I do not believe any man could ever have hoped for a finer task than mine. I, who have often considered life not worth living, congratulated myself on this undertaking in which I should have the opportunity of creating my masterpiece. But before attempting the marvelous game from which I was certain I was never to return, I wished to visit Venice once again, I wished to draw again from the memorial and eternal glories of these monuments the deep joy of such a life instilled in stone as but rarely it is possible to instil in men. How often while contemplating the architecture of St. Mark’s have I said to myself that we have the right to make men die because we also know how to make them live, but no right to destroy memories because we cannot build them again. How could one reconstruct the glories of fourteen centuries of domination? With Bottecchia and the De Carli brothers I went to visit Venice for the last time. A light naval motorboat carried us swiftly along the short stretch of water separating the mainland from the city on the sea. It was a clear day; the bluish surface of the basin of St. Mark glittered under the first light zephyrs of May, and, stirred from time to time by smarter puffs, the little waves broke crisply against the sides and over the bow of our skiff. The symmetrical form of a swift torpedo-boat, whose slender sides were moulded for speed like the tendons of a grayhound, was outlined against the curved horizon flecked with frail diaphanous clouds. Amethyst and cobalt, purple and gold mingled in the rapid, ever-changing water swirls about us, intersecting now and anon shattered into fragments that in turn recreate new gleams of loveliness of color and new plays of light. The cold, viscid seaweed stood erect in midstream eagerly awaiting the caress of a passing keel, or hid its dark mass among the shadows of the Cyclopean walls from which the swift foam of the eddies is hurled back. The spirals of a slender column resembling a wistaria vine descended as far as the odorous musk along the bank, while two gentle peacocks, reclining upon marble, wound their sinuous necks about a byzantine image before which wavered the flame of a votive lamp. Our gondola glided silently along the tortuous canal of the dead city. Now and again we passed a heavy stone railing before which dancing statues seemed to suspend the invisible garlands of a distant minuet, or such a heavy iron gate as pricks the pale sky with its pointed blades, or a cypress and a rose bush closely bound together in a single embrace for centuries, with their long, green foliage resting on the water. The Lombardesque eagles curved under the cornice of Casa Vendramin uphold the festoons of stone and on the porous, stained marble one can always read the phrase of the Latin psalm “non nobis, non nobis.” Yet, even for us it is springtime; even for us it is sweet to think it is springtime and that we shall be able to die in springtime.