In the course to be pursued with the lesser malefactors, no difficulty was likely to arise: the rack and the gibbet were their legal portion. But for the doge, the law afforded no precedent; and, upon a crime which it had not entered into the mind of man to conceive (as with that nation which, having never contemplated parricide, had neglected to provide any punishment for it), no tribunal known to the constitution was competent to pass judgment. The Council of X. demanded the assistance of a _giunta_ of twenty nobles, who were to give advice, but not to ballot; and this body having been constituted, "they sent for my Lord Marino Faliero the Duke, and my Lord was then consorting in the palace with people of great estate, gentlemen, and other good men, none of whom knew yet how the fact stood." The ringleaders were immediately hanged between the Red Columns on the _Piazzetta_--some singly, some in couples; and the two chiefs of them, Bertuccio Israello and Calendaro, with a cruel precaution not uncommon in Venice, were previously gagged. Nor was the process of the highest delinquent long protracted. He appears neither to have denied nor to have extenuated his guilt; and, 'on Friday the 16th day of April, judgment was given in the Council of X. that my Lord Marino Faliero the Duke should have his head cut off, and that the execution should be done on the landing-place of the stone staircase, the Giant's Stairs, where the doges take their oath when they first enter the palace. On the following day, the doors of the palace being shut, the duke had his head cut off, about the hour of noon; and the cap of estate was taken from the duke's head before he came down the staircase. When the execution was over, it is said, that one of the chiefs of the Council of X. went to the columns of the palace against the Piazza, and, displaying the bloody sword, exclaimed, "Justice has fallen on the traitor!" and, the gates being then opened, the populace eagerly rushed in to see the doge who had been executed.' The body of Faliero was conveyed, by torchlight, in a gondola, and unattended by the customary ceremonies, to the church of San Giovanni and San Paolo; in the outer wall of which a stone coffin is still imbedded, with an illegible inscription, which once presented the words, _Hic jacet Marinus Feletro Dux._ His lands and goods were confiscated to the state, with the exception of 2,000 ducats, of which he was permitted to dispose; and, yet further to transmit to posterity the memory of his enormous crime, his portrait was not admitted to range with those of his brother doges in the Hall of the Great Council. In the frame which it ought to occupy is suspended a black veil, inscribed with the words, _Hic est locus Marini Feletro decapitati pro criminibus._