CHAPTER XI.

A COMMISSION.


When Ferdinand Lind looked out the next day from the window of his
hotel, it was not at all the Venice of chromolithography that lay before
him. The morning was wild, gray, and gloomy, with a blustering wind
blowing down from the north; the broad expanse of green water ruffled
and lashed by continual squalls; the sea-gulls wheeling and dipping over
the driven waves; the dingy masses of shipping huddled along the wet and
deserted quays; the long spur of the Lido a thin black line between the
green sea and purple sky; and the domed churches over there, and the
rows of tall and narrow and grumbling palaces overlooking the canals
nearer at hand, all alike dismal and bedraggled and dark.

When he went outside he shivered; but at all events these cold, damp
odors of the sea and the rainy wind were more grateful than the
mustiness of the hotel. But the deserted look of the place! The
gondolas, with their hearse-like coverings on, lay empty and untended by
the steps, as if waiting for a funeral procession. The men had taken
shelter below the archways, where they formed groups, silent,
uncomfortable, sulky. The few passers-by on the wet quays hurried along
with their voluminous black cloaks wrapped round their shoulders, and
hiding most of the mahogany-colored faces. Even the plague of beggars
had been dispersed; they had slunk away shivering into the foul-smelling
nooks and crannies. There was not a soul to give a handful of maize to
the pigeons in the Place of St. Mark.

But when Lind had got round into the Place, what was his surprise to