AT HOLT, THREE OF THE CASTLE WINDOWS HAVE BEEN leaded and glassed, and Lord Stephen has an azure Venetian glass goblet with a twisted stem.
Here, glass is used in all kinds of ways. For jugs, tureens, drinking glasses. And for jigsaw pictures of Mary and Jesus. I’ve seen women wearing necklaces strung with little glass balls, pale green and violet and misty blue. They’re like sea-eyes.
If you half-close your eyes, Venice might be wholly glass. Windows flashing, domes shining, water jigging and leaping as if it were plucked by sky-puppeteers with invisible silk strings.
Venetians have sallow skins. The men are golden ruffians. Even when they shave, they look unshaven, and wiry hair grows all over their bodies. The women are beautiful lionesses, with hair of two or even three different colors—tawny and bronze and copper. They’re always laughing, and most of them have singed, husky voices; they speak very fast, with much more to say than time to say it in.
Their eyes are so large and liquid that at first I supposed Venetians must be gentle or even breakable. But actually, they’re tough too, and self-interested and calculating.