absolute, except for the light of a tiny lantern on the deck forward, I could put myself back in the middle ages. I could see the black barge of the Fante, the captain of the inquisitorial guard, swiftly rowed with muffled oars to the palazzo of the unhappy wretch who had offended against the laws of Venice. The barge stops at his door; the bolts are slipped by a spy within; the messenger of torture and imprisonment, somber as the night, makes his way to the bedside 130of the doomed man. He starts from his deep sleep; he is beckoned silently down the echoing stairs; he seats himself in the black barge; and so, shivering, he goes to his end.

Fante

130

We shot into one of the narrow, crooked little canals. And now our gondola scraped the very walls of the window-barred store-houses that once overflowed with the wealth of the Orient. It was impossible to think of myself as a simple gentleman with a letter of credit at my bankers. St. Hilary and I were marauders, adventurers, brawlers, and this prosaic umbrella between my knees was a long, keen blade, ready for a lively bout with the watch.

We were in the Giudecca now, dodging this chain and that of the shipping moored along the Fondamenta della Zattere. As we made for the shore opposite, the rain, which had been coming down in a gentle drizzle, fell smartly, and St. Hilary shouted to the gondolier to row faster.

Giudecca quarter is anything but fashionable. Gondoliers repeat the word twice with scorn when the tourist expresses a wish to go there. Steamers from Greece and America, laden with corn, are anchored along its quay. From early dawn to night, hundreds of barefooted stevedores, each with his sack on his shoulder, patter up the narrow plank that spans ship and shore. 131An instant they poise their burden on the scale that stands at the doorway of the magazines, while an official from the customs-house jealously notes that it is full weight. Then shouldering it again, they are swallowed up in the cavernous interiors.

131

Most of the old palaces of the Giudecca have degenerated into these store-houses. But here and there, as a thing so insignificant that it is overlooked, one finds a low-ceiled trattoria, where at the noon hour the stevedores drink the strong wines of Chioggia and shout out their lusty songs; or it may be an infinitesimal shop, where sharp-faced old women sell fish and cheese and cherries.

trattoria

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