Chapter VI: Book VI: 60 (2)

At six o'clock in the morning, they come to their gondolas, fastened to posts with their prows aground. Then they begin to scrape and wash their _barchette_ at the _Traghetti_, just as dragoons curry, brush and sponge their horses on picket. The ticklish sea-horse is restive and refuses to stand still under the movements of its horseman, who draws water in a wooden vessel and pours it over the sides and into the well of the craft. He several times repeats the aspersion, taking care to discard the water from the surface of the sea in order to obtain the cleaner water below. Then he scrubs the oars, polishes the brasses and the glass of the little black deck-house, dusts the cushions and carpets and rubs up the iron head of the prow. The whole is not done without a few words of humour or affection addressed, in the pretty Venetian dialect, to the skittish or docile gondola.

When the gondola's toilet is completed, the gondolier proceeds to make his own. He combs his hair, shakes out his jacket and his blue, red or grey cap, washes his face, feet and hands. His wife, daughter or mistress brings him a bowl containing a mess of vegetables, bread and meat. Breakfast over, each gondolier awaits Fortune, singing: he has her before his eyes, one foot in the air, holding out her scarf to the wind and serving as a weather-cock, at the top of the monument of the Dogana di Mare. Does she give the signal? The favoured gondolier, with oar upraised, starts out at the back of his craft, even as Achilles used to fly in former days, or as one of Franconi's[122] circus-riders gallops to-day on the crupper of a fiery steed. The gondola, shaped like a skate, glides over the water as over ice: "_Sia, stati! Sta longo!_" that does for the whole day. Then night comes, and the _calle_ will see my gondolier singing and drinking with his _zitella_ the half-sequin which I leave him, as I go off most certainly to replace Henry V. on the throne.

VENICE, _September_ 1833.

I was trying to find out, when I woke, why I liked Venice so much, when I suddenly remembered that I was in Brittany: it was the force of kindred that found utterance within me. Was there not, in Cæsar's time, in Armorica, a country of the Veneti[123]: _civitas Venetorum, civitas Venetica?_ Has not Strabo "said that they said" that the Veneti[124] were the descendants of the Veneti of Gaul?

It has been contradictorily held that the fishermen of Morbihan were a colony of the _pescatori_ of Palestrina: Venice, then, would be the mother and not the daughter of Vannes[125]. One can reconcile this by supposing, which for that matter is very probable, that Vannes and Venice were mutually brought to bed of one another. I therefore look upon the Venetians as Bretons; the gondoliers and I are cousins, sprung from the horn of Gaul: _cornu Galliæ._[126]

[Sidenote: On the Riva degli Schiavoni.]

Delighted with this thought, I went to breakfast in a café on the Riva degli Schiavoni. The bread was new, the tea scented, the cream as in Brittany, the butter as in the Prévalais; for butter, thanks to the progress of enlightenment, has improved everywhere: I have eaten excellent butter at Granada. The bustle of a harbour always delights me: barge-masters were picnicking; vendors of fruit and flowers offered me lemons, grapes and nosegays; fishermen got ready their tartans; naval cadets, stepping into a long-boat, went off to their lessons in naval tactics on board the flag-ship; gondolas were taking passengers to the Trieste steam-boat. Yet it was that same Trieste which was like to have had me cut down on the steps of the Tuileries by Bonaparte, as he threatened when, in 1807, I took it upon myself to write in the _Mercure_:

"It was reserved for us to find at the back of the Adriatic the
tomb of two king's daughters[127] whose funeral oration we had
heard delivered in an attic in London. Ah, at least the grave
that holds those noble ladies will have once heard its silence
broken; the sound of a Frenchman's foot-steps will have made
two Frenchwomen start in their coffins! The respects of a poor
gentleman, at Versailles, would have been nothing to princesses;
the prayer of a Christian, on foreign soil, will perhaps have been
agreeable to saints."

Some few years, it seems to me, have passed, since I began to serve the Bourbons: they have enlightened my fidelity, but they will not tire it I am breakfasting on the Riva degli Schiavoni, while waiting for the exile.

