overtures; then, as I sat at the restaurant window giving myself up to impressions of the music, I did not know which dazzled me most, the incomparable piazza magnificently illuminated and filled with countless numbers of moving people, or the music that seemed to be borne away in rustling glory to the winds.  Only one thing was wanting that might certainly have been expected from an Italian audience:  the people were gathered round the band in thousands listening most intently, but no two hands ever forgot themselves so far as to applaud, as the least sign of approbation of Austrian military music would have been looked upon as treason to the Italian Fatherland.  All public life in Venice also suffered by this extraordinary rift between the general public and the authorities; this was peculiarly apparent in the relations of the population to the Austrian officers, who floated about publicly in Venice like oil on water.  The populace, too, behaved with no less reserve, or one might even say hostility, to the clergy, who were for the most part of Italian origin.  I saw a procession of clerics in their vestments passing along the Piazza San Marco accompanied by the people with unconcealed derision.

It was very difficult for Ritter to induce me to interrupt my daily arrangements even to visit a gallery or a church, though, whenever we had to pass through the town, the exceedingly varied architectonic peculiarities and beauties always delighted me afresh.  But the frequent gondola trips towards the Lido constituted my chief enjoyment during practically the whole of my stay in Venice.  It was more especially on our homeward journeys at sunset that I was always over-powered by unique impressions.  During the first part of our stay in the September of that year we saw on one of these occasions the marvellous apparition of the great comet, which at that time was at its highest brilliancy, and was generally said to portend an imminent catastrophe.  The singing of a popular choral society, trained by an official of the Venetian arsenal, seemed like a real lagoon idyll.  They generally sang only three-part naturally harmonised folk-songs.  It was new to me not to hear the higher voice rise above the compass of the alto, that is to say, without touching the soprano, thereby imparting to the sound of the chorus a manly youthfulness hitherto unknown to me.  On fine evenings they glided down the Grand Canal in a large illuminated gondola, stopping before a few palaces as if to serenade (when requested and paid for so doing, be it understood), and generally attracted a number of other gondolas in their wake.  During one sleepless night, when I felt impelled to go out on to my balcony in the small hours, I heard for the first time the famous old folk-song of the gondolieri.  I seemed to hear the first call, in the stillness of the night, proceeding from the Rialo to about a mile away like a rough lament, and answered in the same tone from a yet further distance in another