Part 14

But outside, the horrified crowd pushed towards that spot, where a few torches had difficulties in fighting against the wind and the rain. The sbirri who had rushed to that spot, lead by the Grand Captain, as soon as the first indications of the event had started to stir, had found a motionless body in the darkness of the side alley, who had still blood gushing out of his side. When the torches came, a dagger with a cross-shaped handle of steel was seen in the wound, and the engraved words were read: "Death to all inquisitors of the state!", which were passed on through the stunned crowd in low voices from one mouth to the next.

The first jolt of an earthquake, though constituting a terrible warning that one would be standing on volcanic ground, does not stir up people's minds in their depths, yet. The horror is too vividly intermixed with surprise and indignation; indeed, wherever the effects do not persist in a too tangible manner, people, swiftly striving back to their usual routine, prefer to believe that their senses had been deceived for the sake of their peace of mind. Only the repetition of the destructive, inescapable, and merciless event disproves any kind of belief in a misinterpretation, any hope that only random coincidences could have brought on the event. The return of the danger brings on everlasting fear and points to a series of horrifying events with no end in sight, against which neither courage nor cowardice can provide even the slightest protection.

The news of the second murderous assault against an inquisitor of the state had a similar effect in Venice. For that the wounded man had been nothing less, the insiders had not been able to keep a secret. Nobody could deny that the boldness, with which this second blow had been struck, was surely just incited once again and encouraged to proceed on the course of violence by the successful execution of the crime. Though the dagger had not struck a deadly blow this time, deflected by a silken undergarment, the wound was nevertheless life-threatening and caused, at any rate, a standstill in the activities of the secret tribunal, which was not allowed to proclaim a sentence without the unanimous consent of its three members. Thus, its rule was paralysed for the moment, and, what was more important, the unpenetrated secret surrounding the hostile power destroyed the belief in the omniscience and omnipotence of the triumvirate and finally had to undermine the self-confidence and the unscrupulous energy of its members.

After all, what precautions were still left, and which means of secret investigations had not been exhausted yet? Had they not, in the Council of Ten, vowed to each other with a solemn oath to keep most silent about the election of the new, third inquisitor? And nevertheless, a few days afterwards, the blow had been struck as surely as if it had come from heaven against no one but the newly elected one. With distrustful looks, they all looked at each other. The thought was forcing itself upon them that among the rulers themselves, treason was building its nest, that the tyrants had, in a suicidal way, assaulted their own power. The secretary of the inquisition was arrested, who had been the last to talk to the wounded man shortly before the attack. He was questioned thoroughly and threatened with a cruel death. This was also, of course, unsuccessful.

And what had been the benefit of increasing the numbers of the secret police, the massive recruiting of new spies from among the servants of the nobili and the foreign ambassadors, in the inns, in the arsenal, even in the barracks and monasteries? One half of Venice was payed to spy on the other half. A sizable amount of money was supposed to be the reward for even the slightest news, which would help them to get on the trail of the conspiracy. Now, it was tripled. But, since the conspiracy was presumed to be among the aristocracy, they had little hopes to get results from these measures, which were only targeted at the poorer people. Quite generally, they did a lot of things to preserve the appearance that they were not idle, though what they did was idle. Strict orders were issued that the inns and taverns had to be closed at nightfall; wearing masks and weapons of any kind was banned with a severe punishment; all night long, the steps of the patrols echoed through the allies, and they were heard calling out to the gondolas, which were passing by the guard-posts on the canals. Nobody who wanted to leave Venice received a passport, and at the entrance to the harbour, there was a large guard-ship, stopping every vessel, and even the officials of the republic were asked for the password, before they were allowed to pass.

Far across the Terraferma, the rumour of these frightening conditions was spreading, as usual increasing with the distance. Whoever was planning to travel to the city, postponed it. Whoever had been planning to engage into a business connection with a Venetian house, preferred to wait until the confusion was over, which was threatening to revolutionise the structure of the republic in its foundations. The resulting effect was soon evident in a desolation of the city, where everything seemed to have come to a standstill. The nobili only left their palaces in cases of extreme emergency, locking themselves in against any visitor, to avoid getting unknowingly in contact with one of the conspirators. Nobody knew precisely what was going on outside, and the most outrageous rumours of arrests, torture, and inflicted punishments reached the closed doors, entered into the frightened families. Even the common people, though they felt clearly that they were not the ones who were primarily suffering under these conditions, and though they watched gloatingly how the noble men gave each other squinting looks in panic and fear, could still not fight off an uneasy feeling in the long run. It was definitely a nuisance to abandon cards and wine at nightfall, to be searched for concealed weapons by every guard who felt like it, and not to be save for a single moment from the treachery of false accusations, in spite of having the best conscience in the world.

