We shall hereafter see how the senate was affected by his pathetic appeal, and how it accepted him as a son.
Doria, indefatigable in the pursuit of revenge, instituted search for the corpse of Gianluigi. Few believed he was dead, and Doria feared that he had escaped into France and was preparing to let loose a new tempest upon the government.
After four days of search, the corpse was found by a diver named Pallino. Doria wished to vent his wrath and awe the people by suspending the body before the gates of the arsenal; but he did not dare to run the risk of a new popular outbreak. The body was therefore returned to its grave in the waves. Two months after Doria caused it to be fished up again, weighted with a mass of stones, carried out and launched into the deep sea.
The vacancy in the office of Doge, created by the resignation of Giovanni Battista di Fornari, was filled by the election of Bendetto Gentile. Fearing that the confederates of Fieschi might renew their insurrection and that it might break out in the very hall of the senate, the new Doge forbade the wearing of arms in the Ducal palace. At the same time he sent Ceva Doria as a legate to Cæsar in Germany (the brothers Luca and Giovanni Battista Grimaldi were already at that court for other business) to inform the emperor fully of the perils from which Genoa had escaped and to assure him of her constant devotion. Ceva Doria had secret instructions to ask the consent of Cæsar to the absorption of the Fieschi estates by the Republic. The request particularly regarded Varese, Roccatagliata and Montobbio, in the last of which Count Gerolamo was fortified. Ceva Doria was instructed to manage the matter with much dexterity. He was to represent that Varese and Roccatagliata belonged by ancient rights to the Republic and that Montobbio was a cause of incessant irritation and frequent danger to the city; that the Republic would be gratified if the emperor should wish to honour and reward his faithful servant Figueroa with some feud; that they had already occupied Roccatagliata, Varese and Calice and that Ferrante Gonzaga had protested, but that Domenico Doria, the commissioner of the Republic, had satisfied the imperial governor that the occupation was necessary to protect these feuds from the Lords of Lando. Ceva Doria was also instructed to devise a plan for securing the imperial approval to the confiscation of the castles of Torriglia and San Stefano.