On the second of January Corner was told that he was to be tortured again, and he addressed his tormentors as follows:--
Since this is your will, which will soon be done, I ask one thing of you as a grace, that since I am to lose this body so miserably, I may not lose my soul, and that I may confess and receive communion, in order that our Lord God may have mercy on this poor soul. Lunardo answered: I wish it may go to the house of the Devil. Hearing this cruel speech I answered that although fortune had given him power over the body, God had not given him power over the soul, and that I hoped, by His grace, that if I had good patience this should be my purgatory, for my innocence’ sake; and that He would receive my soul into His glory, and (I said): The more pain you inflict on this wretched body so much the more merit will He give me, and to Him I commend myself.
The unhappy man was kept in prison six years, and was supposed in Venice to be dead, but he succeeded in sending a message to his son. The Republic then sternly demanded of Visconti his release, and he returned to his home at last, deformed by torture, pale and emaciated, with a beard that descended to his belt. He lived just two months after that, prematurely broken by his horrible sufferings, and was followed to his grave by a vast concourse of the people. Romanin says that he was a nephew of the Doge Marco Corner, whose brave defence of his poverty and of his burgher wife, when he was a candidate, will be remembered. It is more likely that the Doge was the Provveditor’s great-uncle, as he died a very old man, more than seventy years before the death of the unfortunate Giorgio. It is possible, however, that Romanin may have meant that the latter was the Doge’s grandson, for in Italian there is but one word to signify ‘grandson’ or ‘nephew,’ though when the former meaning is intended it is usual to make it clear.
[Sidenote: _Portraits of Doge Francesco Foscari: one, attributed to G. Bellini, Museo Civico, Room XVI.; another, by Bartolommeo Bon, Camera degli Stucchi, ducal palace._]
Foscari’s name is so closely associated in most persons’ memories with the tragedy of his worthless son, that we are apt to forget that his reign lasted a third of a century and covered one of the most important periods in Venetian history. It embraces most of the wars of the league, the rise and fall of Carmagnola, the end of the house of Visconti, and the foundation and elevation of the Sforza family; and, most important of all, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks.