The multitude were seized with consternation; and the whole fell on their knees, from the sublime podesta himself, to the humblest saffron-gatherer. Never was there such a mixture of devotion. Never was there such a concert of exclamations, sighs, callings on the saints, and rattling of beads. The whole concourse lay for some minutes with their very noses rubbing to the ground, until they were all roused at once by a loud burst of laughter. Thirty thousand pair of eyes were lifted up at the instant, and all fixed in astonishment on a human figure, seen calmly sitting on the water, in the very track of the explosion, and still half hidden in the heavy mass of smoke that curled in a huge globe over the remnants. The laugh had proceeded from him, and the nearer he approached the multitude, the louder he laughed. At length, stopping in front of the spot where the sublime podesta, a little ashamed of his prostration, was getting the dust shaken out of his gold-embroidered robe of office, and bathing his burning visage in orange-flower water, the stranger began a sort of complimentary song to the famous city of Vicenza. The stranger found a willing audience; for his first stanza was in honour of the "most magnificent city of Vicenza;" its "twenty palaces by the matchless Palladio;" much more "its sixty churches;" and much more than all "its breed of Dominicans, unrivalled throughout the earth for the fervour of their piety and the capacity of their stomachs." The last touch made the grand-prior of the cathedral wince a little, but it was welcomed with a roar from the multitude. The song proceeded; but if the prior had frowned at the first stanza, the podesta was doubly angry at the second, which sneered at Venetian pomposity in incomparable style. But the prior and podesta were equally outvoted, for the roar of the multitude was twice as loud as before. Then came other touches on the _cavalieri serventi_, the ladies, the nuns, and the husbands, till every class had its share: but the satire was so witty, that, keen as it was, the shouts of the people silenced all disapprobation. He finished by a brilliant stanza, in which he said, that "having been sent by Neptune from the depths of the ocean to visit the earth, he had chosen for his landing-place its most renowned spot, the birthplace of the gayest men and the handsomest women--the exquisite Vicenza." With these words he ascended from the shore, and was received with thunders of applause.