Part 2

At one end, fronting the church, stand the three great flag-poles, the same you saw at the landing, socketed in bronze, exquisitely modeled and chased, bearing the banners of Candia, Cyprus, and the Morea--kingdoms conquered by the state--all three in a row, presenting arms to the power that overthrew them, and forever dipping their colors to the glory of its past.

Here, too, in this noble square, under your very feet, what solemnities, what historic fêtes, what conspiracies! Here for centuries has been held the priestly pageant of Corpus Christi, aflame with lanterns and flambeaux. Here eleven centuries ago blind old Dandolo received the Crusader chiefs of France. Here the splendid nuptials of Francesco Foscari were celebrated by a tournament, witnessed by thirty thousand people, and lasting ten days. Here the conspiracies of Tiepolo and Faliero were crushed--Venetian against Venetian the only time in a thousand years. And here Italy suffered her crowning indignity, the occupation by the French under the newly-fledged warrior who unlimbered his cannon at the door of the holy church, pushed the four bronze horses from their pedestals over the sacred entrance--the horses of Constantine, wrought by Lysippus the Greek,--despoiled the noble church of its silver lamps, robbed the ancient column of its winged lion, and then, after a campaign unprecedented in its brilliancy, unexampled in the humiliation and degradation it entailed upon a people who for ten centuries had known no power outside of Venice, planted in the centre of this same noble square, with an irony as bitter as it was cruel, the “Tree of Liberty,” at which was burned, on the 4th of June, 1797, the insignia of the ancient republic.

And yet, notwithstanding all her vicissitudes, the Venice of to-day is still the Venice of her glorious past, the Venice of Dandolo, Foscari, and Faliero. The actors are long since dead, but the stage-setting is the same; the same sun, the same air, the same sky over all. The beautiful dome of the Salute still dominates the Grand Canal. The great plaza is still perfect in all its proportions and in all that made up its beauty and splendor. The Campanile still raises its head, glistening in the morning light. High over all still flash and swoop the pigeons of Venice--the pigeons of Dandolo--now black as cinders, now flakes of gold in the yellow light. The doors of the sacred church are still open; the people pass in and out. Under the marble arcades, where the soldiers of the army of France stacked their arms, to-day sit hundreds of free Venetians, with their wives and sweethearts, sipping their ices and coffee; the great orchestra, the king’s band, filling the air with its music.

When you ask what magician has wrought this change, let the old guide answer as once he answered me when, crossing the Piazza and uncovering his head, he pointed to a stone and said, in his soft Italian:--

“Here, Signore,--just here, where the great Napoleon burnt our flag,--the noble republic of our fathers, under our good King and his royal spouse, was born anew.”

But you cannot stay. You will return and study the Piazza to-morrow; not now. The air intoxicates you. The sunlight is in your blood; your cheeks burn; you look out and over the Grand Canal--molten silver in the shimmer of the morning. Below, near the Public Garden, beyond San Giorgio, like a cluster of butterflies, hovers a fleet of Chioggia fishing-boats, becalmed in the channel. Off the Riva, near Danieli’s, lies the Trieste steamer, just arrived, a swarm of gondolas and _barcos_ about her landing-ladders; the yellow smoke of her funnel drifting lazily. Farther away, on the golden ball of the Dogana, the bronze Goddess of the Wind poises light as air, her face aflame, her whirling sail bent with the passing breeze.

You resolve to stop no more; only to float, loll on your cushions, watch the gulls circle, and the slow sweep of the oars of the luggers. You would throw open--wide open--the great swinging gates of your soul. You not only would enjoy, you would absorb, drink in, fill yourself to the brim.

For hours you drift about. There is plenty of time to-morrow for the churches and palaces and caffès. To-day you want only the salt air in your face, the splash and gurgle of the water at the bow, and the low song that Giorgio sings to himself as he bends to his blade.

Soon you dart into a cool canal, skirt along an old wall, water stained and worn, and rest at a low step. Giorgio springs out, twists a cord around an iron ring, and disappears through an archway framing a garden abloom with flowering vines.

It is high noon. Now for your midday luncheon!

