VENICE11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT
11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT
A Julymoon over, a gondola under, a tenor lilting abarcarolle, thousands with you on the Grand Canal—Venicea festa! From a near-by belfry, a clock booms eleven. Eleven! and we are only to the Foscari Palace. An hour ago we started at the Rialto, a thousand gay gondolas with bunting, lanterns, and greens, everybody jostling, singing, and shouting, and in the centre, like the queen-jewel of a tiara, the brilliantbarcafilled with orchestra and singers and ablaze in a myriad of colored lights. This is a great occasion, theserenata ufficiale. Thefestaof the Redentore is near its close. Church portals hang with mulberry branches begged by the monks of St. Francis, and the people have feasted royally on the luscious black fruit bought at the little stands on the Giudecca quays. Last Sunday the priestly procession in full canonicals crossed the bridge of boats to the Giudecca on its annual pilgrimage to the church of the Redentore. Venice thus sustains her reputation as a reverencer of traditions; they are burning lamps still in San Marco Cathedral for an innocent man who was put to death hundreds of years ago. And so the churchof the Redentore is packed to suffocation at least one day of the year, and after that, with the religious rites off her mind, Venice suddenly gives up trying to look solemn and bursts out into the joy and tumult of the “Official Serenade.”
This year it is splendid. Every moment belated gondolas are arriving like flocks of black swans, with fresh quotas of enthusiasm and an increase of gayety and confusion. What laughter and fun! The Canal is a hopeless jam. Dancing lanterns play light and shade on thousands of bright faces, and the gondoliers, in fresh white blouses and blue sailor collars, look like shadows as they lean silently on their long oars. In the intervals of the music there is something weird and frantic to both their labor and their language as they agonize to protect their beloved boats from scratches and smashes and at the same time retain positions of vantage in this ice-floe of a tangle as thebarcastruggles forward a few difficult yards to its next point of serenade. There are ten or a dozen of these serenade-points, and at each the writhing flotilla pauses, and singers and orchestra provide the entertainment. It is finest to be afloat, but, oh, the land! Red-and-green fire throws into enormous relief fairylike towers and turrets that have figured in song and story for a thousand years; and in windows, terraces, balconies, and tops there throngs a multitude that none of us may number. Every face is turned toward thebarca; every handkerchiefwaves our way. An occasional searchlight darts impartially over them and us, picks out a spot in sudden brilliance and as suddenly drops it back into blacker obscurity. But in that brief flashing, scattered friends have discovered friends, and gondolas are started inching toward each other, and presently parties are joined and ice boxes uncovered. After covertly studying the apparently aimless movements of our own gondola I finally unearthed a dark conspiracy in the reunion line that interested only Paolo, our gondolier, and an occasional crony at a neighboring oar. Paolo’s face and manners are innocence itself, but his guile is fathoms deep. We could not understand why he did not get us nearer to thebarca, the universal objective, until we saw the bottle pass between him and a raven-haired, flashing-toothed athlete at the nearest oar and surprised the quick greeting and low, musical laugh of congratulation and content. But who minds, with Venicea festa! And Venice is Paolo’s—not ours, alas!
Night on the Grand Canal! What a realm of witchery! “The horns of elfland faintly blowing.” What lullaby could soothe more sweetly than the dip of the oar or the soft plash of the dark water under the gondola’s prow! The charm of unreality invests the shadowy, spiritualized palaces rising like silver wraiths from the quivering stream. The summer moon touches each carven arch and column, each stone-lace balcony, each fretted embrasure, each delicate ogive window and sculpturedcapital, and lo, a magician’s wand has reared a dream-land of unearthly beauty!
In the soft and odorous darkness the birds that love this Venice are securely nesting—the gulls, that in winter whirl up the canals with harsh clamors of the coming storms, are now at rest along the beaches of their blue Adriatic; the swallows and pigeons are sleeping among the red tiles of the crooked gables; the sparrows are aloft among the mulberry-trees of the Giudecca and the sycamores of the Public Gardens; the canaries are dim spots in fragrant magnolia-trees or in spreading beds of purple oleander; and the ortolans, robins, and blackbirds nestle among azaleas and the heavy festoons of banksias. All their music now is hushed, and they are as mute and soundless to-night as were their awe-struck sires, long centuries since, when gentle St. Francis read them his offices under the cypresses of Del Deserto.
