Leaning one day over the Ponte di Paglia I saw one being brought in, in a barca with a green box--as we should say, a Black and Green Maria.

I cannot resist quoting Coryat's lyrical passage in praise of what to most of us is as sinister a building as could be imagined.

"There is near unto the Dukes Palace a very faire prison, the fairest absolutely that ever I saw, being divided from the Palace by a little channell of water, and againe joyned unto it by a merveilous faire little gallery that is inserted aloft into the middest of the Palace wall East-ward.

[He means the Bridge of Sighs.] I thinke there is not a fairer prison in all Christendome: it is built with very faire white ashler stone, having a little walke without the roomes of the prison which is forty paces long and seven broad....

It is altogether impossible for the prisoners to get forth." The next important building is the famous hotel known as Danieli's, once a palace, which has its place in literature as having afforded a shelter to those feverish and capricious lovers, George Sand and Alfred de Musset.