The Mother-Aunt is ill in bed; but as she is at the present moment receiving three visitors, you will understand about how ill.  The fact is, she is worn to death with sight-seeing.  I can’t stop her; while she is on her legs it is her duty, and she will.  The consequence is I get rushed through things I want to let soak into me, and have to go again.  My only way of getting her to rest has been by deserting her; and then I come back and receive reproaches with a meek countenance.

Mr. C——­ has been good to us and cordial, and brings his gondola often to our service.  A gondola and pair has quite a different motion from a one-oared gondola; it is like riding a seahorse instead of a sea-camel—­ almost exciting, only it is so soft in its prancings.

He took A. and myself into the procession which welcomed the crowned heads last Wednesday; the hurly-burly of it was splendid.  We tore down the Grand Canal from end to end, almost cheek by jowl with the royalties; the M.-A. was quite jubilant when she heard we had had such “good places.”  Hundreds of gondolas swarmed round; many of them in the old Carpaccio rig-outs, very gorgeous though a little tawdry when taken out of the canvas.  Hut the rush and the collisions, and the sound of many waters walloping under the bellies of the gondolas, and the blows of fighting oars—­regular underwater wrestling matches—­made it as vivid and amusing as a prolonged Oxford and Cambridge boat-race in fancy costume.  Our gondoliers streamed with the exertion, and looked like men fighting a real battle, and yet enjoyed it thoroughly.  Violent altercations with police-boats don’t ruffle them at all; at one moment it looks daggers drawn; at the next it is shrugs and smiles.  Often, from not knowing enough of Italian and Italian ways, I get hot all over when an ordinary discussion is going on, thinking that blows are about to be exchanged.  The Mother-Aunt had hung a wonderful satin skirt out of window for decoration; and when she leaned over it in a bodice of the same color, it looked as if she were sitting with her legs out as well!  I suppose it was this peculiar effect that, when the King and Queen came by earlier in the morning, won for her a special bow and smile.

I must hurry or I shall miss the post that I wish to catch.  There seems little chance now of my getting you in Venice; but elsewhere perhaps you will drop to me out of the clouds.

    Your own and most loving.

LETTER XXXIX.

My Own, Own Beloved:  Say that my being away does not seem too long?  I have not had a letter yet, and that makes me somehow not anxious but compunctious; only writing to you of all I do helps to keep me in good conscience.  Not the other foot gone to the mender’s, I hope, with the same obstructive accompaniments as went to the setting-up again of the last?  If I don’t hear soon, you will have me dancing on wires, which cost as much by the word as a gondola by the hour.