According to Sabellico, the discussions of the Senate over the best way to treat Carmagnola went on for months. There were those who had always distrusted him. Others refused to desert his cause unless proofs of his treachery could be given. The General was in Venice during these discussions, but had no suspicions of them. This proves the perfect faith of the councillors, for his friends would not tell him any sooner than his enemies; and though there were those of them who greatly needed the rewards that the General would so generously have given for the information, not one would speak. The great court of the palace has been the scene of comedy and tragedy, many times repeated; but one act in the Carmagnola drama which occurred here is by no means the least interesting of these events. One morning as the General went to pay his respects to Foscari, he met him passing from the Council Chamber to the Palace. The soldier cheerfully asked if he should bid his Serenity good morning or good evening, as he had not slept that night. To which the Doge smilingly replied that among the many matters spoken of in the long discussion nothing had been more frequently mentioned than {197} Carmagnola's name,--a ghastly joke when we know that the discussion involved the soldier's life. At last the whole matter was put in the hands of the Council of Ten, who at once invited the General to come to Venice to consult on matters of importance. Utterly unsuspicious, he set out at once; and all along his way, on the plains of Lombardy, as he rode, or as he sailed down the Brenta, he was honored and welcomed as if he were a royal personage. At Mestre he was met by eight gentlemen, who blandly escorted him to his fate. We may well wonder of what they talked to him,--if they told him of his wife and daughter who were expecting his return; or were they silent and abstracted, as if preoccupied with the grave questions to be discussed with him before the Council? They conducted him directly to the palace, and there dismissed his retainers, saying that their master would be long detained by the Doge, who had much to say to him. Not finding the Doge, Carmagnola turned to go to his own house; and then his friends, under pretext of showing him a shorter way, conducted him through intricate passages into the prisons. When he saw to what place he had been led, he exclaimed, "I am a lost man!" And when his friends endeavored to console him, he replied, "No, no! we do not cage the birds we mean to set at liberty."