The returning gondola passes under the walls of the male madhouse.  Just before reaching this melancholy island there is a spot at which it is possible still to realize what Venice was like when S. Mark’s campanile fell, for one has the S. Giorgio campanile and this other so completely in line that S. Georgio’s alone is visible.

Some of the Armenian proverbs are very shrewd and all have a flavour of their own.  Here are a few:—­

“What can the rose do in the sea, and the violet before the fire?”

“The mother who has a daughter always has a hand in her purse.”

“Every one places wood under his own pot.”

“The day can dawn without the cock’s crowing.”

“If you cannot become rich, become the neighbour of a rich man.”

“Our dog is so good that the fox has pupped in our poultry house.”

“One day the ass began to bray.  They said to him:  ’What a beautiful voice!’ Since then he always brays.”

“Whether I eat or not I shall have the fever, so better eat and have the fever.”

“The sermon of a poor priest is not heard.”

“When he rides a horse, he forgets God; when he comes down from the horse, he forgets the horse.”

“Dine with thy friend, but do no business with him.”

“To a bald head a golden comb.”

“Choose your consort with the eyes of an old man, and choose your horse with the eyes of a young man.”

“A good girl is worth more than seven boys.”

“When you are in town, if you observe that people wear the hat on one side, wear yours likewise.”

“The fox’s last hole is the furrier’s shop.”

“The Kurd asked the barber:  ‘Is my hair white or black?’ The other answered him:  ’I will put it before you, and you will see’.”

“He who mounts an ass, has one shame; he who falls from it, has two.”

“Be learned, but be taken for a fool.”

Of a grumbler:  “Every one’s grain grows straight; mine grows crooked.”

Of an impatient man:  “He feeds the hen with one hand and with the other he looks for her eggs.”

I have not printed these exactly as they appear in the little pamphlet, because one has only to turn one page to realize that what the S. Lazzaro press most needs is a proof-reader.

I said at the beginning of this book that the perfect way to approach Venice for the first time is from Chioggia.  But that is not too easy.  What, however, is quite easy is to visit Chioggia from Venice and then, returning, catch some of the beauty—­without, however, all the surprise and wonder—­of that approach.

Steamers leave the Riva, opposite Danieli’s, every two hours.  They take their easy way up the lagoon towards the Lido for a little while, and then turn off to the right, always keeping in the enclosed channel, for eighteen miles.  I took the two o’clock boat on a hot day and am not ashamed to confess that upon the outward voyage I converted it (as indeed did almost everybody else) into a dormitory.  But Chioggia awakened me, and upon the voyage back I missed, I think, nothing.