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Updated: September 13, 2025
From the lagoon rose a damp sea-breeze. What was it all? Ah! I began to understand: that story of old Count Alvise's, the death of his grand-aunt, Pisana Vendramin. Yes, it was about that I had been dreaming. I returned to my room; I struck a light, and sat down to my writing-table. Sleep had become impossible. I tried to work at my opera.
"Are you idiotic?" cried Vendramin. "No; you are mad; for madness, the crisis we despise, is the memory of an antecedent condition acting on our present state of being. The genius of my dreams has taught me that, and much else! You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti; nay, dear Emilio, take them separately; it will be far wiser. Raphael alone ever united form and idea.
"It seems," says the Count, "that there was one of his songs in particular which was called the 'Husbands' Air' L'Aria dei Marit because they didn't enjoy it quite as much as their better-halves.... My grand-aunt, Pisana Renier, married to the Procuratore Vendramin, was a patrician of the old school, of the style that was getting rare a hundred years ago.
By this time, the doctor and Vendramin, Capraja, Cataneo, and Genovese had made their way to the piazzetta. It was midnight. The glittering bay, outlined by the churches of San Giorgio and San Paulo at the end of the Giudecca, and the beginning of the Grand Canal, that opens so mysteriously under the Dogana and the church of Santa Maria della Salute, lay glorious and still.
The physician, startled by the contrast, was, in fact, clapping his hands, carried away by admiration for one of the finest compositions of modern music. "Brava la Doni!" said Vendramin, who had heard the Duchess. "Now the introduction is ended," said she. "You have gone through a great sensation," she added, turning to the Frenchman.
The tears the Duchess wiped away as she quitted her box showed plainly that she was thinking of the Venice that is no more; and Vendramin kissed her hand. The performance ended with the most extraordinary chaos of noises: abuse and hisses hurled at Genovese and a fit of frenzy in praise of la Tinti. It was a long time since the Venetians had had so lively an evening.
My grandaunt Vendramin laughed when this story was told her, refused to go to hear this insolent dog, and added that it might be quite possible by the aid of spells and infernal pacts to kill a gentildonna, but as to making her fall in love with a lackey never!
"I? I possess the whole world!" cried Capraja, with a sovereign gesture of his hand. "And I have devoured it!" replied the Duke. They observed that the physician and Vendramin were gone, and that they were alone. Next morning, after a night of perfect happiness, the Prince's sleep was disturbed by a dream.
It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's mortality. § XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478, after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice.
"But, carino," said she in Emilio's ear, "are not you as far better than every expression of love, as cause is superior to effect?" After handing the Duchess to her gondola, Emilio waited for Vendramin to go to Florian's. The Cafe Florian at Venice is a quite undefinable institution. Merchants transact their business there, and lawyers meet to talk over their most difficult cases.
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