Nevertheless this free movement in the open air gave the Venetian
aristocracy, as a whole, a healthy bias.
And when envy and ambition called for satisfaction, an official victim
was forthcoming and legal means and authorities were ready. The moral
torture which for years the Doge Francesco Foscari (d. 1457) suffered
before the eyes of all Venice is a frightful example of a vengeance
possible only in an aristocracy. The Council of Ten, which had a hand
in everything, which disposed without appeal of life and death, of S
financial affairs and military appointments, which included the
Inquisitors among its number, and which overthrew Foscari, as it had
overthrown so many powerful men before this Council was yearly chosen
afresh from the whole governing body, the Gran Consiglio, and was
consequently the most direct expression of its will. It is not probable
that serious intrigues occurred at these elections, as the short
duration of the office and the accountability which followed rendered
it an object of no great desire. But violent and mysterious as the
proceedings of this and other authorities might be, the genuine
Venetian courted rather than fled their sentence, not only because the
Republic had long arms, and if it could not catch him might punish his
family, but because in most cases it acted from rational motives and
not from a thirst for blood.
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