United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Beyond the bridge, which the ubiquitous Lion guards with menacing, uplifted paw, beyond the Piazzetta of San Pietro where the acacia trees are growing, down by the main canal, where the breath comes freer for it is broader than the one where the gondolas from the great houses of Venice gather and float lazily; past the line of low, whitewashed cottages bordering the narrow foot-path on either side, over the little wooden bridge that spans the lagoon, fifty feet across from bank to bank with its ugly traghetto at the farther end, a figure was often seen wending, with a child held in tender mother fashion, to the campo of the "Matrice," the mother church of San Donate.
And this they must have done at the traghetto di San Spirito. Neither the church nor the traghetto are now in existence, and this part of the story is therefore obscure. Having reached San Marco, he took a gondola at the Ponte della Paglia, where tourists are now wont to stand and contemplate the Ducal Palace and the Bridge of Sighs.
He was beginning to feel a sense of satisfaction, not all barbaric, in the position he had won among men who had some views of order, and to perceive that there might be a lawful use, almost as pleasant, for those very attributes which had rendered him so formidable a foe outside the pale of traghetto civilization.
Two or three comers swell the group from the recesses of the dark little shop behind, for no other reason than that life is pleasant where so much is going on; and some maiden, into whose life a dawning romance is just creeping, confesses it with a brighter color as she hangs, half-timidly, her bunch of tinselled flowers before the red lamp of the good little Madonna of this traghetto benedetto, whose gondoliers are the bravest in all Venice!
"I have already shown it three times, kind woman, in Mestre, out on the lagoon at the guard's gondola, and at the Traghetto. My name is Andrea Delfin, my profession is that of a notary's legal clerk, as which I've worked in Brescia. I'm a calm person and never liked having any business with the police." "Just the better," said the woman, walking up the stairs again, ahead of her guest.
At the moment something HAD touched a Borodino and in the most vital of spots. This was nothing less than the heart of young Vittorio, the pride and hope of his father. He had seen the "Rose of the Shipyards," as she was now called, pass the traghetto of the Molo, off which lay his gondola awaiting custom, it was on one of the days when the two-soldi boy acted as chaperon, and his end had come.
"And many a fare I pay to light the traghetto of San Nicolò; with an ave for the favor of the Blessed Mother to confound the scoundrel Castellani, who threw a good Nicolotto over the Ponte Senza Parapetti, in the last fight; and it cost us oil enough to light Venice for a year faith of San Nicolò! to keep them from winning at our regatta maledetti!"
Then the Rio S. Maria Zobenigo o dei Furlani and a palace, opposite the steamboat station. Another palace, and then a busy traghetto, with vine leaves over its shelter, and looking up the campo we see the church of S. Maria del Giglio with all its holy statues.
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.
Kitty was in so much excitement after this conversation that when she reached the Campo San Maurizio, where she should have turned abruptly to the left, she wandered awhile up and down the campo, looking at the gondolas on the Traghetto between it and the Accademia, at the Church of San Maurizio, at the rising moon, and the bright lights in some of the shop windows of the small streets to the north.
Word Of The Day