It was delightful to glide along over a sea of light so richly tinted, among those graceful gondolas, with their freights of gayety and beauty. As the glow on the sky began to fade, they all turned their prows toward San Marc, and dropping into a slower motion, the whole procession moved on together to the stairs of the piazzetta; and by the time the twilight was perceptible, the _cafés_ were crowded, and the square was like one great _féte_. We passed the evening in wandering up and down, never for an instant feeling like strangers, and excited and amused till long after midnight.
After several days' delay, we received an answer this morning from the authorities, with permission to see the bridge of sighs, and the prisons of the ducal palace. We landed at the broad stairs, and passing the desolate court, with its marble pillars and statues green with damp and neglect, ascended the "giant's steps," and found the warder waiting for us, with his enormous keys, at the door of a private passage. At the bottom of a staircase we entered a close gallery, from which the first range of cells opened. The doors were broken down, and the guide holding his torch in them for a moment in passing, showed us the same dismal interior in each--a mere cave, in which you would hardly think it possible to breathe, with a raised platform for a bed, and a small hole in the front wall to admit food and what air could find its way through from the narrow passage. There were eight of these; and descending another flight of damp steps, we came to a second range, differing only from the first in their slimy dampness. These are the cells of which Lord Byron gives a description in the notes to the fourth canto of Childe Harold. He has transcribed, if you remember, the inscription from the ceilings and walls of one which was occupied successively by the victims of the Inquisition. The letters are cut rudely enough, and must have been done entirely by feeling, as there is no possibility of the penetration of a ray of light. I copied them with some difficulty, forgetting that they were in print, and, comparing them afterward with my copy of Childe Harold, I found them exactly the same, and I refer you, therefore, to his notes.