habit of the place, and death seems only to be a louder echo of their life. small that I am ashamed to name it brings a me、 lodious benedetto on my head. I have come, indeed, to know every face which makes its appearance along the quay of the Giudeca. A beetle-browed man, with ragged children and a slatternly wife, has lost all my sym in asking blessings. A dog in an upper balcony, which barked at me obstreporously on the first week of my appearance, subdued it to a low growl after a fortnight, and now he makes only an inquiring thrust of his nose through the balcony bars, and, having scented an old acquaintance, retires with quiet gravity. A little distance away, there is a bridge which crosses this canal; a narrow alley, I find, at its end, conducts through slumberous houses to a narrow quay and a broad sheet of water. Beyond the water lies the island of Giudeca, be-pathy by his perverse constancy in begging and tween which and the quay I am upon lie moored the greater part of those sea-going craft which supply now all the needs of the port of Venice. Here are quaint vessels from Chioggia, at the other end of the Lagoon, which have not changed their fashion in a hundred years. They have the same high peak and stern which they had in the days of the Doges; and a painted Virgin at the bow is a constant prayer against peril. Here are clumsy feluccas from Crete and the Ionian islands, with Greek sailors half-clad, who have the same nut-brown faces and lithe limbs you see in old pictures. To the westward, the canal of the Giudeca stretches, dividing its island from the body of the city, and then losing itself in the wide, lazy sweep of the Lagoon, where you see little isles with tall bell-towers, and scattered lateen-rigged vessels, and square-armed colliers from England, and low-lying fields of rushes-all alike seeming to float on the surface of the water. When the sun is setting, you can not imagine the witching beauty of this scene: the blue mountains of Treviso rise from the distant edge of the Lagoon in sharp, pyramidal forms; they grow less and less in size as they sweep to the south, till finally, where the smooth water makes the horizon-line, you can see, five miles away, the trees of the last shore, seeming to rise from the sea, and standing with all their lines firmly and darkly drawn against a bright orange sky. Most of all, I have remarked an old gentleman, whom I scarce ever fail to meet at about the vesper hour, in a long brown overcoat, of an antique fashion, and wearing a hat which must have been the mode at least forty years ago. His constant companion is a young woman, with a very sweet, pale face, who clings timidly to his arm; and who, like her protector, is clad always in a sober-colored dress of an old date. Her features are very delicate, and her hair, like that of all the Venetian women, singularly beautiful. There is no look of likeness between them, or I should have taken them for father and daughter. They seem to talk but little together; and I have sometimes thought that the poor girl might be the victim of one of those savage marriages of Europe, by which beauty and youth is frequently tied, for some reasons of family or property, to decrepitude and age. Yet the old gentleman has a very firm step, and a proud look of the eye, which he keeps fixed steadfastly before him, scarce deigning to notice any passer-by. The girl, too, or perhaps I should rather say the woman, seems struggling to maintain the same indifference with the old gentleman; and all her side-looks are very furtive and subdued. From this quay-a favorite walk of mine-as from a vessel on the ocean, I see the sun dying each night in the water. Add only to what I have said of the view a warm, purple glow to the They walk rapidly, and always disappear down whole western half of the heavens-the long a narrow court which is by the further bridge of shadow of a ship in the middle distance, and the the quay, and which leads into a mouldering sound of a hundred sweet-toned vesper bells ring-quarter of the city. They speak to no one; they ing from out all the towers of Venice, and floating, and mellowing, and dying along the placid surface of the sea-and you will have some notion of a quiet Venetian evening. Upon the bridges which spring with a light marble arch across the side canals are grouped the figures of loitering gondoliers. Their shaggy brown coats, with pointed hoods, their tasseled caps, their crimson neck-ties, and their attitudes of a lazy grace, as they lean against the light stone balustrades, are all in happy keeping with the scene. A marching company of priests, two by two, with their broad hats nearly touching, sometimes passes me; and their waving black cloaks stir the air, like the wings of ill-omened birds. A lean beggar, who has been sunning himself throughout the day in the lee of a palace wall, steals