One of the first things I did when I awoke in the morning was to get out on to the roof of the palace and look about me. I always ask to be directed on to the roof when I arrive at a new place. And there I remained the whole morning, painting, deaf to the pleadings of my friends that I should come down and eat. It was the chimneys that fascinated me! From the decorative standpoint they were quite startling. Chimneys, chimneys, everywhere, and such chimneys--grouped into pictures in every direction! There were clusters of twos, and clusters of threes; and wherever there were spaces that could be used for decoration they were used to the full. Each one of these chimneys seemed to have its own particular character. Some bulged out at the top in graceful lines; some were square and stolid; others were light and airy. At the base of some bloomed a blaze of flowers from the roof gardens. Each one was different. When I learned that a book had been published on the chimneys of Venice I was not in the least surprised. [Illustration: PALACE IN A BY-CANAL] When my friends were able to tear me away from chimneys we got into our gondola and allowed the gondolier to take us where he pleased, to drift about in the by-canals. I wanted my impressions of Venice to be quite haphazard. We glided in the gondola past marble palaces--green palaces, pink palaces, blue palaces, all toned and variegated with age. Venice struck me as being a highly-coloured city, the most brilliantly coloured I had ever seen. It was not, as most cities are, merely a background for brightly-dressed figures: the buildings themselves were coloured, and the gondolas and the figures were black and sombre. Every wall, every doorway, was coloured. We glided past a series of crazy old doorways of blues, greens, and vermilions. Each door was broken with many changes of colour, and the red, rusty ironwork above, just where it caught the sun, was of a rich golden sienna. Certainly Venice is the most highly-coloured city in the world. How different from the impressions one finds in Bond Street--the vicious water-colours in which the artist always insists on orange and vermilion sails and crisp, flowing reflections that have been painted on slanting tables: the water-colours that are so sought after and so saleable! That Venice is vividly coloured I admit; but there is a scumble over the city. Age has toned it. The pink palace reflected in the green water is totally unlike the pink palace of the blobby water-colours. There are blues, and violets, and old-rose tones, and a certain bloom in it that these artists never seem to give. And to a certain extent these pictures handicap one: one feels annoyed to think that Venice should be so caricatured. You see the Bridge of Sighs at daybreak; you see the Salute by moonlight; and somehow you cannot forget these eternal water-colours. There is a certain resemblance, sufficient to irritate. [Illustration: THE ORANGE DOOR]