The great voyager was born in this house, and here he spent, in comparative quiet, after many years of toilsome but profitable travel, the last days of his life. Having, like Shakspere’s banish’d Norfolk, retired himself to Italy, here in Venice he gave his body to this pleasant country’s earth, in 1323 or thereabouts. How far the rest of the quotation is applicable to his peculiar case no man, of course, can say. Polo was called by alliterative neighbors “Mark the Millionaire”--hence the “Corte Millione”; and the rich man, proverbially, does not find heaven a place of easy access. The Corte Millione, Polo’s court-yard, is now the _al-fresco_ foyer of the Malibran Theatre, which was built originally in 1678. But hardly one of the millions of Venetian youths who, for more than two centuries, have cooled themselves under the stars, by the side of Polo’s old well and Polo’s old marble balustrade, between the acts of the play or the ballet, ever heard of Mark the Millionaire, or care where he lived or where he died. The mystery as to the exact part of this pleasant country’s earth which received Marco Polo’s body has never been cleared up. In a copy of his last will and testament, I read, however, that he left a certain sum of money to the Monastery of Saint Lawrence here, “where I desire to be buried.” He certainly buried his father, Nicolò Polo, in the old and original Church of S. Lorenzo; and the natural inference is that he himself lies somewhere within its precincts. The sarcophagus erected for the elder Polo by the filial care of the younger Polo is known to have existed, until towards the end of the Sixteenth Century, in the porch leading to the church. The old building was renewed, from its very foundations, in 1592, and no traces of the ancient structure remain; the old parochial records no longer exist, and even the name of the Polos is as unknown to the parochial authorities to-day as it is to the worldlings who crowd the theatre erected upon the site of the house which was their home. Petrarch is known to have made several visits to Venice, and he is said to have been very familiar with it, and very fond of it, even in his youth. In 1353 or ’54 he was certainly here, for a short time, in an official capacity; and documentary evidence clearly proves that he settled in Venice in 1362--a cholera year--and remained here until 1368, making annual excursions to Padua, and spending certain of the summer and autumn months with friends at Pavia. During this [Illustration: DEL PETRARCHA. E. DI M. LAVRA.]