Again they would come to whole towns of palaces, whose proper inmates

were all banished, and which were all changed into barracks: troops

of idle soldiers leaning out of the state windows, where their

accoutrements hung drying on the marble architecture, and showing to the

mind like hosts of rats who were (happily) eating away the props of the

edifices that supported them, and must soon, with them, be smashed on

the heads of the other swarms of soldiers and the swarms of priests, and

the swarms of spies, who were all the ill-looking population left to be

ruined, in the streets below.

Through such scenes, the family procession moved on to Venice. And here

it dispersed for a time, as they were to live in Venice some few months

in a palace (itself six times as big as the whole Marshalsea) on the

Grand Canal. In this crowning unreality, where all the streets were paved with water,

and where the deathlike stillness of the days and nights was broken by

no sound but the softened ringing of church-bells, the rippling of

the current, and the cry of the gondoliers turning the corners of the

flowing streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her task being done, sat

down to muse. The family began a gay life, went here and there, and

turned night into day; but she was timid of joining in their gaieties,

and only asked leave to be left alone.

Sometimes she would step into one of the gondolas that were always kept

in waiting, moored to painted posts at the door--when she could escape

from the attendance of that oppressive maid, who was her mistress, and

a very hard one--and would be taken all over the strange city. Social

people in other gondolas began to ask each other who the little solitary

girl was whom they passed, sitting in her boat with folded hands,

looking so pensively and wonderingly about her. Never thinking that

it would be worth anybody's while to notice her or her doings, Little

Dorrit, in her quiet, scared, lost manner, went about the city none the

less. But her favourite station was the balcony of her own room, overhanging

the canal, with other balconies below, and none above. It was of massive

stone darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy which came from the East

to that collection of wild fancies; and Little Dorrit was little indeed,

leaning on the broad-cushioned ledge, and looking over. As she liked no

place of an evening half so well, she soon began to be watched for, and

many eyes in passing gondolas were raised, and many people said, There

was the little figure of the English girl who was always alone.




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