thereafter, till they had been solemnly warned by one of their number with
_"Ricordatevi del povero Fornaretto!"_ (Remember the poor Baker-Boy!)
The poet Dall 'Ongaro has woven the story into a beautiful and touching
tragedy; but I believe the poet is still to be born who shall take from
the gondoliers their Veneranda Porta, and place her historic figure in
dramatic literature. Veneranda Porta was a lady of the days of the
Republic, between whom and her husband existed an incompatibility. This
was increased by the course of Signora Porta in taking a lover, and it at
last led to the assassination of the husband by the paramours. The head of
the murdered man was found in one of the canals, and being exposed, as the
old custom was, upon the granite pedestal at the corner of St. Mark's
Church, it was recognized by his brother who found among the papers on
which the long hair was curled fragments of a letter he had written to the
deceased. The crime was traced to the paramours, and being brought before
the Ten, they were both condemned to be hanged between the columns of the
Piazzetta. The gondoliers relate that when the sentence was pronounced,
Veneranda said to the Chief of the Ten, "But as for me this sentence will
never be carried out. You cannot hang a woman. Consider the impropriety!"
The Venetian rulers were wise men in their generation, and far from being
balked by this question of delicacy, the Chief replied, solving it, "My
dear, you shall be hanged in my breeches."

It is very coarse salt which keeps one of these stories; another is
remembered because it concerns one of the people; and another for its
abomination and horror. The incidents of Venetian history which take the
fancy and touch the sensibility of the world seem hardly known to the
gondoliers, the most intelligent and quick-witted of the populace, and
themselves the very stuff that some romantic dreams of Venice are made of.
However sad the fact, it is undeniable that the stories of the sausage-
maker whose broth was flavored with murder, and the baker-boy who suffered