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Updated: June 13, 2025
Dawn was growing over the water, and the gray and oily surface of the lagoon was closely dotted with gondolas, distinct and black in the morning twilight; they came sweeping on from San Nicolò and Castello black and red, breast to breast gathering impetus as they neared the Piazzetta, in numbers which must have left every traghetto of Venice deserted; Nicolotti and Castellani allies, since they never had been friends!
These, with his tufted nose and his tragic attitude, gave him an appearance so grotesque and hideous that Zoë, after springing to her feet and throwing her arms wildly aloft, fell in a dead faint into Sampey's arms. Bat gloated over his rival; Castellani was dumfounded. Presently Sampey's nerve returned with his wits.
"With my token thou canst command the loyalty of every Nicolotto is it thine oar that made that rustle? and perchance, if there were a rising of the traghetti to demand aught of the Signoria come nearer, Antonio! the Castellani also, if they willed to join with their traghetti in asking for justice would not serve under my token the less heartily for the word, confided low to their bancali dost understand? that if their taxes and their fines oppress them, these also, I being free, will pay this year to the maledetto Avvogadoro del Commun."
So Piero, laughing at the ease with which he had carried his point for nothing but the asking, and it had to be done, since he had promised Marina, had his interview alone with Fra Paolo, and passed easily through the group of disappointed friars, under those exquisitely wrought arcades to his gondola, thanking them with nonchalance and pressing them to avail themselves more often of the eager service of his barcarioli, that the blessing of the Madonna might be upon their traghetti, to the discomfiture of their rivals the Castellani.
The announcement stunned the Wild Man. Castellani himself had a hard mental struggle to realize the situation, and then, with his accustomed equanimity and his old-time air of authority, he said: "Well, phat is oll the row aboot, annyhow? D'ye want to shpile th' mon's thrick, Misther Bat?
Since this happening Piero had been indeed a great man among the people a popular idol, with a degree of power difficult to estimate by one unfamiliar with the customs and traditions of Venice; holding the key, practically, to all the traghetti of Venice, since even before this sweeping disaffection of the Castellani the Nicolotti were invariably acknowledged to be the more powerful faction, so that now it was a trifling matter to coerce a rival offending traghetto; and gondoliers, private and public, were, to say the least, courteous toward these nobles of the Nicolotti, who were dealing with tosi as never before in the history of Venice.
Castellani junior, a fine, patriotic young fellow, who has since been banished for his liberal ideas of government, smiled as he read astonishment in our eyes, and proceeded forthwith to dazzle us still further with more gems of rarest beauty, till then hidden away in his strong iron boxes.
Castellani supposes the computation of Mengotti to fall much below the truth, and there can be no doubt that a vastly larger quantity of earth and gravel is washed down from the Alps and the Apennines than is carried to the sea. Castellani, Dell Immediata Influenza delle Salce sul corso delle Acqua, i., pp. 42,43.
To the della Robbias we come in the Castellani chapel in the right transept, which has two full-length statues by either Luca or Andrea, in the gentle glazed medium, of S. Francis and S. Bernard, quite different from anything we have seen or shall see, because isolated. The other full-size figures by these masters such as those at Impruneta are placed against the wall.
Fashion, if not public feeling, came to aid the renaissance, and others, in Rome and elsewhere, undertook similar work after the models of Castellani. It may be asserted that the triumph of the classic jewelry is now complete. Castellani renounced the modern methods of chasing and engraving, and adhered only to the antique fashion of overlaying with cords, grains, and finest threads of gold.
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