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Updated: June 1, 2025
Night generally surprises me in the midst of my reveries; I return, lulled in my gondola by the murmur of waters, pass about an hour with M. de R., whose imagination and sensibility almost equal your own; then, retire to sleep, and dream of the Euganeans. August 27th. I am just returned from visiting the isles of Burano, Torcello, and Mazorbo, distant about five miles from Venice.
A Count from Torcello is the title which Venetian persiflage gives to improbable noblemen; and thus even the pride of the dead Republic of Torcello has passed into matter of scornful jest, as that of the dead Republic of Venice may likewise in its day. When we leave the riva of Casa Falier, we pass down the Grand Canal, cross the Basin of St.
The palaces of Torcello or Rialto were houses, not of war, but of peace; no dark masses of tower and wall, but bright with marbles and frescoes, and broken with arcades of fretted masonry. Venice, in a word, to her very close was a city of nobles, the one place in the modern world where the old senatorial houses of the fifth century lived and ruled as of old. But it was a city of Roman nobles.
Fra Paolo never gave the people many words, but sometimes they were strong and beautiful, like an old poem, and in their own Venetian not in the Latin which had been made for the great ones. "It was a wonderful book, written long ago," he told them; "before the Bishop of Altinum fled with his people to Torcello and built the old Duomo; before Venice began to be."
But it is here that one can best study the story of its birth; it is easier to realize those centuries of exile and buffeting for life amid the dreary flats, the solitude, the poverty of Torcello than beneath the gleaming front of the Ducal Palace or the mosaics of St. Mark.
No, his nieces would not be with him, he had told Vittorio. One was gone to Torcello, and the other had an engagement for the evening, which Vittorio thought peccato. The padrone proposed to float about in the moonlight for a while, and listen to the music, and this, at least, was benissimo and commanded the gondolier's warmest approval.
The simple inhabitants of Torcello came forth with gifts, or rather bargains, of flowers, to meet their discoverers, and, in a little while, exhausted our soldi. They also attended us in full force when we sat down to lunch, the old, the young men and maidens, and the little children, all alike sallow, tattered, and dirty.
When I slept that night I dreamed of an altar-piece in the Temple of Folly. The goddess sat enthroned beneath a canopy hung with bells and corals. On her lap was a beautiful winged smiling genius, who flourished two bright torches. On her left hand stood the man of Modena with his white lamb, a new S. John. On her right stood the man of Torcello with his keys, a new S. Peter.
The interior presents a crowded assemblage of ornaments, elaborate mosaic pavements, and inlaid work without end. The high altar, placed in a semicircular recess, which reminded me of the church at Torcello, glitters with barbaric paintings on a gold ground, and receives the strongest glow of light imaginable from five windows, filled up with transparent marble clouded like tortoiseshell.
Why should not the sacred remains be stolen from the Egyptian city and brought to Venice? Why not? The Doge therefore arranged with two adventurers, Rustico of Torcello and Buono of Malamocco, to make the attempt; and they were successful. When the body was exhumed such sweetness proceeded from it that all Alexandria marvelled, but did not trace the cause.
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