The night is fragrant with the breath of roses, carnations, and camellias from palace gardens and with spicy honeysuckle from the neighboring Zattere. Visions of stirring romance and adventure crowd in on the mind. Down the pebbly paths of yonder garden surely some lover has just passed, brave in velvet doublet and silken hose, from laying his roses at the satin-slippered feet of his lady! Presently he will drift this way in his cushioned gondola and the soft night winds will bear her the mellow throb of his guitar and many a plaintivesigh of love and Venice. But hush! from out that old black watergate, in bravo’s cloak and with muffled oar, who bears the helpless lady away through the deep shadows under the garden wall? Hard with your oar, my gondolier! A purse of golden ducats if you speed me to San Marco! I shall slip this scribbled note into the Lion’s Mouth! Ho, for the vengeance of The Ten!
VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA
VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA
If it were day, what a different scene we should have on this twisting sea-serpent of a Grand Canal. Venice would then be a sparkling vision resplendent with every sea charm, tinted with pinks and opals and pearls, and as changeful and full of caprice as any other coquette. Instead of this spangle of stars above, we should have a vast expanse of pale-blue sky, cloudless and glittering, and the misty reflections that now sink faintly deep down into these dark waters would vanish before a stream so azure and brilliant that it would seem as if a portion of the sky above had been cut and fitted between the palace fronts below. And how these mellow old churches and houses would glow and their wavering shadows shake in the stream! The exquisite traceries on balcony, arch, and column would seem carven of ivory, and from under the red-tiled eaves grim heads of stone would stare down over sculptured cornices and peep out through delicate quatrefoils and creamy foliations. And into these wonder-palaces the eager sun would peer to see the lofty ceilings all frescoed and gilded, the floors of colored marbles, the carven furniture andfaded rich hangings, and the deep and arched recesses that overlook the gardens in the rear. And what gardens! Mellow brick walls festooned in pale-blue wistaria and lined with hedges of white thorn, a solemn cypress in either corner, clumps of fig-trees and mulberry and golden magnolia, airy grapevine pergolas of slender, osier-bound willow, little paths snugly bordered with box, trellises of gorgeous roses, and here and there some antique statue or rude stone urn half hidden in color masses of scarlet pomegranates and snowy lilies.
The day-life of this famed waterway is very gay and picturesque. Here is both energy and idleness, and jolly friendships and laughter and light-heartedness. Deep-laden market scows pass ponderously by, piled high with fruits and vegetables, the rowers singing at their oars or shouting voluble greetings. Fishermen step slowly along, balancing baskets on their heads. Swarthy, black-eyed women, in dark skirts and gay neckerchiefs and with mauve-colored shawls falling gracefully from head to waist, throng therivashops and bargain over purchases with violent gestures and eager earnestness. Priests returning from mass in rusty black cassocks loiter among the noisy groups and are received with profound bows and reverent touches of the cap. Husky, barefooted girl water-carriers, known as thebigolanti, stride by with copper vessels hanging from the yoke across their shoulders and offer you a supply for asoldo. Up the intersecting canals endless processions are passing over the arching bridges, and you pause, perhaps, to observe the varied life from a place by the rail: girl bead-stringers with wooden trays full of turquoise bits; garrulous pleasure parties off for the Lido; laboring boatmen, breaking out into song; old men and women shuffling along to gossip and quarrel around the carven well-heads of the littlecampi; and now and then some withered old aristocrat on his way to have coffee and chess at Florian’s and then a solemn smoke over the “Gazetta di Venezia” before the Caffè Orientale in the warm morning sun of therivaof the Schiavoni.
How well the Foscari Palace, there, looks by night. The Foscari Palace—poor old Foscari! It is a sad but glowing chapter his name recalls. Here lived the great Doge, the least serene of all their Serenities. Grown old in power and worn with foreign wars, his heart broke over the treason of his worthless son, and the helpless, sobbing old man, no longer of use, was deposed by The Ten in his tottering age. The very next day he died—and there, in that palace. Just now, when the red-fire glowed, a pale campanile stood out of the gloom to the right and beyond the palace; that is where they buried him, in the church of the Frari. With belated reverence and remorseful at having dishonored him a few hours since, they proceeded to make history in Venice with the splendor of his obsequies. They clothed him in cloth of gold, set his ducal cap upon hishead, buckled on his golden spurs, and laid his great sword by his side. And thus in solemn pomp, attended by nobles and lighted by countless tapers, the pageant passed out of San Marco, crossed the Rialto, and came at last to the church of the Frari. And there what is left of Doge Foscari lies to this day. It is not a poor place to be in, either. The bones of Titian and Canova are beside him, a Titian masterpiece glorifies the choir, and on the opposite wall are two altar pieces of Bellini’s so lovely as to mark the very zenith of Venetian art.
A pause in the music of the serenade brings us suddenly back to the Venice of to-night. A vast scramble is in progress. We jostle and scrape forward another few yards. Thebarcasends a light hose-spray to right, left, and in front in a desperate effort to clear a passage. Dilatory or helpless gondoliers are lightly sprinkled, and all those of us who a moment since had been envying their good positions now basely give way to howls of joy. No use to struggle: all gondoliers are alike in such a crush. A champion Castellani is no better than Paolo, if heisstrong enough to bend coppercentesimipieces between thumb and finger. Presently we stop. The tumult rages, good-naturedly and jolly, as the jockeying goes on for improved positions. And then there falls a sudden silence. A tenor is singing the “Cielo e Mar” of “La Gioconda.” You lie at full length on the cushions, the gondola lifting slowly with an indolent sway, and under the spell of the dreamy,witching music you watch the smoke of your cigar as it drifts up and over and out and away toward the little streets in the dark.
Ah, little streets of Venice; under whatever name ofcalleorcortoorsalizzada, you are just the same—bedraggled and delightful! What rare surprises are always reserved for each revisit—an overlooked doorway, a balcony, some sculptured detail! If the house-fronts are plastered and patched—still they are picturesquely discolored. If the fantastic windows are out of plumb the gay shutters, nevertheless, are charmingly faded and there are pretty faces behind the bars. The roofs let in the rain—but how rookish and rickety they are. The battered doors are low—but they have knockers that are ponderous and imposing. Name plates are surprisingly large and keyholes deep and cavernous. The stirrup-handled bell-wires run almost to the tiny iron balconies, away up under the oval windows of the eaves—those little balconies that for ages have never refused sympathetic regard for the hum of slippered feet on the stone pavements below. And there are weathered store-fronts with corrugated iron shutters and gilt signs on black boards; and under your feet in the pavement are odd little slits for water to run off in, that remind you of openings in letter-drops at home. There, too, are the shops whose modest output arrays the Venetian poor to such advantage, and there are the stores and markets where they bargain forfrittoleof white flour and oil, orpolentaof ground corn, and personally pick out their sardines at ten for a penny, or indulge in a finebrunrinoas large as a trout. There one sees picturesque lanterns and gay little window-boxes full of flowers away up among the chimneys and tin waterpipes. The rooms, perhaps, seem dark and gloomy to us of modern houses, but you stop with a thrill of delight at the happiness in the voice that carols a gay air from “Traviata” somewhere in their depths, and you look up with a smile at the bright bird that loves that dark cage. Some carping and fussy visitors may compare these rude homes to the dungeons under the “Leads” beyond the Bridge of Sighs, but how could they consistently be other than they are, venerable and dirty, with splotches of paint and charcoal markings and half-effaced pencil-drawings, of cracked plaster full of holes, and all toned down by time and weather to a uniform mellow gray! Of course, such critics accept, with all Italy, the proud ones with the marble tablets that tell that Marco Polo lived there, or Petrarch, or Titian, or Garibaldi, but the nameless and undistinguished many are quite as worth preserving. Thus one appreciates the inspiration of the authorities and applauds their industry in profusely tacking up those little ovals of blue tin with the jealous warning in white letters, “Divieto di Affisione”—that is, “Don’t spoil these walls with placards!” So, peace, harping Philistine, to whom nothing is ever hallowed! Though your emotions are thinand your enthusiasms a-chill, respect these little byways; and if not for themselves, then for where they bring you—to fascinating curiosity shops of the antiquarians up the back courts; to charmingcampiwhere you stand by graven well-heads, wonderwist in the lengthening shadows of historic churches; to lichen-grown bridges, themselves pictures, arched over sunny canals overhung by gabled windows and flanked by garden walls pale blue with wistaria; or (could you have forgotten?) to nothing less than the great Piazza itself and glittering San Marco, the supreme jewel-casket of the world.
