airless
streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night we
passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said
good-night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that brief
passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things--the freshness,
and the darkness, and the kindness of the brooding, all-enfolding night
above the sea.

THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING.

The night before the wedding we had a supper-party in my rooms. We were
twelve in all. My friend Eustace brought his gondolier Antonio with
fair-haired, dark-eyed wife, and little Attilio, their eldest child. My
own gondolier, Francesco, came with his wife and two children. Then
there was the handsome, languid Luigi, who, in his best clothes, or out
of them, is fit for any drawing-room. Two gondoliers, in dark blue
shirts, completed the list of guests, if we exclude the maid Catina, who
came and went about the table, laughing and joining in the songs, and
sitting down at intervals to take her share of wine. The big room
looking across the garden to the Grand Canal had been prepared for
supper; and the company were to be received in the smaller, which has a
fine open space in front of it to southwards. But as the guests arrived,
they seemed to find the kitchen and the cooking that was going on quite
irresistible. Catina, it seems, had lost her head with so many
cuttlefishes, _orai_, cakes, and fowls, and cutlets to reduce to order.
There was, therefore, a great bustle below stairs; and I could hear
plainly that all my guests were lending their making, or their marring,
hands to the preparation of the supper. That the company should cook
their own food on the way to the dining-room, seemed a quite novel
arrangement, but one that promised well for their contentment with the
banquet. Nobody could be dissatisfied with what was everybody's affair.

When seven o'clock struck, Eustace and I, who had been entertaining the
children in their mothers' absence, heard the sound of steps upon the
stairs. The guests arrived, bringing their own _risotto_ with them.
Welcome was short, if hearty. We sat down in carefully appointed order,
and fell into such conversation as the quarter of San Vio and our
several interests supplied. From time to time one of the matrons left
the table and descended to the kitchen, when a finishing stroke was
needed for roast pullet or stewed veal. The excuses they made their host
for supposed failure in the dis