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Updated: May 9, 2025
"It belonged to the Pisani, a famous family of Venice," said the Chauffeulier as we sailed by. "But Napoleon took it as he took so many other good things in this part of the world and gave it to his stepson Eugène Beauharnais." "I've never thought about Napoleon in connection with Venice, somehow," I said.
When we arrived on the scene, with our hands full of scents made and bottled by the banished monks, quaint pottery, and photographs of frescoes, general interest was transferred to us, but only for a moment. Even Maida's beauty failed as an attraction beside the starting-handle of the car, when the Chauffeulier turned it.
Barrymore seized the starting handle, and gave it the one vigorous twist which wakes the engine when it is napping. But almost for the first time the motor was refractory. The handle recoiled so violently and unexpectedly that the Chauffeulier staggered back and trod on the toes of the fat man of the crowd, while at the same time there burst from the inner being of the car a loud report.
For a while we ran smoothly along a road on a high embankment, which reminded Sir Ralph and the Chauffeulier of the Loire; less beautiful though, they thought, despite the great wedding-ring of white mountains that girdled the country round.
We all got out as if we had stopped on purpose, and the hotel which Fate and our Chauffeulier had chosen proved very fair, though too modern to be in the picture. If the automobile had flashed us to Mars things could hardly have been more unfamiliar to our eyes than when we walked out next morning to find ourselves in the midst of a great fête.
"How long a time shall we spend in Padua, Countess?" asked the Chauffeulier as we came within sight of a gateway, some domes and campanili. "Oh, don't let's make up our mind till we get there," replied Aunt Kathryn comfortably. "But we are there," said he. "In another minute the little men of the dazio will be tapping our bags as a doctor taps his patient's lungs." Padua!
We expected, if Beechy were well, to get on next day; but the Chauffeulier was troubled about the road between Ragusa and Cattaro and no proper "route-book" existing for that part of the world, unexplored by motors, he could find out surprisingly little from any one.
Suddenly and arbitrarily it was the rule to keep on the left side instead of the right, and the Chauffeulier shot across before a tram, approaching at the speed of a train, could run us down. "That's the worst of this part of Italy," I heard him shout over the din to Maida.
The Chauffeulier set them to music by quoting from Shelley's "Lines Written in Dejection in the Euganean Hills" a sweet old-fashioned title of other days, and words so beautiful that for a moment I was depressed in sympathy though I couldn't help feeling that I should be happy in the Euganean Hills.
I couldn't help being disappointed, because I'd wanted the Chauffeulier to be with us when I saw Venice first; but I couldn't say that; and I'm afraid he thought, as everybody was silent, that nobody cared.
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