Although the quay was not yet finished, the work seemed to be quite abandoned.

There were heaps of rubbish, blocks of stone, broken fences, and dilapidated tool-sheds all around.

To such a height had it been necessary to carry the quay walls--designed to protect the city from floods, for the river bed has been rising for centuries past--that the old terrace of the Boccanera gardens, with its double flight of steps to which pleasure boats had once been moored, now lay in a hollow, threatened with annihilation whenever the works should be finished.

But nothing had yet been levelled; the soil, brought thither for making up the bank, lay as it had fallen from the carts, and on all sides were pits and mounds interspersed with the abandoned building materials.

Wretched urchins came to play there, workmen without work slept in the sunshine, and women after washing ragged linen spread it out to dry upon the stones.