THE KEY OF DEATH.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4942, 22 February 1926, Page 4

THE KEY OF DEATH.

ANCIENT VENETIAN TRADITION.

Among the curiosities preserved In the arsenal of Venice is a key of which a singular tradition is related. About the year 1600 one of the dangerous men, in whom extraordinary talent is only the fearful source of crime and wickedness beyond that of ordinary men, established himself as a merchant, or trader, in Venice.

The stranger, whose name, was Tebajdo, became enamoured of the daughter of an ancient house already affianced to another. He demanded her hand in marriage, and was, of course, rejected. ■ Enraged, he studied he.w to be revenged.

Profoundly skilled in the mechanical!' arts, he allowed himself no rest until he ha ; d invented the- niosit formidable weapon which could be imagined. It was a key of large size, the handle of which was so constructed that it could be turned round with little difficulty. When turned it, revealed a spring which, on pressure, launched from the other end a needle or 'lancet of such subtle fineness that it entered into the flesh and buried itself therein without leaving external trace.

Tebaldo- waited in disguise at the door of the church in which the maiden whom he loved was about to receive the nuptial benediction; and he sent the slender steel unperceived into the breast of the bridegroom.

The- wounded man had no suspicion of injury, but, seized with a sudden sharp pain in the midst of the ceremony, he fainted, and was carried to his house amid the lamentations of the bridal party.

Vain was .all the skill of the physicians-, who. could not discover the cause of the strange illness, and in a few days he died, Tebaldo again demanded the hand of .the maiden from her parents, and received a second refusal. They, too, perished miserably in a few days. The alarm which the deaths' —which appeared almost miraculous—occasioned excited the utmost vigilance of the magistrates.

When, on close examination of the bodies, the small instrument wa£ found in the gangrened flesh, terror was universal.. —everyone feared for his own life. ’ '

The/ maiden, cruelly orphaned, had passed the first months- of her mourning in a when TebalUdo, hoping to; bend her to hfe will, entreated to speak to her at the grate. • The face of the foreigner had been ever displeasing to her, but since the death of all most dear to her it had become odious, and her reply was most decidedly. in the; negative. Tebaldo, beyond himself with rage, attempted to- wound her through the grate, and succeeded. The obscurity of ’the place prevented his movement being observed. On her return to he'r room the maiden felt a pain in her breast, and, uncovering it, she found it spotted with a single drop of blood.

The pain increased. The surgeons' who hastened to . her assistance- — taught by the- past—wasted no time in conjecture, but, cutting deep into the wounded part, extracted the needle before any mortal, mischief had commenced, and saved the life of the Lady. ' The State, inquisition used every means to discover. the hand which dealt with insidious and irresistible blows. The visit of Teba ; l,do to- the cohvent caused suspicion to fall, uopn him. His house was carefully searched, thei famous Inventioned dis,hovered, and he perished on the gibbet.