Anton Pavlovich visited Vienna, but ‘the blue-eyed Venice’ surpassed all his expectations and threw him into a state of childlike ecstasy. Its canals, buildings, gondola rides, St. Mark’s Square and beautiful evenings made him, who had been to an earthly paradise on Ceylon, confess that he had never seen anything like Venice and wanted to stay there forever.

I am now in Venice. I arrived here two days ago from Vienna. One thing I can say: I have never in my life seen a town more marvelous than Venice. It is perfect enchantment, brilliance, joy, life. Instead of streets and roads there are canals; instead of cabs — gondolas; the architecture is amazing, and there is not a single spot that does not excite some historical or artistic interest. You float in a gondola and see the Palace of the Doges, the house where Desdemona lived, homes of various painters, churches. And in the churches, there are sculptures and paintings such as we have never dreamed of. In a word, it is enchantment. All day from morning till night I sit in a gondola and glide along the streets, or I wander around the famous St. Mark’s Square. The square is as level and clean as a parquet floor. Here there is St. Mark’s — something impossible to describe — the Palace of the Doges, and other buildings which make me feel as I do, listening to a part singing — I feel the amazing beauty and revel in it. And the evenings! My God! One might almost die of the strangeness of it. One goes in a gondola… warmth, stillness, stars…. There are no horses in Venice, and so there is a silence here as in the open country. Gondolas flit to and fro, … then a gondola glides by, hung with lanterns. In it are a double-bass, violins, a guitar, a mandolin and cornet, two or three ladies, several men, and one hears singing and music. They sing from operas. What voices! One goes on a little further and again meets a boat with singers, and then again, and the air is full, till midnight, of the mingled strains of violins and tenor voices, and all sorts of heart-stirring sounds.