“Here were two men taken up last week, one for murdering his fellow-servant in cold blood, while the undefended creature had the lemonade tray in his hand going in to serve company; the other for breaking the new lamps lately set up with intention to light this town in the manner of the streets at Paris.  ‘I hope,’ said I, ’that they will hang the murderer.’  ‘I rather hope,’ replied a very sensible lady who sate near me, ’that they will hang the person who broke the lamps:  for,’ added she, ’the first committed his crime only out of revenge, poor fellow!! because the other had got his mistress from him by treachery; but this creature has had the impudence to break our fine new lamps, all for the sake of spiting the Arch-duke!!’ The Arch-duke meantime hangs nobody at all; but sets his prisoners to work upon the roads, public buildings, &c., where they labour in their chains; and where, strange to tell! they often insult passengers who refuse them alms when asked as they go by; and, stranger still, they are not punished for it when they do.” ...

The lover sacrificing his reputation, his liberty, or his life, to save the fair fame of his mistress, is not an unusual event in fiction, whatever it may be in real life.  Balzac, Charles de Bernard, and M. de Jarnac have each made a self-sacrifice of this kind the basis of a romance.  But neither of them has hit upon a better plot than might be formed out of the following Venetian story: 

“Some years ago then, perhaps a hundred, one of the many spies who ply this town by night, ran to the state inquisitor, with information that such a nobleman (naming him) had connections with the French ambassador, and went privately to his house every night at a certain hour.  The messergrando, as they call him, could not believe, nor would proceed, without better and stronger proof, against a man for whom he had an intimate personal friendship, and on whose virtue he counted with very particular reliance.  Another spy was therefore set, and brought back the same intelligence, adding the description of his disguise:  on which the worthy magistrate put on his mask and bauta, and went out himself; when his eyes confirming the report of his informants, and the reflection on his duty stifling all remorse, he sent publicly for Foscarini in the morning, whom the populace attended all weeping to his door.

“Nothing but resolute denial of the crime alleged could however be forced from the firm-minded citizen, who, sensible of the discovery, prepared for that punishment he knew to be inevitable, and submitted to the fate his friend was obliged to inflict:  no less than a dungeon for life, that dungeon so horrible that I have heard Mr. Howard was not permitted to see it.

“The people lamented, but their lamentations were vain.  The magistrate who condemned him never recovered the shock:  but Foscarini was heard of no more, till an old lady died forty years after in Paris, whose last confession declared she was visited with amorous intentions by a nobleman of Venice whose name she never knew, while she resided there as companion to the ambassadress.  So was Foscarini lost! so died he a martyr to love, and tenderness for female reputation!”