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The figure on the Dogana ball, which from certain points has almost as much lightness as Gian Bologna's famous Mercury, represents Fortune and turns with the wind. Among the pictures is a much dam-aged classical scene supposed to represent Apollo and Daphne in a romantic landscape.
He had wrapped himself up in a heavy travelling-rug, and by his side reposed a pair of crutches, so that when they drew up before the little roadside office of the Italian dogana he was reclining upon a cushion presenting quite a pathetic figure. But who had made all these preparations for his flight? He held his breath as the chauffeur sounded his horn to announce his arrival.
Had they at the dogana discovered the trick and telephoned from the frontier? Instantly the fugitive reassumed his role of invalid, and no sooner had he settled himself than the second man in a cocked hat and heavy black cloak opened the door and peered within. Another lamp was flashed upon his face. The carabineer asked in Italian: "What is your name, signore?"
One of them carried her box to the office of the Dogana, but a large party of Americans had come by the same train and the officials were too busily engaged in turning over the contents of their innumerable Saratogas to do more than scrabble in chalk on the side of her shabby leather trunk and shake their heads at the proffered key, and soon she was in a vettura clattering down the wide new Via Nazionale.
Over the bridges of San Cristoforo and San Gregorio, through the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and I walk in darkness, pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push our way along its Riva to the point of the Dogana. We are out at sea alone, between the Canalozzo and the Giudecca. A moist wind ruffles the water and cools our forehead.
Stars came out, uncertainly at first, and then in strength, reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us and let us pass. Madonna's lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the harbour-pile. The city grew before us.
The canal of the Giudecca was one black mass of gondolas, which rendered even a casual glimpse of the water scarcely obtainable; and it was amidst the cries of the gondoliers and the noise of boats knocking against each other, that the young painter passed the Dogana and reached the grand canal.
The charming architectural promontory of the Dogana stretches out the most graceful of arms, balancing in its hand the gilded globe on which revolves the delightful satirical figure of a little weathercock of a woman. This Fortune, this Navigation, or whatever she is called she surely needs no name catches the wind in the bit of drapery of which she has divested her rotary bronze loveliness.
Everyone who has been to Venice can recall this scene and the decisive way in which the Dogana thrusts into the lagoon like the prow of a ship of which the Salute's domes form the canvas. But to see Venice from the Dogana is a rarer experience. No sooner does one round the point the Punta della Salute and come to the Giudecca canal than everything changes.
Having thus resolved to serve Farnese and also to finish the chapel in S. Marcello, he obtained for Federigo from M. Tizio da Spoleti, the master of the household to the above-named Cardinal, the commission to paint the façade of a house that he had on the Piazza della Dogana, near S. Eustachio; which was very welcome to Federigo, for he had never desired anything so much as to have some work altogether for himself.
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