It was an awful journey from Naples to Venice. I had another half-hour in Rome en route. ‘Half an hour in Rome'—doesn’t it sound terrible? Fancy being in Rome and going no further than the refreshment-room in the railway-station! And at Bologna I was nearly frozen to death. The snow lay thick everywhere, and the mountain passes looked like seas of ice. When I arrived in Venice there was a dull November fog lying over the city, and my heart went down into my boots. But I recovered myself sufficiently to get into a gondola, which, however graceful it may be on a fine day, looked on this occasion more like a frowning hearse than ever. I asked if I couldn’t have a carriage and drive to the hotel, as it was so foggy on the water. The gondolier stared at me in blank amazement. ‘And where would monsieur get the horses?’ he said; and then I learnt for the first time that there are no horses in Venice, and that the gondola is absolutely the only means of locomotion. Some of the Venetians, those who have never been to the mainland, have never seen a horse in all their lives. A showman once brought one to a fair, and called it a monster, and the factory girls and boys paid sixpence each to see the marvellous curiosity.

This utter absence of wheels and animals makes this city in the sea a city of silence and of perfect rest. A sense of perfect bliss steals over the tired traveller from the towns of noise, and he glides along past the marble palaces in his gondola as in a dream. And Venice is a dream. The wonderful stories of her Bridge of Sighs, the weird tales of the old romancers and poets, are all dreams. At any rate, they are not true. But Venice is beautiful, and, though much of the romance that enshrined her has been swept away by the ruthless hand of the modern literary inquisitor, ‘A Day with the Doges’ is a day to be remembered in one’s life, and Venice remains a city unique in the world. My gondolier took me down short cuts—waterways all of them—which were overpowering in their odour. We glided swiftly over waters that were simply floating refuse heaps and dustbins. But out of the fishy water rose now and then a glorious palace that made amends for all. Cutting into the Grand Canal from one of these water-lanes, we grounded on the mud, and stuck there for four or five minutes; but the spirit of romance breathed o’er the scene, and I felt that I could have stuck in the mud for ever and not found the position monotonous.

I was lucky enough to see the beginning of the Carnival in Venice, and to make the acquaintance of a gentleman who has a palace on the Grand Canal, and who was kind enough to take me about in his gondola and show me everything. On the Rialto one afternoon, wanting to find out where Shylock lived, I approached a gentleman, who was smoking a cigarette and lounging about. I asked him my question in Italian. He replied in English, with a strong German accent: ‘That’s the house—that one yonder, Mr. ——,’ giving me my correct name. I stared at him. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I thought you didn’t know me. I’m at Danielli’s Hotel here, but I used to be coffee-room waiter at the Palace Hotel, Aberdeen. Don’t you remember me now?’

One of the great show places of Venice is the museum of the Arsenal. Of course I stopped enraptured before the magnificent gold barge in which the old Doges went forth and married the Adriatic, flinging a gold ring into the sea; but what interested me most was the case which contained relics of Duke Francesco Carrara, commonly called ‘the Tyrant of Padua.’ I was in a very bad temper myself the day I saw his ‘relics.’ The bitter cold had upset my liver, and made me extra fiendish, and so I felt in perfect sympathy with the gentleman who wreaked his vengeance on his enemies in the most ingeniously diabolical manner possible.

The first ‘specimen’ which attracts your attention is a beautifully decorated jewel-box—all velvet and gold, and set with precious stones. Duke Francis was in love with a lady who one day snubbed him before company. Francis smiled a sweet smile and bit his lip, but never by word or deed allowed the fair charmer to see that she had trodden on his corns. But when her birthday came round he sent her anonymously this beautiful box, with an inscription upon it to say that it was from an unknown admirer to the Queen of Beauty. When the box was delivered the lady was out, so her maid took it in, and, with the natural curiosity of the female sex, she began to wonder what the beautiful box contained. It was delivered uncovered, and attached to it by a ribbon was a little golden key. The maid thought to herself, ‘I’ll just open this, and see what lovely thing is inside it for my mistress.’ She put the golden key in the lock, she gave it a turn; up then flew the lid, and all that remained of the inquisitive maid was gathered up from the floor and scraped off the walls. The Duke’s notion of a birthday present for a lady who had rejected his addresses was decidedly original, was it not? He must have been the ancestor of the gentleman who, when Sir William Harcourt was Home Secretary, used to send him such curious hampers and brown-paper parcels.

