| The Doge’s Counsellors | 6 |
| Savi of the Council | 16 |
| Procurators of Saint Mark | 9 |
| ‘Criminal’ Quarantia | 40 |
| ‘Old’ Civil Quarantia | 40 |
| ‘New’ Civil Quarantia | 40 |
| Colleges of the XXV. and the XV. | 40 |
| Senate | 60 |
| ‘Zonta,’ supplementary to Senate | 60 |
| Council of Ten | 10 |
| Inquisitors (of Ten) | 3 |
| Avogadori of the Commonwealth | 3 |
| Total | 327 |
besides the whole of the Great Council, which consisted of all nobles over twenty-five years of age, and of the younger men chosen by lot to sit without a vote.
And these are only the principal magistracies. The secondary ones comprised over five hundred officials, divided between something like one hundred and thirty offices, such as Provveditors, or inspectors of some forty different matters, from artillery to butchers’ shops, from ‘Ancient and Modern Justice’ to oats: Savi, Inquisitors of all matters except religion, Auditors, Executors, Correctors, Reformers, Deputies, and Syndics; a perfect ant-hill of officials who were perpetually in one another’s way.
Here is an instance of the manner in which ordinary justice was administered, even by the Council of Ten.
WHEN THE ALPS SHOW THEMSELVES, FONDAMENTA NUOVE
On the sixth of March 1776 a patrician called Semitecolo, who was a member of one of the Quarantie, and therefore a magistrate, was walking in the Fondamenta Nuove when he saw a big butcher named Milani unmercifully beating a wretched peddler of old books. He stopped and expostulated; the butcher took his interference ill, and delivered a blow with his fist which caused the blood to gush abundantly from the magistrate’s nose. Semitecolo was taken into a neighbouring house, and the butcher walked off.
Still covered with blood, Semitecolo hastened to lay the matter before the Council of Ten, demanding the
CAFÉ ON THE ZATTERE