But the wistful “Cielo e Mar” is ended, and we move along to opposite the Accademia, treasure-temple of Venetian art. You uncovered just then, my comrade of the night, and out of reverence to the Titian Assumption, I dare say. I uncovered, too, but it was to the madonnas and saints of Giovanni Bellini. Do you know them well? No? Not the Santa Conversazione? Ah, then life still holds a delight in reserve for you.
A sudden great and universal hush has fallen on canal and shore. Another tenor, sweet and vibrant as a bell, breathes that tenderest of all serenades, the one from “Don Pasquale.” At all times irresistible, it seems doubly so now. The faces that you see are grave and eager and transported. The silence and rapt attention is a tribute beyond words to composer and singer; and where else but in Italy would a multitude hush to a whisper whenmusic sounds, and break into wild tumult when it ceases? A few weeks here, and one comes to understand that music is the very breath and life of these people. The vagabond Venetian, penniless but happy, comes out of his doze in a corner of a sunnyrivaand before his mouth has settled from its yawn it is rounded into a song. A bottle of cheap wine, a loaf of bread, and a guitar provide joy enough for an army in the family parties of the poor that float out on to the lagoon in rough market gondolas at sunset. Verdi and Rossini make work light for women, walk to business with the men, and hum comfort and courage all day. And so one needs to be discreet and silent when a solo begins or be prepared for an instant and tempestuous rebuke. But there seems little need for a warning to-night, with the hand of Venice so strong upon us.
Between serenades one takes his ease on the cushions and looks about on the people around him. Some one begins to whistle the jolly old “Carnival of Venice,” and it is promptly taken up on all sides, bolder spirits even venturing upon the variations. A German gives us the Fatherland’s version, about the hat that had three corners. An enormous Spaniard near at hand bellows a fragment of “I Pagliacci,” and is thunderously applauded. His friends, embarrassed but elated, urge him on to a second effort, which is received with indifference. On his third attempt he is hissed. Such is the caprice of an open-air audience in Italy.
The jolly stag party in the gondola to the right presses upon us the hospitality of the capacious hamper, which we decline with a thousand thanks and in gestures more intelligible than our pidgin-Italian. At our elbow two slender American women in black provide excellent eavesdropping entertainment. Here is talk to our liking, thrilling with the names of men of fame who knew and loved this Venice. “Just over there, Helen, is the palace where Browning lived and died. What an elaborate place for a poet! Howells lived next door, you know, when he wrote his ‘Venetian Life.’ These places are ever so much finer than the one farther down where Goldoni wrote his comedies. Oh, don’t you know the Goldoni house? It is this side the Rialto, just opposite the Byron Palace with the blue-striped gondola posts.” “I think,” says the other, “that the memories are quite as rich farther on. At the Hotel Europa, you remember, Chateaubriand once lived, and so did George Eliot; and from there you can see the Danieli where George Sand and Alfred de Musset sought happiness but only found misery.” At mention of the Europa the face of her friend is transfigured and our own hearts beat high in sympathy with the reverence of the lowered voice: “Wagner wrote ‘Tristan und Isolde’ at the Europa. He died in the palace where the three trees stand, away down beyond the Rialto.” Oh, deathless Venice! Oh, universal Love! They marvel at this elfin world—the English father, mother, and son in the gondola ahead.
“It is a mode of mind.”
“Or a form of hypnosis; a psychological phase.”
The boy turns from the distant fairy candles of San Marco and regards them with amaze and disapproval. His enthusiasms are keen and a-quiver and the freshness of life’s morning is on his face. “Don’t analyze,” he says. “Just breathe it and feel it.” The parents exchange amused glances and smile indulgently. “‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,’” quotes the father under his breath; but we know, and they know, that they have been answered.
