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Peter's Chair in Venice. Prithee, Memmo, tease us no more with such doubts, but let Contarino's proposal be adopted at once. Our confederates must be summoned to Parozzi's palace with all diligence, and there furnished with such weapons as are necessary. Let the stroke of midnight be the signal for Contarino's quitting the ball-room, and hastening to seize the arsenal.
Here his reflections were interrupted. Memmo, Falieri, and Contarino entered the room, three young Venetians of the highest rank, Parozzi's inseparable companions, men depraved both in mind and body, spendthrifts, voluptuaries, well known to every usurer in Venice, and owing more than their paternal inheritance would ever admit of their paying.
And now it would not be at all amiss to make Count Rosalvo sit down quietly between the good old Doge and his lovely niece; and then cause him to relate the motive of Monaldeschi's hatred, in what manner he lost Valeria, what crimes were imputed to him, and how he escaped from the assassins sent in pursuit of him by his enemy; how he had long wandered from place to place, and how he had at length learned, during his abode in Bohemia with a gang of gipsies, such means of disguising his features as enabled him to defy the keenest penetration to discover in the beggar Abellino the once admired Count Rosalvo; how in this disguise he had returned to Italy; and how Lomellino, having ascertained that he was universally believed at Naples to have long since perished by shipwreck, and therefore that neither the officers of the Inquisition, nor the assassins of his enemies were likely to trouble themselves any more about him, he had ventured to resume, with some slight alterations, his own appearance at Venice; how the arrival of Monaldeschi had obliged him to conceal himself, till an opportunity offered of presenting himself to the Prince when unattended, and of demanding satisfaction for his injuries; how he had been himself wounded in several places by his antagonist, though the combat finally terminated in his favour; how he had resolved to make use of Monaldeschi's death to terrify Andreas still further, and of Parozzi's conspiracy to obtain Rosabella's hand of the Doge; how he had trembled lest the heart of his mistress should have been only captivated by the romantic appearance of the adventurer Flodoardo, and have rejected him when known to be the bravo Abellino; how he had resolved to make use of the terror inspired by the assassin to put her love to the severest trial; and how, had she failed in that trial, he had determined to renounce the inconstant maid for ever; with many other HOWS, WHYS, and WHEREFORES, which, not being explained, will, I doubt, leave much of this tale involved in mystery: but before I begin Rosalvo's history, I must ask two questions First do my readers like the manner in which I relate adventures?
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