removed by international usage beyond the sphere of police activities. The situation, then, was an extremely sensitive one; so much so, indeed, that it was thought advisable by the “Capo della Sbiraglia,” or chief of police, to send for an Advocate of the Commune, one Zorzi, that he might request the delivery of the criminal with all possible courtesy. Zorzi, on reaching the Embassy, met three of the members of its staff in the courtyard, and begged that they would make known his coming to the Ambassador. Instead of complying, however, they only ran back into the house, shouting to those within to make ready to bar the way; and Zorzi, on following them with some of the “sbirri,” found the staircase held against his further advance by a crowd of ruffians, while others were beginning to hurl down furniture and household utensils out of the windows on to the heads of the “sbirri” below. So that the prudent Advocate withdrew with his police and reported the matter to the Council of Ten, which promptly sent a force of soldiers to the Embassy to seize the original criminal, who had taken refuge there and, with him, all the other resisters of Messer Zorzi and the police. The Council had acted thus in spite of its all but certainty that the King of France would declare war on Venice for her violation of his Embassy; but, to its relief, no notice was taken of their action. It was quite certain, though, that the French Ambassador was in the habit of employing “bravi” about his person; and his colleague of Spain appears to have been guilty of the same delinquency. In 1556 Edward Courtenay, Lord Devon, died at Padua, of low fever, as was supposed, but in reality he was murdered by a “bravo” of Dalmatia, Marco Risano, in the pay of Ruy Gomez, the Spanish Minister. Courtenay’s papers were placed for safekeeping in the hands of the Paduan authorities until the pleasure of Queen Mary should be known concerning them. The Council of Ten, however, was enabled to obtain a knowledge of their contents by means of its officer, the “Podestà” of Padua; and certain documents which proved that Courtenay had been an agent and spy of France were found among the papers and purloined by the Council. A typical “bravo” of a certain kind was a hardened blackguard of noble family called Leonardo Pesaro. He is said to have combined in his own person all the vices of the age in which he lived, the end of the Sixteenth Century and the beginning of the Seventeenth. Again and again this scoundrel was arrested and expelled from Venetian territory as an undesirable citizen; and, as often, he would return either to the capital or to one of the provincial cities, Padua or Vicenza or Verona. At last, though, in 1601, Pesaro crowned all his other achievements by one of the most shameless outrages ever perpetrated upon the laws of any country.