Gorgeous silks and priceless tapestries and rare Oriental stuffs have doubtless often hung from the balconies of the palace on the right in the great gala days of the wonderful past when the Carnival lasted half a year. The law had not yet ruled that all gondolas must be a uniform solemn black, and the cradle-like boat of to-day, for all its brass dolphins and carven scenes from the “Gerusalemme Liberata,” would have cut a sorry figure beside the sumptuous ones of an earlier time, with their mountings of silver and gold, profusion of rich colors, upholstery of enormous value, and bearing owners of fabulous wealth whose names were written in the city’s Book of Gold. Ah, those were the triumphant days when foreign princes waited, half a hundred at a time, to have the judgment of the Venetian Senate on the affairs of their states; when royalty was no unusual spectacle on the Piazza of San Marco; when the argosiesof the world, “with portly sail,” came to anchor in these waters; when Dante and Petrarch were received as ambassadors; when the Admirable Crichton would be tossed a hundred ducats for amusing the Senate with an extemporized Latin oration; and when his Serenity, the Doge, on Ascension Day fared forth in dazzling splendor to espouse the sea from the throne of his sumptuous Bucentoro. The glory of that old and powerful Venice can never pass from the memory of men. Whole libraries preserve it in imperishable record. It is interesting, too, to note how it affected bygone visitors just as it does us to-day—as when one turns the pages of John Evelyn’s “Diary” and smiles to see how soon it was after his “portmanteau” had been “visited” at the Dogana customs-offices that he pronounced the Merceria to be “one of the most delicious streets in the world for the sweetness of it,” and learned with amaze of the skill and rapidity of Venetian artisans who, while King HenryIIIof England was one day visiting the Arsenal, built a galley, rigged, and finished it for launching, and cast a cannon of sixteen thousand pounds and put it on board,—and all while his Majesty was having luncheon. There was, indeed, a great deal of the marvelous about men who could contrive glass goblets so sensitive as to betray the presence of poison, or who could at so early an age make such exquisite books as the Aldine classics, to the despair of publishers for hundreds of years to follow.
Just now, in the fitful glare of red-lights, hundreds of eager Venetian faces, transported as always by the spirit of Carnival, were seen in excited groupings in every nook and corner of the neighboringfondamente. One thinks how different is the present scene from those these people are accustomed to look upon on other nights. You would find them then in the little family squares whose corners are shrines of the Virgin set with flowers and illumined with candles. Husband and wife will, perhaps, have spent the early evening in gallery seats at the Teatro Goldoni, and Giovanni, weary with a long day at thetraghetto, would have finished thumbing the headlines of the day’s “L’ Adriatico” and would now have his friends about him, and Maria would let thebambinostay up a little longer, and all would feast with prodigious merriment and satisfaction on the ever-popularsoupe au pidocchi,—which is mussel-broth flavored with spices,—to be followed by Chioggia eels and white wine of Policella. Neighboring women would, of course, drop in for their dearly loved gossip, hatless, with silver pins fastening their blue-black hair, coral beads around their necks, and draping shawls thrown over their bright waists. And presently some withered old coffee-roaster would drag himself in with his fragrant ovens glowing, the bright flames leaping, and toffee-venders would plead for sales. With the ease of sleight-of-hand a guitar suddenly makes its appearance out of nowhere and everybody enthusiastically joins in some haunting,languorous, dreamyvillottedear to the hearts of Venetians. Just around the corner lounging groups would be scattered before café doors and voices would be humming in low, eager talk. The usual wrangling and bargaining would be in progress at the cooking-stalls piled high with fish and garlic,polenta, cabbages, and apples. In near-bytrattoriewith sanded floors artistic bohemia, with ambition numbed by the latest African sirocco, battens on bowls of macaroni in a turmoil of smoke and confusion. In the dark interior of a neighboring wineshop one would find the wonderful golden-browns that Rembrandt loved, as a single oil lamp glows on the weathered faces of a circle of old cronies. And somewhere, just at hand, a gondolier’s weird and fascinating cry of “Ah, Stalì!” would be heard; and all about them Venice would be crooning her ancient lullaby in the ceaseless, low lapping of water on stone steps.
All together and forward once more, to opposite the church of the Salute. We have lost our recent neighbors and have an entirely new set. The changes in the grouping are like the shuffling units of a kaleidoscope. A brilliant company is gathered on the balconies of Desdemona’s Palace, but Othello is not among them—another piece of calculated devilty, no doubt, on the part of the crafty Iago! Still, Portia is there from flowery Belmont and with her are Jessica and Lorenzo. The music is now from melodious old “Dinorah,” charmingly rendered and just as soothing as the first timeone ever heard it. The Salute stands out impressively in her great domes and elaborate spirals. It is beautiful, of course, by night, but then if it were day we might run inside and revel in Titians and Tintorettos. The fantastic columns fade and flash as the red and green fires smoulder or flame, and the gilded Fortuna on the dome of the adjoining Dogana catches some of the glitter and generously sends it on to the Seminario in the rear.
