated with a few friends, they resolved upon assembling the heads of the different magistracies, and immediately seizing such ringleaders as had been denounced. These were taken, at their own houses, without resistance. Precautions were adopted against any tumultuous gathering of the mechanics of the Arsenal, and strict orders were issued to the keeper of the Campanile not on any account to toll the bells.

In the course to be pursued with the lesser malefactors, no difficulty was likely to arise: the rack and the gibbet were their legal portion. But for the doge, the law afforded no precedent; and, upon a crime which it had not entered into the mind of man to conceive (as with that nation which, having never contemplated parricide, had neglected to provide any punishment for it), no tribunal known to the constitution was competent to pass judgment. The Council of X. demanded the assistance of a giunta of twenty nobles, who were to give advice, but not to ballot; and this body having been constituted, "they sent for my Lord Marino Faliero the Duke, and my Lord was then consorting in the palace with people of great estate, gentlemen, and other good men, none of whom knew yet how the fact stood."

The ringleaders were immediately hanged between the Red Columns on the Piazzetta—some singly, some in couples; and the two chiefs of them, Bertuccio Israello and Calendaro, with a cruel precaution not uncommon in Venice, were previously gagged. Nor was the process of the highest delinquent long protracted. He appears neither to have denied nor to have extenuated his guilt; and, "on Friday the 16th day of April, judgment was given in the Council of X. that my Lord Marino Faliero the Duke should have his head cut off, and that the execution should be done on the landing-place of the stone staircase, the Giant's Stairs, where the doges take their oath when they first enter the palace. On the following day, the doors of the palace being shut, the duke had his head cut off, about the hour of noon; and the cap of estate was taken from the duke's head before he came down the staircase. When the execution was over, it is said, that one of the chiefs of the Council of X. went to the columns of the palace against the Piazza, and, displaying the bloody sword, exclaimed, "Justice has fallen on the traitor!" and, the gates being then opened, the populace eagerly rushed in to see the doge who had been executed."

The body of Faliero was conveyed, by torchlight, in a gondola, and unattended by the customary ceremonies, to the church of San Giovanni and San Paolo; in the outer wall of which a stone coffin is still imbedded, with an illegible inscription, which once presented the words, Hic jacet Marinus Feletro Dux. His lands and goods were confiscated to the state, with the exception of 2,000 ducats, of which he was permitted to dispose; and, yet further to transmit to posterity the memory of his enormous crime, his portrait was not admitted to range with those of his brother doges in the Hall of the Great Council. In the frame which it ought to occupy is suspended a black veil, inscribed with the words, Hic est locus Marini Feletro decapitati pro criminibus.

The fate of Beltramo deserves a few words. He was amply rewarded for his opportune discovery, by a pension of a thousand ducats in perpetuity, the grant of a private residence which had belonged to Faliero, and inscription in the Golden Book. Dissatisfied, however, with this lavish payment for a very ambiguous virtue, he lost no occasion of taxing the nobles with neglect of his services, and of uttering loud calumnies against them, both secretly and in public. The government, wearied by his importunities and ingratitude, at length deprived him of his appointments, and sentenced him to ten years exile at Ragusa; but his restless and turbulent spirit soon prompted him to seek a spot less under the control of the signory, in which he might vent his railings afresh, and with impunity. It is probable that the long arm of the Council of X. arrested his design, for we are significantly informed that he perished on his way to Pannonia.

The volume is embellished with seven Plates, by Finden, from Drawings by Prout; and nine characteristic Wood-cuts, chiefly from Titian. Considering the excellence of the originals, more pains might have been bestowed upon the latter; and Mr. Prout might surely have found different points of view from those he has so recently given in the Landscape Annual. The book altogether is a marvel of cheapness.