VENICE, _September_ 1833.

From the little table at which I sit, my eyes wander over all the roads: a breeze from the offing cools the air; the tide is rising; a three-master is coming in. The Lido on one side, the Doge's Palace on the other, the lagoons in the middle: that is the picture. It is from this port that so many glorious fleets set sail; old Dandolo sallied forth in all the pomp of naval chivalry, of which Villehardouin[128], who began our language and our Memoirs, has left us a description:

"And when the ships were laden with arms, and meats, and knights, and sergeants, and the shields were arrayed all round in the form of a frieze, and the banners waved, of which there were so many fair ones, never did fairer fleets sail from any port."

The morning scene in Venice also puts me in mind of the story of Captain Olivet and Zulietta, which was so well told:

"The gondola lay to, and I saw a dazzlingly beautiful young woman
step out, coquettishly dressed and very nimble. In three bounds
she was in the cabin and seated at my side, before I perceived
that a place had been laid for her. She was a brunette of twenty
years at the most, as charming as she was lively. She could speak
only Italian; her accent alone would have been enough to turn my
head. While eating and chatting, she fixed her eyes on me and then,
exclaiming, 'Holy Virgin! O my dear Brémond, how long it is since I
saw you!1 she threw herself into my arms, sealed her lips to mine
and pressed me almost to suffocation. Her large, black, Oriental
eyes darted shafts of fire into my heart; and although surprise
at first diverted my senses, my amorous feelings very rapidly
overcame me.... She told us that I was the image of M. de Brémond,
the director of the Tuscan custom-house; that she had been madly
in love with this M. de Brémond; that she was still madly in love
with him; that she had left him because she was a fool; that she
took me in his place; that she wanted to love me, since it suited
her; that, for the same reason, I must love her as long as it
suited her; and that, when she left me in the lurch, I must bear it
patiently as her dear Brémond had done. No sooner said than done....

"In the evening, we escorted her back to her apartments. While we
were talking, I noticed two pistols on her dressing-table.

"'Ah, ah!' said I, taking one up, 'here is a patch-box of a new
construction; may I ask what it is used for?'

"She said, with an ingenuous pride which made her still more
charming:

"'When I am complaisant to those whom I do not love, I make them
pay for the weariness they cause me: nothing can be fairer; but,
although I endure their caresses, I will not endure their insults,
and I shall not miss the first man who shall be wanting in respect
to me.'

'When I left her, I made an appointment for the next day. I did not
keep her waiting. I found her _in vestito di confidenza_, in a more
than wanton undress, which is known only in southern countries and
which I will not amuse myself with describing, although I remember
it too well.... I had no idea of the delights that awaited me.
I have spoken of Madame de Larnage, in the transports which the
recollection of her still sometimes awakens in me; but how old,
ugly, and cold she was, compared with my Zulietta! Do not attempt
to imagine the charms and graces of this bewitching girl; you would
be too far from the truth. The young virgins of the cloister are
not so fresh, the beauties of the harem are not so lively, the
houris of paradise are not so piquant.[129]"

This adventure ended with an eccentricity on the part of Rousseau and Zulietta's phrase:

"_Lascia le donne e studia la matematica._"

[Sidenote: Zulietta, Margherita Cogni.]

Lord Byron also gave up his life to paid Venuses: he filled the Mocenigo Palace with those Venetian beauties, who had " taken refuge," according to him, "under the _fazzioli._" Sometimes, perturbed by a feeling of shame, he fled, and spent the night on the water in his gondola. He had, as his favourite sultana, Margherita Cogni, surnamed, from her husband's condition, the Fornarina[130]:

"Very dark, tall"--it is Lord Byron who speaks--"the Venetian face,
very fine black eyes. She was two-and-twenty years old....

"In the autumn, one day, going to the Lido... we were overtaken
by a heavy squall. . . . . . . ....On our return, after a tight
struggle, I found Margarita on the open steps of the Mocenigo
Palace, on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing
through her tears, and the long dark hair, which was streaming,
drenched with rain, over her brows and breast. She was perfectly
exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her hair and dress about
her thin tall figure, and the lightning flashing round her, and
the waves rolling at her feet, made her look like Medea alighted
from her chariot, or the sybil of the tempest that was rolling
around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except
ourselves. On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me.... but
calling out to me, '_Ah! can' della Madonna, ne este il tempo per
andar' al' Lido!_--Ah! dog of the Virgin, is this a time to go to
the Lido?' ran into the house," etc.

In these two stories of Rousseau and Byron, one feels the difference in social position, character and education between the two men. Through the charm of the style of the author of the _Confessions_ peeps something vulgar, cynical, in bad form, in bad taste; the obscenity of expression peculiar to that period still further spoils the picture. Zulietta is superior to her lover in elevation of feeling and in habitual elegance: it is almost a fine lady smitten with the puny secretary of a paltry ambassador[131]. The same inferiority appears again when Rousseau arranges to bring up, with his friend Carrio, at their common expense, a little girl of eleven years whose favours, or rather whose tears, they were to share.

Lord Byron bears himself differently: he shines forth with the manners and the fatuousness of the aristocracy; a peer of Great Britain, playing with the woman of the people whom he has seduced, he raises her to himself by his caresses and the magic of his talent Byron arrived in Venice rich and famous: Rousseau landed there poor and unknown; everybody knows the palace that blabbed the errors of the noble heir of the English commodore[132]: no _cicerone_ could point out to you the house in which the plebeian son of the humble clock-maker of Geneva hid his pleasures. Rousseau does not even speak of Venice; he seems to have lived in it without seeing it: Byron has sung it admirably[133].

You have seen in these Memoirs what I have said of the relations of imagination and destiny that seem to have existed between the historian of _René_ and the poet of _Childe Harold._ Here I point to another of those conjunctures so nattering to my pride. Does not the dark-haired Fornarina of Lord Byron bear a certain family likeness to the fair-haired Velléda of the _Martyrs_, her elder?

[Sidenote: Velléda.]

"'Hidden among the rocks, I waited some time, but nothing appeared.
Suddenly, my ear was struck by sounds which the wind carried to
me from the middle of the lake. I listened and distinguished the
accents of a human voice; at the same time I discovered a skiff
poised on the crest of a wave; it came down again, disappeared
between two billows, and then showed itself once more on the
summit of a heavy swell; it approached the shore. A woman was
steering; she sang as she struggled against the storm and seemed
to sport amidst the winds: one would have thought that they were
in her power, from the manner in which she seemed to defy them. I
saw her throw into the lake by turns, as a sacrifice, pieces of
linen, sheep's fleeces, cakes of wax and little gold and silver
grindstones.

"Soon she touched land, sprang on shore, fastened her bark to the
trunk of a willow and darted into the wood, leaning on the poplar
oar which she held in her hand. She passed quite close to me
without seeing me. Her figure was tall; a dark, short, sleeveless
tunic scarce served to veil her nudity. She carried a golden sickle
slung from a brass girdle and her head was encircled with an oaken
branch. The whiteness of her arms and complexion, her blue eyes,
her rosy lips, her long fair hair that waved dishevelled in the
air bespoke the daughter of the Gauls and contrasted, by their
gentleness, with her proud and fierce gait She sang words full of
terror in a melodious voice, and her uncovered breast rose and fell
like the foam of the waves[134].'"

I should blush to show myself between Byron and Jean-Jacques, without knowing what place posterity will award me, if these Memoirs were to appear during my life; but, when they see the light, I shall have gone and for all time, like my illustrious predecessors, to a distant shore; my shade will be delivered to the breath of opinion, vain and light like the little that will remain of my ashes.

