Note 59 — Chapter V · Palazzo Pubblico, The Fountain, and the Duomo

The stone is probably some rare form of agate. It is transparent and takes many lights; the colour is a faint yellowish blue. The people of the place have strange fancies about its colour. Before we had seen it we asked of others what it looked like. “Ah,” answered the small son of the sacristan, “it is white, and it is not white. It has no given colour. It is impossible to describe it, for nothing else is like it.” Goldoni, in his memoirs, gives the following description of it:—“The ring with which St Joseph wedded the Virgin Mary is made of a transparent blue stone, and is a circle of some thickness; thus it appeared to me, but they say that the ring changes its colour and form miraculously, according to the various persons who approach it.”