I threw on my coat, picked up my umbrella, nodded
to the boys, who looked rather anxiously after me, and plunged through
the door and out into the storm.
"It was the kind of a night that I love,--a regular howler. Most people
think the sunshine makes Venice, but they wouldn't think so if they
could study it on one of these nights when a nor'easter whirls up out of
the Adriatic and comes roaring across the lagoons as if it would swallow
up the dear old girl and sweep her into the sea. She don't mind it. She
always comes up smiling the next day, looking twice as pretty for her
bath, and I'm always twice as happy, for I've seen a whole lot of things
I never would have seen in the daylight. The Campanile, for one thing,
upside down in the streaming piazza; slashes of colored light from the
shop-windows soaking into the rain-pools; and great, black, gloomy
shadows choking up alleys, with only a single taper peering out of the
darkness like a burglar's lantern.
"When we turned to breast the gale--the rain had almost ceased--and
struggled on through the Ascensione, a sudden gust of wind whirled my
umbrella inside out, and after that I walked on ahead of him, stopping
every now and then to enjoy the grandeur of it all, until we reached the
traghetto.
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