When the bronze giants struck the hour of midnight on
the bell, I thought the life and animation of the city were all
centred here; and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I only
saw them dotted, here and there, with sleeping boatmen wrapped up
in their cloaks, and lying at full length upon the stones.
But close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons sucking
at their walls, and welling up into the secret places of the town:
crept the water always. Noiseless and watchful: coiled round and
round it, in its many folds, like an old serpent: waiting for the
time, I thought, when people should look down into its depths for
any stone of the old city that had claimed to be its mistress.
Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market-place at
Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this
strange Dream upon the water: half-wondering if it lie there yet,
and if its name be VENICE.
CHAPTER VIII--BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE PASS OF THE
SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND
I had been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put
me out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet.
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