ns. Later in the
same day I met the artist himself in the waters of the Lido--a form of
rencontre that is very common in Venice in the summer. The converse is,
however, the more amusing and usually disenchanting: the recognition, in
the Piazza, in the evening, in their clothes, of certain of the
morning's bathers. Disillusion here, I can assure you.

On the south wall of S. Mark's, looking over the Molo and the lagoon, is
the famous Madonna before whom two lights burn all night. Not all day
too, as I have seen it stated. Above her are two pretty cherubs against
a light-blue background, holding the head of Christ: one of the gayest
pieces of colour in Venice. Justice is again pinnacled here, and on her
right, on another pinnacle, is a charming angel, upon whom a lion
fondlingly climbs. Between and on each side are holy men within
canopies, and beneath is much delicate work in sculpture. Below are
porphyry insets and veined marbles, and on the parapet two griffins, one
apparently destroying a child and one a lamb. The porphyry stone on the
ground at the corner on our left is the Pietra del Bando, from which the
laws of the Republic were read to the people. Thomas Coryat, the
traveller, who walked from Somerset to Venice in 1608 and wrote the
result of his journey in a quaint volume called _Coryat's Crudities_,
adds another to the functions of the Pietra del Bando. "On this stone,"
he says, "are laide for the space of three dayes and three nights the
heads of all such as being enemies or traitors to the State, or some
notorious offenders, have been apprehended out of the citie, and
beheaded by those that have been bountifully hired by the Senate for the
same purpose." The four affectionate figures, in porphyry, at the corner
of the Doges' Palace doorway, came also from the East. Nothing definite
is known of them, but many stories are told. The two richly carved
isolated columns were brought from Acre in 1256.

Of these columns old Coryat has a story which I have found in no other
writer. It may be true, and on the other hand it may have been the
invention of some mischievous Venetian wag wishing to get a laugh out of
the inquisitive Somerset pedestrian, whose leg was, I take it,
invitingly pullable. "Near to this stone," he says, referring to the
Pietra del Bando, "is another memorable thing to be observed. A
marvailous faire paire of gallowes made of alabaster, the pillars being
wrought with many curious borders, and wor