drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly on the golden globes that tremble
like peacock-crests above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest
white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced over all its work, as
if exulting in its beauty--beauty which filled me with subtle, selfish
yearning to keep such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of
my whole life, and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless
shadow of it could never be fairly reflected in picture or poem.

Through the wavering snow-fall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the granite
pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, and the
winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so mild and gentle
he looked by the tender light of the storm. [Footnote: St. Theodore was
the first patron of Venice, but he was deposed and St. Mark adopted, when
the bones of the latter were brought from Alexandria. The Venetians seem
to have felt some compunctions for this desertion of an early friend, and
they have given St. Theodore a place on one of the granite pillars, while
the other is surmounted by the Lion, representing St. Mark. _Fra Marco e
Todaro_, is a Venetian proverb expressing the state of perplexity which
we indicate by the figure of an ass between two bundles of hay.] The
towers of the island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness;
the sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like
phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque
distance more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost
palpable, lay upon the mutest city in the world.



CHAPTER IV.

COMINCIA FAR CALDO.