A. Bashet, Archives.
government took good care that foreign representatives residing in Venice should not follow their example. They were never told anything in the way of news, and though honours and privileges were heaped upon them, they were kept at arm’s length. As far back as the fourteenth century there was a law forbidding all patricians to have any acquaintance or social intercourse with any foreign representative except under the most exceptional circumstances, and M. Baschet has found material in the Archives sufficient to prove that the foreign ambassadors lived in something very like the seclusion of exile, and were altogether banished from all intercourse with the upper classes. The same writer adds that the diplomatists resented this rude exclusion, and that the practice of it made the Republic not a few enemies.
To such a criticism Venice would have answered, as usual, by the argument of success on the whole during many centuries. Those who care to examine the point more closely may read M. Baschet’s interesting work on the Secret Chancery.
PONTE DEL CRISTO
IV
THE ARSENAL, THE GLASS-WORKS, AND THE LACE-MAKERS
The old Arsenal is such a museum of shadows nowadays that it is hard to realise what it once meant to the Venetians. Six hundred years ago, the sight of it inspired one of Dante’s most vivid descriptions of activity, and I have sometimes wondered whether in his day the three dwelling-houses of the Provveditors were already nick-named Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, as they were always called at a later date.
The Arsenal was founded in the twelfth century, and from the very first was one of the institutions most jealously watched over by the government. In the sixteenth century it had grown to be a vast enclosure of docks and basins, protected by a crenellated wall, and having but one entrance, which was guarded by sentinels. In the interior, the houses of the Provveditors had grown to be three great palaces, built round a courtyard, each officer occupying one of them during the thirty-two months of his term of office.
The Provveditors were nobles, of course, but they must necessarily have been men who thoroughly understood nautical matters, for it was their duty to oversee all work done in the place, to the minutest details, and they had absolute control of all the vast stores accumulated for building and fitting the fleet of the Republic. Every manufactured article was stamped with the arms of the Republic as soon as it was made or purchased, and not a nail, not a fathom of rope, not a yard of canvas could be brought out of the storehouses without the consent of one of the Provveditors. If anything was found outside the walls of the Arsenal with the public mark on it, the object was considered by law to be stolen, an inquiry was made, and if the culprit who had committed the misdemeanour could be caught, he was condemned to the galleys.
In order to enforce the rigid regulations the government not only required all three Provveditors to inhabit constantly the palaces assigned to them, but insisted that one of them should remain day and night within the