Rousseau and Byron had one feature in common in Venice: neither showed any feeling for the arts. Rousseau, who had wonderful gifts for music, does not seem to know that, near Zulietta, there existed pictures, statues, monuments; and yet with what charm do those master-pieces mate with love, whose object they divine and whose flame they increase! As to Lord Byron, he "loathes the infernal din" of Rubens' colours, he "spits upon" all the pictures of saints with which the churches are glutted; he never met a picture or statue coming within a league of his thought. He prefers to those deceitful arts the beauty of a few mountains, a few seas, a few horses, a certain Morean lion and a tiger which he saw supping in Exeter Change. Is there not a little prejudice in all this?

Que d'affectation et de forfanterie[135]!

VENICE, _September_ 1833.

But what, then, is this town in which all the lofty intelligences have arranged to meet? Some have visited it themselves; others have sent their Muses there. Something would have been lacking to the immortality of those talents, if they had not hung pictures on that temple of voluptuousness and glory. Without again recalling the great poets of Italy, the geniuses of the whole of Europe placed their creations there: there breathed Shakespeare's Desdemona, very different from Rousseau's Zulietta and Byron's Margherita, that chaste Venetian who declares her love to Othello:

And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her[136].

There appeared Otway's[137] Belvidera, who says to Jaffeir:

Oh smile, as when our loves were in their spring.
. . . . . . . . .
Oh lead me to some desert wide and wild,
Barren as our misfortunes, where my soul
May have its vent, where I may tell aloud
To the high heavens, and every list'ning planet,
With what a boundless stock my bosom's fraught;
Where I may throw my eager arms about thee,
Give loose to love, with kisses kindling joy,
And let off all the fire that's in my heart[138].

Goethe, in our time, has celebrated Venice, and the gentle Marot[139], who first made his voice heard at the awakening of the French Muses, took refuge in Titian's native place. Montesquieu wrote:

"Although one had seen all the cities of the world, there might
still be a surprise in store for him in Venice[140]."

When, in too undraped a picture, the author of the _Lettres persanes_ depicts a Mussulman woman surrendered in Paradise to two "heavenly men," does he not seem to have painted the courtezan of Rousseau's _Confessions_ and her of Byron's Memoirs? Was not I, between my two Floridans, like Anaïs between her two angels[141]? But the "painted girls" and I were not immortal.

[Sidenote: And Corinne.]

Madame de Staël gives Venice over to the inspiration of Corinne: the latter hears the sound of the cannon that announces "the obscure sacrifice of a young girl[142] ...a solemn counsel, which a woman resigned to her fate gives to those who still struggle with destiny." ...Corinne climbs to the top of the tower of St. Mark's, contemplates the city and the waves, turns her eyes towards Greece "enveloped in clouds;" at night she sees "nothing but the reflection of the lanterns which light the gondolas:" they give her the idea of "spectres gliding upon the water, guided by a little star[143]."

Oswald departs; Corinne darts out of the room to recall him: "The rain then fell in torrents, a most violent wind arose;" Corinne descends to the banks of the canal:

"The night was so dark that not a single bark was to be seen....
Corinne called to the gondoliers, who took her cries for those
of some wretch drowning in the tempest; nevertheless none dared
approach to offer assistance, so formidable were the waves of the
Grand Canal[144]."

There again you have Lord Byron's Margherita.

I find an unspeakable pleasure in meeting the masterpieces of those great masters in the very place for which they were made. I breathe freely in the midst of the immortal band, like a humble traveller admitted to the hospitable hearth of a rich and beautiful family.

[60] This book was written on the road from Paris to Venice, between the 7th and 10th of September 1833, and in Venice, from the 10th to the 15th of September 1833.--T.

[61] Salins suffered from a terrible conflagration in 1825. It was rebuilt, with regular streets, by public subscription.--T.

[62] Pierre Joseph Thoulier, Abbé d'Olivet (1682-1768) was born at Salins, on the Furieuse, a tributary of the Loire. He first joined the Jesuits, where he was known as the Père Thoulier, but soon left the Company, in order to follow a literary career. Meantime Voltaire had been his pupil at the college of Louis-le-Grand. He became a member of the French Academy in 1723; Voltaire in 1746. D'Olivet is the author of an _Histoire de l'Académie française_, up to 1700, and of several important grammatical works and translations, and he worked much on the Dictionary of the French Academy.--T.

