At the apex of the constitutional pyramid we find the Doge. The Doge also had his distinctive functions in the State; his duties were ornamental rather than administrative. Though all the acts of the Government were executed in his name, laws passed, dispatches sent, treaties made, and war declared, yet it is not in these departments that the Doge stands pre-eminent; it is throughout the pomp and display of the Republic that he is supreme; and the archive wherein his glory shows most brightly is the _Ceremoniali_. The Doge was elected for life. When a Doge died, the eldest Ducal Councillor filled the office of Vice-Doge until the election of the new Prince. The remains of the deceased Doge were laid out in the Chamber of the Pioveghi, on the first floor of the Ducal Palace, dressed in robes of State, the mantle of cloth of gold and the ducal beretta. Twenty Venetian noblemen were appointed to attend in the chapelle ardente. On the third day the Doge was buried; and the Great Council on the same day elected the officers who were to revise the coronation oath, and to render its provisions more stringent if the conduct of the deceased had revealed any point where a future Doge could exercise even the smallest independence in constitutional matters. At the same time the Council elected another body of officers, who were required to examine the conduct of the late Doge, and, if he had violated his coronation oath, his heirs paid the penalty by a fine. Immediately after the appointment of these officers, the Maggior Consiglio proceeded to create the forty-one electors to the dukedom. The process of election was long and intricate, and occupied five days at the least; for there was a quintuple series of ballots and votings to be concluded before the forty-one were finally chosen. When the forty-one noblemen had been appointed they were taken to a chamber specially prepared for them, where, as in the case of a papal election, they were obliged to stay until they had determined upon the new Doge. They were bound by oath never to reveal what took place inside this election chamber. But this oath was not always observed in the spirit; and memoranda of the proceedings of the forty-one are still preserved in the private archives of the Marcello family. The first step was to elect three priors, or presidents, and two secretaries. The presidents took their seats at a table on which stood a ballot-box and an urn. The secretaries gave to every elector a slip of paper, upon which each one wrote the name of the man whom he proposed as Doge. The forty-one slips of paper were then placed in the urn, and one was drawn out at hazard. If the noble, whose name was written upon the slip, chanced to be an elector, he was required to withdraw. Then each of the electors was at liberty to attack the candidate, to point out defects and recal misdeeds. These hostile criticisms, which covered the whole of a candidate's private life, his