There were also those who, if not exactly poor, were in difficulties, the class that for ever feeds the pawnbroker and the small money-lender. The Republic exercised the strictest supervision over these industries, and few cities in the world ever turned a harder face against the inroads of the Hebrews. It was with the greatest unwillingness and with many precautions that Jews were ever admitted into the city at all, and a special code provided the most extraordinary and cruel penalties for the most ordinary misdemeanours when committed by them. They were forced to wear a special dress with a large patch of yellow on the chest, and they could only follow the meanest occupations. In mediæval Rome it was the business of the Jews to bury the Christian dead, but it often happened that the Pope’s private physician was a Hebrew. I do not find that in Venice they were ever forced to be gravediggers for the poor, but they were forbidden to act as physicians except for their own sick. Both Church and State rigorously forbade their intermarriage with Christians, and, so far as the happy ending of the love story is concerned, Lorenzo and Shylock’s daughter could never have married. More than once, before the sixteenth century, the Jews were expelled from Venice and made to live in Mestre, which seems to have been their regular headquarters, but they were allowed to come into the city during the time of certain public fairs. If they prolonged their stay beyond the limit, however, they became liable to fine or imprisonment. Some of these measures had been partly relaxed by the middle of the sixteenth century, but the Jews never enjoyed anything like equality with the other citizens. Oddly enough the money-lender of the lower classes in Venice was the wine-seller, whom the people called the Bastionero. In the wine-shop it was customary to pawn objects for wine and money [Illustration: THE RIALTO STEPS] simultaneously, one-third of the value being given in wine, which was generally watered. If the pledge were not redeemed within three months, the amount to be paid for getting it back was increased, and again at the end of the next three months, and so on, until, [Illustration: NOON ON THE RIALTO] at the end of the year, the original sum lent was doubled. If it was not paid, the wine-seller had a right to sell the object for what it would bring.