out cautiously, as he sees me approach, and doffs his cap, and thrusts forward his hand, with a cringing side-cast of the head, making an inimitable pantomime of entreaty; and a coin so do not even salute, so far as I have seen, a single one of the parish priests who glide back and forth upon the walk by the Giudeca. Once only, a gondolier, with a flimsy black cockade, who was loitering at the door of a wine-shop, lifted his hat as they passed in a very respectful manner; but neither man or woman seemed to acknowledge the salutation. The steadfast look of the old gentleman, and the clinging hold of the young woman upon his arm, have once or twice induced me to believe him blind. But his assured step upon the uneven surface of the stones, and the readiness with which he meets the stairs of the successive bridges, have satisfied me that it can not be. I am quite sure there is some mystery about the couple-some old family story, perhaps, of wrong or of crime, which, in its small way, might throw a light upon the tyranny or the license which contributed to the wreck of the Venetian State. I have hinted as much to my professor of languages-who is a wiry little man, with fer- Canal. His pretty meek-faced companion was ret eyes-and who has promised to clear up what-beside him. They paced up and down with the ever mystery may lie in the matter. I shall hardly see him, however, again-being now Christmas time-for a week to come. The Christmas season drags heavily at Venice. The people may possibly be good Christians, but they are certainly not cheerful ones. The air, indeed, has a Christmas-like cold in its breath; but there is no cheer of blazing fires to quicken one's thankfulness, and to crackle a Christmas prayer for the bounties of the year. same calm, dispassionate faces, there in the eye of St. Mark's and of the crowd, which they had worn in the view of the Lagoon and of the silent, solemn sunsets. It is true they had now gala dresses; but so old, so quaint, that they seemed to belong, as they really did, to an age gone by. The old gentleman wore a bell-shaped hat, such as one sees in the pictures of the close of the last century, and its material was not of the shiny, silky substance of the present day, but of rich beaver. The lady, too, showed a face delicate as before, but set off with a coiffure so long gone by that its very age relieved it from oddity, and made me think I was looking at some sweet picture of a half century ago. The richest of that old Venetian lace, which provokes always the covetous The pinched old women steal through the dim and narrow pass-ways, with little earthen pots of live coals—the only fire which ever blesses their dismal homes. No frost lies along the fields with a silvery white coat, stiffening the grass tips, and making eyes sparkle and cheeks tingle; but the Venetian winter overtakes you adrift; cutting you through with cold winds, that howlness of traveling ladies, belonged to her costume, among the ancient houses; dampening every blast with the always present water; and bringing cold tokens from the land-winter, in huge ice-cakes, which float wide and drearily down the Lagoon. There are no Christmas songs, and no Christmas trees. Only the churches light up their chilly vaults with a sickly blaze of candles; and the devout poor ones, finding comfort in the air softened by the burning of incense, kneel down for hours together. The dust rests thickly on the tombs of nobles and of Doges, who lie in the churches; dark pictures of Tintoretto stare at you from behind the altars; the monotone of a chant rises in a distant corner; beggars, with filthy blankets drawn over their heads, thrust their meagre hands at you; and a chill dampness cleaves to you until you go out into the sunlight again. and agreed charmingly with her quiet manner, and with the forlorn air which hung a pleasing mystery about the couple. I could not observe that they seemed nearer to friends or to kin in the middle of the crowd than upon the silent quay of the Zattere, where I had so often seen them before. They appeared to be taking their gala walk in memory of old days, utterly neglectful of all around them, and living, as it were, an interior life, sustained only by association, and which clung to the gaunt shadow of the Campanile, and to the brilliant front of San Marco, with a loving and a pious fondness. It is not to be wondered at, indeed, that those of old Venetian blood should cherish vain and proud regrets. They are living in the shadows of a great past. An inferior ráce of creatures occupy the places of the rich and the powerful. The very griffins mock at them from the sculptured walls, and every where what is new is. dwarfed by contrast with the old. I followed the old gentleman after a while into the church of St. Mark. He walked reverently through the vestibule, and put on a religious