1eans chilled the passionate love with which he continued to regard his ungrateful country. He was now excluded from all communication with his family, torn from the wife of his affections, debarred from the society of his children, hopeless of again embracing those parents who had already far outstripped the natural term of human existence; and to his imagination, for ever centering itself upon the single desire of return, life presented no other object deserving pursuit; till, for the attainment of this wish, life itself at length appeared to be scarcely more than an adequate sacrifice. Preyed upon by this fever of the heart, after six years' unavailing suit for a remission of punishment, in the summer of 1456, he addressed a letter to the Duke of Milan, imploring his good offices with the senate. That letter, purposely left open in a place obvious to the spies by whom, even in his exile, he was surrounded, and afterwards intrusted to an equally treacherous hand for delivery to Sforza, was conveyed, as the writer intended, to the Council of Ten; and the result, which equally ful. filled his expectation, was a hasty summons to Venice to answer for the heavy crime of soliciting foreign intercession with his native government. "For a third time, Francesco Foscari listened to the accusation of his son; for the first time he heard him only avow the charge of his accusers, and calmly state that his offence, such as it was, had been committed designedly and aforethought, with the sole object of detection, in order that he might be brought back, even as a malefactor, to Venice. This prompt and voluntary declaration, however, was not sufficient to decide the nice hesitation of his judges. Guilt, they said, might be too easily admitted as well as too pertinaciously denied; and the same process therefore by which, at other times, confession was wrested from the hardened criminal might now compel a too facile self-accuser to retract his acknowledgment. The father again looked on while his son was raised on the accursed cord no less than thirty times, in order that, under his agony, he might be induced to utter a lying declaration of innocence. But this cruelty was exercised in vain; and, when nature gave way, the sufferer was carried to the apartments of the Doge, torn, bleeding, senselesss, and dislocated, but firm in his original purpose. Nor had his persecutors relaxed in theirs; they renewed his sentence of exile, and added that its first year should be passed in prison. Before he embarked, one interview was permitted with his family. The Doge, as Sanuto, perhaps unconscious of the pathos of his simplicity, has narrated, was an aged and decrepit man, who walked with the support of a crutch, and when he came into the chamber, he spake with great firmness, so that it might seem it was not his son whom he was addressing, but it was his son-his only son. 'Go, Giacopo,' was his reply, when prayed for the last time to solicit mercy; 'Go, Giacopo, submit to the will of your country, and seek nothing farther.' This effort of self-restraint was beyond the powers, not of the old man's enduring spirit, but of his exhausted frame; and when he retired, he swooned in the arms of his attendants. Giacopo reached his Candian prison, and was shortly afterwards released by death. "Francesco Foscari, far less happy in his survival, continued to live on, but it was in sorrow and feebleness which prevented attention to the duties of his high office: he remained secluded in his chamber, never went abroad, and absented himself even from the sittings of the councils. No practical inconvenience could result from this want of activity in the chief magistrate; for the constitution sufficiently provided against any accidental suspension of his personal functions, and his place in council, and on state occasions, was supplied by an authorised deputy. Some indulgence, moreover, might be thought due to the extreme age and domestic griefs of Foscari; since they appeared to promise that any favour which might be granted would be claimed but for a short period. But yet farther trials were in store. Giacopo Loredano, who in 1467 was appointed one of the Chiefs of the Ten, belonged to a family between which and that of Foscari an hereditary feud had long existed. His uncle Pietro, after gaining high distinction in active service, as Admiral of Venice, on his return to the capital, headed the political faction which opposed the warlike projects of the Doge; divided applause with him by his eloquence in the councils ; and so far extended his influence as frequently to obtain majorities in their divisions. In an evil moment of impatience, Foscari once publicly avowed in the senate, that so long as Pietro Loredano lived he should never feel himself really to be Doge. Not long afterwards, the Admiral, engaged as Provveditore with one of the armies opposed to Filippo-Maria, died suddenly at a military banquet given during a short suspension of arms; and the evil-omened words of Foscari were connected with his decease. It was remarked, also, that his brother Marco Loredano, one of the Avvogadori, died, in a somewhat similar manner, while engaged in instituting a legal process against a son-in-law of the Doge, for peculation upon the state. The foul rumours