It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.”
The gondola wuz crowded by the fantom crowds that set round me onheeded by my Josiah, jest as sperit crowds may be cramped all round onbeknown to us.
Wall, I expected that about the most interestin’ thing in Venice to me would be the Bridge of Sighs, that stands, as Byron so eloquently observes, with a palace on the nigh side, and a prison on the off side (I may not have got the exact words, but it is the same meanin’). And I had more emotions there than I could count, as I looked at it.
Al Faizi wuz dretful interested in the old prison and dungeons and in the relicks of the infamous Council of Ten.
He writ pages in that book of hisen, and didn’t come no more nigh depicterin’ all their atrocities and abominations than one drop of water would to exhaustin’ the ocean.
In the palaces we see the height of luxury and richness of beauty. In the prisons and dungeons we can see the black depths of terror and cruelty of the time when the Council of Ten ruled Venice.
The Doge’s palace is a dream of magnificence. You look up the Giant’s Staircase, way up—up to the great statutes of Mars and Neptune, where them mean creeters wuz crowned—the Doges, I mean. And then you can’t help meditatin’ that whilst they clumb to the very top of magnificence, they didn’t do well, they didn’t die peaceable in their beds, none on ’em.
No, they wuz pizened, or had their heads cut off, or sunthin’ or other, that interfered with their comfort.
I wouldn’t want Josiah to be a Doge—not if he could be jest as well as not. No, Dogein’ seemed to be resky business in them days, and I presoom that it would be now.
And then they wuz so awful mean some on ’em—jest read what they done, it’s enough to skair you to death almost. I had dretful emotions as I looked at that long table where the Ten ust to set in silence, and condemn men and wimmen to death.