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Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour of stout rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land, and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall block piled on block of Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for the waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful waste.
The poor goddesses were both headless, and some cruel fortune had struck off their hands, and they looked strangely forlorn in the swaggering attitudes of the absurd period of art to which they belonged: they extended their mutilated arms toward the sea for pity, but it regarded them not; and we passed before them scoffing at their bad taste, for we were hungry, and it was yet some distance to Malamocco.
I thought. "There seems to be no exercise at all in this place." "Isn't there some walk?" "I wonder," I answered. "We might walk to Chioggia perhaps, along the Lido." And we tried that, but the long stretch of beach fatigued Margaret's back, and gave her blisters, and we never got beyond Malamocco....
Even Signor Girolamo, although he had been very frugal, felt rather uncomfortable; but no one in my gondola was really ill, excepting Madonna Elisabetta and Cavaliere Ursino, at the port of Chioggia. Most of the others, especially the women, were very ill. The weather now improved so much, that we arrived at Malamocco in quite good time.
In the time of Anafesto, the larger islands of the dogado formed the seats of powerful factions; the disproportion in point of influence between the Crown and the tribune of Malamocco or the tribune of Equilo was but slightly marked; and the abolition of that magistracy was a much more sweeping measure than the first makers of a doge would have dared to propose.
Here, a boat laden with market produce, its gay, striped sail bulging to the breeze; there, the towers of Malamocco and Poveglia, with the pretty vista of the channel between. Again, a rude shrine erected on piles, or a group of boys diving off a tumble-down wharf in the distance. It was very delightful, this monopoly of the young girl's attention.
Several Venetian gentlemen now entered our barge, and a certain Messer Francesco Capello, clad in a long mantle of white brocade, embroidered with large gold patterns, like your own, delivered an oration to the effect that this illustrious Signory, having heard of your presence at Ferrara, had sent two ambassadors to show the love they bear you, and that now, having heard of my Lady Mother's and my own visit to Venice, they had sent the other gentlemen who received us at Chioggia, and now, as a further token of their affection, sent these to Malamocco, to express the great pleasure the Signory felt at our coming, and to inform us that the Doge himself, with the Signory and a number of noble matrons, were about to give us welcome and do us honour to the best of their power.
The wheel of the steamer was as usual chewing the sea, and finding it unpalatable, and making vain efforts at expectoration. We were in sight of the breakwater outside Malamocco, and a pilot-boat was making us from the land.
Among remoter feasts in honor of national triumphs, was one on the Day of the Annunciation, commemorative of the removal of the capital of the Venetian isles to Rialto from Malamocco, after King Pepin had burnt the latter city, and when, advancing on Venice, he was met in the lagoons and beaten by the islanders and the tides: these by their recession stranding his boats in the mud, and those falling upon his helpless host with the fury of an insulted and imperiled people.
The very existence of Venice may be said to depend sometimes on these murazzi, which were finished at an immense cost by the Republic in the days of its decadence. The enormous monoliths which compose them had to be brought across the Adriatic in sailing vessels. Of all the Lidi, that of Malamocco is the weakest; and here, if anywhere, the sea might effect an entrance into the lagoon.
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