Some one calls my name from among the oleanders of the Britannia terrace, just opposite. What a delight to be known by name in this charmed city! I look up at the adjoining hotel and there are the windows of my room, and I know that within in the dark my clothing and articles of travel lie about. With secret wonder I whisper to myself that I, after all the years of waiting and hoping,Iam actually a part of Venice!
One might think there could not possibly be any more gondolas in all the city outside of to-night’s tremendous gathering; but even now you could find them floating lazily about the lagoons, or away out toward the Lido where the moist winds are ruffling the water and the distant Bride of the Sea seems only some sort of bright exhalation. Theirs is a languorous and listless drifting and their dim lamps waver slowly like glowworms. Little need there for the musical wails of “Ah, Premì!” “Ah, Stalì!” Little of such complaint as Byron made that gondoliers are songless, for one could not ask for more plaintive and soothing melody than the low, passionatecrooning of the barefooted boy at the oar. And, perhaps, in the musky dark of silent canals more gondolas than one are even now stealing lightly and with love’s devious purposes under the fretted balconies of the star-eyed daughters of Venice, while Beppo muffles his oar to the warning of Tom Moore:—
“Row gently here, my gondolier;So softly wake the tide,That not an ear on earth may hearSave hers to whom we glide!”
“Row gently here, my gondolier;So softly wake the tide,That not an ear on earth may hearSave hers to whom we glide!”
“Row gently here, my gondolier;So softly wake the tide,That not an ear on earth may hearSave hers to whom we glide!”
“Row gently here, my gondolier;
So softly wake the tide,
That not an ear on earth may hear
Save hers to whom we glide!”
It seems weeks since, in the cool of this very morning, out at the little island of Burano, I lunched under shady locusts in the quiet garden of “The Crowned Lion.” It was a pleasant stop on the way to deserted old Torcello—Torcello that mothered Venice, but now sleeps, a clutter of grass-grown ruins, in the appalling stillness of her weedy canals and thickets of blackberry hedges. Within a cable length of where our gondola is now resting a black, tarry fishing-bark tugs at anchor. If it were day and her sails were set, one could not help being delighted over the oranges and reds and blues of her patched and weathered canvas, the curve of the elaborately painted bow, and the spirited air of the curious figurehead. Unchanged survivors of the fading Past are these sturdy oldbragozziof Chioggia, and one could not ask for a braver show than they present when they hoist their painted sails to dry in one long line from the Public Gardens to the Doge’s Palace.
It was at Chioggia that we loitered, a few days back, and fed on picturesqueness to satiety. We have but to close our eyes—and there are the grizzled old fellows in redberrettas, trousers rolled to their wiry brown knees and great hoops of yellow gold in their ears. When the midday sun was hottest we found them sitting in the shade of their fishing-boats’ sails, mending their nets with wooden bodkins and brown twine. In the old days, when the hand of Venice was all-powerful in this part of the world, the Chioggians were the gayest and most picturesque people of these islands. Artists still consider them the purest types of Venetians, but they are a sad and melancholy lot now, as if burdened with the heritage of glorious memories. It seemed to me that the old men were the happiest living things in Chioggia; then, perhaps, came the boys, then the girls, and last of all the women—and the older the women the gloomier. The flirt of a sober mantilla is the nearest they ever come nowadays to gayety.
We shall never forget, nor ever want to, that wonderful sail back from Chioggia to Venice. Listening to the music on the Canal to-night the memory of it seems compact of dreams, or as the florid cloister-fancy of a Middle-Ages monk that we had read in some illuminated old volume bound in vellum and clasped with gold. There was all the vitalizing pageantry of sunset about us, all the immensity of sky and sea, and many a bright little island rising out of the rippling lagoon thisside the marshy wastes. The yellow strips of Pellestrina and Malamocco topped the waves in two long lines, like half-submerged reefs of gold. Above was a vast dome of turquoise glinted with pinks and grays, and with here and there a little heap of snowy clouds. Every phase of the wonderful sky was reproduced in the water. The sun reflected a second sun of no less ruddy fire which burned across the sea in a broad highway of shaking light that rolled to our very feet. The piled and fleecy clouds were steeped in gold, and bands of purple mists across Shelley’s Euganean Hills were pierced by it through and through. Venice, a mirage of the azure sea, rose slowly as we drew nearer, a witchery of towers, campaniles, palaces, painted sails, and drifting gondolas. As the dimming beauty faded with the brief Eastern twilight and we were gazing in awe on the enchanting panorama, there suddenly loomed a fresh and added glory, for just above the topmost pinnacle of stately San Giorgio floated a young summer moon!
