and trifled with by the result, for my disappointments arising out of the
dramatic manner of the Italians had not yet been frequent enough to teach
me to expect nothing from it.

There was some compensation for me--coming, like all compensation, a long
while after the loss--in the spectacle of a funeral procession on the
Grand Canal, which had a singular and imposing solemnity only possible to
the place. It was the funeral of an Austrian general, whose coffin,
mounted on a sable catafalco, was borne upon the middle boat of three that
moved abreast. The barges on either side bristled with the bayonets of
soldiery, but the dead man was alone in his boat, except for one strange
figure that stood at the head of the coffin, and rested its glittering
hand upon the black fall of the drapery. This was a man clad cap-a-pie in
a perfect suit of gleaming mail, with his visor down, and his shoulders
swept by the heavy raven plumes of his helm. As at times he moved from
side to side, and glanced upward at the old palaces, sad in the yellow
morning light, he put out of sight, for me, every thing else upon the
Canal, and seemed the ghost of some crusader come back to Venice, in
wonder if this city, lying dead under the hoofs of the Croat, were indeed
that same haughty Lady of the Sea who had once sent her blind old Doge to
beat down the pride of an empire and disdain its crown.



CHAPTER IX.

A DAY-BREAK RAMBLE.


One summer morning the mosquitoes played for me with sleep, and won. It