Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1885 — The Key of Death. [ARTICLE]

The Key of Death.

In the collection of curiosities preserved in the arsenal of Venice there is a key of -which the following singular tradition is related: About the year 1600 one of those dangerous men in whom extraordinary talent is only the fearful source of crime and wickedness beyond that of ordinary men came to establish himself as a merchant or trader in Venice. The stranger, whose name was Tebaldo, became enamored of the daughter of an anc ent house, already affianced to another. He demanded her hand in marriage, and was, of course, rejected. Enraged at this, he studied how to be revenged. Profoundly skilled in the mechanical arts, he allowed himself no rest until he had invented the most formidable weapon which could be imagined. This 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 discovered a spring, which, on pressure launched from the other end a needle or lancet of such subtle fineness that it entered into tire flesh and buried itself there 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. The assassin sent 4116 slender steel unperceived into the breast of the bridegroom. The wounded man had no suspicion of injury, but, seized with a sudden and 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 divine the cause of this 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 these deaths—which appeared almost miraculous—occasioned excited the utmost vigilance of the magistrates; and when, on close examination of the bodies, the small instrument was found in the gangrened flesh, terror was universal; every one feared for his own life. The maiden thus cruelly orphaned had passed the first few months of her mourning in a convent, when Tebaldo, hoping to bend her to his will, entreated to speak with her at the grate. The face of the foreigner had been ever displeasing to her, but since the death of all those most dear to her it had become odious (as though she had a presumption of his guilt), and her reply was most decisively in the negative. Tebaldo, beyond himself with rage, attempted to wound her through the prate, and succeeded ; the obscurity of the place prevented his movement being observed. On her return to her 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, butting 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 these insidious and irresistible blows. The visit of Tebal-

do to the convent caused suspicion to fall heavily upon him. His house was carefully searched, the infamous invention discovered, and he perished on the gibbet.— Public Opinion.