air that startled me. Passing in at the central door, and slipping softly over the wavy floor of mosa One bright streak of this sunshine lies all day long upon the Riva,* which stretches from the Ducal Palace to the arsenal. Here is always gathered a motley throng of soldiers, of jugglers, of Punch-players, and of the picturesque Turkish and Cretan sailors. Jostling through this crowd, and passing the southern arcade of the Palace, you meet at mid-afternoon of the Christmas sea-ics, he knelt, with his companion, at that little son with troops of ladies, who lounge up and down over the square of St. Mark's, in a kind of solemn saunter, that I am sure can be seen no where else. Gone-by fashions of Paris flame upon the heads of pale-cheeked women, and weazen-faced old men struggle through the mass, with anxious and doubting daughters clinging close to their arms. The officers of the occupying army stride haughtily upon the place, eying with insolence whatever of beauty is to be seen, and showing by every look and gesture that they are the masters, and the others the menials. I was looking on this strange grouping of people not long ago, upon a festal day of the Christmas season, when my eye fell upon the old gentleman whom I had been accustomed to see upon the quiet Riva of the Zattere across the Grand A Venetian term for quay. altar of the Virgin upon the left, where the lights are always burning. They both bowed low, and showed a fervor of devotion which is but rarely seen in either Protestant or Popish churches. I felt sure that a great grief of some kind rested on them, and I hoped with all my heart that the Virgin might heal it. Presently they raised their heads together, as if their prayers had been in concert; they crossed themselves; the old gentleman, as he rose, cast a look of mournful admiration over the golden ceiling, and into the obscure depths of the vaulted temple, beckoned his companion, and turned to pass out. There was something inexpressibly touching in the manner of both, as they went through the final form of devotion, at the doorway. It seemed to me that they saw, in this temple hallowed by religion, the liveliest traces of the ancient Venetian grandeur; here, indeed, are the only monu uments of the past Venetian splendor which are still consecrated to their old service. The Palace has passed into the keeping of strangers, and idle soldiers, talking a new language, saunter under the arcades; the basins of the Arsenal are occupied by a few disabled vessels of foreign build; but in the churches the same God is worshiped, the same prayers are said, and the same saints rule, from among the urns of the fathers, the devotions of the children. halls of the house, which were once festive, were utterly deserted. The sun, which reached only to the upper rooms, brought a little warmth with it. No fire was made to drive away the damps below. A few pictures, it may be, remained upon the walls of the closed rooms, the work of esteemed artists, showing forth some scene of battle or of state, in which the founders of the house had reaped honors from the Republic. But the richly carved tables and quaint old chairs, had, I did not doubt, slipped away one by one to some Jew furniture-vender living near, who had preyed with fawning and with profit upon the old gentleman's humbled condition. I could not forbear following the old gentleman and his companion, at a respectful distance, through the neighboring alleys. They seemed to glide along before me like some spectral inhabitants of the ancient city, who had gloried in its splendor, and who had come back to mourn over The daughter, too-if indeed the young woman its decay. Without a thought of tracing them to were his daughter-had, I doubted not, slipped their home, and indeed without any distinctness old fragments of Venetian lace into her reticule, of intent, save only the chase of a phantom on days of bitter cold or of casual illness, to exthought, I followed them through alley after al-change against some little comfort for the old ley. The paving stones were damp and dark; the cornices of the houses almost met overhead. The murmur of the voices upon the Square of St. Mark's died away in the distance. The echoes of a few scattered foot-falls alone broke the silence. Sometimes I lost sight of them at an angle of the narrow street, and presently came again in full view of the old gentleman, resolutely striding on. I can not tell how far it was from St. Mark's, when they stopped at a tall doorway in the Calle Justiniana. I had passed that way before, and had remarked an ancient bronze knocker which hung upon the door, of rich Venetian sculpture. I had even entertained the sacrilegious thought of negotiating with the porter, or whoever might be the owner, for its purchase. A shrill voice from above responded to the summons of the old gentleman, and