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The former I knew slightly, years after, when she came to London and was often in friendly communication with my father, then manager of Covent Garden, upon the subject of the introduction on the stage of her tragedy of the "Foscari."
I had, as a matter of course, to engross all conversation, and to give the fullest particulars of all that had taken place from the moment I received the order to place myself under arrest up to the time of my release from the 'bastarda'. M. Foscari was seated next to me, and the last part of my narrative was not, I suppose, particularly agreeable to him.
"I should have explained to you," he said, "that as it would be impossible for us to meet here without the knowledge of my servants, we come together on pretence of playing games of chance. My father lives in our palace near Saint Mark's, and I live here alone." At this Foscari, the tall man with the black beard, looked at Contarini and laughed a little.
Thus in the whole mechanism of the state of Venice we trace the action of a permanent aristocracy tolerating, with a view to its own supremacy, an amount of magisterial control which in certain cases, like that of the two Foscari, amounted to the sternest tyranny. By submitting to the Council of Ten the nobility of Venice secured its hold upon the people and preserved unity in its policy.
A plague which swept away fifty thousand lives was raging at the time, and there is notable evidence of the reverence in which the great painter was held, in the fact that to him alone the state permitted a public funeral in all that season of terror and death. In this church, also, is a monument to the doge Foscari, whose name a once resident of Venice, Lord Byron, has made permanently famous.
"The sense he had by nature," says his historian Chastellain, "had been increased to twice as much again, in his straitened fortunes, by long constraint and perilous dangers, which sharpened his wits perforce." "He is the king of kings," was said of him by the Doge of Venice, Francis Foscari, a good judge of policy; "there is no doing without him."
"Such, my Angelo! was the ingenuous and flattering avowal of the transcendent Laura Foscari, the pride of Venice, and paragon of her sex. No words can portray the boundless gratitude and affection with which she inspired me; nor will I attempt to describe the enchanting grace and varied intelligence of her conversation during the brief and delightful hour I remained with her.
I have no intention of following out, in their intricate details, the operations which were begun under Foscari and continued under succeeding Doges till the palace assumed its present form, for I am not in this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the architecture of the fifteenth century; but the main facts are the following.
However sad the fact, it is undeniable that the stories of the sausage- maker whose broth was flavored with murder, and the baker-boy who suffered guiltlessly, and that savage jest at the expense of the murderess, interest these people more than the high-well-born sorrows of the Foscari, the tragic fate of Carmagnola, or the story of Falier, which last they know partly, however, because of the scandal about Falier's wife.
It was in the year 1422 that the decree passed to rebuild the palace; Mocenigo died in the following year, and Francesco Foscari was elected in his room.
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