council was greater than that of the Morosini, the story was accepted.
However, the public feeling was so strong that they could not do less
than sentence Ruggiero to two years' banishment. I suppose that has
just expired, and he has returned from Constantinople. He had a bad
reputation before this affair took place, but as his connections are so
powerful, I suppose he will be received as if nothing had happened.
There are plenty of others as bad as he is."

"It's a scandalous thing," Francis Hammond said indignantly, "that,
just because they have got powerful connections, men should be allowed
to do, almost with impunity, things for which an ordinary man would be
hung. There ought to be one law for the rich as well as the poor."

"So there is as far as the state is concerned," his companion replied.
"A noble who plots against the state is as certain of a place in the
lowest dungeons as a fisherman who has done the same; but in other
respects there is naturally some difference."

"Why naturally?" Francis retorted. "You belong to a powerful family,
Giustiniani, and my father is only a trader, but I don't see that
naturally you have any more right to get me stabbed in the back, than I
have to get you put out of the way."

"Naturally perhaps not," Matteo laughed; "but you see it has become a
second nature to us here in Venice. But seriously I admit that the
present state of things has grown to be a scandal, and that the doings
of some of our class ought to be put down with a strong hand."

"Well, I shall say goodnight now," the English boy said. "My father
doesn't like my being out after ten. He keeps up his English habits of