but it gave upon some green and ever-rustling tree-tops, that rose to it
from a tiny garden-ground, no bigger than a pocket handkerchief. Through
this window, also, we could see the quaint, picturesque life of the canal;
and from another room we could reach a little terrace above the water. We
were not in the _appartamento signorile_, [Footnote: The noble floor
--as the second or third story of the palace is called.]--that was above,
--but we were more snugly quartered on the first story from the ground-
floor, commonly used as a winter apartment in the old times. But it had
been cut up, and suites of rooms had been broken according to the caprice
of successive landlords, till it was not at all palatial any more. The
upper stories still retained something of former grandeur, and had
acquired with time more than former discomfort. We were not envious of
them, for they were humbly let at a price less than we paid; though we
could not quite repress a covetous yearning for their arched and carven
windows, which we saw sometimes from the canal, above the tops of the
garden trees.

The gondoliers used always to point out our palace (which was called Casa
Falier) as the house in which Marino Faliero was born; and for a long time
we clung to the hope that it might be so. But however pleasant it was, we
were forced, on reading up the subject a little, to relinquish our
illusion, and accredit an old palace at Santi Apostoli with the
distinction we would fain have claimed for ours. I am rather at a loss to
explain how it made our lives in Casa Falier any pleasanter to think that
a beheaded traitor had been born in it, but we relished the superstition
amazingly as long as we could possibly believe in it. What went far to
confirm us at first in our credulity was the residence, in another part of
the palace, of the Canonico Falier, a lineal descendant of the unhappy
doge. He was a very mild-faced old priest, with a white head, which he
carried downcast, and crimson legs, on which he moved but feebly. He owned