Though Venice at that hour was so gay in her squares, the rest of the town was silent as the grave.  A city in which the hoof of horse or the rolling of wheels is never heard, necessarily possesses a character of its own; but the peculiar form of the government, and the long training of the people in habits of caution, weighed on the spirits of the gay.  There were times and places, it is true, when the buoyancy of youthful blood, and the levity of the thoughtless, found occasion for their display—­nor were they rare; but when men found themselves removed from the temptation, and perhaps from the support of society, they appeared to imbibe the character of their sombre city.

Such was the state of most of the town, while the scene described in the previous chapter was exhibited in the lively piazza of San Marco.  The moon had risen so high that its light fell between the range of walls, here and there touching the surface of the water, to which it imparted a quivering brightness, while the domes and towers rested beneath its light in a solemn but grand repose.  Occasionally the front of a palace received the rays on its heavy cornices and labored columns, the gloomy stillness of the interior of the edifice furnishing, in every such instance, a striking contrast to the richness and architectural beauty without.  Our narrative now leads us to one of these patrician abodes of the first class.

A heavy magnificence pervaded the style of the dwelling.  The vestibule was vast, vaulted, and massive.  The stairs, rich in marbles, heavy and grand.  The apartments were imposing in their gildings and sculpture, while the walls sustained countless works on which the highest geniuses of Italy had lavishly diffused their power.  Among these relics of an age more happy in this respect than that of which we write, the connoisseur would readily have known the pencils of Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoretto—­the three great names in which the subjects of St. Mark so justly prided themselves.  Among these works of the higher masters were mingled others by the pencils of Bellino, and Montegna, and Palma Vecchio—­artists who were secondary only to the more renowned colorists of the Venetian school.  Vast sheets of mirrors lined the walls, wherever the still more precious paintings had no place; while the ordinary hangings of velvet and silk became objects of secondary admiration, in a scene of nearly royal magnificence.  The cool and beautiful floors, made of a composition in which all the prized marbles of Italy and of the East polished to the last degree of art, were curiously embedded, formed a suitable finish to a style so gorgeous, and in which luxury and taste were blended in equal profusion.

The building, which, on two of its sides, literally rose from out the water, was, as usual, erected around a dark court.  Following its different faces, the eye might penetrate, by many a door, open at that hour for the passage of the air from off the sea, through long suites of rooms, furnished and fitted in the manner described, all lighted by shaded lamps that spread a soft and gentle glow around.  Passing without notice ranges of reception and sleeping rooms—­the latter of a magnificence to mock the ordinary wants of the body—­we shall at once introduce the reader into the part of the palace where the business of the tale conducts us.