ing, Rocco himself took the disease under both
his arms and was so racked with pain that he kept the other patients in
the hospital awake. This distressing him, he crept away where his groans
were out of hearing, and there he lay till the populace, finding him,
and fearing infection, drove him from the city. At Piacenza, where he
took refuge, a spring of fair water, which is there to this day, gushed
out of the earth for his liquid refreshment and as mark of heaven's
approval; while the hound of a neighbouring sportsman brought him bread
from the lord Golard's table: hence the presence of a dog in all
representations of the saint. In the church of S. Rocco across the way
Tintoretto has a picture of this scene in which we discern the dog to
have been a liver-and-white spaniel.

Golard, discovering the dog's fidelity to Rocco, himself passed into the
saint's service and was so thoroughly converted by him that he became a
humble mendicant in the Piacenza streets. Rocco meanwhile continued to
heal, although he could not heal himself, and he even cured the wild
animals of their complaints, as Tintoretto also shows us. Being at last
healed by heaven, he travelled to Lombardy, where he was taken as a spy
and imprisoned for five years, and in prison he died, after being
revealed as a saint to his gaoler. His dying prayer was that all
Christians who prayed to him in the name of Jesus might be delivered
from pestilence. Shortly after Rocco's death an angel descended to earth
with a table written in letters of gold stating that this wish had been
granted. In the carvings in the chancel, the bronzes on the gate and in
Tintoretto's pictures in the neighbouring church, much of this story may
be traced.

The most noteworthy carvings round the room represent types and
attributes. Here is the musician, the conspirator (a very Guy Fawkes,
with dark lantern and all), the scholar, and so forth, all done with
humorous detail by one Pianta. When he came to the artist he had a
little quiet fun with the master himself, this figure being a caricature
of no less a performer than the great Tintoretto.

The little room leading from the upper hall is that rare thing in
Venice, a council chamber which presents a tight fit for the council.
Just inside is a wax model of the head of one of the four Doges named
Alvise Mocenigo, I know not which. Upstairs is a Treasury filled with
valuable ecclesiastical vessels, missals and vestments, and two fine
re