"We must not conceal this judgment, nor its motive," observed the Inquisitor of the Ten, when the affair was concluded. "The state is never a loser for letting its justice be known." "Nor for its exercise, I should hope," returned the Signor Soranzo. "As our affairs are ended for the night, is it your pleasures, Signori, that we return to our palaces?" "Nay, we have this matter of Jacopo." "Him may we now, surely, turn over to the ordinary tribunals!" "As you may decide, Signori; is this your pleasure?" Both the others bowed assent, and the usual preparations were made for departure. Ere the two seniors of the Council left the palace, however, they held a long and secret conference together. The result was a private order to the criminal judge, and then they returned, each to his own abode, like men who had the approbation of their own consciences. On the other hand, the Signor Soranzo hastened to his own luxurious and happy dwelling. For the first time in his life he entered it with a distrust of himself. Without being conscious of the reason, he felt sad, for he had taken the first step in that tortuous and corrupting path, which eventually leads to the destruction of all those generous and noble sentiments, which can only flourish apart from the sophistry and fictions of selfishness. He would have rejoiced to have been as light of heart as at the moment he handed his fair-haired partner into the gondola that night; but his head had pressed the pillow for many hours, before sleep drew a veil over the solemn trifling with the most serious of your duties, in which he had been an actor. CHAPTER XXIX. "Art thou not guilty! No, indeed, I am not." ROGERS. The following morning brought the funeral of Antonio. The agents of the police took the precaution to circulate in the city, that the Senate permitted this honor to the memory of the old fisherman, on account of his success in the regatta, and as some atonement for his unmerited and mysterious death. All the men of the Lagunes were assembled in the square at the appointed hour, in decent guise, flattered with the notice that their craft received, and more than half disposed to forget their former anger in the present favor. Thus easy is it for those who are elevated above their fellow-creatures by the accident of birth, or by the opinions of a factitious social organization, to repair the wrongs they do in deeds, by small concessions of their conventional superiority.