"Isn't it wonderful?" Nan whispered to her aunt. "I feel as if I were living a hundred years ago, and that these old palaces were not melancholy places given over for _pensions_ and tourists."
"No, of course not, but the old glory has passed. Yet, how beautiful it still is here."
"It is beautiful under any circumstances, and what a history the place has had. With how many different nations has Venice been connected, and what changes she has seen!"
"When was she at the height of her glory?"
"In the fifteenth century, and a great republic she was then, but her magnificence began to wane in the sixteenth century. She has since twice belonged to Austria, has belonged to Italy, has been a republic, and at last was again united to Italy."
"I don't like to think of her as anything but Italian."
"She has had many Oriental influences which are still very evident and make her different from other Italian cities. She used to be the centre where the traffic of both the East and West met and under her Doges held many Eastern possessions. We must get some books, Nan, and read up so you will become better acquainted with the past of the queen of the Adriatic."
"Indeed, I do want to do that. I should love to have seen that ceremony of wedding her to the sea."
"We live in too late an age for all the old romances and poetry except what still lingers through association and imagination. So quiet, Jo? It isn't like you not to have a word to say."
"I'm listening, Miss Helen, and am having such a good time that I am hugging myself for want of a better way to express my delight. I do love all this so much better than I expected to. I'm afraid I hadn't given much thought to the places over here till I actually came. They were names that I ticked off something like this: Paris--gay streets and shops; good place to get smart clothes. London--fogs, omnibuses, Dickens' stories; Munich--beer, picture-galleries. Venice--gondolas; all water."
Miss Helen laughed. "That is the way those places appear in the minds of a good many persons, I'm afraid. You are glad you came, Jo, aren't you? I remember Nan said you were not very enthusiastic at first."
"You bet I'm glad." Jo spoke with more force than elegance. "I could bat my head against the wall when I think of what a goose I was about coming. What an ignoramus I was not to study up more before I came. Nan enjoys things and gets so excited over them lots of times when I don't know what in the world she is driving at. Then by the time I have learned a little history and stuff it is time to leave, and there is not any chance for my enthusiasm to break out. I can't imagine how Daniella kept up with her party. You all are way ahead of me when it comes to literature and pictures and things, and what must she have been?"