You have had all sorts of breakfasts offered you in your wanderings: On white-winged yachts, with the decks scoured clean, the brass glistening, the awning overhead. In the wilderness, lying on balsam boughs, the smell of the bacon and crisping trout filling the bark slant, the blue smoke wreathing the tall pines. In the gardens of Sunny Spain--one you remember at Granada, hugging the great wall of the Alhambra--you see the table now with its heap of fruit and flowers, and can hear the guitar of the gypsy behind the pomegranate. Along the shore of the beautiful bay of Matanzas, where the hidalgo who had watched you paint swept down in his _volante_ and carried you off to his oranges and omelette. At St. Cloud, along the Seine, with the noiseless waiter in the seedy dress suit and necktie of the night before. But the _filet_ and melon! Yes, you would go again. I say you have had all sorts of breakfasts out of doors in your time, but never yet in a gondola.

A few minutes later Giorgio pushes aside the vines. He carries a basket covered with a white cloth. This he lays at your feet on the floor of the boat. You catch sight of the top of a siphon and a flagon of wine: do not hurry, wait till he serves it. But not here, where anybody might come; farther down, where the oleanders hang over the wall, their blossoms in the water, and where the air blows cool between the overhanging palaces.

Later Giorgio draws all the curtains except the side next the oleanders, steps aft and fetches a board, which he rests on the little side seats in front of your lounging-cushions. On this board he spreads the cloth, and then the seltzer and Chianti, the big glass of powdered ice and the little hard Venetian rolls. (By the bye, do you know that there is only one form of primitive roll, the world over?) Then come the cheese, the Gorgonzola--active, alert Gorgonzola, all green spots--wrapped in a leaf; a rough-jacketed melon, with some figs and peaches. Last of all, away down in the bottom of the basket, there is a dish of macaroni garnished with peppers. You do not want any meat. If you did you would not get it. Some time when you are out on the canal, or up the Giudecca, you might get a fish freshly broiled from a passing cook-boat serving the watermen--a sort of floating kitchen for those who are too poor for a fire of their own--but never meat.

Giorgio serves you as daintily as would a woman; unfolding the cheese, splitting the rolls, parting the melon into crescents, flecking off each seed with his knife: and last, the coffee from the little copper coffee-pot, and the thin cakes of sugar, in the thick, unbreakable, dumpy little cups.

There are no courses in this repast. You light a cigarette with your first mouthful and smoke straight through: it is that kind of a breakfast.

Then you spread yourself over space, flat on your back, the smoke curling out through the half-drawn curtains. Soon your gondolier gathers up the fragments, half a melon and the rest,--there is always enough for two,--moves aft, and you hear the clink of the glass and the swish of the siphon. Later you note the closely-eaten crescents floating by, and the empty leaf. Giorgio was hungry too.

But the garden!--there is time for that. You soon discover that it is unlike any other you know. There are no flower-beds and gravel walks, and no brick fountains with the scantily dressed cast-iron boy struggling with the green-painted dolphin, the water spurting from its open mouth. There is water, of course, but it is down a deep well with a great coping of marble, encircled by exquisite carvings and mellow with mould; and there are low trellises of grapes, and a tangle of climbing roses half concealing a weather-stained Cupid with a broken arm. And there is an old-fashioned sun-dial, and sweet smelling box cut into fantastic shapes, and a nest of an arbor so thickly matted with leaves and interlaced branches that you think of your Dulcinea at once. And there are marble benches and stone steps, and at the farther end an old rusty gate through which Giorgio brought the luncheon.

It is all so new to you, and so cool and restful! For the first time you begin to realize that you are breathing the air of a City of Silence. No hum of busy loom, no tramp of horse or rumble of wheel, no jar or shock; only the voices that come over the water, and the plash of the ripples as you pass. But the day is waning; into the sunlight once more.

Giorgio is fast asleep; his arm across his face, his great broad chest bared to the sky.

“_Si, Signore!_”

He is up in an instant, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, catching his oar as he springs.

You glide in and out again, under marble bridges thronged with people; along quays lined with boats; by caffè, church, and palace, and so on to the broad water of the Public Garden.

