A CHAPTER IN FAIRYLAND
"Nobody can ever quite know Venice who goes by rail from Padua," said the Chauffeulier to me, when we had started in the car. "The sixteen miles of road between the two places is a link in Venetian history, and you'll understand what I mean without any explanation as you pass along."
This made me post my wits at the windows of my eyes, and tell them not to dare sleep for an instant, lest I should disappoint expectations. But, after all, the meaning I had to understand was not subtle, though it was interesting.
The way was practically one long street of time-worn palaces and handsome villas which had once been the summer retreats of the rich Venetians; and I guessed it without being told. I guessed, too, that the owners came no more or seldom; that they were not so rich as they had been, or that, because of railways and automobiles, it was easier and more amusing to go further afield. But what I didn't know without telling was that the proprietors had been accustomed, in the good old leisurely days, to step into their gondolas in front of their own palaces in Venice and come up the Brenta to their summer homes without setting foot to ground.
If I hadn't been told, too, that the Brenta was a river big in Venetian history if not in size, I should have taken it for one of my favourite canals, with its slow traffic of lazy barges, and its hundred canals crossing it with long green arms that stretched north and south to the horizon. But at Stra I must have respected it in any case; and it was near Stra, also, that we passed the most important palace of any on that strange, flat road. The very garden wall told that here was a house which must have loomed large in historic eyes, and through magnificent gateways we caught flashing glimpses of a noble building in a neglected park.
"It belonged to the Pisani, a famous family of Venice," said the Chauffeulier as we sailed by. "But Napoleon took it—as he took so many other good things in this part of the world—and gave it to his stepson Eugène Beauharnais."
"I've never thought about Napoleon in connection with Venice, somehow," I said.
"But you will, when your gondola takes you under the huge palace where he lived," he answered.
"Talking of gondolas, I forgot to tell you what a nice plan the Prince has for us," said Aunt Kathryn, with the air of breaking news. "As soon as I mentioned at what time you had arranged to leave Padua, he said he would telegraph to some dear friends of his at Venice, the Conte and Contessa Corramini, to send their beautiful gondola to meet us at Mestre (wherever that is) so that we needn't go into Venice by train across the bridge. Isn't that lovely of him?"
No one would have answered if it hadn't been for Mr. Barrymore. He said that it was a very good plan indeed, and would be pleasanter for us than the one he had made, which he'd meant for a surprise. He had telegraphed from Padua to the Hotel Britannia, where we would stay, ordering gondolas to the tram-way station in Mestre to save our sneaking into Venice by the back-door. Now those gondolas would do very well for our luggage, while the party of five made the journey more luxuriously.