‘A certain Sanudo, who lives in the Rio della Croce, in the Giudecca, made his wife go to confession day before yesterday evening; and she was a Cappello by birth. During the following night, at about the fifth hour (one o’clock in the morning at that season according to the old Italian sun-time), he killed her with a dagger-thrust in the throat. He says that she was unfaithful, but every one believes that she was a saint.’ We learn that the poor woman was thirty-six, and that Giovanni Sanudo had been married to her eighteen years. The Council of Ten ordered his arrest, but he had already escaped beyond the frontier, and he was condemned to death in default and a prize of two thousand ducats was offered for his head. [Illustration: THE SALUTE FROM THE GIUDECCA] He had left five children in Venice, three boys and two girls; and the oldest, a daughter christened Sanuda, addressed a petition to the Ten which is worth translating:-- Most Serene Prince (the Doge), Most Illustrious Sirs (the Ten), and most merciful my Masters (the Counsellors, the High Chancellor, and the Avogadors): Never did unfortunate petitioners come to the feet of your Serenity and of your most excellent and most clement Council, more worthy of pity than we, Sanuda, Livio, Aloïse, Franceschino and Livio second, the children of Messer Giovanni Sanudo; misfortune has fallen upon our house because our father having been accused of taking our mother’s life, the justice of your Serenity and of your most excellent Council has condemned him to death; wherefore we, poor innocent children, have lost at once our father and our mother, and all our possessions; and we assure you with tears that we should have to beg our bread unless certain charitable souls helped us. Therefore I, the unhappy Sanuda, who have reached the age of eighteen years, and my brothers and sisters who are younger than I, shall all be given over to the most abject poverty and exposed to the greatest dangers unless your Serenity and your most excellent Council will consent to help us for the love of religion and justice. And so, in order to prevent five poor and honest children of noble blood from perishing thus miserably, we prostrate ourselves at the feet of your Serenity and of your most Illustrious Lordships, imploring you, by the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, to allow our unhappy father to come back to Venice for two years, that he may provide for the safety of his family and especially of his daughters, whose honour is exposed to such grave peril in that state of neglect in which they are now living. We pray that the good God may grant your Serenity and your Lordships long and happy life. The Council of Ten was apparently moved by the appeal. It answered the petition by the following resolution:--