This unfortunate youth bore his exile with more impatience than he had done the rack; he often wrote to his relations and friends, praying them to intercede in his behalf, that the term of his banishment might be abridged, and that he might be permitted to return to his family before he died.—All his applications were fruitless; those to whom he addressed himself had never interfered in his favour, for fear of giving offence to the obdurate Council, or had interfered in vain. After languishing five years in exile, having lost all hope of return, through the interposition of his own family, or countrymen, in a fit of despair he addressed the Duke of Milan, putting him in mind of services which the Doge, his father, had rendered him, and begging that he would use his powerful influence with the State of Venice, that his sentence might be recalled. He entrusted his letter to a merchant, going from Canéa to Venice, who promised to take the first opportunity of sending it from thence to the Duke; instead of which, this wretch, as soon as he arrived at Venice, delivered it to the chiefs of the Council of Ten. This conduct of young Foscari appeared criminal in the eyes of those judges; for, by the laws of the republic, all its subjects are expressly forbid claiming the protection of foreign Princes, in any thing which relates to the government of Venice. Foscari was therefore ordered to be brought from Candia, and shut up in the State prison. There the chiefs of the Council of Ten ordered him once more to be put to the torture, to draw from him the motives which determined him to apply to the Duke of Milan. Such an exertion of law is, indeed, the most flagrant injustice. The miserable youth declared to the Council, that he had wrote the letter, in the full persuasion that the merchant, whose character he knew, would betray him, and deliver it to them; the consequence of which, he foresaw, would be, his being ordered back a prisoner to Venice, the only means he had in his power of seeing his parents and friends; a pleasure for which he had languished, with unsurmountable desire, for some time, and which he was willing to purchase at the expence of any danger or pain. The Judges, little affected with this generous instance of filial piety, ordained, that the unhappy young man should be carried back to Candia, and there be imprisoned for a year, and remain banished to that island for life; with this condition, that if he should make any more applications to foreign Powers, his imprisonment should be perpetual. At the same time they gave permission, that the Doge and his lady, might visit their unfortunate son.