But you do not land; some other day for that. You want the row back up the canal, with the glory of the setting sun in your face. Suddenly, as you turn, the sun is shut out: it is the great warship Stromboli, lying at anchor off the garden wall; huge, solid as a fort, fine-lined as a yacht, with exquisite detail of rail, mast, yard-arms, and gun mountings, the light flashing from her polished brasses.

In a moment you are under her stern, and beyond, skirting the old shipyard with the curious arch,--the one Whistler etched,--sheering to avoid the little steamers puffing with modern pride, their noses high in air at the gondolas; past the long quay of the Riva, where the torpedo-boats lie tethered in a row, like swift horses eager for a dash; past the fruit-boats dropping their sails for a short cut to the market next the Rialto; past the long, low, ugly bath-house anchored off the Dogana; past the wonderful, the matchless, the never-to-be-unloved or forgotten, the most blessed, the _Santa Maria della Salute_.

Oh! this drift back, square in the face of the royal sun, attended by all the pomp and glory of a departing day! What shall be said of this reveling, rioting, dominant god of the west, clothed in purple and fine gold; strewing his path with rose-leaves thrown broadcast on azure fields; rolling on beds of violet; saturated, steeped, drunken with color; every steeple, tower, and dome ablaze; the whole world on tip-toe, kissing its hands good-night!

Giorgio loves it, too. His cap is off, lying on the narrow deck; his cravat loosened, his white shirt, as he turns up the Giudecca, flashing like burning gold.

Somehow you cannot sit and take your ease in the fullness of all this beauty and grandeur. You spring to your feet. You must see behind and on both sides, your eye roving eagerly away out to the lagoon beyond the great flour-mill and the gardens.

Suddenly a delicate violet light falls about you; the lines of palaces grow purple; the water is dulled to a soft gray, broken by long, undulating waves of blue; the hulls of the fishing-boats become inky black, their listless sails deepening in the falling shadows. Only the little cupola high up on the dome of the Redentore still burns pink and gold. Then it fades and is gone. The day is done!

ALONG THE RIVA

THE afternoon hours are always the best. In the morning the great sweep of dazzling pavement is a blaze of white light, spotted with moving dots of color. These dots carry gay-colored parasols and fans, or shield their eyes with aprons, hugging, as they scurry along, the half-shadows of a bridge-rail or caffè awning. Here and there, farther down along the Riva, are larger dots--fruit-sellers crouching under huge umbrellas, or groups of gondoliers under improvised awnings of sailcloth and boat oars. Once in a while one of these water-cabmen darts out from his shelter like an old spider, waylays a bright fly as she hurries past, and carries her off bodily to his gondola. Should she escape he crawls back again lazily and is merged once more in the larger dot. In the noonday glare even these disappear; the fruit-sellers seeking some shaded _calle_, the gondoliers the cool coverings of their boats.

Now that the Sun God has chosen to hide his face behind the trees of the King’s Garden, this blaze of white is toned to a cool gray. Only San Giorgio’s tower across the Grand Canal is aflame, and that but half way down its bright red length. The people, too, who have been all day behind closed blinds and doors, are astir. The awnings of the caffès are thrown back and the windows of the balconies opened. The waiters bring out little tables, arranging the chairs in rows like those in a concert hall. The boatmen who have been asleep under cool bridges, curled up on the decks of their boats, stretch themselves awake, rubbing their eyes. The churches swing back their huge doors--even the red curtains of the _Chiesa della Pietà_ are caught to one side, so that you can see the sickly yellow glow of the candles far back on the altars and smell the incense as you pass.

Soon the current from away up near the Piazza begins to flow down towards the Public Garden, which lies at the end of this Grand Promenade of Venice. Priests come, and students; sailors on a half day’s leave; stevedores from the salt warehouses; fishermen; peddlers, with knick-knacks and sweetmeats; throngs from the hotels; and slender, graceful Venetians, out for their afternoon stroll in twos and threes, with high combs and gay shawls, worn as a Spanish Donna would her mantilla--bewitching creatures in cool muslin dresses and wide sashes of silk, with restless butterfly fans, and restless, wicked eyes too, that flash and coax as they saunter along.

