Mrs. Sprague then told Rafael how they had wandered off into a part of the city where the canals were narrow and dirty, where the houses were old and crumbling to ruins, and where the streets seemed hardly more than cracks between the walls.
"I don't wish to put that memory picture into my necklace," said Edith.
"It is not necessary," answered Rafael. "There will be many beautiful beads. This afternoon we will climb the bell-tower of San Giorgio when the sun is setting, and there you will get a picture of this 'pearl of the world' that will make you forget every other."
But Edith was turning her camera upon the pavement below, where three flag-poles stand in front of St. Mark's.
"The lazy pigeons in the square were lean and hungry when those three masts were placed before the cathedral," Rafael told her. "The Venetians were hardy sailors, bold adventurers, and rich merchants in those days; and it was an honor for Morea and the eastern islands of Candia and Cyprus to fly their banners in our city. All the vessels from the East and the West stopped at our port, and the fame of Venice spread far and wide."
"You speak boastfully," said Edith saucily.
"It is all true," Rafael said earnestly. "Four hundred years ago there was no place in the whole world where so much pomp and magnificence could be seen as in St. Mark's Square and on the Grand Canal.
"Over in the museum at the arsenal"—Rafael's voice broke in his excitement—"there is a model of a ship of state, in which, for hundreds of years, the Doge used every year to go out to the entrance of the lagoon and throw a jewelled ring into the waters of the Adriatic, to make Venice the bride of the sea.
"People from far and wide, by thousands and tens of thousands, came to see the ceremony. It was a marvellous sight to see," he added proudly, as if he had seen it many times.
"Two or three hundred senators, in their scarlet robes, marched with the Doge from this palace to the wharf, where the ship of state waited for them; and thousands of magnificent gondolas followed it on its journey to the Lido port, where the ceremony took place."