until Dandolo himself should pass. The Doge and his counsellors, being apprised of the matter, sent for the captain and had from his own lips an account of the injury he had [Illustration: PONTE E FONDAMENTA DI DONNA ONESTA] suffered; but while they promised him every satisfaction which the law would allow, they severely reproved him for having dared to think of taking vengeance in person. The Doge, however, on hearing Isarello’s story, recognised in him an instrument that might be useful against the aristocracy; and sending for him privately on the following night, received him in his own apartment, and laid before him the plan which he had been maturing for some time. The most reliable accounts say that within a few hours Isarello gathered twenty conspirators, each of whom promised to furnish forty armed men; but of these twenty heads, only Isarello himself, Filippo Calendario, his father-in-law, erroneously stated to have been the architect who restored the ducal palace, but who was in reality only a master stone-cutter in the work, and two or three other trusty friends, were aware that the Doge himself was the prime mover in the conspiracy, the others supposing that the only object of the movement was to punish the nobles for their overbearing conduct, and to force the government to the better administration of justice. During a few days the principal conspirators came by night to the ducal palace, in order to prepare their plan of action. Meanwhile, in order to increase the unpopularity of the aristocracy, they practised a singular deceit. Two or three of them wandered about the city in the evening, apparently disguised as nobles, insulting the plebeians whom they met, and singing low songs under the windows of honest artisans’ wives; then separating, they loudly bade each other good-night, calling each other by the names of the most illustrious Venetian houses, so that the offended persons supposed they had been annoyed by the fashionable young good-for-nothings of the highest nobility. Meanwhile the conspirators discussed various means for getting possession of the city, and it was finally agreed that they should all meet, fully armed, on the night of the fifteenth of April 1355 in the Square of Saint Mark, before the ducal palace, when the Doge would cause the great bell to ring the alarm, and news would be bruited abroad among the people that the Genoese were at the mouth of the harbour with fifty galleys. Thereupon it was expected that the nobles would flock to the palace, as they always did in cases of danger, to meet in council, and the conspirators would be able to kill them without difficulty as they arrived. After the massacre, they intended to proclaim the absolute sovereignty of the Doge, who bound himself to confer all the important offices of the State upon men belonging to the working-classes. The plan failed, apparently for two reasons.