"This work is not merely food for the eye, but a feast. Amidst grand architectural forms of balconies and spiral columns sits Venice, the blonde, on a throne, radiant with beauty, with that fresh and rosy carnation peculiar to the daughters of humid climates, her silken skirt spread out beneath a silken mantle. Around her a circle of young women bend over with a voluptuous and yet haughty smile, possessing that Venetian charm peculiar to a goddess who has a courtesan's blood in her veins, but who rests on a cloud and attracts men to her instead of descending to them. Thrown into relief against pale violet draperies and mantles of azure and gold, their living flesh, their backs and shoulders, are impregnated with light or swim in the penumbra, the soft roundness of their nudity harmonizing with the tranquil gayety of their attitudes and features. Venice in their midst, ostentatious and yet gentle, seems like a queen whose mere rank gives the right to be happy, and whose only desire is to render those who see her happy also. On her serene head, which is thrown slightly backwards, two angels place {346} a crown. What a miserable instrumentality is language! A tone of satiny flesh, a luminous shadow on a bare shoulder, a flickering light on floating silk, attract, recall, and retain the eye for a long time, and yet there is but a vague phrase with which to express the charm.... Beneath the ideal sky and behind a balustrade are Venetian ladies in the costume of the time, in low-neck dresses cut square and closely fitting the body. It is actual society, and is as seductive as the goddess. They are gazing, leaning over and smiling; the light which illuminates portions of their clothes and faces falls on them or diffuses itself in such exquisite contrasts that one is moved with transports of delight. At one time a brow, at another a delicate ear or a necklace or a pearl, issues from the warm shadow. One, in the flower of youth, has the archest of looks; another, about forty and amply developed, glances upward and smiles in the best possible humor. This one--a superb creature, with red sleeves striped with gold--stoops, and her swelling breasts expand the chemise of her bodice. A little blond, curly-headed girl in the arms of an old woman raises her charming little hand with the most mutinous air, and her fresh little visage is a rose. There is not one who is not happy in living, and who is not merely cheerful, but joyous. And how well these rumpled, changeable silks, these white, diaphanous pearls accord with these transparent tints, as delicate as the petals of flowers! Away below, finally, is the restless activity of the sturdy, noisy crowd; warriors, prancing horses, grand flowing togas, a trumpeter bedizened with drapery, a man's naked back near a cuirass, and in the intervals, a dense throng of vigorous and animated heads, and in one corner a young mother and her infant; all