partially excited by these untoward coincidences, for they appear in truth to have been no more, met with little acceptation, and were rejected or forgotten except by a single bosom. Giacopo, the son of one, the nephew of the other deceased Loredano, gave full credit to the accusation, inscribed on his father's tomb at Sta. Elena, that he died by poison, bound himself by a solemn vow to the most deadly and unrelenting pursuit of revenge, and fulfilled that vow to the uttermost. "During the lifetime of Pietro Loredano, Foscari, willing to terminate the feud by a domestic alliance, had tendered the hand of his daughter to one of his rival's sons. The youth saw his proffered bride, openly expressed dislike of her person, and rejected her with marked discourtesy; so that, in the quarrel thus heightened, Foscari might now conceive himself to be the most injured party. Not such was the impression of Giacopo Loredano year after year he grimly awaited the season most fitted for his unbending purpose; and it arrived at length when he found himself in authority among the Ten. Relying upon the ascendency belonging to that high station, he hazarded a proposal for the deposition of the aged Doge, which was at first, however, received with coldness; for those who had twice before refused a voluntary abdication, shrank from the strange contradiction of now demanding one on compulsion. A junta was required to assist in their deliberations, and among the assessors elected by the Great Council, in complete ignorance of the purpose for which they were needed, was Marco Foscari, a Procuratore of St. Mark, and brother of the Doge himself. The Ten perceived that to reject his assistance might ex cite suspicion, while to procure his apparent approbation would give a show of impartiality to their process: his nomination, therefore, was accepted, but he was removed to a separate apartment, excluded from the debate, sworn to keep that exclusion secret, and yet compelled to assent to the final decree in the discussion of which he had not been allowed to participate. The council sat during eight days and nearly as many nights; and, at the close of their protracted meetings, a committee was deputed to request the abdication of the Doge. The old man received them with surprise, but with composure, and replied that he had sworn not to abdicate, and therefore must maintain his faith. It was not possible that he could resign; but if it appeared fit to their wisdom that he should cease to be Doge, they had it in their power to make a proposal to that effect to the Great Council. It was far, however, from the intention of the Ten to subject themselves to the chances of debate in that larger body; and, assuming to their own magistracy a prerogative not attributed to it by the constitution, they discharged Foscari from his oath, declared his office vacant, assigned to him a pension of two thousand ducats, and enjoined him to quit the palace within three days, on pain of confiscation of all his property. Loredano, to whom the right belonged, according to the weekly routine of office, enjoyed the barbarous satisfaction of presenting this decree with his own hand. Who are you, Signor?' enquired the Doge of another Chief of the Ten who accompanied him, and whose person he did not immediately recognise. I am a son of Marco Memmo.' 'Ah, your father,' replied Foscari, is my friend.' Then declaring that he yielded willing obedience to the most excellent Council of Ten, and laying aside the ducal bonnet and robes, he surrendered his ring of office, which was broken in his presence. On the morrow, when he prepared to leave the palace, it was suggested to him that he should retire by a private staircase, and thus avoid the concourse assembled in the court-yard below. With calm dignity he refused the proposition: he would descend, he said, by no other than the self-same steps by which he had mounted thirty years before. Accordingly, supported by his brother, he slowly traversed the Giant's Stairs, and, at their foot, leaning on his staff and turning round to the palace, he accompanied his last look to it with these parting words, 'My services established me within your walls; it is the malice of my enemies which tears me from them!' "It was to the Oligarchy alone that Foscari was obnoxious; by the populace he had always been beloved, and strange indeed would it have been had he now failed to excite their sympathy. But even the regrets of the people of Venice were fettered by their tyrants; and whatever pity they might secretly continue to cherish for their wronged and humiliated prince, all expression of it was silenced by a peremptory decree of the Council, forbidding any mention of his name, and annexing death as a penalty to disobedience. On the fifth day after Foscari's deposition, Pascale Malipieri was elected Doge. The dethroned prince heard the announcement of his successor by the bell of the campanile, suppressed his agitation, but ruptured a blood-vessel in the exertion, and died in a few hours."-- Vol. ii. p. 93. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. MEN. FRANCIS FOSCARI, Doge of Venice. MARCO MEMMO, a Chief of the Forty. Other Senators, The Council of Ten, Guards, WOMAN. MARINA, Wife of young FOSCARI. Scene - the Ducal Palace, Venice. |