reputation, so to speak.  But above all, he was to have the horror, every evening upon going to his room, of passing through those uniform and desolate corridors, faintly lighted by gas, where before each door are pairs of cosmopolitan shoes—­heavy alpine shoes, filthy German boots, the conjugal boots of my lord and my lady, which make one think, by their size, of the troglodyte giants—­awaiting, with a fatigued air, their morning polish.

The imprudent Amedee was destined to all sorts of weariness, all sorts of deceptions, and all the homesickness of a solitary traveller.  At the sight of the famous monuments and celebrated sites, which have become in some way looked upon as models for painters and material for literary development, Amedee felt that sensation of “already seen” which paralyzes the faculty of admiration.  Dare we say it?  The dome in Milan, that enormous quiver of white marble arrows, did not move him.  He was indifferent to the sublime medley of bronze in the Baptistery in Florence; and the leaning tower at Pisa produced simply the effect of mystification.  He walked miles through the museums and silent galleries, satiated with art and glutted with masterpieces.  He was disgusted to find that he could not tolerate a dozen “Adorations of the Shepherds,” or fourteen “Descents from the Cross,” consecutively, even if they were signed with the most glorious names.  The scenes of suffering and martyrdom, so many times repeated, were particularly distasteful to him; and he took a still greater dislike even to a certain monk, always represented on his knees in prayer with an axe sticking in his tonsure, than to the everlasting St. Sebastian pierced with arrows.  His deadened and depraved attention discerned only the disagreeable and ugly side of a work of art.  In the adorable artless originals he could see only childish and barbarous drawing, and he thought the old colorists’ yolk-of-an-egg tone monotonous.

He wished to spur his sensations, to see something extraordinary.  He travelled toward Venice, the noiseless city, the city without birds or verdure, toward that silent country of sky, marble, and water; but once there, the reality seemed inferior to his dream.  He had not that shock of surprise and enthusiasm in the presence of St. Mark’s and the Doges’ palace which he had hoped for.  He had read too many descriptions of all these wonders; seen too many more or less faithful pictures, and in his disenchantment he recalled a lamp-shade which once, in his own home, had excited his childish imagination—­an ugly lampshade of blue pasteboard upon which was printed a nocturnal fete, the illuminations upon the ducal palace being represented by a row of pin-pricks.

Once more I repeat it, never travel alone, and above all, never go to Venice alone and without love!  For young married people in their honeymoon, or a pair of lovers, the gondola is a floating boudoir, a nest upon the waters like a kingfisher’s.  But for one who is sad, and who stretches himself upon the sombre cushions of the bark, the gondola is a tomb.