a loss to account for the so-called Throne of Attila, which stands in the
grass-grown piazza before the cathedral; and I fear that it may really
have been after all only the seat which the ancient Tribunes of Torcello
occupied on public occasions. It is a stone arm-chair, of a rude
stateliness, and though I questioned its authenticity, I went and sat down
in it a little while, to give myself the benefit of a doubt in case Attila
had really pressed the same seat.

As soon as our gondola touched the grassy shores at Torcello, Giovanna's
children, Beppi and Nina, whom we had brought with us to give a first
experience of trees and flowers and mother earth, leaped from the boat and
took possession of land and water. By a curious fatality the little girl,
who was bred safely amid the hundred canals of Venice, signalized her
absence from their perils by presently falling into the only canal in
Torcello, whence she was taken dripping, to be confined at a farm-house
during the rest of our stay. The children were wild with pleasure, being
absolutely new to the country, and ran over the island, plucking bouquets
of weeds and flowers by armsful. A rake, borne afield upon the shoulder of
a peasant, afterwhile fascinated the Venetian Beppi, and drew him away to
study its strange and wonderful uses.

The simple inhabitants of Torcello came forth with gifts, or rather
bargains, of flowers, to meet their discoverers, and, in a little while,
exhausted our soldi. They also attended us in full force when we sat down
to lunch,--the old, the young men and maidens, and the little children,
all alike sallow, tattered, and dirty. Under these circumstances, a sense
of the idyllic and the patriarchal gave zest to our collation, and moved
us to bestow, in a splendid manner, fragments of the feast among the poor
Torcellani. Knowing the abstemiousness of Italians everywhere, and seeing
the hungry fashion in which the islanders clutched our gifts and devoured