On Sunday the 23rd of October, in the presence of the Ten and the chief officers of State, he silently drew the ducal ring from his finger. A _Capo_ broke it in pieces and removed the ducal cap from his head. The discrowned Foscari was bid to retire to his home in S. Pantaleone. As the Councillors were leaving the room he noticed that one of the Quarantia lingered awhile and gazed pityingly upon him. He called him, took his hand and asked: "Whose son art thou?" "I am the son of Marin Memo," was the reply. "He is my dear comrade," said the Doge. "Prithee bid him come to see me, for it will be a precious solace to me: we will visit the monasteries together." Early on the morrow Francesco Foscari left his apartments leaning on a crutched stick accompanied by his brother Marco, his only suite a few sobbing kinsmen and servants. As they neared the principal staircase Marco said: "It is well, your Serenity, that we go to the landing-stage by the other stairway which is covered." "Nay," answered Foscari, "I will descend by the same stairs up which I mounted to the Dogeship." Stripped of his honours, forsaken by his Councillors, bent beneath the weight of his eighty-four years and the long tenure of a great office, the humiliated Foscari tottered down those steps in silence, which more than the third of a century before he had climbed, erect, exultant, full of hope, amid the acclamation of a whole city.
[Illustration: BUST OF FRANCESCO FOSCARI]
The Great Council met the same day: the electoral machinery was set in motion and on the morrow, the 30th October, Pasquale Malipiero was chosen and proclaimed Doge two hours before sunset. Two days after, on All Saints' Day, the new Doge, and his Council were at mass at St Mark's when a messenger came in hot haste with the news that Francesco Foscari was dead. The Councillors gazed mutely at each other. The Ten were convoked and, pricked perhaps by remorse at their severity, voted a magnificent and honourable funeral, the widow protesting against the mockery and declaring that she would sell her dowry to give her lord worthy burial. Wrapped in a mantle of cloth of gold; crowned with the ducal cap; sword by side and spurred with gold, all that remained of the great Doge Foscari lay in state in the hall of the Senate, guarded by four and twenty nobles in scarlet robes to indicate that if the Doge were dead the Signory yet lived. The bier was borne by a picked body of sailors. Pasquale Malipiero, clothed as a simple senator; the officers of State; the clergy; the guilds followed. With solemn pomp the pageant went its way lighted by innumerable tapers along the Merceria and across the Rialto bridge to the Church of the Frari. The sumptuous monument, erected in the choir to his memory, by Ant. Riccio, still testifies to his fame. Those who would gaze on the striking, sensuous features of unhappy Doge Foscari will find his bust in the corridor that leads to the private apartments of the ducal palace, a faithful portrait carved by Bart. Buon. It was rescued when the original group over the Porta della Carta was destroyed in 1797.