Irma in Italy Part 31

"Not stranger than the leaning towers," interposed Irma. "I suppose the people of Bologna must be terribly afraid of earthquakes. I hated even to drive near the leaning towers."

"I did not know we were to tell only strange things we had seen," said Aunt Caroline. "I was most impressed by the Accademia. You others did not stay long enough in the gallery. Besides Raphael's St. Cecilia, there are very many pictures worth seeing; no one can really have a good idea of Guido Reni without coming to Bologna."

"Well, I enjoyed the drive through the park, and our glimpse of Carducci's house on the way back. It was all so restful after the noise of the streets," said Uncle Jim.

"There are certainly many beautiful churches in Bologna, and more homelike-looking palaces than I have seen anywhere else in Italy," said Mrs. Sanford. "We might have enjoyed a longer stay there."

"I didn't think much of the shops," interposed Katie. "There was hardly a thing I wanted to buy." Whereat the others smiled, as shopping was Katie's favorite pastime.

"You'll find them worse in Ravenna, for that is not only a decaying, but a decayed city, from all the accounts I've heard."

"I almost wish we were not going there," added Aunt Caroline. "They say it's full of malaria."

"Oh, in one short day and night we can keep out of the way of germs."

It was noon when they reached Ravenna, tired enough after a warm journey.

"Dante's tomb is only a step from here," said Marion to Irma, as they finished _dejeuner_. "Bring your camera and we'll go out and take a shot at it." Irma posed herself in front of the door of the domed building containing the remains of the great poet, while Marion took a snapshot.

They stopped for a minute to read an inscription on an opposite house, where Garibaldi had been entertained, and turning another corner, with some little trouble, Marion found the simple dwelling where Lord Byron had lived during his year or two in Ravenna.

"Now," began Marion, "if you can get Ellen to come, I move that we three drive about the town. I am tired of too large a crowd, or perhaps it is the weather. But this is one of the days when more than three would spoil all the fun of looking at things."

As the suggestion pleased Ellen, the three started out in their carriage ahead of the others. There were no trolley cars; few people were moving around in the long, dusty streets; and many of the larger houses, or palaces, were indeed deserted mansions, with no signs of life about them.

"First to Theodoric's tomb," Marion had announced, as they started, and as they drove along he talked entertainingly about old Ravenna, especially in the last days of the Roman Empire, when the Emperor Honorius held court there, believing the place to be safe against the barbarians. Later, after the fall of Rome, Theodoric made this his city, and tried to revive the Western Empire.

"Ravenna used to be a great seaport," said Marion, "with a harbor for a large fleet, but the sea has been gradually receding until now it is five miles away."

"These marshes and this little creek, I suppose, are all that the sea has left Ravenna as a reminder of those days," said Irma.

"Yes," responded Marion, "but Theodoric's tomb is a thing we shall remember better." And the girls agreed with him a few minutes later, when they stood in the garden in front of the gray walls of the impressive circular mausoleum.

"Oh, please stand still a moment," cried Marion, as they leaned over a particularly beautiful rosebush; then a click came from the camera.

"I hate to have my picture taken when I am not expecting it," cried Ellen.

"Don't worry! Theodoric's tomb will quite overshadow us," responded Irma, in mock consolation.

After this the three drove from one church to another to see the splendid mosaics that are Ravenna's chief treasures. Saints and emperors and other great personages were there in all the glory of rich color, and scriptural truths were taught in the symbols of the early Church.

"Although the figures are sometimes out of drawing and the designs rather queer, it is just the same in these mosaics as in some of the old frescoes; they were put on the church walls to teach truth to the ma.s.s of people who could not read, and that is why I do not laugh at them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIENA. GENERAL VIEW, WITH CAMPANILE.

(_See page 227._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RAVENNA. THEODORIC'S TOMB.]

It seemed to Irma, when the whole party met at dinner that evening, that Katie was displeased with somebody or something. Had Richard been teasing her? For teasing was a cousinly privilege which he often exercised. Was she annoyed that she had not been asked to join Marion's particular group of three? For the present there seemed to be no answer.

The next day, after a warm journey of several hours, the whole party stood on the steps of the railway station at Venice, waiting to see their luggage put aboard the gondola. "How strange it seems to wait for a boat instead of a cab to take one from the station to a hotel," and Irma watched the water of the ca.n.a.l break with a slight wavelike motion against the steps.

"Yes," responded Richard, who happened to be standing next her, "and here we part for the present. I wish our rooms were in the same hotel, but since that cannot be, Ellen and I, at least, will try to give you all we can of our society."

"Please do," said Irma. "Ellen says you will be only a few doors away.

Good-by, good-by," she concluded, as Richard helped his mother and Ellen and Katie into a gondola, where they sat rather stiffly with their bags piled up behind them in the stern.

"Is it what you expected?" asked Aunt Caroline, as they glided in their own gondola over the Grand Ca.n.a.l.

"Yes," sighed Irma; "it's more than I expected. I know that I shall be perfectly happy in Venice."

But although Venice did not disappoint Irma, many things in this Queen of the Adriatic were different from her expectations. She soon discovered that it was possible to walk almost as far in Venice as in any other large city, provided you did not object to threading your way sometimes through narrow pa.s.sages and over curving bridges.

"Has any one ever counted the bridges in Venice?" she asked one day.

"There must be hundreds of them," she said on the second day of her stay there, when she and Marion had had a long walk that had ended in the great Piazza in front of San Marco.

"Some one has counted them, of course, but I can only guess that there are several hundred. But here we are at the heart of Venice. Isn't it great?"

"Yes, this is just what I expected; it is almost too beautiful to be real," and Irma stood in front of the great church with its gilded domes, its mosaic pictures, and the four bronze horses from Constantinople, over the main entrance, forming, as a whole, a picture of which the eye could never weary.

"Let us not go inside to-day," said Marion.

"Oh, I would rather get a general impression of the piazza. That beautiful building, white and yellow, must be the Doge's Palace. Ah, yes, and there is the Lion of St. Mark's on his column. But who is that odd-looking saint on the other column, standing on a crocodile?"

"St. Theodore, I believe. It's a wonder that he can continue to look so pleasant, since he was quite cut out by St. Mark."

"I don't understand."

"Oh, St. Theodore was the patron saint of Venice. He was a Byzantine saint, by the way, until some Venetian sea captains at Alexandria, where St. Mark was buried, took offence at the way the relics of the saint were treated by the sultan. They got the priests in charge to view the matter as they did, and so the body was secretly delivered to their care. On the voyage to Venice the saint saved the vessel from s.h.i.+pwreck, and after their arrival St. Mark threw all others into the shade.

Nevertheless, St. Theodore smiles on, as if he had nothing to forgive."

"It is an interesting story; and is it perfectly true?" queried Irma.

"As true as any Richard would tell you," replied Marion.

"Oh, the pigeons, the pigeons!" cried Irma, turning about and walking toward a spot where scores of pigeons were gathering around a girl who was scattering handfuls of peas from a little basket. As Irma approached, the girl looked up, and then----

"Why, Irma Derrington!" she cried, and she let her basket fall to the ground as she rushed toward Irma.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AS IRMA APPROACHED, THE GIRL LOOKED UP."

(_Page 296._)]

"It really is Muriel," said Irma, as she hastened toward her friend.

"Why haven't you written in all these weeks?" cried Muriel reproachfully, after the first exchange of greetings.

"How could I without your address?"

"Didn't I give you our banker's?"