But on whose account had I to be interested in the _pozzi_? It was
difficult to learn, unless I took the word of sentimental hearsay. I began
with Marin Falier, but history would not permit the doge to languish in
these dungeons for a moment. He was imprisoned in the apartments of state,
and during one night only. His fellow-conspirators were hanged nearly as
fast as taken.

Failing so signally with Falier, I tried several other political prisoners
of sad and famous memory with scarcely better effect. To a man, they
struggled to shun the illustrious captivity designed them, and escaped
from the _pozzi_ by every artifice of fact and figure.

The Carraras of Padua were put to death in the city of Venice, and their
story is the most pathetic and romantic in Venetian history. But it was
not the cells under the Ducal Palace which witnessed their cruel taking-
off: they were strangled in the prison formerly existing at the top of the
palace, called the Torresella. [Footnote: Galliciolli, _Memorie
Venete_.] It is possible, however, that Jacopo Foscari may have been
confined in the _pozzi_ at different times about the middle of the
fifteenth century. With his fate alone, then, can the horror of these
cells be satisfactorily associated by those who relish the dark romance of
Venetian annals; for it is not to be expected that the less tragic
fortunes of Carlo Zeno and Vittore Pisani, who may also have been
imprisoned in the _pozzi_, can move the true sentimentalizer.
Certainly, there has been anguish enough in the prisons of the Ducal
Palace, but we know little of it by name, and cannot confidently relate it
to any great historic presence.

Touching the Giant's Stairs in the court of the palace, the inexorable