I could see the Doge descend the Giant's Stairs, and issue from the
gate of the Ducal Palace. I could picture the great Bucentaur as
it reached the open beyond the line of the tide. I could see the
white-mitred Patriarch walking from his convent on the now deserted
isle of Sant' Elena to the shore where his barge lay waiting to
join the glittering procession.

And then there floated before my entranced vision the princely
figure of the Doge taking the Pope-blessed ring, and, advancing to
the little gallery behind his throne on the Bucentaur, raising it
high, and dropping it into the sea. I could almost hear the faint
splash as it sank in the golden waves, and hear, too, the sonorous
words of the old wedding ceremony: "Desponsamus te, Mare, in
signum veri perpetuique dominii!"

Then when the shouts of mirth and music had died away and the
Bucentaur and its train had drifted back into the lagoon, the blue
sea, new-wedded, slept through the night with the May moon on her
breast and the silent stars for sentinels.


II


LA GIUDECCA, May 15,
CASA ROSA.

Not for a moment have we regretted leaving our crowded,
conventional hotel in Venice proper, for these rooms in a house on
the Giudecca. The very vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck sitting on a