Venetian architecture.
In St. Mark's, embossed with domes, encrusted with mosaics, loaded with incoherent spoils of the East, I found myself at the same time in San Vitale at Ravenna, in St. Sophia in Constantinople, in St. Saviour's in Jerusalem and in those lesser churches of the Morea, Chios and Malta: St. Mark's, a monument of Byzantine architecture, composite of victory and conquest raised to the Cross, is a trophy, as is the whole of Venice. The most remarkable effect of its architecture is its darkness under a brilliant sky; but to-day, the loth of September, the deadened light from the outside harmonized with the gloomy basilica. They were completing the Forty Hours ordered to obtain fine weather. The fervour of the faithful praying against rain was great: the Venetians look upon a grey and watery sky as the plague.
Our prayers were granted: the evening became charming; at night I went for a walk on the quay. The sea lay smooth; the stars mingled with the scattered lights of the boats and ships anchored here and there. The cafés were full, but one saw no Pulcinelli, Greeks nor Moors: everything comes to an end. A Madonna, brightly illuminated at the crossing of a bridge, attracted the crowd: young girls were devoutly telling their beads on their knees; they made the Sign of the Cross with their right hand and stopped the passers-by with their left. Returning to my inn, I went to bed and to sleep to the singing of the gondoliers stationed under my windows.
I have as my guide Antonio, the oldest and best-informed of the ciceroni of the place; he knows the palaces, statues and pictures by heart
On the 11th of September, I paid a visit to the Abbé Betio and M. Gamba[97], the keepers of the Library: they received me with extreme politeness, although I had no letter of recommendation.
As one goes through the rooms of the Ducal Palace, one passes from wonders to wonders. There the whole history of Venice unrolls itself, painted by the greatest masters: their pictures have been described a hundred times.
Among the antiques, I remarked, like everybody else, the group of Leda and the Swan and the Ganymede ascribed to Praxiteles. The Swan is prodigious in its embrace and its voluptuousness; Leda is too compliant. The eagle of the Ganymede is not a real eagle; it looks the best-tempered beast in the world. Ganymede, charmed at being carried off, is enchanting: he talks to the eagle, which talks to him.
Those antiques are placed at either end of the magnificent rooms of the Library. I contemplated, with the sacred respect of the poet, a manuscript of Dante's and gazed, with the greed of the traveller, upon the map of the world of Fra Mauro[98] (1460). Africa, however, does not appear to be traced upon it so correctly as they say. They ought, above all, in Venice, to explore the archives: they would find invaluable documents there.
From the painted and gilded halls, I passed to the prisons and the dungeons; the same palace presents the microcosm of society, joy and sorrow. The prisons are under the leads, the dungeons on the level of the water of the canal and on two storeys. A thousand tales are told of strangulations and secret beheadings[99]; by way of compensation we hear that a prisoner left those dungeons fat, plump and rosy, after eighteen years spent in captivity: he had lived like a toad inside a rock. All honour to the human race! What a fine thing it is!
Plenty of philanthropic phrases stain the vaults and walls of the underground cells, since the day when our Revolution, so adverse to blood,