To-day all those chambers are çoisRenédeserted, for men remain nowhere, not even in the prisons; the bars of the windows have been removed and the walls and ceilings white-washed. The gentle and learned Abbé Betio, living in this abandoned part of the Palace, is its peaceful and solitary guardian.
The rooms which immortalize Pellico's captivity are lofty and airy; they command a splendid view; they are the prison for a poet; there would not be much to say about them, admitting the tyranny and absurdity: but the death sentence for a speculative opinion! The Moravian[102] dungeons! Ten years taken from life, youth and talent! And the gnats, those nasty animals by which I myself am being eaten up at the Hôtel de l'Europe, hardened though I be by the weather and the mosquitoes of Florida! For the rest, I have often been worse lodged than was Pellico in his belvedere in the Ducal Palace, notably in the prefecture of the doges of the French Police, where I was obliged to climb up on a table to enjoy the light.
The author of _Francesca da Rimini_ thought of Zanze in his gaol; I, in mine, sang of a young girl whom I had just seen die. I was very anxious to know what became of Pellico's little guardian. I have set persons to make researches: if I find out anything, I will tell you.
A gondola landed me at the Frari, where we French, accustomed as we are to the Grecian or Gothic exteriors of our own churches, are not much struck by those outsides of basilicas in brick, ungrateful and common to the eye; but, in the inside, the harmony of the lines and the disposition of the masses produce a simplicity and a calmness of composition that enchant one.
The tombs in the Frari, placed in the lateral walls, decorate the building without obstructing it The magnificence of the marbles blazes forth on every side, charming foliage bears witness to the finish of the old Venetian sculpture. On one of the squares of the pavement in the nave are these words:
HERE LIES TITIAN, THE RIVAL OF ZEUXIS AND APELLES
This stone is opposite one of the painter's master-pieces. Canova has his gorgeous sepulchre not far from Titian's flag-stone; this sepulchre is the replica of the monument which he had conceived for Titian himself and which he executed afterwards for the Archduchess Maria Christina[103]. The remains of the sculptor of the _Hebe_ and the _Magdalen_ are not all collected in this work: thus Canova inhabits the representation of a tomb made by himself, not for himself, which tomb is but his semi-cenotaph.