There the Patriarch was waiting with his flat boat, and the monks of Saint Helen served him a collation of chestnuts and red wine, which, at eight or nine o’clock in the morning, was cruelly ungastronomic; and the Patriarch gave his sailors bread and fresh broad beans in the shell. The Patriarch sent acolytes to the Doge with a nosegay of Damascus roses; and his flat boat having been taken in tow by the Bucentaur, and another boat in which a choir sang the hymns composed for the occasion, they all moved out towards the open sea. Then, in profound silence, the Doge opened the little stern window behind his throne, and the Patriarch, [Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Venice._] who had come on board, poured holy water into the sea and prayed, saying, ‘Lord, vouchsafe calm and quiet weather to all them that journey by sea’; after which prayer the Patriarch handed the ring to the Doge, who dropped [Sidenote: _Carrer, Annali._] it into the sea just where the holy water had been poured, saying, ‘We espouse thee, O Sea, in token of perpetual sovereignty.’ The guns of the fortresses thundered out a salute, and all the thousands of spectators cheered for Saint Mark, and all the young men waved flags; then the whole company began to throw flowers, freshly cut, from boat to boat, and the Patriarch presented great silver dishes full of flowers to the Doge; and all went ashore at San Nicola on the Lido to hear the pontifical high mass, after which every man went home to his own house. That was the ceremony at which the Venetians assisted in 1796, little guessing that they saw it for the last time. A few months later a vandal mob [Sidenote: _Rom. x. 305; Mutinelli, Lessico and Ult._] beached the Bucentaur on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and stripped it of all its ornaments, to burn them and get the gold. The hull was then armed with four heavy old guns, and was turned into a sort of floating battery and sailors’ prison at the entrance of the harbour. On her stern was painted her new name ‘Idra,’ the Hydra, and there she rotted for years. A few fragments of the old vessel are now preserved in the Arsenal. More than two hundred men worked at reducing the Bucentaur and the two big carved boats of the Signory to the democratic standard of beauty. The last pilot of the Bucentaur was Andrea Chiribini, who, like all his predecessors, called himself ‘admiral,’ and was a ruffian not worth the rope with [Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult.; Bembo, Ben. 265._]