One of the pleasantest sights to be noted from our windows at
breakfast time is Angelo making ready our private gondola for the
day. Angelo himself is not attractive to the eye by reason of the
silliest possible hat for a man of forty-five whose hair is
slightly grey. It is a white straw sailor, with a turned-up brim,
a blue ribbon encircling the crown, and a white elastic under the
chin; such a hat as you would expect to see crowning the flaxen
curls of mother's darling boy of four.

I love to look at the gondola, with its solemn caracoling like that
of a possible water-horse, of which the arched neck is the graceful
ferro. This is a strange, weird, beautiful thing when the black
gondola sways a little from side to side in the moonlight. Angelo
keeps ours polished so that it shines like silver in the morning
sun, and he has an exquisite conscientiousness in rubbing every
trace of brass about his precious craft. He has a little box under
the prow full of bottles and brushes and rags. The cushions are
laid on the bank of the canal; the pieces of carpet are taken out,
shaken, and brushed, and the narrow strips are laid over the curved
wood ends of the gondola to keep the sun from cracking them. The
felze, or cabin, is freed of all dust, the tiny four-legged stools
and the carved chair are wiped off, and occasionally a thin coat of
black paint is needed here and there, and a touching-up of the gold
lines which relieve the sombreness. The last thing to be done is
to polish the vases and run back into the garden for nosegays, and
when these are disposed in their niches on each side of the felze,
Angelo waves his infantile hat gaily to us at the window, and
smiles his readiness to be off.

On other mornings we watch the loading and unloading of grain.