"No; I have never gone so far. But when one has seen their pictures and the excellent photographs that we have now--but stop a moment if you please, I must show you something else." They had just passed some high houses and reached a place, where a narrow, ditch-like canal, bridged where the street crossed it, emptied into the Spree. On one side stood the blank wall of a three-story factory. Opposite was a low hut, very narrow in front, but extending along the canal to a considerable depth. It seemed to have formerly opened upon the quay, by a door beside its single window, but the door was now walled up, and the window covered on the inner side by a dark cloth. This decaying little house was connected by means of an iron railing with its massive neighbor. The artist leaned over the railing and gazed up the canal, whose dirty brown water flowed so sluggishly, that it seemed stagnant and gave forth a mouldering exhalation. "Of what does this remind you?" he asked, turning to Edwin. "What do you mean by 'this'?" "Why, the canal, and yonder little bridge that connects the two banks, the post to which the clothes-line is fastened, and the atmospheric effect and coloring of the stones, which we artists call _tone_." "It bears a distant, but by no means flattering resemblance, to Venice and the Bridge of Sighs." "Right!" cried the little man, who in his earnestness, failed to hear the tinge of sarcasm in Edwin's remark. "True, I have not been in Venice myself. But friends of mine, who have visited Italy, have likewise been compelled to confess that this view was completely Venetian, at least as the city is represented in Canaletto's pictures, which, however, are doubtless somewhat cooler in tone, than the reality. However, we are in Berlin, and it is only a harmless jest when I talk of my lagune." "_Your_ lagune?" "Certainly. I live here." "In this--"