lt, abandoned the main subject of
dispute, and took up the quarrel laterally and in detail. Reciprocally
questioning the reputation of all their female relatives to the third
and fourth cousins, they defied each other as the offspring of assassins
and prostitutes. As the peace-making tide gradually drifted their boats
asunder, their anger rose, and they danced back and forth and hurled
opprobrium with a foamy volubility that quite left my powers of
comprehension behind. At last the townsman, executing a _pas seul_ of
uncommon violence, stooped and picked up a bit of stone lime, while the
countryman, taking shelter at the stern of his boat, there attended the
shot. To my infinite disappointment it was not fired. The Venetian
seemed to have touched the climax of his passion in the mere
demonstration of hostility, and gently gathering up his oar gave the
countryman the right of way. The courage of the latter rose as the
strange danger passed, and as far as he could be heard, he continued to
exult in the wildest excesses of insult: 'Ah-heigh! brutal executioner!
Ah, hideous headsman!' Da capo. I now know that these people never
intended to do more than quarrel, and no doubt they parted as well
pleased as if they had actually carried broken heads from the
encounter. But at the time I felt affronted and trifled with by the
result, for my disappointments arising out of the dramatic manner of the
Italians had not yet been frequent enough to teach me to expect nothing
from it."

I too have seen the beginning of many quarrels, chiefly on the water.
But I have seen only two Venetians use their fists--and they were
infants in arms. For the rest, except at traghetti and at the corners of
canals, the Venetians are good-humoured and blessed with an easy smiling
tolerance. Venice is the best place in the world, and they are in
Venice, and there you are! Why lose one's temper?

Next the Casa Falier is a calle, and then the great Giustinian Lolin
Palace with brown and yellow posts. Taglioni lived here for a while too.
Another calle, the Giustinian, a dull house with a garden and red and
white striped posts, and we are at the Iron Bridge and the Campo S.
Vitale, a small poor-people's church, with a Venetian-red house against
it, and inside, but difficult to see, yet worth seeing, a fine picture
by Carpaccio of a saint on horseback.

The magnificent palace in good repair that comes next is the Cavalli,
with a row of bronze dragons on th