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."