The young patrician was already esteemed a connoisseur in the most
exquisite industries of Venice, and the Lady Laura had confided to her
son the ordering of a set of goblets of _girasole_ for the banquet--a
new opalescent glass, with iridescent borderings, such as had never yet
been seen at any Venetian fete.
Thus the gondola of the Giustiniani floated for long hours before the
famous establishment of Girolamo Magagnati, so delicate and intricate
was the work that had been ordered from him; and the gondoliers,
meanwhile, in their splendid liveries, held converse with other
gondoliers in lazily drifting barks, with hatchments of other noble
houses embroidered on their sleeves; and their tones were strident and
quarrelsome, or self-complacent and patronizing, as the quality of the
silken sashes which displayed the color of their house was heavier or
poorer than their own.
One boasts of the lantern, all of brass, "Wrought by Messer Alessandro
Leopardi--'come no c'e altro!'--there is no other like it--which he, the
favored gondolier, has been burnishing for the banquet of the Dandolo,
to which he shall that night convey the noble lady of the Giustiniani!"
"It is less beautiful," retorts a gondolier of the house of Mocenigo,
the fringes of his sash of rose sweeping the bridge of his gondola as it
moves forward, slightly tilting on its side, with a quick, disdainful
motion called forth by proper Mocenigo pride--so pliant are these barks
of Venice to the moods of the gondolier.
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