[63] Mirabeau was imprisoned in the Castle of Joux, at his father's instance, in 1775; Toussaint-Louverture (_cf._ Vol. III., p. 191, n. 3) died there on the 27th of April 1803, after a ten months' confinement--T.

[64] _Cf._ Vol. II., pp. 246-250.--T.

[65] "When, on the 7th of August 1814, the Bull of _Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum_, came to sanction the work of restoration of the Company of Jesus, the primitive cantons of Switzerland did not remain insensible to the joys of Catholicism. Ignace Brocard, Jacques Roh, Gaspard Rothenflue and several of their fellow-countrymen enlisted under the banner of the newly-reinstated Order. The Valais gave back to the Jesuits their old college of Brigg." (CRÉTINEAU-JOLY, _Histoire du Sunderbund_, Vol. I., p. 428.)--B.

[66] _Dies Iræ_, Stanza 5:

Liber seri plus proferetur,
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus judicetur.--T.

[67] Francis I. lived till 1835.--T.

[68] Charles X. lived till 1836.--T.

[69] Ferdinand III. Grand-duke of Tuscany (1769-1824). _Vide supra_ p. 12, n. 1.--T.

[70] Charles Felix I. King of Sardinia (1765-1831) succeeded to the throne on the abdication of his brother, Victor Emanuel I., in 1821, the year before the Congress of Verona.--T.

[71] Pierre François Hercule Comte de Serre (1777-1822). He died as Ambassador to Naples.--T.

[72] Vincenzo Scamozzi (1552-1616), the architect of many of the finest buildings in North Italy.--T.

[73] Niccola Pisano (_circa_ 1206-1278), one of the greatest Italian architects.--T.

[74] And not Signor Procurante, as the earlier editions of the Memoirs have it.--T.

[75] VOLTAIRE: _Candide, ou l'Optimisme_, Part I., Chap. XXV.: _Candid and Martin pay a Visit to Seignor Pococurante, a Noble Venetian._--T.

[76] Philippe de Comines (_circa_ 1445-1511), the statesman and historian, author of the valuable _Cronique et hystoire faicte et composée par messire Philippe de Comines._--T.

[77] JACOPO SANNAZARO.--_Author's Note._

[78] GABRIELLO CHIABRERA, _Canzoni eroiche_, III.: _Per Vittorio Cappello, Generale de' Veneziani nella Morea_, 10-12.--T.

[79] Pierre Luc Charles Cicéri (1782-1868), a famous French scene-painter, who executed numbers of stage-scenes for the Royal Academy of Music, or grand Opera-house, in Paris.--B.

[80] Giorgio Barbarelli (_circa_ 1477-1511), known as Giorgione, the great Venetian colourist and pupil of Giovanni Bellini (_vide infra._)--T.

[81] Paolo Cagliari (1528-1588), of Verona, known as Paul Veronese, one of the most celebrated painters of the Venetian School, went to Venice in 1555 and remained there. He executed the decorations of the Library of St. Mark in 1563 and the ceiling of the council-chamber in the Palace of the Doges in 1577.--T.

[82] Jacopo Robusti (1518-1594), called Tintoretto from the trade of his father, a dyer, received his first important order in 1546, for the decoration of Santa Maria dell' Orto. In 1560, he began to paint the Scuola di San Rocco and the Doges' Palace and, in the same year, seems to have taken Titian's place as Court painter to the Doges.--T.

[83] Giovanni Bellini (_post_1427-1516), the founder of the Venetian School of painting and the greatest of the fifteenth-century artists. Titian and Giorgione were both his pupils.--T.

[84] Paride Bordone (_circa_ 1500-1571), one of Titian's greatest pupils.--T.

[85] Jacopo Palma the Elder( _circa_ 1480-1528) and Jacopo Palma the Younger (_circa_ 1544-1628), uncle and nephew.--T.

