count must know whether his generous soul is capable of such ideas.”
“So much the less, fair countess,” rejoined Camillo, “need you fear those slanderers.”
“As if,” replied Apollonia, “people were not always disposed to believe the worst, be it ever so improbable! And are you, indeed, such a stranger in Venice, as not to know how the most upright is rendered an object of suspicion to the secret tribunal; how the attention of the three formidable judges, who render no account, whom no one knows, is directed towards him? It is not the open, the public accusations that are most to be feared”
“But may not this be unfounded?” asked the captain, interrupting the countess.
“Oh! it is but too true?” answered Apollonia—“to the disgrace of the republic, but too well founded. Nay, the most superficial, the most unsubstantiated charge preferred anonymously in writing, on any scrap of paper, and thrown into the jaws of one of those iron lions’ heads[1] that are to be seen in all the public places, and that have subterraneous communications with the secret tribunal, is sufficient to tear the son from the arms of the parent, the husband from the bosom of his wife. In the
- ↑ The holes that were covered by those lions’ heads are still visible, but the heads themselves are removed, and their object and subterraneous communication suppressed.
