CHAPTER XIV.
As the summer months advanced, the transformation of the Venetian palace into the modern hotel proceeded rapidly towards completion.
The outside of the building, with its fine Palladian front looking on the canal, was wisely left unaltered.

Inside, as a matter of necessity, the rooms were almost rebuilt--so far at least as the size and the arrangement of them were concerned.

The vast saloons were partitioned off into 'apartments' containing three or four rooms each.
The broad corridors in the upper regions afforded spare space enough for rows of little bedchambers, devoted to servants and to travellers with limited means.

Nothing was spared but the solid floors and the finely-carved ceilings.

These last, in excellent preservation as to workmanship, merely required cleaning, and regilding here and there, to add greatly to the beauty and importance of the best rooms in the hotel.