[86] Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) settled in Venice and presented the city with his library (1362).--T.

[87] George Gemistus Pletho (_b._ 1390), the celebrated Byzantine Platonic philosopher and scholar.--T.

[88] Johannes Cardinal Bessarion (1395-1472), Archbishop of Nicæa (1437), a cardinal (1439), Archbishop of Siponto and Bishop of Sabina and Tusculum, and Patriarch of Constantinople (1463). Bessarion was a disciple of Plethon and author of, among many other works of Platonic philosophy, the famous _Adversus Calumniatorem Platonis_ (1469).--T.

[89] Or Acre: 1104.--T.

[90] 1176.--T.

[91] 1124.--T.

[92] 10 October 1571.--T.

[93] The so-called Grand Sanhedrim of 1806 was a council summoned by Napoleon for the 20th of October of that year, consisting of representatives of the chief synagogues of France, Italy and Europe. The object of its deliberations was to point out to the Government means of enabling the Jews to participate in the civil and political rights of England, by modifying such of their habits and doctrines as kept them isolated from their fellow-citizens. The sittings of the Grand Sanhedrim, which consisted of 71 members, opened on the 9th of February and ended on the 9th of March 1807. The most notable clause, from Napoleon's point of view, in the solemn public declaration issued on the latter date, is that dispensing Jews who are performing military service from all religious observances that are irreconcilable with such military service.--T.

[94] Leopoldo Conte Cicognara (1767-1834), a distinguished diplomatist and antiquarian. He became President of the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice in 1812. His principal work, the _Storia della Scultura_, was published in 1813-1818.--T.

[95] It is clear to my eyes that the ogive, whose so-called mysterious origin men go so far to seek, was born casually of the intersection of two semicircular arches; therefore it is found everywhere. Later architects have done no more than release it from the designs in which it originally figured.--_Author's Note._

[96] See the previous note.--_Author's Note._

[97] Bartolommeo Gamba (1780-1841), a learned Italian bibliographer and biographer. His chief work is the _Serie dell' Edizioni dei Testi di Lingua Italiana_ (1812-1828).--T.

[98] Fra Mauro (_fl._ 15th Century), a monk of the Camaldule Order, who drew his famous map of the world between 1457 and 1459.--T.

[99] Here for instance, is Charles Dickens' lurid description of the _Pozzi_, or Prisons, which he pretends to see in a dream:

"I descended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below
another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite
dark. Each had a loophole in its massive wall, where, in the
old time, every day a torch was placed--I dreamed--to light the
prisoners within, for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering
of these brief rays, had scratched and cut inscriptions in the
blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour with the rusty
nail's point had outlived their agony and them, through many
generations.

"One cell I saw in which no man remained for more than
four-and-twenty hours; being marked for dead before he entered
it. Hard by another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the
Confessor came--a monk brown-robed and hooded--ghastly in the day
and free bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison,
Hope's extinguisher and Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the
spot where, at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was
strangled; and struck my hand upon the guilty door--low-browed
and stealthy--through which the lumpish sack was carried out into
a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a
net." (_Pictures from Italy: An Italian Dream._)--T.

[100]

. . . . . . "Into that hideous den,
With one blow of the axe, admitted light again."--T.

[101] Silvio Pellico (1788-1854) was imprisoned in Milan and Venice
from 1820 to 1822 and at the Spielberg, near Brünn, from 1822 to
1830. His _Mie Prigioni_ had only lately been published (1833)
and Chateaubriand was much struck with them. During his previous
journey to Italy, in a letter dated Basle, 17 May 1833, he wrote to
Madame Récamier:

"Here I am at Basle, safe and sound. You have seen that fine river
pass which is going, for a moment, to bring news of me to you in
France. Travelling always gives me back my strength, sentiment and
thought; I am very busy writing _a new prologue to a_ BOOK. I nave
read the whole of Pellico, cursorily. I am delighted with it; I
should like to write an account of that work, the saintliness of
which will prevent its success with our revolutionaries, who are
free after Fouché's fashion. Are you not enchanted with _Zanze
sotto i Piombi?_ And the little deaf-and-dumb person? And Schiller,
the old gaoler, and the religious conversations through the
window, and our poor Maroncelli? And that poor young wife of the
_sopr'intendente_, who dies so sweetly? And the return to beautiful
Italy?"--B.

