When his friends and masters bade him relax his energies, he used to answer: My duty is to serve and not to live; there is some one daily dying in his office.[172] When at length the very sources of existence failed, and the firm brain wandered for a moment, he was once heard to say: 'Let us go to S.Mark, for it is late.'[173] The very last words he uttered, frequently repeated, but scarcely intelligible, were: 'Esto Perpetua.'[174] _May Venice last forever_! This was the dying prayer of the man who had consecrated his best faculties to the service of his country.

But before he passed away into that half slumber which precedes death, he made confession to his accustomed spiritual father, received the Eucharist and Extreme Unction, and bade farewell to the superior of the Servites, in the following sentence: 'Go ye to rest, and I will return to God, from whom I came.' With these words he closed his lips in silence, crossing his hands upon his breast and fixing his eyes upon a crucifix that stood before him.[175] [Footnote 172: Fulgenzio's _Life_, p.

98.] [Footnote 173: _Ibid._ p.

105.] [Footnote 174: _Ibid._] [Footnote 175: Letter of the Superior to the Venetian Senate, printed in the _Lettere_, vol.ii.pp.

450-453.