These details will serve to give some notion of the sort of people with whom Eustace and I spent our day.  The bride’s house is in an excellent position on an open canal leading from the Canalozzo to the Giudecca.  She had arrived before us, and received her friends in the middle of the room.  Each of us in turn kissed her cheek and murmured our congratulations.  We found the large living-room of the house arranged with chairs all round the walls, and the company were marshalled in some order of precedence, my friend and I taking place near the bride.  On either hand airy bedrooms opened out, and two large doors, wide open, gave a view from where we sat of a good-sized kitchen.  This arrangement of the house was not only comfortable, but pretty; for the bright copper pans and pipkins ranged on shelves along the kitchen walls had a very cheerful effect.  The walls were whitewashed, but literally covered with all sorts of pictures.  A great plaster cast from some antique, an Atys, Adonis, or Paris, looked down from a bracket placed between the windows.  There was enough furniture, solid and well kept, in all the rooms.  Among the pictures were full-length portraits in oils of two celebrated gondoliers—­one in antique costume, the other painted a few years since.  The original of the latter soon came and stood before it.  He had won regatta prizes; and the flags of four discordant colours were painted round him by the artist, who had evidently cared more to commemorate the triumphs of his sitter and to strike a likeness than to secure the tone of his own picture.  This champion turned out a fine fellow—­Corradini—­with one of the brightest little gondoliers of thirteen for his son.

After the company were seated, lemonade and cakes were handed round amid a hubbub of chattering women.  Then followed cups of black coffee and more cakes.  Then a glass of Cyprus and more cakes.  Then a glass of curacoa and more cakes.  Finally, a glass of noyau and still more cakes.  It was only a little after seven in the morning.  Yet politeness compelled us to consume these delicacies.  I tried to shirk my duty; but this discretion was taken by my hosts for well-bred modesty; and instead of being let off, I had the richest piece of pastry and the largest maccaroon available pressed so kindly on me, that, had they been poisoned, I would not have refused to eat them.  The conversation grew more, and more animated, the women gathering together in their dresses of bright blue and scarlet, the men lighting cigars and puffing out a few quiet words.  It struck me as a drawback that these picturesque people had put on Sunday-clothes to look as much like shopkeepers as possible.  But they did not all of them succeed.  Two handsome women, who handed the cups round—­one a brunette, the other a blonde—­wore skirts of brilliant blue, with a sort of white jacket, and white kerchief folded heavily about their shoulders.  The brunette had a great string of coral, the blonde