treasures--The Baptistery--The good Andrea Dandolo--The vision of Bishop
Magnus--The parasites.


Let us now enter the atrium. When I first did so, in 1889, I fell at
once into the hands of a guide, who, having completed his other
services, offered for sale a few pieces of mosaic which he had casually
chipped off the wall with his knife somewhere in the gallery. Being
young and simple I supposed this the correct thing for guides to do, and
was justified in that belief when at the Acropolis, a few weeks later,
the terrible Greek who had me in tow ran lightly up a workman's ladder,
produced a hammer from his pocket and knocked a beautiful carved leaf
from a capital. But S. Mark's has no such vandals to-day. There are
guides in plenty, who detach themselves from its portals or appear
suddenly between the flagstaffs with promises of assistance; but they
are easily repulsed and the mosaics are safe.

Entering the atrium by the central door we come upon history at once.
For just inside on the pavement whose tesselations are not less lovely
than the ceiling mosaics--indeed I often think more lovely--are the
porphyry slabs on which the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa asked pardon of
Pope Alexander III, whom he had driven from Rome into an exile which had
now brought him to Venice. The story has it that the great Emperor
divested himself of his cloak of power and lay full length on these very
stones; the Pope placed his foot on his neck, saying, "I will tread on
the asp and the basilisk." The Emperor ventured the remark that he was
submitting not to the Pope but to S. Peter. "To both of us," said
Alexander. That was on July 24, 1177, and on the walls of the Doges'
Palace we shall see pictures of the Pope's sojourn in Venice and
subsequent triumph.