296 THE STONES OF VENICE

interesting from the extraordinary involution of the alleys leading to it from the Rialto. In Venice, the straight road is usually by water, and the long road by land; but the difference of distance appears, in this case, altogether inexplicable. Twenty or thirty strokes of the oar will bring a gondola from the foot of the Rialto to that of Ponte SS. Apostoli; but the unwise pedestrian, who has not noticed the white clue beneath his feet,* may think himself fortunate, if, after a quarter of an hour’s wandering among the houses behind the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, he find himself anywhere in the neighbourhood of the point he seeks. With much patience, however, and modest following of the guidance of the marble thread, he will at last emerge over a steep bridge into the open space of the Piazza, rendered cheerful in autumn by a perpetual market of pomegranates, and purple gourds, like enormous black figs; while the canal, at its extremity, is half-blocked up by barges laden with vast baskets of grapes as black as charcoal, thatched over with their own leaves.

Looking back, on the other side of this canal, he will see the windows represented in Plate 15, which, with the arcade of pointed arches beneath them, are the remains of the palace once belonging to the unhappy Doge Marino Faliero.¹

* Two threads of white marble, each about an inch wide, inlaid in the dark grey pavement, indicate the road to the Rialto from the farthest extremity of the north quarter of Venice. The peasant or traveller, lost in the intricacy of the pathway in this portion of the city, cannot fail, after a few experimental traverses, to cross these white lines, which thenceforward he has nothing to do but to follow, though their capricious sinuosities will try his patience not a little.2

¹ [On one of the loose sheets of MS. there is a further description of the house and its balcony:-

“The group of delicate arches which form the window of the first story are rather set off than injured in effect by the leafage and flowers with which the modern balcony projecting beneath them is generally filled, and might probably arrest the eye even of the passing traveller: they will richly reward our laborious examination. The whole group is drawn as it at present stands. The modern balcony of iron and wood is probably the successor of a Renaissance one of stone.”]

² [The construction of the new street, the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which leads from the square of the Apostoli towards the railway station, has destroyed most of these marbles; some of them, however, remain in narrow back streets, but they now guide the traveller only for a short way.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]