with a click the latch flew back and the door stood ajar. I came up in time to catch a glimpse of the little square court within. It was like that of most of the old houses of Venice. A cistern curbing, richly wrought out of a single block of Istrian marble, stood in the centre, set off with grotesque heads of cherubs and of saints. The paving stones were green and mossy, save one narrow pathway, which led over them to the cistern. The stairway, upon one side of the court, was high and steep; the balustrade was adorned with battered figures of lions' heads and of griffins; at the landing-place was an open balcony, from which lofty windows, with the rich, pointed Venetian tops, opened upon the principal suit of the house. But all of these were closed with rough board shutters, here and there slanting from their hinges, and showing broken panes of glass, and the disorder of a neglected apartment. A fragment of a faded fresco still flamed within the balcony between the windows. Only upon the floor above was there any sign of life. There I caught a glimpse of a white curtain, a cat dozing in a half-opened window, and of a pot of flowers. gentleman. I knew, indeed, that in this way much of the rich cabinet-work, for which the Venetian artisans were so famous two hundred years ago, had gone to supply the modern palaces of Russian nobles by Moscow and Novogorod. Old time friendships, I knew, too often went to wreck in the midst of such destitution; and there are those of ancient lineage living in Venice very lonely and deserted, only because their pride forbids that a friend should witness the extent of their poverty. Yet even these make some exterior show of dignity; they put black cockades upon the hats of their servants, or, by a little judicious management, they make their solitary fag of all work do duty in a faded livery at the stern of a gondola. They have, moreover, many of them, their little remnants of country property, in the neighborhood of Oderzo or Padua, where they go to economize the summer months, and balance a carnival season at the Fenice, by living upon vegetable diet, and wearing out the faded finery of the winter. But the old gentleman about whom I now felt myself entertaining a deep concern, seemed to be even more friendless and pitiable than these. He appeared to commune only with the phantoms of the past; and I must say that I admired his noble indifference to the degenerate outcasts around him. My ferret-eyed Professor made his appearance toward the close of the Christmas week, in a very hilarious humor. He is one of those happily-constituted creatures who never thinks of tomorrow, if only his dinner of to-day is secured. I had contributed to his cheer by inviting him to a quiet lunch (if quiet can be predicated of a bustling Italian Osteria) in the eating-rooms of the Vapore. I had a hope of learning something from him in respect to the old gentleman of the Zattere. I recalled my former mention of him, and ordered a pint of Covegliano, which is a fiery little wine of a very communicative and cheerful aroI conjectured how it was proud birth and ma. poverty were joined in the old man. The great 66 Benissimo," said the Professor, but whether of the wine or of the subject of my inquiry I could not tell. I related to him what I had seen in the Christmas time upon the Place, and described the parties more fully. The Professor was on the alert. I mentioned that I had traced them to a certain tall doorway he might remember in the Calle Justiniana. 66 Lo cognosco," said the Professor, twinkling his eye. "It is the Signor Nobile Pesaro: poor gentleman!" and he touched his temple significantly, as if the old noble had a failing in his mind. "And the lady?" said i. "Sua figluola," said he, filling his glass, after which he waved his forefinger back and forth in an expressive manner, as much as to say, "poor girl, her fate is hard." With that he filled his glass again, and told me She left two sons, Antonio and Enrico. By a rule of the Venetian State not more than one son of a noble family was allowed to marry, except their fortune was great enough to maintain the dignity of a divided household. The loss of Candia and the gaming-tables of the Ridotto had together so far diminished the wealth of the Count Pesaro, that Antonio alone was privileged to choose a bride, and under the advices of a State which exercised a more than fatherly interest in those matters he was very early betrothed to a daughter of the Contarini. But Antonio wore a careless and dissolute habit of life; he indulged freely in the licentious intrigues of Venice, and showed little respect for the claims which bound him to a noble maiden, whom he had scarce seen. Enrico, the younger son, destined at one time for the Church, had more caution but far less generosity in his nature, and, covering his dissoluteness under the mask of