More frequently, when bad weather deprived us of our walk, we patronized the popular drama at the Malibran Theatre, where the performances were given in the daytime.

The admission cost us six kreutzers.

The audiences were excellent, the majority being in their shirt-sleeves, and the pieces given were generally of the ultra-melodramatic type.

However, one day to my great astonishment and intense delight I saw there _Le Baruffe Chioggiote_, the grotesque comedy that had appealed so strongly to Goethe in his days at this very theatre.

So true to nature was this performance that it surpassed anything of the kind I have ever witnessed." Wagner's impressions of Venice, where, some twenty-four years later, he was to end his anxious and marvellous life, seem to me so interesting that I quote a little more: "There was little else that attracted my attention in the oppressed and degenerate life of the Venetian people, and the only impression I derived from the exquisite ruin of this wonderful city as far as human interest is concerned was that of a watering-place kept up for the benefit of visitors.