toward
which a mournful procession of boats, each with its torch and its banner
of black, was slowly gliding, while back over the water echoed the dirge
from those sobbing cellos. Here, where only the dead were sleeping, the
sky was as blue and the sea as calm as if sorrow had never been born in
the world.

Before them Murano, low-lying, scattered, was close at hand, the smoke
of its daily activities tremulous over it, dimming the beauty of sky and
sea.

"His Excellency knows Murano? The Duomo, with its mosaics? Wonderful!
there are none like them; and it is old--'ma antica'! And the
stabilimenti?--it is glory enough for one island! Ah, the padrone wishes
to visit the stabilimento Magagnati?"

Paolo Cagliari had not known what he would do until the old man's
suggestion seemed to make his vision less vaguely inaccessible, and
before they reached the landing he had learned, by a judicious
indifference which sharpened his companion's loquacity, that Messer
Girolamo lived there alone with his daughter, who went about always with
a bambino in her arms--the child of a dead sister.

There could be no doubt; yet, to keep the old man talking, he put the
question, "She is very beautiful, the donzella?"

"Eccellenza"--with a pause and deprecatory movement of the
shoulders--"_cosi_--so-so--a little pale--like a saint--devote. For the
poor? Good, _gentile_, the donzel of Messer Girolamo. _Bella_, with rosy
colors? _Non_!"

With the Venetians there could be no sharp distinction between the
decorative and the fine arts, as the fine arts were employed by them
without limit in their sumptuous decorations; and that which elsewhere
would have been merely decorative they raised, by exquisite quality and
finish, to a point which deserved to be termed art, without
qualifications.

The Veronese, who had been knighted by the Doge, could scarcely go
unrecognized to any art establishment in any quarter of Venice, and with
unconcealed pleasure Girolamo bowed low before this master who had come
to do him honor; displaying all that the initiated would hold most
precious among his treasures--that design, faded and dim, almost
unrecognizable, of those early mosaics of the Master Pietro--he held
nothing back. It was a day of honor for his house, and the two were
alone in his cabinet.

The Veronese had a gift of sympathy; his heart opened to those who loved
art and had conquered difficulties in her service, and the talk flowed
freely. "I be