The Doge’s Counsellors 6 Savi of the Council 16 Procurators of Saint Mark 9 ‘Criminal’ Quarantia 40 ‘Old’ Civil Quarantia 40 ‘New’ Civil Quarantia 40 Colleges of the XXV. and the XV. 40 Senate 60 ‘Zonta,’ supplementary to Senate 60 Council of Ten 10 Inquisitors (of Ten) 3 Avogadori of the Commonwealth 3 --- Total 327 besides the whole of the Great Council, which consisted of all nobles over twenty-five years of age, and of the younger men chosen by lot to sit without a vote. And these are only the principal magistracies. The secondary ones comprised over five hundred officials, divided between something like one hundred and thirty offices, such as Provveditors, or inspectors of some forty different matters, from artillery to butchers’ shops, from ‘Ancient and Modern Justice’ to oats: Savi, Inquisitors of all matters except religion, Auditors, Executors, Correctors, Reformers, Deputies, and Syndics; a perfect ant-hill of officials who were perpetually in one another’s way. Here is an instance of the manner in which ordinary justice was administered, even by the Council of Ten. [Illustration: WHEN THE ALPS SHOW THEMSELVES, FONDAMENTA NUOVE] On the sixth of March 1776 a patrician called Semitecolo, who was a member of one of the Quarantie, and therefore a magistrate, was walking in the Fondamenta Nuove when he saw a big butcher named Milani unmercifully beating a wretched peddler of old books. He stopped and expostulated; the butcher took his interference ill, and delivered a blow with his fist which caused the blood to gush abundantly from the magistrate’s nose. Semitecolo was taken into a neighbouring house, and the butcher walked off. Still covered with blood, Semitecolo hastened to lay the matter before the Council of Ten, demanding the [Illustration: CAFÉ ON THE ZATTERE] arrest of Milani. But Pier Barbarigo, who was one of the Capi for the week, while sympathising deeply, excused himself from arresting the culprit, on the ground that a detailed account of the affair signed by witnesses must be laid before the Council; and, moreover, the Council was busy just then, he said, owing to the arrival of the Pope’s Nuncio, and there would be no meeting on the next day. Semitecolo could not even get an order to have the butcher watched by the police, and the culprit had full time and liberty to leave Venice before anything was done. Note that he himself did not expect impunity, but only a very long delay before his arrest was ordered.