But Zorzi was not to be confronted with any of these witnesses: neither
with the soldiers who would tell the Council strange stories of devils
with blue noses and fiery tails, nor with Giovanni, whose letter called
him a liar, a thief and an assassin, nor with Beroviero nor Pasquale.
The Council never allowed the accused man and the witnesses for or
against him to be before them at the same time, nor to hold any
communication while the trial lasted. That was a rule of their
procedure, but they were not by any means the mysterious body of malign
monsters which they have too often been represented to be, in an age
when no criminal trials could take place without torture.
Zorzi waited on his bench, listening to the tread of the guards. As many
trials occupied more than one day, his case would come up last of all,
and the witnesses would all be examined before he himself was called to
make his defence. He was nervous and anxious. Even while he was sitting
there, Giovanni might be finding out some new accusation against him or
the officer of archers might be accusing him of witchcraft and of having
a compact with the devil himself. He was innocent, but he had broken the
law, and no doubt many an innocent man had sat on that same bench before
him, who had never again returned to his home.
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