The Mysteries of Udolpho

My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.

I play the torturer, by small and small,

To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken.

RICHARD II

We now return, for a moment, to Venice, where Count Morano was suffering

under an accumulation of misfortunes. Soon after his arrival in that

city, he had been arrested by order of the Senate, and, without knowing

of what he was suspected, was conveyed to a place of confinement,

whither the most strenuous enquiries of his friends had been unable to

trace him. Who the enemy was, that had occasioned him this calamity, he

had not been able to guess, unless, indeed, it was Montoni, on whom his

suspicions rested, and not only with much apparent probability, but with

justice.

In the affair of the poisoned cup, Montoni had suspected Morano; but,

being unable to obtain the degree of proof, which was necessary to

convict him of a guilty intention, he had recourse to means of other

revenge, than he could hope to obtain by prosecution. He employed

a person, in whom he believed he might confide, to drop a letter of

accusation into the DENUNZIE SECRETE, or lions' mouths, which are

fixed in a gallery of the Doge's palace, as receptacles for anonymous

information, concerning persons, who may be disaffected towards the

state.

As, on these occasions, the accuser is not confronted with the

accused, a man may falsely impeach his enemy, and accomplish an unjust

revenge, without fear of punishment, or detection. That Montoni should

have recourse to these diabolical means of ruining a person, whom he

suspected of having attempted his life, is not in the least surprising.

In the letter, which he had employed as the instrument of his revenge,

he accused Morano of designs against the state, which he attempted to

prove, with all the plausible simplicity of which he was master; and

the Senate, with whom a suspicion was, at that time, almost equal to

a proof, arrested the Count, in consequence of this accusation; and,

without even hinting to him his crime, threw him into one of those

secret prisons, which were the terror of the Venetians, and in which

persons often languished, and sometimes died, without being discovered

by their friends.

Morano had incurred the personal resentment of many members of the

state; his habits of life had rendered him obnoxious to some; and his

ambition, and the bold rivalship, which he discovered, on several public

occasions,--to others; and it was not to be expected, that mercy would

soften the rigour of a law, which was to be dispensed from the hands of

his enemies.