And hence he establishes the
impossibility that d'Ossuna should at the same moment be plotting the
overthrow of Venice; that power whose assistance, or at least whose
connivance was one of the weapons most necessary for his success. On
these grounds, Comte Daru contends that the Duke maintained a secret
understanding both with the Signory and the court of France; that,
refining on political duplicity, he deceived Pierre by really
instructing him to gain over the Dutch troops quartered in the _Lagune_;
not, however, as his emissary supposed, to be employed ultimately for
the seizure of Venice, but in truth for that of Naples; that Pierre's
courage was not proof against the dangers with which his apparently most
hazardous commission beset him; and that accordingly he betrayed his
employer, and revealed to the Inquisitors a plot which _they_ well knew
to be feigned: and, lastly, that when the ambitious plans of d'Ossuna,
partially discovered before their time by the Spanish government, might
have compromised Venice also if they had been fully elucidated; in order
to blot out each syllable of evidence which could bear, even indirectly,
upon the transaction, so far as she was concerned, it was thought
expedient to remove every individual who had been even unwittingly
connected with it.
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