ers of Venice use the old words, and
tell long-winded stories of their derivation and first meaning, which
seem quite unnecessary. But in Beroviero's time, the gondola had only
lately come into fashion, and every one adopted it quickly because it
was much cheaper than keeping horses, and it was far more pleasant to be
taken quickly by water, by shorter ways, than to ride in the narrow
streets, in the mud in winter and in the dust in summer, jostling those
who walked, and sometimes quarrelling with those who rode, because the
way was too narrow for one horse to pass another, when both had riders
on their backs. Moreover, it was law that after nine o'clock in the
morning no man who had reached the fig-tree that grew in the open space
before San Salvatore, should ride to Saint Mark's by the Merceria, so
that people had to walk the rest of the way, leaving their horses to
grooms. The gondola was therefore a great convenience, besides being a
notable economy, and old Francesco Sansovino says that in his day, which
was within a lifetime of Angelo Beroviero's, there were nine or ten
thousand gondolas in Venice. But at first they had not the high peaked
stem of iron, and stem and stern were made almost alike, as in the
Venetian boats and skiffs of our own time.

Giovanni got out at the steps of the Contarini palace, which, of the
many that even then belonged to different branches of that great house,
was distinguished above all others by its marvellous outer winding
staircase, which still stands in all its beauty and slender grace. But
near the great palace there were little wooden houses of two stories,
some new and straight and gaily painted, but some old and crooked,
hanging over the canals so that they seemed ready to topple down, with
crazy outer balconies half closed in by lattices behind which the women
sat for coolness, and sometimes even slept in the hot months. For the
great city of stone and brick was not half built yet, and the space
before Saint Mark's was much larger than it is now, for the Procuratie
did not yet exist, nor the clock, but the great bell-tower stood almost
in the middle of an open square, and there were little wooden booths at
its base, in which all sorts of cheap trinkets were sold. There were
also such booths and small shops at the base of the two columns. Also,
the bridge of Rialto was a broad bridge of boats, on which shops were
built on each side of the way, and the middle of the bridge could b