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When they were exhausted, fresh workmen took their places, and in the incredibly short time of four days, the two castles were finished. The workmen were next set to level the paling and earthwork, from Lido to San Spirito, and in the course of a fortnight the lofty and massive stone walls were erected. By this time, something like a fleet was at Pisani's disposal.

Even Pietro was aroused to admiration, and as the music died away and the crowds began to disperse, he exclaimed: "There's no doubt but that Venice has outdone herself, and it was a master stroke to make such use of homing pigeons. These spoiled birds that flutter about the Square have no spirit in them, and I doubt if one of them could carry a message even from the Lido!"

The answer was in the harsher dialect of Calabria, and it was given with the rough familiarity of a seaman. "La Bella Sorrentina is no housekeeper of a curato! She is not a damsel to take a siesta with a Tunisian rover prowling about in her neighborhood. Hadst ever been beyond the Lido, thou wouldst have known the difference between chasing the felucca and catching her."

"We are born, and we die that much is known to us all; but the when and the where are mysteries, until time reveals them." "Thou art not a man to act without good motive. Though these Israelites could not foresee their visit to the Lido, thine hath not been without intention." "I am here, Don Camillo Monforte, because my spirit hath need of room.

The physician became at once aware that Browning's confidence was far from receiving the warrant in which he believed. Still he maintained his customary two hours' walk each day. Towards the close of November, on a day of fog, he returned from the Lido with symptoms of a bronchial cold. He dealt with the trouble as he was accustomed, and did not take to his bed.

The tears were hardly yet dry in the despairing eyes that had seen the French fleet sail away from the Lido, after Solferino, without firing a shot in behalf of Venice; but Lombardy, the Duchies, the Sicilies, had all passed to Sardinia, and the Pope alone represented the old order of native despotism in Italy.

And finally, in the common Mediterranean sea-horses, which you can pick up by dozens on the Lido at Venice, and a specimen of which exists in the dried form in every domestic museum, the pouch is permanently closed by coalescence of the edges, leaving a narrow opening in front, through which the small hippocampi creep out one by one as soon as they consider themselves capable of buffeting the waves of the Adriatic.

There were few travellers entering Venice on one of its world-famous moonlit nights who were so sad at heart as were these two. And there were few travellers in Venice as heavy hearted as was the man who next morning took one of the earliest boats out to the Lido. Muller and Mrs. Bernauer were on the same boat watching him from a hidden corner.

Mystic, felucca, xebec, brigantine, and three-masted ship, were apparently floating past them, as they shot through the maze of shipping, when Gino bent forward and drew the attention of his master to a large gondola, which was pulling with a lazy oar towards them, from the direction of the Lido.

As the galleys passed beyond the Lido into the wider water and the Daughter of Venice stood in her royal wedding-robes beside the Doge, under the golden canopy of the Bucentoro, a rosy light flashing from the circlet of rubies which, like the espousal ring of the Serenissimo, had been consecrated with solemn mass and benediction by the Patriarch of Venice, did the words of the ancient rite occur to some among that throng of nobles, perchance, as an omen?