For the gondoliers of the house of Giustiniani are unfolding, with quick, ringing, jubilant voices, vast confidential tales of the fetes that are in preparation for the marriage of the young noble of the Council, their master, of which this banquet is only the precursor.  “For of course there will be a sposalizia!  Santa Maria! there is no room on the Canal Grande for the gondolas that come to the palazzo—­from every casa in the ’Libro d’Oro’—­to win the favor of the donna nobile of the Giustiniani, for some bella donzella who shall be chosen for their young master—­who is like a prince, and will end one day in being Doge!  Santa Maria di Castello, he does not wait that day to scatter his golden coins!”

If that question of “sposalizia” is not imminent there is truth enough for any Venetian conscience in the story of the ranks of princely gondolas at the bend of the Canal Grande, on the days when the donna nobile of the Giustiniani gives welcome to her guests—­princely gondolas they are, with felzes of brocaded and embroidered stuffs, the framework inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl, with metal fittings curiously wrought, and all that bravery of pomp so dear to the Venetian heart, which calls forth surly decrees from those stern Signori of the Council—­the much unloved “Provveditori alle Pompe,” the sumptuary officers of this superb Republic.

Meanwhile, in this narrow water-street, sunk a few feet below the paved foot path that stretches to the doors of the dwellings, there are sudden grumbling movements among the retainers of the patrician families, as they steer their gorgeous gondolas from side to side, to avoid humiliating contact with that slow procession of barges bringing produce from the island gardens of Mazzorbo, there are other barges laden with great, white wooden tubs of water from Fusina, fresh and very needful to these cities of the sea, and the dark hulks of barks curiously entangled with nets and masts and unwieldy tackle of sailor and fisher, show flashes of brilliant color as the water plays through the netted baskets swinging low against their sides, while the sunlight glances back from the gold and silver glory of the scales of living fish, crowded and palpitating within their meshes.

The fisherfolk who guide these barks are gray and gnomelike in their coloring, tanned by sky and sea and ceaseless atmospheres of fish, into a neutral tint,—­less vivid in hues of skin and hair, with eyes less brilliant, with less vivacity and charm of bearing than the gay Venetians,—­but they are the descendants of those island tribes from which the commerce and greatness of Venice issued; there is almost a show of stateliness in the aggravating slowness with which their heavily freighted barks proceed, serenely occupying the best of the narrow waterway.  They are not envious of the hangers-on of those palaces of the nobles, these free fisherfolk of the islands; they have only haughty stares for the servile set of gondoliers in lacings of gold and scarlet—­who are not nobles nor fishers, nor people of the soil—­and they pass them silently, with much ostentation of taking all the gondoliers of Murano into the friendliness of their jests and curses, as the barges touch and clash with some swiftly gliding gondolier of their own rank, who wears no bravery or armorial bearings.