They meant to have lunched in the open air; but, as it was cloudy, decided to spread the feast at the hotel. Such a delightful revel as followed! A scene from the 'Decameron,' modernised, would give some idea of it; for after the banquet all adjourned to the gardens of the Doria Villa, and there disported themselves as merrily as if all the plagues of life were quite forgotten, and death itself among the lost arts. Flirting and dancing, charades and singing, stories and statues, poems and pictures, gossip and gambols, absorbed the hours as pleasantly as in the olden time. And if the costumes were not as picturesque as those in Vedder's fine picture, the ladies were as lovely, the gentlemen as gallant, and all much better behaved than those of Boccaccio's party.
A few drops of rain quenched the fun at its height, and sent the revellers home as fast as four horses could take them, leaving the town gaping after them, and our ladies much enlivened by the delights of the day.
This third and last event pleasantly ended their sojourn at Albano; for a day or two later they vanished, leaving the dear officers disconsolate till the next batch of travelling ladies came to comfort their despair.
A week was spent in Venice, floating about all day from one delightful old church to another, or paying visits to Titians and Tintorettos; buying little turtles, photographs, or Venetian glass; eating candied fruit and seeing the doves fed in the square of San Marco; visiting shops full of dusty antiquities, or searching the stalls on the Rialto for Moor's-head rings; being rowed to the Lido by Giacomo in a red sash; and lulled to sleep at night by the songs of a chorus that floated under the windows in the moonlight.
Lavinia never could get used to seeing the butcher, the baker, and the postman go their rounds in boats. Matilda was in bliss, with a gondola all to herself, where she sat surrounded with water-colours, trying to paint everything she saw; for here the energy she had lost at Rome seemed to return to her. Amanda haunted a certain shop, trying to make the man take a reasonable sum for a very ancient and ugly bit of jewellery, which she called 'a sprigalario,' for want of a better name; and after each failure she went off to compose herself with a visit to the Doges.
Of course they all saw the Bridge of Sighs and the dungeons below, with their many horrors; likewise a Mass at St. Mark's, where the Patriarch was a fat old soul in red silk, even to his shoes and holy pocket-handkerchief; and the service appeared to consist in six purple priests dressing and undressing him like an old doll, while a dozen white-gowned boys droned up in a gold cock-loft, and many beggars whined on the dirty floor below.
Do other travellers eat locusts, I wonder, as ours did one sunny day, sitting on church steps, and discover that the food of the Apostle was not the insect whose 'zeeing' foretells hot weather; but the long, dry pods of the locust-tree, sweet to the taste, but rather 'dry fodder,' as the impious Livy remarked after choking herself with a quarter of a yard of it.
When the week was up Mat implored to be left behind with Angela, the maid, and Brio, a big poodle possessed of the devil. But she was torn away, and only consoled by the promise of many new gloves, with as many buttons as she pleased, when they got to Munich.
'The lakes are the proper entrance into Italy, and Venice a lovely exit. One soon tires of it, and is ready to leave, which is an excellent arrangement, though I should prefer to depart in some more cheerful vehicle than a hearse,' observed Lavinia, as they left the long, black gondola at the steps of the station.
'Haven't you a sigh for those lovely lakes, a tear for Albano, a pang of regret for Rome?' asked Amanda, hoping to wring one moan for Italy from the old lady.