The return voyage leaves S. Francesco in Deserto on the right, with the long low Lido straight ahead. Then we turn to the right and the Lido is on the left for most of the way to Venice. After a mile or so the mouth of the Adriatic is passed, where the Doge dropped his ring from the Bucintoro and thus renewed the espousals. On the day which I have in mind two airships were circling the city, and now and then the rays of the sun caught their envelopes and turned them to silver. Beneath, the lagoon was still as a pond; a few fishing boats with yellow sails lay at anchor near the Porto di Lido, like brimstone butterflies on a hot stone; and far away the snow of the Tyrolean alps still hung between heaven and earth. CHAPTER XV ON FOOT. I: FROM THE PIAZZA TO S. STEFANO The Ridotto--The Fenice Theatre--The Goldoni Theatre--_Amleto_--A star part--S. Zobenigo--S. Stefano--Cloisters--Francesco Morosini--A great soldier--Nicolo Tommaseo--The Campo Morosini--Red hair. Leaving the Piazza at the corner diagonally opposite the Merceria clock, we come at once into the busy Salizzada S. Moise, where the shops for the more expensive tourists are to be found. A little way on the right is the beginning of the Frezzeria, a Venetian shopping centre second only to the Merceria. A little way on the left is the Calle del Ridotto where, divided now into a cinema theatre, auction rooms, a restaurant, and the Grand Canal Hotel, is the once famous Ridotto of which Casanova has much to tell. Here were held masquerades; here were gambling tables; hither Venice resorted to forget that she had ever been great and to make sure that she should be great no longer. The Austrians suppressed it. The church of S. Moise, with its very florid facade of statuary, has little of interest in it. Keeping with the stream and passing the Bauer-Gruenwald restaurant on the left, we come in a few minutes to a bridge--the Ponte delle Ostreghe (or Oysters)--over a rio at the end of which, looking to the right, we see the great Venetian theatre, the Fenice. The Fenice is, I suppose, the most romantic theatre in the world, for the simple reason that the audience, at any rate those who occupy the boxes, all arrive in boats. Before it is a basin for the convenience of navigation, but even with that the confusion on a gala night must be excessive, and a vast space of time must divide the first comers from the last, if the last are to be punctual. And when one translates our own difficulties over cars and cabs at the end of a performance into the terms of gondolas and canals, one can imagine how long it must be before the theatre is emptied. The Fenice is also remarkable among the world's theatres for its size, holding, as it does, three thousand persons. It is peculiar furthermore in being open only for a few weeks in the spring.