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This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements, and the circumstances which determined her character and position among European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated, we find the names of all her hero princes of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
In the spring, two years after my visit to Malamocco, we people in Casa Falier made a long-intended expedition to the island of Torcello, which is perhaps the most interesting of the islands of the lagoons.
He was born at Passagno, near Asolo, in 1757, and was taught the elements of art by his grandfather and afterwards by a sculptor named Torretto, who recommended him to the Falier family as a "phenomenon". The Faliers made him their protégé, continued his education in Venice, and when the time was ripe sent him to Rome, the sculptors' Mecca.
Next the Rio del Duca is the pretty little Palazzo Falier, from one of whose windows Mr. Howells used to look when he was gathering material for his Venetian Life. Mr. Howells lived there in the early eighteen-sixties, when a member of the American Consulate in Venice.
Next the Casa Falier is a calle, and then the great Giustinian Lolin Palace with brown and yellow posts. Taglioni lived here for a while too.
However sad the fact, it is undeniable that the stories of the sausage- maker whose broth was flavored with murder, and the baker-boy who suffered guiltlessly, and that savage jest at the expense of the murderess, interest these people more than the high-well-born sorrows of the Foscari, the tragic fate of Carmagnola, or the story of Falier, which last they know partly, however, because of the scandal about Falier's wife.
I know that my feeling of brotherhood in the case of two sparrows, which obliged me by hopping down from a garden wall at the end of Calle Falier and promenading on the pavement, was quite humble and sincere; and that I resented the ill-nature of a cat, "Whom love kept wakeful and the muse," and who at that hour was spitefully reviling the morn from a window grating.
Nave, Torcello. | 17. Nave, Torcello. | 18. Ca' Falier, Venice. 5. South transept, St. Mark's. | 19. St. Zeno, Verona. 6. Northern portico, upper shafts, | 20. San Stefano, Venice. St. Mark's. | 21. Another of the same group. | 22. Nave, Salisbury. 8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan. | 23. Santa Fosca, Torcello. 9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.| 24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral. 10.
The Venetian ladies, when they bathed, went to the Lido, or else to the bath-houses in front of the Ducal Palace, where they saturated themselves a good part of the day, and drank coffee, and, possibly, gossiped. I think that our balconies at Palazzo Giustiniani were even better places to see the life of the Grand Canal from than the balcony of Casa Falier, which we had just left.
Here upon this paper I have written down the name of the woman and of her confederates who have hired the bravo Rocca to kill me to-night in the shadow of the church of San Salvatore. You will read that paper and the woman's name when you have my permission." Falier stepped back dumb with amazement.
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