"'T will make me think
The world is full of rubs, and that my fortune
Runs 'gainst the bias."
RICHARD THE SECOND.


Though Venice at that hour was so gay in her squares, the rest of the
town was silent as the grave. A city in which the hoof of horse or the
rolling of wheels is never heard, necessarily possesses a character of
its own; but the peculiar form of the government, and the long training
of the people in habits of caution, weighed on the spirits of the gay.
There were times and places, it is true, when the buoyancy of youthful
blood, and the levity of the thoughtless, found occasion for their
display--nor were they rare; but when men found themselves removed from
the temptation, and perhaps from the support of society, they appeared
to imbibe the character of their sombre city.

Such was the state of most of the town, while the scene described in the
previous chapter was exhibited in the lively piazza of San Marco. The
moon had risen so high that its light fell between the range of walls,
here and there touching the surface of the water, to which it imparted a
quivering brightness, while the domes and towers rested beneath its
light in a solemn but grand repose. Occasionally the front of a palace
received the rays on its heavy cornices and labored columns, the gloomy
stillness of the interior of the edifice furnishing, in every such
instance, a striking contrast to the richness and architectural beauty
without. Our narrative now leads us to one of these patrician abodes of
the first class.