The sentence goes on to direct that the Count’s widow should enjoy the interest of ten thousand ducats of the bonded debt, on condition that she should live in Treviso. Provision was also made for his unmarried daughters. As for the one who was affianced to
Sigismondo Malatesta, since there was no divorce law by which he could sever an alliance which was odious, he adopted the simple expedient of murdering her as soon as he had married her and secured her dowry.
Carmagnola’s body was dressed in crimson velvet, and on his severed head was placed the cap which still bears his name. The corpse was borne to the church of San Francesco della Vigna with twenty-four torches, but as it was about to be buried there, the capuchin monk who had received his last confession appeared in haste and said that the dead man had wished to be buried in the church of the Frari, and he was accordingly laid there, in the cloister. In Venice it was the custom that the clothes of executed persons should be given to the gaoler, not to the headsman; but in this case the Council of Ten decreed that the dress worn by Carmagnola should be handed over with his body to the monks of the church where he was buried, the gaoler receiving ten ducats as compensation.
His remains are now interred in Milan beside those of his wife Antonia in the greater church of Saint Francis. The historian Morosini, quoted by Romanin in a note, judged from his statue that he had the hard face, the cruel eye, and, generally, the unpleasant aspect which denote a man of dangerous character and stubborn purpose; and adds that he was a person of a keen wit, a tough constitution, and great courage, but capricious and of doubtful honesty.
Carmagnola’s wife was deeply implicated in his treachery, as is not surprising considering that she was known as the niece of Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, and was believed by many to be his daughter. She and her children were required to remain in Venice some time
before proceeding to Treviso, and were detained in the convent of the Vergini, the same religious house which had served as a prison for two ladies of the Quirini family more than a century earlier. It was there that the Countess received the news of her husband’s execution, which was announced to her by one of the heads of the Council of Ten and an Avogador; and these officials at the same time demanded of her a list of her jewellery, assuring her that the Signory would forgive her misdeeds if she would only show a proper spirit of contrition. I find no account of the poor woman’s behaviour on this occasion; but as the sentence was executed only a few hours after it was passed, the news of her husband’s death on the scaffold was in all likelihood conveyed to her without any previous notice of his condemnation, and it was accompanied by a cold request for an inventory of her jewels, and a lecture on patience and repentance. Even the imagination of a novelist fails to guess what she must have felt as she listened to the grim men who had just condemned her husband and seen him die, and now wished to be told how many earrings and gold chains and brooches she had in her possession.