sanctity, he chafed himself into a bitter jealousy of the brother whose privileges so far exceeded his own. Fra Paolo, his priestly tutor and companion, was a monk of Pesaro was once a very great name in Ven- the order of Franciscans, who, like many of the ice. There was in former times a Doge Pesaro, Venetian priesthood in the latter days of the oliand there were high ministers of state, and garchy, paid little heed to his vows, and used the embassadors to foreign courts belonging to the stole and the mask to conceal the appetites of a house. In the old church of the Frari, upon debased nature. With his assistance Enrico took the further side of the Grand Canal, is a painting a delight in plotting the discomfiture of the secret of Titian's, in which a family of Pesaro appears intrigues of his brother, and in bringing to the kneeling before the blessed Virgin. A gorgeous-ears of the Contarini the scandal attaching to the ly-sculptured palace between the Rialto and the affianced lover of their noble daughter. Golden House is still known as the Pesaro Palace, but the family which built it, and which dwelt there, has long since lost all claim to its cherubs and griffins; only the crumbling mansion where live the old Count and his daughter now boasts any living remnants of the Pesaro name. These keep mostly upon the topmast floor of the house, where a little sunshine finds its way, and plays hospitably around the flower-pots which the daughter has arranged upon the ledge of the window. Below, as I had thought, the rooms are dark and dismal. The rich furniture which belonged to them once is gone; only a painting or two, by famous Venetian artists, now hang upon the walls. They are portraits of near relations, and the broken old gentleman, they say, lingers for hours about them in gloomy silence. Affairs stood in this wise in the ancient house of Pesaro when (it was in the latter part of the eighteenth century) one of the last royal embassadors of France established himself in a palace near to the church of San Zaccaria, and separated only by a narrow canal from that occupied by the Count Pesaro. The life of foreign embassadors, and most of all the embassadors of France, was always jealously watched in Venice, and many a householder who was so unfortunate as to live in the neighborhood of an embassador's residence received secret orders to quit his abode, and only found a cause in its speedy occupation by those masked spies of the Republic who passed secretly in and out of the Ducal Palace. The Inquisition, however, had its own reasons So long ago as the middle of the last century for leaving the Pesaro family undisturbed. Perthe family had become small, and reduced in haps it was the design of the mysterious powers wealth. The head of the house, however, was an of the State to embroil the house of Pesaro in important member of the State, and was suspect-criminal correspondence with the envoy of France; ed (for such things were never known in Venice) to have a voice in the terrible Council of Three. This man, the Count Giovanni Pesaro, whose manner was stern, and whose affections seemed all of them to have become absorbed in the mysteries of the State, was a widower. There were stories that even the Countess in her life-time had fallen under the suspicions of the Council of Inquisition, and that the silent husband either could not or would not guard her from the cruel watch which destroyed her happiness and shortened her days. perhaps Fra Paolo, who had free access to the Pesaro Palace, was a spy of St. Mark's; or perhaps (men whispered it in trembling) the stern Count Pesaro himself held a place in the awful Council of Three. The side-canals of Venice are not wide, and looking across, where the jealous Venetian blinds do not forbid the view, one can easily observe the movements of an opposite neighbor. Most of the rooms of the palace of the embassador were carefully screened, but yet the water-door, the grand hall of entrance, and the marble stairway were added a defiance of the State, which had shorn him of privilege, and virtually condemned him to an aimless life. But if Enrico was the more cautious and dis fully exposed, and the quick eyes of Antonio and Enrico did not fail to notice a lithe figure, which from day to day glided over the marble steps, or threw its shadow across the marble hall. Blanche was the only daughter of the embas-creet, Antonio was the more bold and daring. sador, and besides her there remained to him no family. She had just reached that age when the romance of life is strongest; and the music stealing over the water from floating canopies, the masked figures passing like phantoms under the shadow of palaces, and all the license and silence of Venice, created for her a wild, strange charm, both mysterious and dangerous. The very secrecy of Venetian intrigues contrasted favorably