" The
populace were speechless at the sight, while his companions in arms,
his relations and friends, abandoned themselves to despair. Venice
presented one universal scene of mourning.
On the evening of the fatal day, Amalia stood upon the terrace of her
palace, overlooking the grand canal. She contemplated with pleasurable
melancholy the calm and even course of the moon, whose modest light
shone in the cloudless sky. Her thoughts were of Alvise. To divert
them, she turned to gaze on a long procession of illuminated gondolas,
from which she heard a strain of plaintive music, as if of prayers for
the dead, A dreadful presentiment seized her heart; she inquired the
purpose of the procession, and heard, with unspeakable terror, that it
was the solemnization of the funeral rites of a Venetian nobleman, who
had been beheaded for high treason. "His name?" cried the breathless
girl, in almost unintelligible accents: "Alvise Sanuto."
She fell, as if shot; and striking her head in the fall upon a
projecting part of the terrace, was mortally wounded, and
expired.--_Lettere su Venezia_--_Translated in the Oxford Literary
Gaz.
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