Beauty has here an abiding-place. Venice is doubtless a fairer vision now, with its myriad lights, than when the only illumination was from flickering tapers before the corner shrines of the Virgin. More comfortable it surely is than when St. Roche himself was baffled by more than seventy plagues. The jaunty boatman and his peerless gondola still charm us, and dustless and noiseless the city continues musical with the cheery hum of voices and the soft shuffle of feet. In the cooltwilight of the churches marvels of sculpture and immortal canvases still inspire and enthrall. Time has added new charms to the marbles of bell tower, church, and palace, and nature still employs a witchery scarce equaled elsewhere in decking the Sea City with flowers. From the water-lilies of the Brenta, the flaming begonia trumpets of the Giudecca, the pale sea-lavender of the Dead Lagoon, the rose-pergolas and oleander-cloisters of San Lazzaro, the primroses and sea-holly of the Lido wooded with odorous acacias and white-flowered catalpas, and carpeted with crimson poppies and the snowy Star of Bethlehem, away out to the sand dunes and lush grasses of Triporti, there continually rises an inexhaustible incense of fragrance and beauty.
The serenade is nearly ended. Anticipating the coming rush at the San Marco Piazza, a word to Paolo starts us laboriously toward the outskirts of the flotilla. From the Royal Gardens to themolois a matter of only a dozen plunges or so of the stout oar, spurred by an offer of extralirefor extra speed. Off flies our gondola, frowning as superbly as ever did swan in the eye of Keats. We dart alongside the wet quay beyond the Bridge of Sighs and one of those superannuated old gondoliers calledrampiniearns apourboireby steadying the prow as we jump ashore at the base of the column of San Marco’s winged lion. St. Theodore looks down placidly from the vantage-point above his crocodile as we pass between these storied pillars—“fra Marco eTodaro,” as the Venetians say when they mean “between pillar and post.” Thepiazzettais already crowded and our hope of a table at Florian’s is dwindling. Never did the stately Sansovino Library or the airy colonnades and warm Moorish marbles of the Palace of the Doges look finer, but past them we speed with no time for the scantiest of glances at the famous quatrefoils and the thirty-six pillars with the renowned capitals, and in we hurry to the broad and glorious piazza and its flooding of light and life. Florian’s is in a state of siege. Every table seems taken and hungry people by hundreds are clamoring for places. The Quadri, across the square, would probably have had to content us had not the efficacy of frequent past tips saved the day, and my nightly waiter welcomes us with his dry and mirthless smile and slips us into a snug harbor under the very guns of the enemy. My companions are officers of the American squadron now lying at Triest and they pass their professional opinion that the strategy was capital. But though officers, they areyoungofficers, and Venice has captured them hand and foot. Scarcely have we completed our supper-order when the flowing strains of the Coronation March from “The Prophet” roll in from themoloin thebarca’sgood night, and, as if it were riding in on that splendid musical tide, the noisy, jubilant host of thefestacomes pouring upon us.
