CONCERNING VENICE (HISTORY LESSONS)

Waters lap gently against the shore as Barbara Ulrich recites Maurice Barrès’s essay about the past glories and tenuous fate of the Most Serene Republic, its once faithful and cosmopolitan but now indolent citizens, its visitors both famous (Chateaubriand, Goethe, Napoleon) and ordinary, its courtesans and pigeons, its solidity and dazzling immateriality.