In the Grand Canal, just at the corner of the _Palazzo Babarigo_, there appears the entrance to one of those myriad little ways that shoot secretly away from the great, wide water street. Turning into this, the _Rio San Polo_, following its course under the bridges and taking the second turning on the left, an obedient gondolier will swing you round with one sweep of his long oar into the _Rio Marin_. Being human, assuming your love of the beautiful, taking time also as his perquisite, he will probably choose more devious ways than this. But, everyone will tell you that, by the _Rio San Polo_, it is the shortest. On each side of the _Rio Marin_, there runs a narrow little pathway. Here, the houses do not dip down to the water’s edge, the space of light is wider, and the hurrying of the pedestrian on the footway seems to concentrate life for a moment and give it speech, in a place where everything is mute, where everything is still. Idlers gather lazily on the bridges to watch the swaying gondolas as they pass beneath. Here, even the mystery you will find by night, is driven away. The sun, the broad stretch of heaven, no longer a ribbon-strip of blue tying together the house-tops, these combine to defy mystery in the _Rio Marin_. Rose trees and flowering bushes top the grey walls; lift up their colours against a cloudless sky and smile down to you of gardens concealed on the other side. Towards the end of this little water-way, almost opposite the _Chiesa Tedeschi_, stands the _Palazzo Capello_, a broad and somewhat unbeautiful house, looking placidly down upon the quiet water. No great history is attached to it. No poet has ever written there, seated at its windows; no tragedy has been played that the guide books know of, no blood has been splashed against its walls. You will not find it mentioned in any of the descriptions of Venice, for it has no history to detain the ear; it bears no show of ornament without to attract the eye. Yet, with that pomp and vanity that breathed in Venice in the middle centuries, it was called--a palace--and only to those who know it from within, can this dignity of name seem justified.