Italy : 20. Marcolini

It was midnight; the great clock had struck, and was
still echoing through every porch and gallery in the
quarter of St. Mark, when a young Citizen, wrapped
in his cloak, was hastening home under it from an interview
with his Mistress. His step was light, for his heart was
so. Her parents had just consented to their marriage;
and the very day was named. 'Lovely Giulietta!' he
cried, 'And shall I then call thee mine at last? Who
was ever so blest as thy Marcolini?' But as he spoke,
he stopped; for something glittered on the pavement
before him. It was a scabbard of rich workmanship;
and the discovery, what was it but an earnest of good
fortune? 'Rest thou there!' he cried, thrusting it gaily
into his belt. 'If another claims thee not, thou hast
changed masters!' and on he went as before, humming
the burden of a song which he and his Giulietta had
been singing together. But how little do we know what
the next minute will bring forth! He turned by the
Church of St. Geminiano, and in three steps he met the
Watch. A murder had just been committed. The
Senator Renaldi had been found dead at his door, the
dagger left in his heart; and the unfortunate Marcolini
was dragged away for examination. The place, the time,
every thing served to excite, to justify suspicion; and no
sooner had he entered the guard-house than a damning
witness appeared against him. The Bravo in his flight
had thrown away his scabbard; and, smeared with blood,
with blood not yet dry, it was now in the belt of Marcolini.
Its patrician ornaments struck every eye; and,
when the fatal dagger was produced and compared with
it, not a doubt of his guilt remained. Still there is in
the innocent an energy and a composure, an energy when
they speak and a composure when they are silent, to
which none can be altogether insensible; and the Judge
delayed for some time to pronounce the sentence, though
he was a near relation of the dead. At length, however,
it came; and Marcolini lost his life, Giulietta her reason.
Not many years afterwards the truth revealed itself,
the real criminal in his last moments confessing the
crime: and hence the custom in Venice, a custom that
long prevailed, for a crier to cry out in the Court before
a sentence was passed, 'Ricordatevi del povero Marcolini!'
Great indeed was the lamentation throughout the City;
and the Judge, dying, directed that thenceforth and for
ever a Mass should be sung every night in a chapel of
the Ducal Church for his own soul and the soul of
Marcolini and the souls of all who had suffered by an
unjust judgement. Some land on the Brenta was left by
him for the purpose: and still is the Mass sung in the
chapel; still every night, when the great square is illu-
minating and the casinos are filling fast with the gay and
the dissipated, a bell is rung as for a service, and a ray
of light seen to issue from a small gothic window that
looks towards the place of execution, the place where on
a scaffold Marcolini breathed his last.