Baffo walks beside us in hypocritical composure of bag-wig and
senatorial dignity, whispering unmentionable sonnets in his dialect of
_Xe_ and _Ga_. Somehow or another that last dotage of S. Mark's
decrepitude is more recoverable by our fancy than the heroism of
Pisani in the fourteenth century. From his prison in blockaded Venice
the great admiral was sent forth on a forlorn hope, and blocked
victorious Doria here with boats on which the nobles of the Golden
Book had spent their fortunes. Pietro Doria boasted that with his own
hands he would bridle the bronze horses of S. Mark. But now he found
himself between the navy of Carlo Zeno in the Adriatic and the
flotilla led by Vittore Pisani across the lagoon. It was in vain that
the Republic of S. George strained every nerve to send him succour
from the Ligurian sea; in vain that the lords of Padua kept opening
communications with him from the mainland. From the 1st of January
1380 till the 21st of June the Venetians pressed the blockade ever
closer, grappling their foemen in a grip that if relaxed one moment
would have hurled him at their throats. The long and breathless
struggle ended in the capitulation at Chioggia of what remained of
Doria's forty-eight galleys and fourteen thousand men.

These great deeds are far away and hazy. The brief sentences of
mediaeval annalists bring them less near to us than the _chroniques
scandaleuses_ of good-for-nothing scoundrels, whose vulgar adventures
might be revived at the present hour with scarce a change of setting.
Such is the force of _intimite_ in literature. And yet Baffo and
Casanova are as much of the past as Doria and Pisani. It is only
perhaps that the survival of decadence in all we see around us, forms
a fitting framework for our recollections of their vividly described
corruption.

Not far from the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample breadth
and large bravura manner spans the main canal. Like everything at
Chioggia, it is dirty and has fallen from its first estate. Yet
neither time nor injury can obliterate style or wholly degrade marble.
Hard by the bridge there are two rival inns. At one of these we
ordered a seadinner--crabs, cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots--which
we ate at a table in the open air. Nothing divided us from the street
except a row of Japanese privet-bushes in hooped tubs. Our banquet
soon assumed a somewhat unpleasant similitude to that of Dives; for
the Chioggoti, in all stages of decrep