[102] Bruno, near which the Spielberg stands, is the capital of Moravia.--T.

[103] Maria Christina Josephs Johanna Antonia of Austria, Duchess of Saxe-Teschen (1742-1798), married to Albert Duke of Saxe-Teschen in 1766. The Archduchess Maria Christina's monument, by Canova, is in the church of the Augustines in Vienna.--T.

[104] Titian's _Assumption_, one of the most renowned of existing pictures, was discovered by Count Cicognara in the church of the Frari, for which it had been painted as an altar-piece. It was restored and removed to the _Accademia di Belle Arti_, where it still hangs.--T.

[105] Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin and eleventh Earl of Kincardine (1766-1841) was British Envoy to Constantinople from 1799 to 1802. Between 1801 and 1803, he removed to England from Athens the so-called Elgin marbles, comprising the bulk of the surviving plastic decoration of the Parthenon, executed under the direction of Phidias about 440 B.C. These stolen goods were purchased by the nation in 1816 and are now in the British Museum.--T.

[106] Tommaso Mocenigo, Doge from 1414 to 1423; Giovanni Mocenigo, Doge from 1475 to 1485; and Luigi Mocenigo, Doge from 1570 to 1577, are all buried in Santi Giovanni e Paolo.--T.

[107] Michele Morosini, Doge of Venice for a few months in 1382.--T.

[108] Andrea Vendramin, Doge of Venice (_d._ 1478), became Doge in 1476.--T.

[109] Seventeen doges in all are buried in Santi Giovanni e Paolo or "Zanipolo," as the Venetians pronounce it.--B..

[110] Marco Antonio Bragadino (_d._ 1571), flayed alive by the Turks after his valiant defense of Famagusta, in Cyprus.--T.

[111] Angelo Emo (1731-1792), the last of the Venetian admirals. He bombarded Tunis and forced it to sign a truce with the Republic--T.

[112] Cary's DANTE: _Hell_, Canto XXI. 7-15.--T.

[113] Henry IV. defeated the Leaguers at Ivry-la-Bataille on the 14th of March 1590.--T.

[114] Sir William Edward Parry (1790-1855) started on his second polar expedition in 1821 and his third in 1824. These two expeditions, neither of which was specially successful, are referred to by Chateaubriand on page 136 of Vol. I. of the Memoirs. A later expedition, by way of Spitsbergen, was likewise unsuccessful. From 1823 to 1829, Parry was Acting Hydrographer to the Navy. In 1852, he was made a rear-admiral and, in 1853, Governor of Greenwich Hospital.--T.

[115] St. Christopher (_fl._ 3rd Century) is said to have lived in Syria and to have been of prodigious height and strength. As a penance for having been a servant of the devil, he devoted himself to the task of carrying pilgrims across a river where there was no bridge. Christ came to the river one day in the form of a child and asked to be carried over, but His weight grew heavier and heavier till His bearer was nearly broken down in the midst of the stream. When they reached the shore:

"Marvel not," said the Child, "for with Me thou hast borne the sins of the world."

St. Christopher is usually represented as bearing the Infant Christ and leaning upon a staff. He was martyred under the Emperor Decius _circa_ 250. The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Christopher on the 25th of July.--T.

[116] The Isola di San Michele contains the modern burying-ground of Venice.--T.

[117] Pietro Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), known as Fra Paola and surnamed Servita, a noted Venetian historian, entered the Order of the Servites in 1565. In 1570, he was made professor of philosophy in the Servite Monastery in Venice. He was distinguished, in the controversy with Pope Paul V. (1606-1607), as the champion of free thought. His chief work is the _Istoria del Concilio di Trento_, published in London in 1619. Fra Paolo was a member of the Council of Ten and consulting theologian to the Venetian Republic.--T.

