of the ages of the finest work of man, was in danger of eternal
destruction. Venice rose from the green sea water like the city of
enchantment that Turner so often painted. Venice was never so lovely,
so wholly the palace of enchantment as she was then, stripped of all
the tourist triviality and vulgarity that she usually endures at this
season. It was Venice left to her ancient self in this hour of her
danger. She was like a marvelous, fragile, still beautiful great lady,
so delicate that the least violence might kill her! In this dying light
of the day she was already something unearthly, on the extreme marge
of our modern world....

That evening the restaurant windows were covered tight with shutters
and heavy screens before the doors. The waiter put a candle in a saucer
before your plate and you ate your food in this wavering light. There
was not the usual temptation to linger in the piazza after dinner, for
the cafes were all sealed against a betraying gleam of light and the
Venetian public had taken to heart the posted advice to stay within
doors and draw their wooden shutters. As I entered my room, the moon
was rising behind the Salute, throwing its light across the Canal on to
the walls of the palaces opposite. The soft night was full of murmuring
voices, for Venice is the most vocal of cities. The people were exchanging
views across their waterways from darkened house to house, speculating on
the chances of another aerial raid tonight. They were making salty jokes
about their enemies in the Venetian manner. The moonlight illuminated the
broad waterway beneath my window with its shuttered palaces as if it were
already day. A solitary gondola came around the bend of the Canal and its
boatman began to sing one of the familiar songs that once was bawled from
illuminated barges on spring nights like this, for the benefit of the
tourists in the hotels. To-night he was singing it for himself, because
of the soft radiance of the night, because of Venice. His song rose from