The Grand Council was convoked on the 1st of May, when the doge, pale in countenance, and disconcerted in demeanour, proposed, as the only means of safety, the admission of some democratic modifications into their forms, under the direction of General Buonaparte; or, in other words, to lay their institutions at the feet of the conqueror, to be remodelled at his pleasure. Of six hundred and nineteen patricians, only twenty-one dissented from a vote which inferred the absolute surrender of their constitution. The conditions to be agreed on were, indeed, declared subject to the revision of the Council; but this, in the circumstances, could only be considered as a clause intended to save appearances. The surrender must have been regarded as unconditional and total.[284] Amidst the dejection and confusion which possessed the Government, some able intriguer (the secretary, it was said, of the French ambassador at Venice, whose principal had been recalled) contrived to induce the Venetian Government to commit an act of absolute suicide, so as to spare Buonaparte the trouble and small degree of scandal which might attach to totally destroying the existence of the republic. On the 9th of May, as the committee of the Great Council were in close deliberation with the doge, two strangers intruded upon those councils, which heretofore--such was the jealous severity of the oligarchy--were like those of supernatural beings; those who looked on them died. But now, affliction, confusion, and fear, had withdrawn the guards from these secret and mysterious chambers and laid open to the intrusion of strangers those stern haunts of a suspicious oligarchy, where, in other days, an official or lictor of the Government might have been punished with death even for too loud a foot-fall, far more for the fatal crime of having heard more than was designed to come to his knowledge. All this was now ended; and without check or rebuke the two strangers were permitted to communicate with the Senate by writing. Their advice, which had the terms of a command, was, to anticipate the intended reforms of the French--to dissolve the present Government--throw open their prisons--disband their Sclavonian soldiers--plant the tree of liberty on the place of Saint Mark, and to take other popular measures of the same nature, the least of which, proposed but a few months before, would have been a signal of death to the individual who had dared to hint at it.[285] An English satirist has told us a story of a man persuaded by an eloquent friend, to hang himself, in order to preserve his life. The story of the fall of Venice vindicates the boldness of the satire. It does not appear that Buonaparte could have gone farther; nay, it seems unlikely he would have gone so far, as was now recommended.