All the days were spent
on the water, only landing now and then to look at some famous building
or picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely facade of St.
Mark's before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time! The
evenings were spent on the water too; for every night, immediately after
sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the
Doge's Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends
always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung with
embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was
surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and gondolas bearing colored
lanterns and pennons and gay awnings, and managed by gondoliers in
picturesque uniforms. All these floated and shifted and swept on
together with a sort of rhythmic undulation as if keeping time to the
music, while across their path dazzling showers and arches of colored
fire poured from the palace fronts and the hotels. Every movement of the
fairy flotilla was repeated in the illuminated water, every torch-tip
and scarlet lantern and flake of green or rosy fire; above all the
bright full moon looked down as if surprised. It was magically beautiful
in effect. Katy felt as if her previous sober ideas about life and
things had melted away. For the moment the world was turned topsy-turvy.
There was nothing hard or real or sordid left in it; it was just a fairy
tale, and she was in the middle of it as she had longed to be in her
childhood.
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