“Where?” asked the old servant.

“Where you will.”

The gondolier divined his master’s wishes, and by many windings brought him at last into the Canareggio, to the door of a wonderful palazzo, which you will admire when you see Venice, for no traveler ever fails to stop in front of those windows, each of a different design, vying with each other in fantastic ornament, with balconies like lace-work; to study the corners finishing in tall and slender twisted columns, the string-courses wrought by so inventive a chisel that no two shapes are alike in the arabesques on the stones.

How charming is that doorway! how mysterious the vaulted arcade leading to the stairs!  Who could fail to admire the steps on which ingenious art has laid a carpet that will last while Venice stands,—­a carpet as rich as if wrought in Turkey, but composed of marbles in endless variety of shapes, inlaid in white marble.  You will delight in the charming ornament of the colonnades of the upper story,—­gilt like those of a ducal palace,—­so that the marvels of art are both under your feet and above your head.

What delicate shadows!  How silent, how cool!  But how solemn, too, was that old palace! where, to delight Emilio and his friend Vendramin, the Duchess had collected antique Venetian furniture, and employed skilled hands to restore the ceilings.  There, old Venice lived again.  The splendor was not merely noble, it was instructive.  The archaeologist would have found there such models of perfection as the middle ages produced, having taken example from Venice.  Here were to be seen the original ceilings of woodwork covered with scrolls and flowers in gold on a colored ground, or in colors on gold, and ceilings of gilt plaster castings, with a picture of many figures in each corner, with a splendid fresco in the centre,—­a style so costly that there are not two in the Louvre, and that the extravagance of Louis XIV. shrunk from such expense at Versailles.  On all sides marble, wood, and silk had served as materials for exquisite workmanship.

Emilio pushed open a carved oak door, made his way down the long, vaulted passage which runs from end to end on each floor of a Venetian palazzo, and stopped before another door, so familiar that it made his heart beat.  On seeing him, a lady companion came out of a vast drawing-room, and admitted him to a study where he found the Duchess on her knees in front of a Madonna.

He had come to confess and ask forgiveness.  Massimilla, in prayer, had converted him.  He and God; nothing else dwelt in that heart.

The Duchess rose very unaffectedly, and held out her hand.  Her lover did not take it.

“Did not Gianbattista see you, yesterday?” she asked.

“No,” he replied.

“That piece of ill-luck gave me a night of misery.  I was so afraid lest you might meet the Duke, whose perversity I know too well.  What made Vendramin let your palace to him?”