170. Campanula chalice. The flower of any one of a large genus of flowers with bell-shaped corollas.
Interlude I
27. El canibus nostris. Virgil, Eclogues iii, 67. "Notior ut jam sit canibus non Delia nostris"—"So that now not Delia's self is more familiar to our dogs." The boy Giovacchino of whose poetry they are making fun evidently had ideals not in harmony with the ways of these Venetian art students. These "dissolute, brutalized, heartless bunglers," as Jules calls them, attack with quick, clever, merciless tongues whatever savors of idealism, aspiration, purity. Their revenge for the scornful superiority manifested towards them by Jules is to secure, by a well-managed trick, a marriage between him and a paid model.
86. Canova's gallery. Possagno was the birthplace of the sculptor Canova, and the circular church there was designed by him. In the gallery at Possagno is his Psyche (Psiche-fanciulla, or Psyche the young girl); his Pietà (the mother with the dead Christ in her arms) is in the church.
111. Malamocco. A little town on an island near Venice.
111. Alciphron. A Greek writer (about 200 A. D.) of fictitious letters famous for the purity of their style and for the knowledge they give of Greek social customs.
115. Lire. Plural of lira, an Italian coin equal to 18.6 cents in our money.
117. A scented letter. Forged letters have represented this fourteen year old, ignorant model as delicate, shy, reserved, intellectually alert, with lofty poetic and artistic ideals.
117. Tydeus. One of the Seven Allies in the enterprise against Thebes. Jules is supposed to have modeled a statue of him for the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts. From Scene II, 14, we see that it is still in clay.
120. Paolina. Some actress at the Phenix, the leading theater of Venice.