[118] _Cf._ VOL I., p. 76.--T.

[119] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 236.--T.

[120] The _gazetta_ was a Venetian coin, worth about three farthings, the sum charged for a reading of the first Venetian newspaper, a written sheet which appeared about the middle of the sixteenth century during the war with Soliman II.--T.

[121] Aldus Manutius (_circa_ 1450-1515), the celebrated printer and founder of the Aldine Press in Venice; his son, Paulus Manutius (1511-1574); and the latter's son, Aldus Manutius the Younger (1547-1597). All three were distinguished Classical scholars as well as noted printers.--T.

[122] Antonio Franconi (1738-1836), a native of Venice, began life as a tumbler and travelling physician. Afterwards he instituted bull-fights in Lyons and, later, at Bordeaux; and, lastly, went into partnership, in 1783, with Astley, the English circus-proprietor, who had opened a theatrical riding-school in Paris, and founded the circus which he called the Cirque Olympique and which obtained a prodigious success.--T.

[123] The Veneti were an ancient Celtic people living in Brittany, near the coast of the Bay of Biscay. They were subdued by Cæsar, after a severe maritime war, in 56 B.C.--T.

[124] A people dwelling near the head of the Adriatic, between the Po and the Adige.--T.

[125] Vannes, or, in Breton, Gwened is the capital of the Department of Morbihan and is the ancient Civitas Venetorum, the capital of the Veneti.--T.

[126] _Cornu Galliæ_, Cornouailles, Cornwall.--T.

[127] Madame Adélaïde (1732-1800) and Madame Victoire (1733-1799), daughters of Louis XV.--T.

[128] Geoffroi de Villehardouin (_circa_ 1160--_circa_ 1215), the author of a famous chronicle: _Histoire de la conquête de Constantinople, ou Chronique des empereurs Baudouin et Henri de Constantinople._ Villehardouin's Chronicle is not only trustworthy from an historical point of view, but is even more deserving for its literary excellence, while being one of the oldest monuments of original French prose. The Fourth Crusade, in which Villehardouin took part, left Venice in October 1203.--T.

[129] ROUSSEAU: _Confessions_, Part I., Book VII.--T.

[130] The baker's wife.--T.

[131] M. de Montaigu.--T.

[132] Hon. John Byron (1723-1786), second son of William fourth Lord Byron and grand-father of the poet, entered the Navy as a boy. In 1764, he was promoted to commodore and commanded two vessels in a voyage of exploration round the world; he returned in 1766, having accomplished little beyond some curious observations on the Indians of Patagonia and the discovery of some small islands in the Pacific Ocean. He was Governor of Newfoundland from 1769 to 1772; became a vice-admiral in 1778; and on the 6th of July 1779 fought an engagement with the French fleet off Grenada, in the West Indies, the result of which was doubtful.--T.

[133] _Cf._ BYRON, _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto IV.--T.

[134] CHATEAUBRIAND, _Les Martyrs_, Book IX.: _The Story of Eudorus._--T.

[135] MOLIÈRE, _Tartufe_, Act III. Sc. ii.:

"What affectation and blind real is this!"--T.

[136] SHAKESPEARE: _Othello, the Moor of Venice_, Act I. Sc. iii.--T.

[137] Thomas Otway (1652-1685), the principal tragic poet of the English classical school. The most famous of his tragedies, _Venice Preserved_, from which the following quotation is taken, appeared in 1682.--T.

[138] OTWAY: _Venice Preserved, or The Plot Discovered_, Act I. Sc. i.--T.

[139] Clément Marot (1497-1544), the poet, when compelled to fly from France on account of his scandalous life, took refuge in Béarn (1535), then at the Court of Ferrara, where he was secretary to Renée of France, and, finally, in Venice (1536).--T.

[140] MONTESQUIEU: _Lettres persanes._ Letter XXXI.: _Rhédi à Usbek, à Paris._--T.

[141] The incident of Anals will be found in the _Lettres persanes._