XXII
On a certain cloudy afternoon, some ten days later, a fishing-boat, with
a patched orange sail, might have been seen scudding under a light
northwesterly breeze through the channels which connect the island of
San Francesco with the more easterly stretches of the Venetian lagoon.
The boat presently neared the shore of one of the cultivated
lidi--islands formed out of the silt of many rivers by the travail of
centuries, some of them still mere sand or mud banks, others covered by
vineyards and fruit orchards--which, with the
murazzi or sea-walls of
Venice, stand sentinel between the city and the sea. On the
lido along
which the boat was coasting, the vintage was long since over and the
fruit gathered; the last yellow and purple leaves in the orchards, "a
pestilent-stricken multitude," were to-day falling fast to earth, under
the sighing, importunate wind. The air was warm; November was at its
mildest. But all color and light were drowned in floating mists, and
darkness lay over the distant city. It was one of those drear and
ghostly days which may well have breathed into the soul of Shelley that
superb vision of the dead generations of Venice, rising, a phantom host
from the bosom of the sunset, and sweeping in "a rapid mask of death"
over the shadowed waters that saw the birth and may yet furnish the tomb
of so vast a fame.
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