the late Nicolo Paulo of the confine of St. John
Chrysostom," but that only shows what is not disputed, that the Travellers
after their return from the East settled in this locality. And the same
will appears to indicate a surviving connexion with S. Felice, for the
priests and clerks who drew it up and witness it are all of the church of
S. Felice, and it is to the parson of S. Felice and his successor that
Maffeo bequeaths an annuity to procure their prayers for the souls of his
father, his mother, and himself, through after the successor the annuity
is to pass on the same condition to the senior priest of S. Giovanni
Grisostomo. Marco Polo the Elder is in his will described as of _S.
Severo_, as is also his sister-in-law Fiordelisa, and the document
contains no reference to S. Giovanni. On the whole therefore it seems
probable that the Palazzo in the latter parish was purchased by the
Travellers after their return from the East.[1]

[Sidenote: Relic of the Casa Polo in the Corte Sabbionera.]

24. The Court which was known in the 16th century as the Corte del
Millioni has been generally understood to be that now known as the Corte
Sabbionera, and here is still pointed out a relic of Marco Polo's mansion.
[Indeed it is called now (1899) _Corte del Milione_; see p. 30.--H. C.]

M. Pauthier's edition is embellished with a good engraving which purports
to represent the House of Marco Polo. But he has been misled. His
engraving in fact exhibits, at least as the prominent feature, an
embellished representation of a small house which exists on the _west
side_ of the Sabbionera, and which had at one time perhaps that pointed
style of architecture which his engraving shows, though its present
decoration is paltry and unreal. But it is on the _north side_ of the
Court, and on the foundations now occupied by the Malibran theatre, that
Venetian tradition and the investigations of Venetian antiquaries concur
in indicating the site of the Casa Polo. At the end of the 16th century a
great fire destroyed the Palazzo,[2] and under the description of "an old
mansion ruined from the foundation" it passed into the hands of one
Stefano Vecchia, who sold it in 1678 to Giovanni Carlo Grimani. He built
on the site of the ruins a theatre which was in its day one of the largest
in Italy, and was called the Theatre of S. Giovanni Grisostomo; afterwards
the _Teatro Emeronitio_. When modernized in our own day the proprietors
gave it the name of