Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/414

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398
SHAKESPEARE'S MAIDENS AND WOMEN.

Faliero. Of the old Dandolo thoa wilt indeed be reminded in the Arsenal, but on none of the golden galleys wilt thou seek the blind hero. Seest thou on one corner of the Via Santa a snake carved in stone, and on the other a winged lion, which holds the head of the serpent in his claws, you may remember the proud Carmagnolo, but only for an instant. But far more than all such historical persons wilt thou think in Venice of Shakespeare's Shylock, who is ever living while they are long mouldered in the grave. And when thou Grossest the Ilialto thine e}'e will seek him everywhere, and thou deemest he must be there behind some pillar with his Jewish gaberdine, his mistrusting, reckoning face, and thou believest many a time that thou canst hear his harsh voice " Three thousand ducats well ! " I at least, a wandering hunter of dreams, looked around me on the Rialto to see if I could find Shylock. I had something to tell him which would have pleased him ; which was, that his cousin Monsieur de Shylock in Paris had become the greatest baron of all Christendom, and re- ceived from their Catholic Majesties the Order of Isabella, which was originally instituted to celebrate the expulsion of Jews and Moors from Spain. But I found him not on the liialto, so 1 determined to look for my old acquaintance