5-i' The Uat-Trap^ [Jan. 



nearly at a stand. The value of the currenc}' was not only far below 

 its nominal price, but, at tlie same time, so extremely irregular, that 

 it was a common device with the chevaliers of industry to throw down 

 gold in a tavern for the payment of their score, such as, if the reckoning 

 came to but a small sum in silver, the vintner would rather incur its 

 loss than take the risk of changing. If credit in an)- instance was given, 

 few traders cared to press an unwilling debtor ; for the thrust of a 

 stiletto %vas very apt to balance such accounts ; and impunity made 

 assassination so cheap, that the hired bravos declared they could not 

 earn a livelihood. Appeal to the law was {perfectly useless — every 

 offender was certain to escape : some from the danger which attended 

 giving evidence ; more, from the open, undisguised pati'onage of per- 

 sons in rank and place. When the arm of the magistrate was thus 

 found obviously too weak to afford protection, each man thought it 

 but reasonable that he should endeavour to protect himself; and, from 

 first resisting injuries, it was but a step to revenging them ; which, of 

 course, made the avenger, in his turn, the object of recrimination. 

 Riot, in short, plunder and bloodshed, walked abroad through all 

 Ravenna by open day ; and innumerable had been the lives lost, alike 

 from the toleration of these disorders, and in weak or tardy eiTorts to 

 repress them. 



But, when Cardinal Sansovino was named to the post of legate, he 

 entered upon his office, fully determined — if his rule was to exhibit the 

 vices of a despotic system — that it should, at least, also exemj)lif3' the 

 advantages of one. Thenceforward, whatever might be the result, there 

 should no longer exist the hitherto common excuse for committing 

 violence — to wit, that he who did commit, and he who did not, were 

 alike, of necessity, compelled to endure it. He came to his govern- 

 ment surrounded by a guard — small as to numbers — but culled, not 

 merely from half the provinces of Italy, but from half the nations of the 

 globe. French, Germans, Surbzers, Poles, Hungarians, nay, even 

 Turks — so that they struck but heavily, and shunned no discipline — • 

 found a welcome, and such pay as all the world else would not afford 

 them, in his ranks. Secure, then, in the obedience of these troops — who 

 w^ere few, but picked combatants, every single soldier — on the very day 

 after his accession, the legate summoned before him the whole local 

 magistracy of Ravenna ; and assuring them that, in all emergencies of 

 duty, where they might incur a risk, he would sustain them with the 

 power of government, even to the hazard of his life, pledged his honour 

 that they themselves should be held responsible, if violences were com- 

 mitted within their jurisdictions, and the oft'enders not brought forward 

 on his demand. 



He who means to act, may use a threat for fashion's sake ; but it is 

 for form sake only, because he may be quite sure that nobody will 

 attend to it. Every new legate, for twenty years, had begun by making 

 the same professions as Sansovino ; and ended, by leaving things just 

 as they had been left by his predecessor. On the third day only of 

 the new governor's taking office, in spite of all his thunder, Paul Carlo 

 Altieri stabbed an officer, at high noon, upon the Corso, who threatened 

 him with arrest for debt ; and having committed this act with perfect 

 deliberation in the sight of two hundred persons, walked to his father's 

 j^alace, without thinking it necessary even to take sanctuary. 



This time, however, for his sins, M, jiVlticri had miscalulated. Every 



