retty marble rail and brown posts, and then two
more antiquity stores with hideous facades, the unfinished stonework on
the side of the second of which, with the steps and sottoportico, was
to have been a palace for the Duke of Milan, but was discontinued.

Next the Rio del Duca is the pretty little Palazzo Falier, from one of
whose windows Mr. Howells used to look when he was gathering material
for his _Venetian Life_. Mr. Howells lived there in the early
eighteen-sixties, when a member of the American Consulate in Venice. As
to how he performed his consular duties, such as they were, I have no
notion; but we cannot be too grateful to his country for appointing him
to the post, since it provided him with the experiences which make the
most attractive Anglo-Saxon book on Venice that has yet been written. It
is now almost half a century since _Venetian Life_ was published, and
the author is happily still hale.

[Illustration: MADONNA AND SLEEPING CHILD
FROM THE PAINTING BY GIOVANNI BELLINI
_In the Accademia_]

It was not at the Palazzo Falier that Mr. Howells enjoyed the
ministrations of that most entertaining hand-maiden Giovanna; but it was
from here that he heard that quarrel between two gondoliers which he
describes so vividly and which stands for every quarrel of every
gondolier for all time. I take the liberty of quoting it here, because
one gondolier's quarrel is essential to every book that hopes to suggest
Venice to its readers, and I have none of my own worth recording. "Two
large boats, attempting to enter the small canal opposite at the same
time, had struck together with a violence that shook the boatmen to
their inmost souls. One barge was laden with lime, and belonged to a
plasterer of the city; the other was full of fuel, and commanded by a
virulent rustic. These rival captains advanced toward the bows of their
boats, with murderous looks,

Con la test'alta e con rabbiosa fame.
Si che parea che l'aer ne temesse,

and there stamped furiously, and beat the wind with hands of deathful
challenge, while I looked on with that noble interest which the
enlightened mind always feels in people about to punch each others'
heads.

"But the storm burst in words.

"'Figure of a pig!' shrieked the Venetian, 'you have ruined my boat for
ever!'

"'Thou liest, son of an ugly old dog!' returned the countryman, 'and it
was my right to enter the canal first.'

"They then, after this exchange of insu