United States or New Caledonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then comes the garden of the Palazzo Pesaro, now the Paraguay consulate; then the Sagredo, an extremely ancient Gothic building with a beautiful window and balcony, now badly served by paint and stucco and shutters; and then another traghetto at the Campo S. Sofia, with a vine ramping over its shelter.
I had a room in the top of the Palazzo da Mula on the Grand Canal just above the Salute and within a step of the traghetto of San Giglio. By going out of the rear door and keeping close to the wall of the houses skirting the Fondamenta San Zorzi, I could reach the traghetto without getting wet. The Quadri was the nearest caffe, anyhow, and so I started.
"Dinner over and paid for, my host put on his coat, said 'Good-night' with rather an embarrassed air, and without looking at anyone in the room not even Roscoff, who made a move as if to intercept him Roscoff had some pictures of his own to sell walked dejectedly out of the caffe and disappeared in the night. "When I crossed the traghetto the following evening the storm had not abated.
It has a glazed loggia looking down to the Riva. We next come to a brand new spacious building divided into apartments, then a tiny house, and then the rather squalid Palazzo Martinengo. The calle and traghetto of S. Gregorio, and two or three old palaces and the new building which now holds Salviati's glass business, follow.
She cultivated their dialect, she renewed their boats, she piously relighted at the top of the tide-washed <i>pali</i> of traghetto or lagoon the neglected lamp of the tutelary Madonnetta; she took cognisance of the wives, the children, the accidents, the troubles, as to which she became, perceptibly, the most prompt, the established remedy.
But of late there had been much unruliness among the younger members of the traghetti, and a growing inability among their officers to cope with increasing difficulties, because of these barcarioli tosi, who lived in open rebellion against this goodly system of law, poaching upon the dearly bought rights of the traghetto gondoliers, yet escaping all taxes.
"I will take thee and thy gondola, since thou knowest Murano," said the artist kindly; "but I must go swiftly, and I would not tax thee. Thou shalt have thy fare, but I will pay for another gondolier also from the traghetto; he must be young and lusty. Choose thou him and hasten."
And, of course, like London cabs, the gondolas may be taken off them for trips. The municipality, however, makes it a condition, under penalty of fine to the traghetto, that each station should always be provided with two boats for the service of the ferry.
"When I stepped out of the gondola on the other side of the canal and walked up the wooden steps to the level of the Campo, my mysterious friend moved out from under the shadow of the traghetto box and stood where the light from the lantern hanging in front of the Madonna fell upon his face. His eyes, as usual, were fixed on mine. He had evidently been waiting for me.
On such a night the very spirit of Venice is abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the Sea. Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi's "Forza del Destino" at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the narrow calle which leads to the traghetto of the Salute.
Word Of The Day