PRELUDE
Venice, with her life and glory but a memory, is still the citta nobilissima,—a city of moods,—all beautiful to the beauty-lover, all mystic to the dreamer; between the wonderful blue of the water and the sky she floats like a mirage—visionary—unreal—and under the spell of her fascination we are not critics, but lovers. We see the pathos, not the scars of her desolation, and the splendor of her past is too much a part of her to be forgotten, though the gold is dim upon her palace-fronts, and the sheen of her precious marbles has lost its bloom, and the colors of the laughing Giorgione have faded like his smile.
But the very soul of Venetia is always hovering near, ready to be invoked by those who confess her charm. When, under the glamor of her radiant skies the faded hues flash forth once more, there is no ruin nor decay, nor touch of conquering hand of man nor time, only a splendid city of dreams, waiting in silence—as all visions wait—until that invisible, haunting spirit has turned the legends of her power into actual activities.