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So soon as the Podesta was apprised of the affair, he arose, had her brought into his room, and there made himself conversant with the circumstances: and certain physicians being charged to inquire whether the good man had met his death by poison or otherwise, all with one accord averred that 'twas not by poison, but that he was choked by the bursting of an imposthume near the heart.
Which when the Podesta heard, perceiving that the girl's guilt could but be slight, he sought to make a pretence of giving what it was not lawful for him to sell her, and told her that he would set her at liberty, so she were consenting to pleasure him; but finding that he did but waste his words he cast aside all decency, and would have used force.
He was the first Podesta, or Ruler, that the Common wealth of Venice appointed in Constantinople in the yeere 1205 when our state had rule thereof with the French Barons. This Gentleman had a sonne named Messer Pietro, who was the father of the Duke Rinieri, which Duke dying without issue, made his heire M. Andrea, the sonne of M. Marco his brother.
The Podesta, being minded rather to be his own accuser, than that he should be accused by the girl of the violence that he had meditated towards her, began by praising her and her constancy, and in proof thereof went on to tell what he had done; he ended by saying, that, marking her admirable firmness, he had fallen mightily in love with her, and so, notwithstanding she had been wedded to a man of low degree, he would, if 'twere agreeable to her and to her father, Messer Negro, gladly make her his wife.
When 'twas broad day, the affair reached the ears of Messer Negro, who, half dead with grief, hied him with not a few of his friends to the palace; where, having heard all that the Podesta had to say, he required him peremptorily to give him back his daughter.
This consequence would almost certainly follow the establishment of a full representative system in India. In the cities of mediaeval Italy, when the conflict of parties became so acute that neither side could expect justice from the other, the practice grew up of electing a podesta from some foreign city to act as an impartial arbiter.
Each of the seven little states, on the other hand, regulated its own internal affairs. Above all these district officers was a Podesta, a magistrate identical, in name and functions, with the chief officer of the Italian republics. There was sometimes but one Podesta; sometimes one for each province.
A trifle later intelligence came that the Sultan, lingering at Basch-Kegan, supposably because the air along the Bosphorus was better than the air at Adrianople, had effected a treaty by which the Podesta of Galata bound his city to neutrality; still the complacency of the Byzantines was in no wise disturbed. "Score one for the Genoese. It is good to hear of their beating the Venetians."
Of the earlier Podesta, too, he is not unmindful: "Arrigo Mainardi, Pier Traversaro,... Wonder not, Tuscan, if thou seest me weep When I recall those once loved names ... With Traversaro's house and Anastagio's, Each race disinherited." With the pitiful story of Francesca da Polenta we have seen how he dealt and how he spoke of Guido Vecchio.
At length the Podesta, after they had been roaming about thus for a great part of the day, began to fancy that the youth's heated imagination had merely beheld these phantoms in the wild ravings of his grief. "Such happiness," he exclaimed, "would be too great; and I am born only for misfortune." On reaching a village they were forced to let their horses and servants bait.
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