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It was thus Pierre reflected as the cab rolled on. Still he was not unconscious of his surroundings. As he passed the Palazzo di Venezia it seemed to him to be crumbling beneath some assault of the invisible, for the mist had already swept away its battlements, and the lofty, bare, fearsome walls looked as if they were staggering from the onslaught of the growing darkness.
A more insolent display of public wealth a more lavish outpouring of human genius in the service of State pageantry, cannot be imagined. Sublime over all allegories and histories depicted in those multitudes of paintings, sits Venezia herself enthroned and crowned, the personification of haughtiness and power.
His fellow-passengers were a talkative and somewhat egotistical company, and he was left more completely to himself, for the first few moments than, on ordinary occasions, he would have found quite to his mind. No one was likely to note the persistency with which his glance returned to one of the high, stone balconies of the Hotel Venezia.
The straight Corso itself, or what is the most important part of it to Romans, runs through the Region from San Lorenzo in Lucina to Piazza di Sciarra, and beyond that, southwards, it forms the western boundary of Trevi as far as the Palazzo di Venezia, and the Ripresa de' Barberi the 'Catching of the Racers. West of the Corso, the Region takes in the Monte Citorio and the Piazza of the Pantheon, but not the Pantheon itself, and eastwards it embraces the new quarter which was formerly the Villa Ludovisi, and follows the Aurelian wall, from Porta Salaria to Porta Pinciana.
Whether any of the other cities of Italy have in any degree ceased to merit the traditional epithets which so many successive generations assigned to them how far Genoa is still la Superba, Bologna la Grassa, Padua la Dotta, Lucca la Industriosa I cannot say. Venezia is unquestionably still la Bella.
There was Paul II, the magnificent Venetian who built the Palazzo di Venezia; Sixtus IV, to whom one owes the Sixtine Chapel; and Julius II and Leo X, who made Rome a city of theatrical pomp, prodigious festivities, tournaments, ballets, hunts, masquerades, and banquets.
At Perarolo, where the Boite joins the Piave, there is a lump of a mountain in the angle between the rivers, and around this we crawled in long curves until we had risen a thousand feet, and arrived at the same Hotel Venezia, where we were to dine. While dinner was preparing, the Deacon and I walked up to Pieve di Cadore, the birthplace of Titian.
Gliding in the gondola through the narrow canals at low tide, she leaned back simulating stupor, with one word 'Venezia! Her brother was commanded to smoke: 'Fumez, fumez, Roland! As soon as the steel-crested prow had pushed into her Paradise of the Canal Grande, she quietly shrouded her hair from tobacco, and called upon rapture to recompense her for her sufferings.
But it was necessary to come back from the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza di Venezia, then return to the former square, and come back yet again, following the entire Corso three and four times without wearying. The delighted Dario showed himself and looked about him, exchanging salutations.
This establishment had many advantages for lovers. To begin with, it bore a poetical name the Café Venezia Triffitt, who frequently read Byron and Shelley to his adored one, said it made one think of moonlight and gondolas, and similar adjuncts to what he called parfaite amour.
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