Another delightful relic of the life and times of the Tyrant of Padua is in the same case as the beautiful box. It is a simple key—about the size of an ordinary door-key. It was the key of the Duke’s library in his private room. When he wanted to get rid of any of his suite or any person of his household, he used to ring his bell and ask for Mr. John to be sent to him (fancy name, of course). When John entered, the Duke would say: ‘Oh, John, I wish you would go to the bookcase in my private room and bring me Lecky’s “European Morals.”’ ‘Certainly, your grace,’ Mr. John would say; and away he would trot with the key in his hand. When he got to the library, he would put the key in the lock of the bookcase and turn it. But directly he turned it, out of the handle of the key shot a long poisoned needle, which stabbed the hand of the holder, and instantly shot back again. John would take his hand from the key, and say: ‘What the deuce was that?’ He would look at his hand and see only a small dark blue spot. He would think nothing of it, but all of a sudden he would begin to feel queer in his head. Presently someone would come in and find him in a fit on the floor, and the household would be alarmed. ‘Mr. John has had a stroke or a fit,’ the people would say. A doctor would be sent for, but his services would be of no avail. In twenty-four hours Mr. John would be dead, and everybody would think that he had died through a fit. There were no bothering coroners’ inquests to upset the plans of clever fellows like Duke Francis in those days.

Everybody knows what a Venetian gondola is, but I doubt if everybody knows why they are all of one pattern, and all black and funereal. My Venetian friend gave me the information. What brought the subject up was this. As we passed along the Grand Canal, he pointed out to me Sir Henry Layard’s palace. Sir Henry’s gondola was waiting at his door. ‘Why,’ I said, ‘it’s exactly the same pattern as yours; everybody here seems to have the same pattern and colour. Wouldn’t it be gayer if there were a little variety?’

‘It would,’ replied my friend, after he had pointed out to me the palace of the late Comte de Chambord and the palace which Taglioni, the famous danseuse, bought for her son, and which the naughty son lost in one night at cards. ‘It would,’ replied my friend: ‘but the fashion is the result of a sumptuary law of olden times. In those days there was constant rivalry between the nobles and the wealthy merchants of Venice. The merchants went out in glorious gondolas that cost thousands of pounds. The nobles tried to outdo them. The liveries of the gondoliers cost small fortunes. At last the nobles, who were not so rich as the merchants, found that they were crippling themselves to have more magnificent gondolas than the merchants. So, like artful fellows, having influence in the council of the city, they got a law passed which compelled every gondola on the canal to be of one pattern and one colour, whether private or public.’ The design was the gondola which to-day walks the Grand Canal like a thing of li—— like a thing of death, because it is a floating funeral-coach, and nothing else.

A funeral at Venice is very curious. A gondola in black and silver comes for the body at the house of mourning. The coffin is put into the open boat, and the family and the priests then get in and sit round it. The gondoliers are dressed in black and silver, and they row away towards the cemetery, which stands in the middle of a broad lagoon. The sight is a mournful and impressive one. It is far pleasanter to see the great canal and the glorious city bathed in moonlight, and to watch the gondolas filled with gaily-dressed masqueraders and masqueraderesses in all their Carnival finery as they float along to the sound of music and of song. I have never been so carried away by the dreamy beauty of a scene as I was when a boat-load of laughing damsels in dainty costumes stopped just under my sitting-room window one night and serenaded me. It was a delicate little attention, for which I found I was indebted to my Venetian friend.