But generally the Adriatic waits on Venice with subservient calm, and one can float over those vast yet not unpictured lagoons in still assurance that one’s reveries will not be disturbed. I doubt whether such lengths of languorous idling be good for young strong people, but as a rest-cure for tired ones there can be nothing more complete. The shape and build of the gondola (what a perfect name for the gliding sinuous thing!) was evolved by an artist in comfort; the enormous leather cushions let you sink into their thickness as far as you please without ever touching the limit of their pleasant elasticity. Whether cowled in to keep off the sun’s rays in the day or uncovered to give you all the coolness of the evening, the gondola seat relieves you of all responsibility for your body; it holds you as an experienced nurse holds a tired child; and in its silent swan-like rush through the water you get just the sense of motion necessary to keep your nerves employed yet soothed. With the right companion, what talks are possible, as you glide out in the last flush of evening towards the more distant lagoons and wait for the moon to come up out of Istria, across the sea! Your gondolier, silent as Charon, is behind you and you forget his existence. And all the rest is behind, too, but very far behind: daily life with its horrid strident claims and calculations that won’t even leave honeymooning couples alone! Time has ceased, and the world is standing still to let you look at life in its beauty and kiss its face in its peace. When at last you say, without turning your head, “A casa, Sandruccio!” your black swan quivers an instant from low stern to dark arched prow, swings round in the smallest space any boat did ever turn in, and you float back to the regular rhythm of Sandruccio’s twenty-foot oar, till a necklace of lights lies low on the land and the faintest of songs—a very mist of music—is wafted over the water. “Alla Pizzetta?” enquires Sandruccio, speaking for the first time and in a voice expressing much amused indulgence for dreaming lovers. A few minutes later he is imperiously ordering fellow-gondoliers out of his way to the steps, is holding the side of the swan the eighth of an inch off the grind of the stone, and you and your other self dance on shore to become light-hearted young people, keeping time surreptitiously to the gay waltz of the band and laughing at everything and nothing because all the festive crowd around you is doing the same thing. Witch and tyrant as she is—and perhaps for that very reason, since tyrants must know how to yield as well as how to rule—Venice will meet you in almost all your moods, and create new ones for you if you have none of your own.