nt forth on
a forlorn hope, and blocked victorious Doria here with boats on which
the nobles of the Golden Book had spent their fortunes. Pietro Doria
boasted that with his own hands he would bridle the bronze horses of S.
Mark. But now he found himself between the navy of Carlo Zeno in the
Adriatic and the flotilla led by Vittore Pisani across the lagoon. It
was in vain that the Republic of S. George strained every nerve to send
him succour from the Ligurian sea; in vain that the lords of Padua kept
opening communications with him from the mainland. From the 1st of
January 1380 till the 21st of June the Venetians pressed the blockade
ever closer, grappling their foemen in a grip that if relaxed one moment
would have hurled him at their throats. The long and breathless struggle
ended in the capitulation at Chioggia of what remained of Doria's
forty-eight galleys and fourteen thousand men.

These great deeds are far away and hazy. The brief sentences of mediaeval
annalists bring them less near to us than the _chroniques scandaleuses_
of good-for-nothing scoundrels, whose vulgar adventures might be revived
at the present hour with scarce a change of setting. Such is the force
of _intimite_ in literature. And yet Baffo and Casanova are as much of
the past as Doria and Pisani. It is only perhaps that the survival of
decadence in all we see around us, forms a fitting frame-work for our
recollections of their vividly described corruption.

Not far from the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample breadth and
large bravura manner spans the main canal. Like everything at Chioggia,
it is dirty and has fallen from its first estate. Yet neither time nor
injury can obliterate style or wholly degrade marble. Hard by the bridge
there are two rival inns. At one of these we ordered a sea-dinner--crabs,
cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots--which we ate at a table in the open air.
Nothing divided us from the street except a row of Japanese privet-bushes
in hooped tubs. Our banquet soon assumed a somewhat unpleasant similitude
to that of Dives; for the Chioggoti, in all stages of decrepitude and
squalor, crowded round to beg for scraps--indescribable old women,
enveloped in their own petticoats thrown over their heads; girls hooded
with sombre black mantles; old men wrinkled beyond recognition by their
nearest relatives; jabbering, half-naked boys; slow, slouching fishermen
with clay pipes in their mouths and philosophical acceptance on t