"You want me to understand, then, that no steps whatever are to be
taken against the criminals conspiring against your excellency's
life?"

"By no means, count--indeed, that would be an exaggeration of
fatalism. I rely greatly on your sagacity and on the vigilance of
your servants, count. Let them watch the stupid populace--see to it
that faux freres always attend the meetings of my enemies, and
whenever they inform you of conspiracies against myself, why, the
malefactors shall be spirited away without any superfluous noise.
Thank God, we have fortresses and state prisons, with walls too
thick for shrieks or groans to penetrate, and that no one is able to
break through. The public should learn as little as possible of the
fate of these criminals. The public punishment of an assassin who
failed to strike me, only instigates ten others to try if they
cannot hit me better. But the noiseless disappearance of a culprit
fills their cowardly souls with horror and dismay, and the ten men
shrink back from the intended deed, merely because they do not know
in what manner their eleventh accomplice has expiated his crime. The
disappearance of prisoners, the oubliettes, are just what is needed.
You must quietly remove your enemies and adversaries--it must seem
as if some hidden abyss had ingulfed them; everybody, then, will
think this abyss might open one day before his own feet, and he
grows cautious, uneasy, and timid. Solely by the wisdom of secret
punishments, and through the terror inspired by its mysterious
tribunals, Venice has been able to prolong her existence for so many
centuries. Because the spies of the Three were believed to be
ubiquitous--and because everybody was afraid of the two lions on the
Piazzetta, the Venetians obeyed these invisible rulers whom they did