Several members of the Open-Air Club were hanging over the bridge as we passed—Luigi flat on his face and sound asleep in the shadow of the side-wall, and Vittorio sprawled out on the polished rail above. Those who were awake touched their hats respectfully to the old fellow as he crossed the bridge, he returning their salutations quite as a distinguished earl would those of his tenants. Vittorio, when he caught my eye, sprang down and ran ahead to rouse Espero, and then back for Luigi, who awoke with a dazed look on his face, only regaining consciousness in time to wave his hat to me when we were clear of the quay, the others standing in a row enjoying his discomfiture.
“This garden,” continued the Professor, settling himself on the cushions and drawing the curtains so that he could keep the view toward San Giorgio and still shut out the dazzling light, “is now, of course, only a ghost of its former self. The château is half in ruins, and one part is inhabited by fishermen, who dry their nets in the grape arbors and stow their fish-baskets in the porticoes. Many of the fruit-trees, however, still exist, as do many of the vines, and so my old friend Angelo, the gardener, makes a scanty living for himself and his pretty daughter, by supplying the fruit-stands in the autumn and raising lettuce and melons in the spring and summer. The ground itself, like most of the land along the east side of the islands of the Giudecca, is valueless, and everything is falling into ruin.”
We were rounding the Dogana, Espero bending lustily to his oar as we shot past the wood-boats anchored in the stream. The Professor talked on, pointing out the palace where Pierre, the French adventurer, lived during the Spanish conspiracy, and the very side door in the old building, once a convent, from which an Englishman in the old days stole a nun who loved him, and spirited her off to another quaint nook in this same Giudecca, returning her to her cell every morning before daybreak.
“Ah, those were the times to live in. Then a soldo was as large as a lira. Then a woman loved you for yourself, not for what you gave her. Then your gondolier kept your secrets, and the keel of your boat left no trace behind. Then your family crest meant something more than the name-plate on your door, upon which to nail a tax-levy.”
The old man had evidently forgotten his history, but I did not check him. It was his buoyant enthusiasm that always charmed me most.
As Espero passed under Ponte Lungo, the wooden bridge leading to the Fondamenta della Pallada, the Professor waved his hand to the right, and we floated out into the lagoon and stopped at an old water-gate, its doors weather-stained and broken, over which hung a mass of tangled vines.
“The garden of the Contessa,” said the Professor, his face aglow with the expectancy of my pleasure.
It was like a dozen other water-gates I had seen, except that no gratings were open and the surrounding wall was unusually high. Once inside, however, with the gate swung-to on its rusty hinges, you felt instantly that the world had been shut away forever. Here were long arbors bordered by ancient box, with arching roofs of purple grapes. Against the high walls stood fragments of statues, some headless, some with broken arms or battered faces. Near the centre of the great quadrangle was a sunken basin, covered with mould, and green with the scum of stagnant water. In the once well-regulated garden beds the roses bloomed gayly, climbing over pedestal and statue, while the trumpet-flower and scarlet-creeper flaunted their colors high upon the crumbling walls overlooking the lagoon. At one end of this tangled waste rose the remains of a once noble château or summer home, built of stone in the classic style of architecture, the pediment of the porch supported by a row of white marble columns. Leaning against these columns stood old fish-baskets, used for the storing of live fish, while over the ruined arbors hung in great festoons the nets of a neighboring fisherman, who reserved this larger space for drying and mending his seines.
It was a ruin, and yet not a hopeless one. You could see that each year the flowers struggled into life again; that the old black cypresses, once trimmed into quaint designs, had still determined to live on, even without the care of their arboreal barber; that really only the pruning-knife and spade were needed to bring back the garden to its former beauty. And the solitude was there too, the sense of utter isolation, as if the outside world were across the sea, whither nor eye nor voice could follow.
Old Angelo and his pretty daughter—a pure type of the Venetian girl of to-day, as she stood expectantly with folded arms—met us at the gate, and led the way to a sort of summer-house, so thickly covered with matted vines that the sun only filtered through and fell in drops of gold, spattering the ground below. Here, encrusted with green mould, was a marble table of exquisite design, its circular top supported by a tripod with lions’ feet.