one, so low that its hooded aviator could be distinguished and the
bands of color across the belly of the car. It skirted the city toward
the Adriatic more cautiously. Later it was rumored that the second
aeroplane had been brought down in the lagoons and its men captured.

Thereafter no one tried to sleep: the little Venetian bridges and
passages were filled with talking people, and rumors of the damage
done began to come in. Eleven bombs in all were dropped on this first
attack, killing nobody and doing no serious harm, except possibly at
the arsenal where one fell. I was at the local police station when
one of the unexploded bombs was brought in. It was of the incendiary
type containing petroleum. Also there had been picked up somewhere in
the canals the half of a Munich newspaper, which seemed to indicate,
although there was nothing of special significance in the sheet, that
the monoplane was German rather than Austrian. Yet Germany had not yet
declared war on Italy. But was it not the German Kaiser who had threatened
to destroy Italy's art treasures? Were not the German armies in Flanders
and France making war against defenceless, unmilitary monuments?

* * * * *

I realized now the necessity of those preparations to guard the
treasures of Venice, priceless and irreplaceable--why the Belle Arti
had been emptied, and the Colleoni trussed with an ugly wooden framework.
But little at the best could be done to protect Venice herself, which lies
exposed in all her fragile loveliness to the attacks of the new Vandals.
The delicate palaces,--already crumbling from age,--the marvelous facade
of the Ducal Palace with its lustrous color, the leaning _campanili_, the
little churches filled with noble monuments to its great ones,--all were
helpless before an aerial attack, or shelling from warships. Nothing could