If it pleased women to wear long trains the Council forbade them; if they took refuge in long sleeves, thrown back over their shoulders, a law was passed which set a measure and a pattern for all sleeves that might ever be worn.

If a few rich men indulged their fancy in the decoration of their gondolas, now that riding was out of fashion, the Council immediately determined that gondolas should be black and that they should only be gilt and adorned inside.

As for freedom, if any one talked of it he was immediately tortured until he retracted all his errors, and was then promptly beheaded for fear that he should fall again into the same mistake.

Nella said so, and told hideous tales of the things that had been done to innocent men in the little room behind the Council chamber in the Palace.

Besides, if one talked of justice, there was Zorzi's case to prove that there was no justice at all in Venetian law.