Abstract 1301 to 1309; Gradenigo's room--1340-42, page 295-1419. New proposals, p. 298.] _Now_, that is to say, at the time when the Sivos Chronicle was written; the room has long ago been destroyed, and its name given to another chamber on the opposite side of the palace: but I wish the reader to remember the date 1301, as marking the commencement of a great architectural epoch, in which took place the first appliance of the energy of the aristocratic power, and of the Gothic style, to the works of the Ducal Palace. The operations then begun were continued, with hardly an interruption, during the whole period of the prosperity of Venice. We shall see the new buildings consume, and take the place of, the Ziani Palace, piece by piece: and when the Ziani Palace was destroyed, they fed upon themselves; being continued round the square, until, in the sixteenth century, they reached the point where they had been begun in the fourteenth, and pursued the track they had then followed some distance beyond the junction; destroying or hiding their own commencement, as the serpent, which is the type of eternity, conceals its tail in its jaws. SECTION XIV. We cannot, therefore, _see_ the extremity, wherein lay the sting and force of the whole creature,--the chamber, namely, built by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement and the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent will soon become visible to us. The Gradenigo Chamber was somewhere on the Rio Facade, behind the present position of the Bridge of Sighs; i.e. about the point marked on the roof by the dotted lines in the woodcut; it is not known whether low or high, but probably on a first story. The great facade of the Ziani Palace being, as above mentioned, on the Piazzetta, this chamber was as far back and out of the way as possible; secrecy and security being obviously the points first considered. SECTION XV. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other additions to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction of that room. "There were, _near it_," he says, "the Cancellaria, and the _Gheba_ or _Gabbia_, afterwards called the Little Tower." [Footnote: "Vi era appresso la Cancellarla, e la Gheba o Gabbia, iniamata poi Torresella,"---P. 324. A small square tower is seen above the Vine angle in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert Durer. It appears about 25 feet square, and is very probably the Torresella in question.]