to her romantic thought with the brilliant profli-bassador, saw the admiration of the heirs of the gacy of the court of Versailles. There never was a lady, young or old, French or Venetian, who did not prefer boldness to watch[fulness, and audacity to caution. And therefore it was that Enrico, kindled into a new passion which consumed all the old designs of his life, lost ground in contention with the more adventurous approaches of Antonio. - Blanche, with the quick eye of a woman, and from the near windows of the palace of the em Pesaro house, and looked with the greater favor Nor were her face or figure such as to pass upon the bolder adventures of Antonio. The unnoticed even among the most attractive of the watchful looks of Enrico and of the masked Fra Venetian beauties. The brothers Pesaro, wearied Paolo, in the gatherings of the Ducal hall or in of their jealous strife among the masked intri- the saloons of the Ridotto, were not slow to obguantes who frequented the tables of the Ridotto, serve the new and the dangerous favor which the were kindled into wholly new endeavor by a sight | senior heir of the Pesaro name was winning of the blooming face of the Western stranger. from the stranger lady. The difficulties which hedged all approach, served here (as they always serve) to quicken ingenuity and to multiply resources. The State was jealous of all communication with the families of embassadors; marriage with an alien, on the part of a member of a noble family, was scrupulously forbidden. Antonio was already betrothed to the daughter of a noble house which never failed of means to avenge its wrongs. Enrico, the younger, was in the eye of the State sworn to celibacy and to the service of the Church. "It is well," said Enrico, as he sat closeted with his saintly adviser in a chamber of the Pesaro Palace, "the State will never permit an heir of a noble house to wed with the daughter of an alien; the Contarini will never admit this stain upon their honor. Let the favor which Blanche of France shows to Antonio be known to the State, and Antonio is—" "A banished man," said Fra Paolo, softening the danger to the assumed fears of the brother." "And what then?" pursued Enrico, doubtfully. But the bright eyes of Blanche, and the piquancy of her girlish, open look, were stronger than the ties of a forced betrothal, or the mock-rights ery of monastic bonds. Music from unseen musicians stole at night through the narrowed canal where rose the palace of the Pesaro. Flowers from unseen hands were floated at morning upon the marble steps upon which the balconies of the Pesaro Palace looked down; and always the eager and girlish Blanche kept strict watch through the kindly Venetian blinds for the figures which stole by night over the surface of the water, and for the lights which glimmered in the patrician house that stood over against the palace of her father. A French lady, moreover, brought with her from her own court more liberty for the revels of of the Ducal Palace, and for the sight of the halls of the Ridotto, than belonged to the noble maidens of Venice. It was not strange that the Pesaro brothers followed her thither, or that the gondoliers who attended at the doors of the embassador were accessible to the gold of the Venetian gallants. In all his other schemes Enrico had sought merely to defeat the intrigues of Antonio, and to gratify by daring and successful gallantries the pride of an offended brother, and of an offcast of the State. But in the pursuit of Blanche there was a new and a livelier impulse. His heart was stirred to a depth that had never before been reached, and to a jealousy of Antonio was now "And then the discreet Enrico attains to the 66 You know the law of the State, my son." "A base law!" "Not so loud," said the cautious priest; "the law has its exceptions. The embassador is reputed rich. If his wealth could be transferred to the State of Venice all would be well.". "It is worth the trial," said Enrico; and he pressed a purse of gold into the hand of the devout Fra Paolo. II. The three Inquisitors of State were met in their chamber of the Ducal Palace. Its floor was of alternate squares of black and white marble, and its walls tapestried with dark hangings set off with silver fringe. They were examining, with their masks thrown aside, the accusations which a servitor had brought in from the Lion's Mouth, which opened in the wall at the head of the second stairway. Two of the inquisitors were dressed in black, and the third, who sat between the others a tall, stern man-was robed in crimson. The face of the last grew troubled as his eye fell upon a strange accusation, affecting his honor, and perhaps his own safety. For even this terrible council-chamber had its own law among its members, and its own punishment for indiscretion. More than once a patrician of Venice had disappeared |