Gondolas, filled with noble dames, appeared on the canals; the blinds of
the palaces were raised for the admission of the sea-breeze;--and music
began to be heard in the port, on the bridges, and under the balconies
of the fair. The course of society was not to be arrested, merely
because the wronged were unavenged, or the innocent suffered.
There stood, then, on the grand canal, as there stand now, many palaces
of scarcely less than royal magnificence. The reader has had occasion to
become acquainted with one or two of these splendid edifices, and it is
now our duty to convey him, in imagination, to another.
The peculiarity of construction, which is a consequence of the watery
site of Venice, gives the same general character to all the superior
dwellings of that remarkable town. The house to which the thread of the
narrative now leads us, had its water-gate, its vestibule, its massive
marble stairs, its inner court, its magnificent suites of rooms above,
its pictures, its lustres, and its floors of precious stones embedded in
composition, like all those which we have already found it necessary to
describe.
The hour was ten, according to our own manner of computing time. A small
but lovely family picture presented itself, deep within the walls of the
patrician abode to which we have alluded. There was a father, a
gentleman who had scarcely attained the middle age, with an eye in which
spirit, intelligence, philanthropy, and, at that moment, paternal
fondness were equally glowing.
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