The fondamenta below Henry’s palace, leading to the church of the Angeli, is one of the most desolate in Murano; the wide green campo of the cemetery which opens from it is deserted and bare, save for a few fowls that humbly commemorate the proud old shield. The dirt of the children is indescribable, as they press close begging a soldino. But their dirt is dearer to them. A bargain for a washed face, even when the reward rings cheerily on the pavement, brings no response but laughter and surprise. We are reminded by contrast of the tribute of Andrea Calmo, a popular poet of the sixteenth century: E voio tanto bene a quel Muran, Che, per diroelo certo in veritæ, Son in pensier de vender le mie intræ. E venir la per starmene pì san. Quei horti a pieni de herbe uliose E quel canal cusi chiaro e pulio Con quelle belle casi si aierose, Con tante creature che par riose Liogo che l’ha stampao Domenedio. (And I wish so well to that Murano, that to tell you the sober truth I am thinking of selling my takings and coming there to live more healthily. The gardens there are so full of olive trees, and the canal so clear and clean, the houses so beautiful and so airy, with so many fair creatures that it seems a place of joy stamped by the Lord God.) Beside the Cà da Mula, hidden among some outbuildings, from which it has in the last years been partially released, is one of Murano’s finest treasures, the convent front of San Cipriano, which in the ninth century, when Malamocco was on the point of submersion, was brought here by order of Ordelafo Faliero. Andrea Dandolo dates the building from 881; it was rebuilt in 1109 and restored in 1605, and its exquisite façade, still bearing the stamp of several ages, freed somewhat from the earth about its base, stands up nobly from the tangled garden around it. The central arch is outlined with the finest Byzantine tracery lined with Gothic, surrounded once with coloured marbles of which only fragments now remain, and above this is a frieze of the best Roman of the Renaissance: slender columns, some Byzantine, some Gothic, adorn it on either side, and fantastic Byzantine symbols are sculptured in the stone discs that are embedded in the walls between the arches of the cloister. A campanula on the ruined wall to the left of the arch stands out clear and pale against the brick building behind, where once the cloister opened out, an exquisite harmony of lavender and rose. Fragmentary though it is, this façade of the famous monastery is one of the most precious relics of the islands of the lagoons.