Not far from the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample breadth and large bravura manner spans the main canal.  Like everything at Chioggia, it is dirty and has fallen from its first estate.  Yet neither time nor injury can obliterate style or wholly degrade marble.  Hard by the bridge there are two rival inns.  At one of these we ordered a seadinner—­crabs, cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots—­which we ate at a table in the open air.  Nothing divided us from the street except a row of Japanese privet-bushes in hooped tubs.  Our banquet soon assumed a somewhat unpleasant similitude to that of Dives; for the Chioggoti, in all stages of decrepitude and squalor, crowded round to beg for scraps—­indescribable old women, enveloped in their own petticoats thrown over their heads; girls hooded with sombre black mantles; old men wrinkled beyond recognition by their nearest relatives; jabbering, half-naked boys; slow, slouching fishermen with clay pipes in their mouths and philosophical acceptance on their sober foreheads.

That afternoon the gondola and sandolo were lashed together side by side.  Two sails were raised, and in this lazy fashion we stole homewards, faster or slower according as the breeze freshened or slackened, landing now and then on islands, sauntering along the sea-walls which bulwark Venice from the Adriatic, and singing—­those at least of us who had the power to sing.  Four of our Venetians had trained voices and memories of inexhaustible music.  Over the level water, with the ripple plashing at our keel, their songs went abroad, and mingled with the failing day.  The barcaroles and serenades peculiar to Venice were, of course, in harmony with the occasion.  But some transcripts from classical operas were even more attractive, through the dignity with which these men invested them.  By the peculiarity of their treatment the recitativo of the stage assumed a solemn movement, marked in rhythm, which removed it from the commonplace into antiquity, and made me understand how cultivated music may pass back by natural, unconscious transition into the realm of popular melody.

The sun sank, not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds above the Alps.  Stars came out, uncertainly at first, and then in strength, reflected on the sea.  The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us and let us pass.  Madonna’s lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the harbour-pile.  The city grew before us.  Stealing into Venice in that calm—­stealing silently and shadowlike, with scarce a ruffle of the water, the masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight, till San Giorgio’s gun boomed with a flash athwart our stern, and the gas-lamps of the Piazzetta swam into sight; all this was like a long enchanted chapter of romance.  And now the music of our men had sunk to one faint whistling from Eustace of tunes in harmony with whispers at the prow.

Then came the steps of the Palazzo Venier and the deep-scented darkness of the garden.  As we passed through to supper, I plucked a spray of yellow Banksia rose, and put it in my buttonhole.  The dew was on its burnished leaves, and evening had drawn forth its perfume.