Nobody has presumed to describe the anguish of the wretched mother; those who are endowed with the most exquisite sensibility, and who have experienced distresses in some degree similar, will have the justest idea of what it was.
The accumulated misery of those unhappy parents touched the hearts of some of the most powerful senators, who applied with so much energy for a complete pardon for young Foscari, that they were on the point of obtaining it; when a vessel arrived from Candia, with tidings, that the miserable youth had expired in prison a short time after his return.
Some years after this, Nicholas Erizzo, a noble Venetian, being on his death-bed, confessed that, bearing a violent resentment against the Senator Donato, he had committed the assassination for which the unhappy family of Foscari had suffered so much.
At this time the sorrows of the Doge were at an end; he had existed only a few months after the death of his son. His life had been prolonged, till he beheld his son persecuted to death for an infamous crime; but not till he should see this foul stain washed from his family, and the innocence of his beloved son made manifest to the world.
The ways of heaven never appeared more dark and intricate, than in the incidents and catastrophe of this mournful story. To reconcile the permission of such events, to our ideas of infinite power and goodness, however difficult, is a natural attempt in the human mind, and has exercised the ingenuity of philosophers in all ages; while, in the eyes of Christians, those seeming perplexities afford an additional proof, that there will be a future state, in which the ways of God to man will be fully justified.
LETTER XV.
Venice.