And what a fascinating spectacle does this grand, unrivaled old square then present! Were Byron hereto-night he would still have to call it “the pleasant place of all festivity.” No chance now to study the designs in this vast flooring of marble or to coax a half-persuaded pigeon on to your shoulder. In every part of its two hundred yards of arcaded length, set with storied architecture so inspiring by beauty and association that it moved even the self-contained Mr. Howells to exclaim, “It makes you glad to be living in this world,” and under the blaze of its rimming of clustered lights and shops and thronged cafés, there storms and chatters a vigorous, cheery, light-hearted multitude fresh from the stimulus of the glittering water pageant. It comes in through thepiazzettawith such a rush that one looks for the band and band-stand, too, to be swept the full length of the square and out under the arches of the Royal Palace. Such laughing and uproar! Such a sirocco of gestures and hailstorm of crackling exclamations! This human tidal wave of the Adriatic pours down the middle, seethes along the edges, and swirls and eddies in the remotest corners. One sees in it happy, voluntary exiles from almost every part of the world, but to-night thefesta-loving Venetians predominate. Every local type is here; from the languid patrician, come in from her country estate and now sipping anise-water here at Florian’s, and the vapid and scented fashionable youths with carnations in their buttonholes, to the flashing, black-eyed shop-girls with red roses in their crisp black hair and graceful mantilla shawls dropping back fromtheir tossing heads, and the vigorous, smiling artisans, easy and jaunty of gait, with soft hats pushed back at every rakish angle on their curly heads. How happy and transported Maria is to-night, in her new black skirt and crimson bodice, and how the sultry red smoulders through the olive of her cheeks as her little hands whirl in a tempest of gestures and the lightnings of excitement play in her midnight eyes! And no less carried away is Giovanni, beside her,—proud as Colleoni on the big bronze horse,—though he lets her do most of the talking and contents himself with approving in quick, expressive shrugs. All classes of society are with us—“rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief”; and old Shylock himself, who was most of these, “dreaming of money-bags.” Scraps of gay, slurring song are continually bubbling over and flashes of wit and snappy repartees go flying to and fro. Flower-girls thread the press and insist upon pinningboutonnièreson the men, and street merchants move about offering everything from curios to caramel-on-a-stick. A crowd gathers about a blind old troubadour thrumming a dirty guitar and struggling to force his rusty voice along the melodious course of some popularvillotte, and presently he will be led among the tables before the cafés andcentesimiand silverlirewill jingle into his ragged hat.
It is little enough to say that no scene ever had a more romantic setting. The quaint old Venetian quatrain does this famed spot scant justice:—
“In St. Mark’s Place three standards you descry,And chargers four that seem about to fly;There is a timepiece which appears a tower,And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.”
“In St. Mark’s Place three standards you descry,And chargers four that seem about to fly;There is a timepiece which appears a tower,And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.”
“In St. Mark’s Place three standards you descry,And chargers four that seem about to fly;There is a timepiece which appears a tower,And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.”
“In St. Mark’s Place three standards you descry,
And chargers four that seem about to fly;
There is a timepiece which appears a tower,
And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.”
In the moonlight the sculptured and arcaded old buildings glow like mellow ivory around three sides of it, and it is warmed and vitalized by bustling cafés and brilliant shop windows set with tempting snares of artful jewelry and cunningly wrought glass. Strong and proud the great Campanile towers upward into the clear night, away above the tops of the three tall flag-staffs. The sumptuous Cathedral, in its wealth of glowing color and lavish adornment, makes one think of a vast heap of glittering treasure piled up by returning Venetian pirates in answer to the accustomed question, “What have you brought back for Marco?” One can scarcely take his eyes off its lofty, yawning portals, its gates of bronze, its forest of columns, its sweeping arches glowing in every color of brilliant mosaics, its profusion of creamy sculptures, its canopied saints and statued pinnacles and its great Byzantine domes billowing into the purple sky. On the ancient clock tower of the Merceria the fierce winged lion of St. Mark’s holds a resolute paw on the open Gospels, and the bronze bellringers swing twelve ponderous blows and hang up the hour of midnight on a dial of blue and gold. As they pause at the completion of their labors and look down on the sea of faces turned toward them from the Piazza they seemso nearly galvanized into life that it would scarcely surprise one to hear them shout, “What news of the argosies of Antonio?”
With the sparkling beauty of Venice so irresistible it is a terrible temptation to my companions to hurry straight back to Triest and come over with their battleship and, like dashing naval Lochinvars, force an espousal of this incomparable Bride of the Sea. Vain thought! It is Venice herself who has always done the espousing; fully to possess her it must be on her own conditions of complete surrender.
How inevitable it seems at night that you must take the step; must cry out, once and for all, to fellow voyagers on the Dead Lagoons of Life: “Ho, brothers! No more of the drab and wretched wastes for me! I am for beauty and romance—‘in Venice, all golden, to dream!’ I shall dwell in this enchanted realm ofdolce far nienteand float with my gondola into the final Sunset. Companionson Life’s waters, ‘Ah, Stalì’!”