Titian's "Assumption."

"And who painted that?" I asked.

Enrico crossed himself in silence, and Mona Lisa's subdued voice
answered: "Our other son did that. He was only nineteen. He was a
mosaicist and was studying to be a painter; he was drowned at the Lido."

The old woman made the sign of the cross, her lips moved, and a single
big tear stood on her leathery cheek. I changed the painful subject, and
soon found excuse to slip away. That evening as the darkness gathered and
twinkling lights began to appear like fireflies, up and down the Grand
Canal, I sat in a little balcony of my hotel watching the scene. A
serenading party, backing their boats out into the stream, had formed a
small blockade, and in the group of gondolas that awaited the unraveling
of the tangle I spied Enrico. He had a single passenger, a lady in the
inevitable black mantilla, holding in her hands the inevitable fan. A
second glance at the lady--and sure enough! it was Mona Lisa. I ran
downstairs, stepped out across the moored line of gondolas, took up a
hook, and reaching over gently pulled Enrico's gondola over so I could
step aboard.

Mona Lisa was crooning a plaintive love-song and her gondolier was coming
in occasionally with bars of melodious bass. I felt guilty for being
about to break in upon such a sentimental little scene, and was going to
retreat, but Enrico and Mona Lisa spied me and both gave a little cry of
surprise and delight.

"Where have you been?" I asked--"you fine old lovers!"