Listen, Tisbe

Listen, Tisbe. Yes, you said, yes, I can do everything here; I am lord and despot ruler of that city; I'm the podesta Venice puts Padua, claw tiger on the sheep. Yes, all-powerful; but absolute as I am, above me, you see. Tisbe, there is a great and terrible thing, full of darkness there is Venice. And do you know what it's like Venice, poor Tisbe! Venice, I'll tell you, it is the State Inquisition, the Council of Ten. Oh! the Council of Ten! talking-down, Tisbe; because it is perhaps somewhere that listens. Men that not one of us knows, and who know us; men 'are visible in any ceremony, and are visible in all scaffolds; men who have in their hands all the heads, yours, mine, that of the Doge, and who have no robe or stole, or crown, nothing that refers to the eyes, nothing that would make you say: He -C is! a mysterious sign under their robes, at most; agents everywhere, everywhere henchmen, executioners everywhere; men who never show the people of Venice other faces that these dreary bronze mouths still open the front porches of St. Mark fatal mouths as the crowd believes dumb, and yet speak of a good, well-High terrible because they say that every passer; Report! - Once terminated, one is caught. When taken, everything is said. In Venice, everything is done in secret, mysteriously, surely. Convicted, executed, nothing to do, nothing to say; can not cry, not a useful look; the patient has a gag, the executioner mask. I was talking about you scaffolds while ago! I was wrong. In Venice, you do not die on the scaffold, it disappears. Missing suddenly a man in a family. What became of him? The shot, wells, the channel Orfano know. Sometimes you hear something falling into the water at night. Go fast then! Besides, dances, feasts, torches, music, gondolas, theaters, five months of carnival, that Venice. You Tisbe, my beautiful actress, you know only that side; me, Senator, I know the other. You see, in all the palace, in one of the Doge, in mine, unknown to him that clever, there is a secret corridor, perpetual trahisseur all rooms, all rooms of all alcoves; a dark corridor with others that you know the doors and we feel meander around you without knowing exactly where it is; a mysterious undermines which come and go constantly unknown men who do something. And personal vendettas that mingle with all this and who walk in the shade! Often at night I stand on my bed, I listen, and I hear footsteps on my wall. That under what pressure I live Tisbe. I am Padua, but this is about me. I mission tame Padua. He ordered me to be terrible. I'm despot only if it tyrant. Never ask me the grace to anyone, seeing I know not refuse you nothing; you lose me. Everything is allowed to punish me, nothing to forgive. Yes, it is. Tyrant of Padua, Venice slave. I am well guarded, go. Oh! the Council of Ten! Put a single worker in a cave and let them make a lock before the lock is finished, the Council of Ten has the key in his pocket. Madam! madame! the servant that serves me spying on me, the friend who greets me I spy, the priest who confess me spy, the woman said: I love you - yes, Tisbe - spying on me.

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