Among the few whose lives and activities seemed to be unaffected by the stifling atmosphere, which depressed all spirits, was also Andrea Delfin. The morning after the crime, he had, like all the other secret spies, been interrogated by the successor of that unfortunate secretary who had put him on the payroll, concerning his observations at the hour of the crime, and had presented him the fairy-tale of a trip to the lido, on which he had the intention to investigate how the fisherman thought about all this. What he could tell them about what was going on in the hotel of the Austrian ambassador and the palace of the countess - meaningless facts, which the tribunal already knew for a long time - at least proved his zeal to familiarise himself with his new task. His friend Samuele did not fail to inform against the striking familiarity he had found between the man from Brescia and the secretary of the embassy. Calmly, Andrea explained himself, and the old acquaintance from Riva could only be advantageous for the intentions of the tribunal.

Thus, almost no day passed by, when he would not, after he was done with his work for the notary, call on his German friend, to whom, being cut off from other company, the conversations with the grave man, clouded by secret grief, became, by and by, a necessity. He had developed an unlimited trust in Andrea, and when he avoided political topics with him, it was more because he could not hope that they would understand each other on account of their different nationalities, than for a concern that Andrea might abuse his openness. He even told him with a laughing face that he had been warned against him being a spy of the tribunal. The carelessness with which he crossed the shunned threshold of the foreign ambassador every day would, of course, catch people's attention.

"I'm no nobile," replied Andrea with a calm face. "The ten men will realise that I don't seek any diplomatic connections here; they didn't even think me worthy of a warning up to now. But I've come to like you, and it would pain me to forgo forcing my unpleasant company on you from time to time, for I'm a perfectly lonely man. Even my kind landlady, who in the past used to shorten the time for me with her proverbs for an hour or so, doesn't enter my room any more. She's ill, and what made her ill is Venice and pale shadows haunting this city."

This was indeed true. After the second assault against the inquisition of the state, Signora Giovanna had been walking around in deep thoughts for one day, and as the night fell, an ever growing excitement had come upon her. She was now firmly convinced that her Orso's spirit had been the perpetrator; for only a bodiless shadow would be able to escape for a second time the thousand spying eyes which were guarding Venice. She put on her best clothes and decided, since she was expecting nothing less than a visit of her departed husband, to be ready to receive him, spending the entire night at the top of the stairs. In a touching confusion of these concepts, she had prepared a favourite dish of her husband, laid the table with three armchairs by its side, and could not be persuaded to eat a bite of it herself. In this state, she sat awake for the larger part of the night. Only after the small lamp in the corridor had gone out, Marietta, calling Andrea to her aid, succeeded in bringing the poor woman back to her room and to bed. A fever broke out, not dangerous, but strong enough to render her unconscious for several hours a day. Andrea watched all of this with deep sympathy, and the moving words the ill woman uttered in her delusions tormented him a lot. He had to admit to himself that he was to blame for the confusion of this good soul, and Marietta's sad looks depressed him more heavily than all the bloody secrets he carried around with him.

With this burden, Andrea strolled past the Doges' Palace one afternoon and, for a long time, stood by the narrow canal which flows along under the high arch of the Bridge of Sighs. Whenever he started to waver in his decisions and he began to doubt in the moral justification of the office of a judge which he had taken on, he fled to this place and confirmed his determination by looking at these ancient walls, behind which thousands of victims of an irresponsible power had sighed and gnashed their teeth, believing in the righteousness and the necessity of his mission.

The sun shone with blinding rays through the mists of September, rising up from the water. This quay, which had at other times been swarming with people, was unsettlingly quiet. The gloomy looks of the soldiers, marching noisily up and down under the arcades of the palace, were liable to scare away the loud cheerfulness of the people passing by. Andrea could hear clearly that from a gondola, which was just arriving at the Piazzetta, his name had been called. He recognised his friend, the secretary of the ambassador from Vienna.

"Do you've got time?" the young man called out at him, "If so, come on board for a while, and join me for a stretch of my way. I'm in a hurry, but would still like to talk to you once more."

Andrea entered the gondola, and the other man shook his hand particularly cordially. "I'm very happy, my dear Andrea that I happened to meet you here. I would have disliked leaving you without a farewell, and yet, I didn't dare to visit you or to sent for you, since this would undoubtedly have caught someone's attention."

