Chapter 4

"'T will make me think
The world is full of rubs, and that my fortune
Runs 'gainst the bias."
RICHARD THE SECOND.

Though Venice at that hour was so gay in her squares, the rest of the
town was silent as the grave. A city in which the hoof of horse or the
rolling of wheels is never heard, necessarily possesses a character of
its own; but the peculiar form of the government, and the long training
of the people in habits of caution, weighed on the spirits of the gay.
There were times and places, it is true, when the buoyancy of youthful
blood, and the levity of the thoughtless, found occasion for their
display--nor were they rare; but when men found themselves removed from
the temptation, and perhaps from the support of society, they appeared
to imbibe the character of their sombre city.

Such was the state of most of the town, while the scene described in the
previous chapter was exhibited in the lively piazza of San Marco. The
moon had risen so high that its light fell between the range of walls,
here and there touching the surface of the water, to which it imparted a
quivering brightness, while the domes and towers rested beneath its
light in a solemn but grand repose. Occasionally the front of a palace
received the rays on its heavy cornices and labored columns, the gloomy
stillness of the interior of the edifice furnishing, in every such
instance, a striking contrast to the richness and architectural beauty
without. Our narrative now leads us to one of these patrician abodes of
the first class.

A heavy magnificence pervaded the style of the dwelling. The vestibule
was vast, vaulted, and massive. The stairs, rich in marbles, heavy and
grand. The apartments were imposing in their gildings and sculpture,
while the walls sustained countless works on which the highest geniuses
of Italy had lavishly diffused their power. Among these relics of an age
more happy in this respect than that of which we write, the connoisseur
would readily have known the pencils of Titian, Paul Veronese, and
Tintoretto--the three great names in which the subjects of St. Mark so
justly prided themselves. Among these works of the higher masters were
mingled others by the pencils of Bellino, and Montegna, and Palma
Vecchio--artists who were secondary only to the more renowned colorists
of the Venetian school. Vast sheets of mirrors lined the walls, wherever
the still more precious paintings had no place; while the ordinary
hangings of velvet and silk became objects of secondary admiration, in a
scene of nearly royal magnificence. The cool and beautiful floors, made
of a composition in which all the prized marbles of Italy and of the
East polished to the last degree of art, were curiously embedded, formed