She returned to her little house in Venice a widely celebrated woman, whose praises were sounded in prose and verse. She dwelt in the Quarter Dorsoduro, near the Church of San Vito. Here she received many distinguished visitors. She was invited to various courts of Europe; and until she reached the age of seventy her life was fruitful in work and in triumphs such as could not have failed to make her native city proud of her. Eleven years before her death she became blind, and from that time she received no strangers, though many desired to see her. To her sister Angela she sent letters, written from her dictation, which spoke all too plainly of the loneliness she would fain have concealed from those who loved her.
By her will she remembered all her relatives, her servants and attendants, and some of her pupils. She gave the bulk of her property to her sister Angela, who was but two years younger than herself. She died when eighty-two years old, and was buried in the little church of her parish beside her sister Giovannina, whose death she had mourned for twenty years.
Pictures by Rosalba Carriera are seen in the Louvre, and in the Academy of Venice and the Church of San Gervasio e Protasio, but the largest collection is at Dresden; and to be perfectly candid, it does seem that the eighteenth-century critics have been more than kind in their praises of her works. If we were writing strictly of art, we could not give her a very exalted rank; but as a Venetian woman who made herself of note in the world in her day and generation, she is most important, and stands quite alone.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ARCHIVES OF VENICE.
Probably no other collection of state papers exists that can compare in interest with the archives of Venice, now preserved in the Convent of the Frari, and most courteously at the disposal of all who seriously wish to study them. It is said that the two hundred and ninety-five rooms in which these archives are disposed contain more than fourteen million documents, the earliest dating from 883. Even so, many Venetian records were doubtless lost in the conflagrations between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, of which we have accounts, for there are some important periods quite blank; and as late as 1797 a mob invaded the Hall of the Council of Ten, and dispersed the papers found there, which would no doubt have been of great value. The knowledge that has been gained from these records and given to the world within a half-century is most important and entertaining, and we are greatly indebted to the numerous scholarly writers who have given us the results of their researches; but there remains much more to be done before the stores of information and entertainment in the archives of the Frari will be exhausted.
It is from them that the true stories of Faliero, Pisani, Carmagnola, Caterina Cornaro, and others have been taken. They tell of all the great ceremonials, even to the minutest details. The letters of royal personages are there preserved. Civil and criminal trials, reports, despatches, and, in short, every imaginable thing that could have happened, been suspected, or whispered in all Venice, seems to be there writ down. To the casual observer, perhaps the most striking feature of these papers is the attention given to matters of minor importance by the government of the Republic. We know that each department was concerned with its special subject, but concerned in such a way that we can almost learn what was eaten in a particular palace on a certain day centuries ago; and the manner in which matters that are regulated by custom or individual fancy in other countries were the subjects of special decrees in Venice, is most surprising.
The papers of the secret chancellery, established in 1402, exceed all others in general interest. The direction of this department pertained to the Council of Ten; and here the story of the growth, splendor, and decline of the Republic can be read with all its complications. In the study of these papers, as they have been given us by patient writers, we are impressed anew with the utter disregard of individual interests and schemes, and the persistent devotion to the good of the Republic, first, last, and always. Venetians formed no syndicates, and profited by no monopolies. Venice was the syndicate, and the monopoly was hers.