"Forward the grenadiers of Gradiska!—Revenge!" exclaimed the grand bailiff, spurring his black horse up the outer breach. "On! on!—Close up, and fall on! No quarter! Follow me with bayonet and sabre!"
Regardless of the fire to which they were exposed, and which was strewing the outer court with ghastly piles of killed and wounded, the vassals of the duchy pressed on. The brave old Baron de Fina blew open the gate of the keep with a petard, which he hooked to it and fired with his own hand. With a triumphant "viva!" the soldiers rushed through the opening, where Lanthiri was encountered hand to hand by Count Giulio; who, forgetting his crimes, gave way to that inborn thirst for blood and conflict which for ages had distinguished his family. The combat was brief. He was borne backwards before the charged bayonets of the Austrians; while his guilty companion, Stefano, was beaten to the earth, and lost his right hand by a stroke from the Baron de Fina's long Italian sword, which was wielded with both hands, and did terrible execution among the Sclavonian vassals of Fana. These infatuated men were appalled by the fall of Strazoldi; whose activity and presence of mind had conspired, more perhaps than the Count's authority, to animate them during their desperate and rebellious resistance. They were compelled to yield before the headlong rush of their infuriated assailants; and in ten minutes the banner of Count Giulio was pulled down, torn to shreds, and given to the winds: he himself was heavily ironed, and despatched, with his mutilated associate in crime, under an Austrian escort, to the strong citadel of Gradiska; while his castle, lands, and followers, were given up to pillage and devastation by Lanthiri.
During the fury of the siege, the miserable Lucretia, overcome with terror and remorse, and the fatigue of her rapid flight, was prematurely delivered of a son. The fierce Lanthiri, regardless of the tears, sighs, and agony of the desolate mother, ordered the child to be cast into the Isonza; but the more humane de Fina, a veteran of the Count di Merci's wars, directed that the infant should be placed in the monastery of San Baldassare in Friuli, where there was a lantern for the reception of foundlings.
On finding himself a fettered captive in the gloomy dungeons of Gradiska, Strazoldi became furious with rage and almost insane, through the conflicting emotions of love for his sister, sorrow for her dishonour, and shame for the dark blot which crime had cast for ever on their family name. Cursing Lucretia and her amours, his mother and himself, he tore the bandages from his wounds, and bled to death. Count Giulio, who was confined in the same vault, beheld with stern composure the life-blood of his companion ebbing away, without offering aid. Thus, in a fearful paroxysm of mental and bodily agony, the soul of the fierce Stefano passed into eternity.
Lucretia and her equally wicked mother were placed in a Calabrian convent. Della Torre was ordered by the senate to be brought to Venice, where his name was erased from the pages of the "Golden Book," which contains the arms and names of all the nobles of the state. His participation in the assassination of John Cornaro's niece, and his rebellion against the bailiff of Frinli were the climax to all his other excesses; which his enemies now exaggerated until they were regarded as of tenfold enormity. The people once more rising in a mob, demolished such ruins of his palace as the fire had left; and tearing the very foundations from the earth, set up instead a column of infamy, to mark the spot to all succeeding ages.
In custody of the common headsman—a black-browed ruffian, with naked arms, blood-red garb, and glittering axe—Della Torre entered Venice; only three days after the venerable Cornaro, weighed down with the cares of state, with age, infirmity, and sorrow, departed in peace at the palace of Saint Mark. His body was embalmed, and laid for the allotted time on a bed of state covered with cloth of gold; his sword girt on the wrong side, and his spurs having the rowels pointed towards the toes: such being the usual manner of arraying the Doges, when after death their bodies are laid out to be viewed by the knights and nobles of the Republic.
Forgetful of the illustrious dead, all Venice rang with the shouts of
"Hail to the new Doge Alviso Mocenigo!" Proveditor General at sea, and commander in Dalmatia, whom the Great Chancellor was conveying to his coronation. The mass del Spirito Santo was sung in the cathedral of the patron saint, Marco. Its vast dome, upheld by nearly three hundred columns of marble and porphyry, towering like an eastern pagoda, and brilliant with alabaster and emeralds, the spoil of rifled Constantinople, reverberated to the holy anthem within, and the joyous bursts of loyalty without. Amidst the clangour of bells and the shouts of the people, the new Doge embarked in a magnificent gondola, covered with a canopy of velvet and gold and decorated with the banners of the knights of the Golden Stole and St. Mark the Glorious. Onward it moved, amid beating of drums, braying of trumpets, the booming of artillery and the acclamations of the people, towards the Palazzo di San Marco, followed by two hundred gondolas bearing the standards of noble families; and surrounded by the gleaming bayonets and halberds of the Dalmatians, the Sclavonians, and other battalions of the Venetian capelletti.
The two great pillars, surmounted by gigantic lions, which formerly stood on the Piræus of Athens, and now erected in the arsenal of Venice, were enveloped in garlands of flowers and floating streamers; two hundred cannon thundered forth a salute from the banks of the grand canal, while the ships and galleys replied by broadsides in honour of Alviso. The nobles were escorting the new Doge to that lordly dome from which but an hour before the superb catafalco bearing the remains of his aged predecessor had departed. Scattering gold among the people, the Doge Alviso ascended the Giant's Staircase; on the summit of which he was invested with the ducal robe and bonnet studded with precious stones. After which, the most noble Angelo Maria Malipierro, senior of the forty-one electors, made an oration to Alviso and his people.
Amid this scene of joy and splendour—to which the bright meridian sun of a glorious summer day lent additional charms, spire and tower gleaming in its golden light, and the long vistas of the sinuous canals (where not shadowed by the gigantic palaces) shining like mirrors of polished gold—Giulio della Torre, who never again could partake of these festivities, stood an outcast felon, fettered and in rags, by the column of infamy that marked the site of his detested palace. Never did he feel the bitter agony of merited humiliation so much as at that moment, when the Doge's splendid train, glittering with all the pomp of wealth and nobility, swept through the marble arch of the Rialto.