e espousals. On the day which I have in
mind two airships were circling the city, and now and then the rays of
the sun caught their envelopes and turned them to silver. Beneath, the
lagoon was still as a pond; a few fishing boats with yellow sails lay at
anchor near the Porto di Lido, like brimstone butterflies on a hot
stone; and far away the snow of the Tyrolean alps still hung between
heaven and earth.

CHAPTER XV

ON FOOT. I: FROM THE PIAZZA TO S. STEFANO

The Ridotto--The Fenice Theatre--The Goldoni Theatre--_Amleto_--A star
part--S. Zobenigo--S. Stefano--Cloisters--Francesco Morosini--A great
soldier--Nicolo Tommaseo--The Campo Morosini--Red hair.

Leaving the Piazza at the corner diagonally opposite the Merceria clock,
we come at once into the busy Salizzada S. Moise, where the shops for
the more expensive tourists are to be found. A little way on the right
is the beginning of the Frezzeria, a Venetian shopping centre second
only to the Merceria. A little way on the left is the Calle del Ridotto
where, divided now into a cinema theatre, auction rooms, a restaurant,
and the Grand Canal Hotel, is the once famous Ridotto of which Casanova
has much to tell. Here were held masquerades; here were gambling tables;
hither Venice resorted to forget that she had ever been great and to
make sure that she should be great no longer. The Austrians suppressed
it.

The church of S. Moise, with its very florid facade of statuary, has
little of interest in it. Keeping with the stream and passing the
Bauer-Gruenwald restaurant on the left, we come in a few minutes to a
bridge--the Ponte delle Ostreghe (or Oysters)--over a rio at the end of
which, looking to the right, we see the great Venetian theatre, the
Fenice.

The Fenice is, I suppose, the most romantic theatre in the world, for
the simple reason that the audience, at any rate those who occupy the
boxes, all arrive in boats. Before it is a basin for the convenience of
navigation, but even with that the confusion on a gala night must be
excessive, and a vast space of time must divide the first comers from
the last, if the last are to be punctual. And when one translates our
own difficulties over cars and cabs at the end of a performance into the
terms of gondolas and canals, one can imagine how long it must be before
the theatre is emptied.

The Fenice is also remarkable among the world's theatres for its size,
holding, as it does, three thousand persons. It is