In Bellini, the windows are unpeopled, but here there is scarcely one uncarpeted, and without its contingent of festive heads and shoulders; whilst in one of the windows, in the house we can still identify, a fascinating infant prances against the grating and pokes a fist through the bars. The bridge in the picture is obviously too low for any gondola to pass under it; it is merely a temporary private way thrown across the rio, which it is easy to believe that Mansueti has substituted in order that we may see above it the procession winding out of the Rio del Piombo. As we look back from the Ponte San’ Antonio we may get, in spite of Mansueti’s changes, a distinct impression of his scene; the sun, shining through the small circular ogival window in the house that still bounds our horizon, lights up a gay interior of green walls draped in crimson and gold with singular richness of effect. [Illustration: THE GONDOLIERS’ SHRINE.] The name of the Rio della Fava, the Canal of the Bean, boasts a traditional derivation that throws a curious light on Venetian pieties. It appears that in 1480, the same year in which was initiated the cult of the Madonna dei Miracoli at the Cà Amadi, another wonder-working image, under the patronage of the same family, was thought worthy of a chapel in San Lio. This chapel was named Santa Maria della Consolazione, or della Fava, from its proximity to the Ponte della Fava. “The ecclesiastical writers,” says Tassini, “recount that the bridge was so named because a man living by it, who had hidden some contraband salt under some sacks of beans, a vegetable he dealt in, when warned that the police were approaching threw himself at the feet of the said miraculous image for succour and obtained this favour--that the Justices, despite their search, found nothing in the house but simple beans.” This naïve faith in the willingness of the Madonna to meet all contingencies survives among the humbler citizens of Venice to-day. A proof is provided by the personal experience of a friend who had bespoken overnight a gondola for the station in the dark early hours of the next morning. The gondolier duly arrived and set out with his fare from San Marco. But they had gone no further than the church of the Salute when his lamp gave out and he halted and asked leave to replenish it. No place for procuring oil was apparent, but the gondolier knew one. He went to the shrine of the Madonna and addressed the figure thus, “Blessed Madonna, thou thinkest harm of no man and thou wouldst not that harm should come to any. I turn to thee for help in my need. The police are not like thee. They will have no pity in their fine if they see me at the station with my lamp unlit. I beg thy lamp for this little while.” And, as there was-no sign of refusal, the Madonna’s lamp was taken to the station and returned on the homeward journey.