Several palaces dispute the honor of being Bianca Cappello's birthplace,
but Mutinelli awards the distinction to the palace at Sant' Appollinare
near the Ponte Storto. One day a gondolier vaingloriously rowed us to the
water-gate of the edifice through a very narrow, damp, and uncleanly
canal, pretending that there was a beautiful staircase in its court. At
the moment of our arrival, however, Bianca happened to be hanging out
clothes from a window, and shrilly disclaimed the staircase, attributing
this merit to another Palazzo Cappello. We were less pleased with her
appearance here, than with that portrait of her which we saw on another
occasion in the palace of a lady of her name and blood. This lady has
since been married, and the name of Cappello is now extinct.

The Palazzo Mocenigo, in which Byron lived, is galvanized into ghastly
newness by recent repairs, and as it is one of the ugliest palaces on the
Grand Canal, it has less claim than ever upon one's interest. The
custodian shows people the rooms where the poet wrote, dined, and slept,
and I suppose it was from the hideous basket-balcony over the main door
that one of his mistresses threw herself into the canal. Another of these
interesting relicts is pointed out in the small butter-and-cheese shop
which she keeps in the street leading from Campo Sant' Angelo to San
Paterinan: she is a fat sinner, long past beauty, bald, and somewhat
melancholy to behold. Indeed, Byron's memory is not a presence which I
approach with pleasure, and I had most enjoyment in his palace when I
thought of good-natured little Thomas Moore, who once visited his lordship
there. Byron himself hated the recollection of his life in Venice, and I
am sure no one else need like it. But he is become a _cosa di
Venezia_, and you cannot pass his palace without having it pointed out
to you by the gondoliers. Early after my arrival in the city I made the
acquaintance of an old smooth-shaven, smooth-mannered Venetian, who said