The lesser conspirators, all men of the humbler sort--Calendario, the architect, who was then at work upon the palace, a number of seamen, and other little-known persons--were hanged; not like the greater criminals, beheaded between the columns, but strung up--a horrible fringe--along the side of the palazzo. The fate of Falieri himself is too generally known to demand description. Calmed by the tragic touch of fate, the Doge bore all the humiliations of his doom with dignity, and was beheaded at the head of the stairs where he had sworn the promissione on first assuming the office of doge. What a contrast was this from that triumphant day when probably he felt that his reward had come to him after the long and faithful service of years. Death stills disappointment as well as rage, and Falieri is said to have acknowledged the justice of his sentence. He had never made any attempt to justify or defend himself, but frankly and at once avowed his guilt and made no attempt to escape from its penalties. His body was conveyed privately to the Church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, the great "Zanipolo"--with which all visitors to Venice are familiar--and was buried in secrecy and silence in the _atrio_ of a little chapel behind the great church--where no doubt for centuries the pavement was worn by many feet with little thought of those who lay below. Even from that refuge his bones have been driven forth, but his name remains in the corner of the Hall of the Great Council, where--with a certain dramatic affectation--the painter-historians have painted a black veil across the vacant place. "This is the place of Marino Falieri, beheaded for his crimes," is all the record left of the Doge disgraced. Was it a crime? The question is one which it is difficult to discuss with any certainty. That Falieri desired to establish--as so many had done in other cities--an independent despotism in Venice, seems entirely unproved. It was the prevailing fear; the one suggestion which alarmed everybody and made sentiment unanimous. But one of the special points which are recorded by the chroniclers as working in him to madness, was that he was _senza parentado_--without any backing of relationship or allies--_i.e._, sonless, with no one to come after him. How little likely then was an old man to embark on such a desperate venture for self-aggrandizement merely. He had, indeed, a nephew who was involved in his fate, but apparently not so deeply as to expose him to the last penalty of the law.