The palace has an imposing but forbidding facade, and a new kind of lion peers over the balcony.  On the facade is the motto “Non nobis, Domine.”  Another garden spreads before the new wing on the right, and a fine acacia-tree is over the gateway.  Next is the Palazzo Marcello, and here too the Duchesse de Berry lived for a while.  The next, with the little prophet’s chamber on the facade and a fine Gothic window and balcony, is the fifteenth-century Erizzo.  Then the Piovene, with fluted window pillars and marble decorations; then the Emo, another antiquity shop, with a fine view down the canal from its balcony.  A traghetto is here, and then the Palazzo Molin, now a business house, and the Rio della Maddalena.  The palace adjoining the Rio is the Barbaro, with an ancient relief on it representing little people being blessed by the Madonna; and then the Barbarigo, with remains of frescoes still to be seen, of which one of a goat and infant is pretty.  It was the custom once to decorate all facades in this way, but these are now almost the only ones that remain.

Now comes a very poor series of houses to the next rio, the Rio di Noale, the last being the Gussoni, or Grimani, with a nice courtyard seen through the door.  It was once decorated with frescoes by Tintoretto.  Looking along the Rio di Noale we see the Misericordia, and only a few yards up on the left is the Palazzo Giovanelli where Giorgione’s “Tempest” may be seen.  At the other corner is the pretty little Palazzo Lezze with a terrace and much greenery, and then the massive but commonplace Boldu palace, adjoining a decayed building on whose fondamenta are piled gondola coverings belonging to the traghetto.  A fine carved column is at the corner of the calle, and next it the Palazzo Bonhomo, with two arches of a colonnade, a shrine and fondamenta.  Then a nice house with a tumbled garden, and in spring purple wistaria and red Judas-trees, and then the Rio S. Felice and the immense but unimpressive Palazzo Fontana, built possibly by no less an architect than the great Sansovino.  A massive head is over the door, and Pope Clement XIII was born here.  A little green garden adjoins—­the Giardinetto Infantile—­and next is a boarded-up dolls’ house, and next the Miani or Palazzo Coletti, with two busts on it, and then the lovely Ca’ d’Oro, that exquisite riot of Gothic richness.

The history of the Ca’ d’Oro—­or golden house, so called from the prevalence of gold in its ornamentation—­is melancholy.  It was built by the two Bons, or Buons, of the Doges’ Palace for Pietro Contarini in 1425.  It passed through various hands, always, one imagines, declining in condition, until at the end of the eighteenth century it was a dramatic academy, and in the middle of the last century the dancer Taglioni lived in it and not only made it squalid but sold certain of its treasures.  Of its famous internal marble staircase, for example, no trace remains.  Then, after probably more careless