Next to all that is connected with religion, that which would do the most to give a clear idea of the fourteenth century would be the study of women and their position at that time, but an almost total lack of documents makes this absolutely impossible. We can learn from old family papers and carefully preserved accounts what women were, and we may even to some extent reconstruct the frame of their outward existence; but the soul of it all escapes us. The story I have told of the little patrician girl alone stands out to give us some idea of what a spotless child’s thoughts could be in a city which was even then one of the most perverse in Europe. But of the many other Venetian ladies whom history mentions by name we know absolutely nothing, so far as their private lives are concerned. One dogess after another appears in magnificent garments; but we feel no more interest in them than if they were so many gorgeous wax figures, for no one has taken the trouble to tell us whether this one was beloved or that one hated; whether one was a woman of heart, or another proud, ambitious, and vain. In most cases we do not even know their ages. Why should any one care? Each one was ‘the dogess of her day,’ and that was enough; she was the companion and consort of the doge, but beyond that, in a state in which the supreme dignity was not hereditary, her value was purely decorative. The fourteenth century was not remarkable for much luxury or feminine display. Among the most characteristic objects used in those times were the extraordinary clogs, with double heels and enormously high, on which women went about in order to keep their skirts out of the mud. For the streets and lanes were not even paved, and there seems to have been no great effort made to clean them. The principal scavengers seem to have been the little pigs of the monastery of Saint Anthony of Padua, which had an official right-of-way about the city, and devoured greedily whatever the good wives of Venice chose to throw into the streets when they cleaned out their kitchens. It will easily be understood that clogs might be useful in such a town. As another illustration of the times, here is a list of the exiguous outfit provided for a young lady of great family on her marriage in the year 1300: One bed, two down quilts, two pillows, four sheets, one coverlet, six silver spoons, one copper pail; one piece of scarlet stuff long enough to make a bodice, one skirt of the same material; one skirt of striped stuff, and one trimming for the said skirt of the price of nine soldi grossi; one skin of a fox; seven amber beads, one ornament made of pearls, an ornament of gold, a silver belt and some silver beads.