Some have taxed me with ignorance, not knowing that I have taken
counsel of one of our best musical critics, and had the benefit of
your conscientious help. I have, perhaps, been an inaccurate
amanuensis. If this were the case, I should be the traitorous
translator without knowing it, and I yet hope to sign myself
always one of your friends.

DE BALZAC.




MASSIMILLA DONI



As all who are learned in such matters know, the Venetian aristocracy
is the first in Europe. Its _Libro d'Oro_ dates from before the
Crusades, from a time when Venice, a survivor of Imperial and
Christian Rome which had flung itself into the waters to escape the
Barbarians, was already powerful and illustrious, and the head of the
political and commercial world.

With a few rare exceptions this brilliant nobility has fallen into
utter ruin. Among the gondoliers who serve the English--to whom
history here reads the lesson of their future fate--there are
descendants of long dead Doges whose names are older than those of
sovereigns. On some bridge, as you glide past it, if you are ever in
Venice, you may admire some lovely girl in rags, a poor child
belonging, perhaps, to one of the most famous patrician families. When