"You're taking a journey?" Andrea asked almost perplexed.

"I guess, I'll have to. Here, read this letter from my dear mother, and tell me whether I'm still allowed to hesitate after this."

He pulled the letter out of his pocket and gave it to his friend. The old lady implored her son that, if he wanted her to ever be able to get but one hour of sleep again, he should travel to her without delay. The rumours from Venice, the position he held there and which put him into more danger than others, the fact that less than a third of all of his letters would reach her, - she would not know who was to blame for this, - all of this was eating away at her peace of mind, and her physician would not vouch for anything, unless she would be comforted and calmed down by a visit of her son. There was a tone of unlimited motherly devotion and deep grief in all of these line, so that Andrea could not read them without being moved.

"And yet," he said, returning the letter, "and yet, I almost wish you wouldn't leave now out of all times, though I know that your mother is counting the hours. Not because, once you'll be gone, I'll be left behind here, completely abandoned and like a walking corpse, but rather because it is not advisable to leave Venice at this time, since the suspicion will follow you on your heels that you were leaving as a precaution. Didn't they give you any trouble, when you were asking for a leave?"

"None at all. How could they, since I'm working for the embassy?"

"If that's so, be twice as cautious. Many a door has already been opened accommodatingly in Venice, because stepping over the threshold meant plunging into an abyss. If you'd follow me in this, you wouldn't show yourself thus openly and without a disguise here in the city during the last hours before your departure. You wouldn't be able to know what measures they might take to prevent it." - "But what shall I do?" asked the young man. "You know that masks are illegal."

"Then stay at home, and rather let the dignitaries of the republic wait for your farewell visit in vain. - And when will you leave?"

"Early tomorrow at five o'clock. I'm planning to stay away for a month, and hope that by then my mother will have calmed down, so that I'll be able to leave her. Now that it has been irreversibly decided that I shall sever my ties, I'm almost at ease with this violent cure, though it cuts into my life rather deeply. Perhaps, once I'll have broken out of the circles of my enchantress, I'll succeed in shaking off her spell for ever more. But will you believe it, my friend, that the separation makes me shiver, as if I wouldn't be able to survive it?"

"If that's so, the best remedy is to part with her right away."

"You mean, not to see her again before the journey? What you're asking is inhuman."

Andrea seized his hand. "My dear friend," he said with a heartfelt emotion, which at other times he had always been able to control, "I have no right to ask you for even the slightest sacrifice. The feeling of cordial affection, which has brought me together with you from the start, is ample thanks by itself, and I do not dare to ask you for anything in the name of this friendship of mine. But by the image of that noble woman, whose loving words you've just let me read, I implore you: Don't enter the house of the countess any more. More than anything I know of her, what even you don't deny, my premonition is warning you, that it will be your doom, if you don't avoid her in these last hours. Promise it to me, my dearest friend!"

He extended his hand to him. But Rosenberg did not take it. "Don't demand an unbreakable promise," he said, gravely shaking his head, "be content with my firm intention to follow your advice. But if the daemon would be stronger than I and would run down everything I've put in his path, then I would have the double grief to have become unfaithful to both me and you. But you don't know what this woman can achieve, when she puts her mind to it."

After this, they were silent and cruised for a while, lost in thought, together through the lifeless waters, receding listlessly like a swamp as the gondola's keel ploughed through them. Near the Rialto, Andrea wished to get out. He asked the young man to give his regards to his mother and inscrutably shrugged his shoulders when being asked whether he could still be found in Venice one month from now. They held each others hand for a long time, and when the gondola landed, they parted with a cordial embrace. Once more, the intelligent and trusting face of the young man looked through the hatch of the black canopy and nodded to his friend, who had stopped on the stairs leading down to the water, lost in his thoughts. For both, the farewell felt more painful than they could explain.

Especially Andrea, who had thought for a long time that he was free from all those ties with which one person would tie himself to another, who seemed to be dead to all those small reasons for living due to that one, fearful goal which he had set out for himself, was astonished at how much the thought of having to make do without that young man for several weeks did pain him. But soon, the wish forced itself upon him that he would never meet him here again, before he had not succeeded in his work. He was resolved to write a letter to the mother and to urge her with mysterious warnings not to consent to her son's return to Venice. Once he had made this decision, he was relieved of a great burden. He instantly went home, in order to carry out his plan.