Watch those officers wheel and turn. See how they laugh when they meet. What confidences under mustachios and fans! Half an hour from now you will find the four at Florian’s, as happy over a little cherry juice and water as if it were the dryest of all the Extras. Later on, away out beyond San Giorgio, four cigarettes could light for you their happy faces, the low plash of their gondolier’s oar keeping time to the soft notes of a guitar.

Yes, one must know the Riva in the afternoon. I know it every hour in the day; though I love it most in the cool of its shadows. And I know every caffè, church, and palace along its whole length, from the Molo to the garden. And I know the bridges, too; best of all the one below the Arsenal, the _Veneta Marina_, and the one you cross before reaching the little church that stands aside as if to let you pass, and the queer-shaped Piazzetta beyond, with the flag-pole and marble balustrade. And I know that old wine-shop where the chairs and tables are drawn close up to the very bridge itself, its awnings half over the last step.

My own gondolier, Espero--bless his sunny face!--knows the owner of this shop and has known her for years; a great, superb creature, with eyes that flash and smoulder under heaps of tangled black hair. He first presented me to this grand duchess of the Riva years ago, when I wanted a dish of macaroni browned on a shallow plate. Whenever I turn in now out of the heat for a glass of crushed ice and orange juice, she mentions the fact and points with pride to the old earthen platter. It is nearly burnt through with my many toastings.

But the bridge is my delight; the arch underneath is so cool, and I have darted under it so often for luncheon and half an hour’s siesta. On these occasions the old burnt-bottomed dish is brought to my gondola sizzling hot, with coffee and rolls, and sometimes a bit of broiled fish as an extra touch.

This bridge has always been the open-air club-room of the entire neighborhood,--everybody who has any lounging to do is a life member. All day long its _habitués_ hang over it, gazing listlessly out upon the lagoon; singly, in bunches, in swarms when the fish-boats round in from Chioggia, or a new P. and O. steamer arrives. Its hand-rail of marble is polished smooth by the arms and legs and blue overalls of two centuries.

There is also a very dear friend of mine living near this bridge, whom you might as well know before I take another step along the Riva. He is attached to my suite. I have a large following quite of his kind, scattered all over Venice. As I am on my way, in this chapter, to the Public Garden, and can never get past this his favorite haunt without his cheer and laugh to greet me; so I cannot, if I would, avoid bringing him in now, knowing full well that he would bring himself in and unannounced whenever it should please his Excellency so to do. He is a happy-hearted, devil-may-care young fellow, who haunts this particular vicinity, and who has his bed and board wherever, at the moment, he may happen to be. The bed problem never troubles him; a bit of sailcloth under the shadow of the hand-rail will do, or a straw mat behind the angle of a wall, or even what shade I can spare from my own white umbrella, with the hard marble flags for feathers. The item of board is a trifle, yet only a trifle, more serious. It may be a fragment of polenta, or a couple of figs, or only a drink from the copper bucket of some passing girl. Quantity, quality, and time of serving are immaterial to him. There will be something to eat before night, and it always comes. One of the pleasures of the neighborhood is to share with him a bite.

This beggar, tramp, _lasagnone_--ragged, barefooted, and sunbrowned, would send a flutter through the hearts of a matinée full of pretty girls, could he step to the footlights just as he is, and with his superb baritone voice ring out one of his own native songs. Lying as he does now under my umbrella, his broad chest burnt almost black, the curls glistening about his forehead, his well-trimmed mustache curving around a mouth half open, shading a row of teeth white as milk, his Leporello hat thrown aside, a broad red sash girding his waist, the fine muscles of his thighs filling his overalls, these same pretty girls might perhaps only draw their skirts aside as they passed: environment plays such curious tricks.

This friend of mine, this royal pauper, Luigi, never in the recollection of any mortal man or woman was known to do a stroke of work. He lives somewhere up a crooked canal, with an old mother who adores him--as, in fact, does every other woman he knows, young or old--and whose needle keeps together the rags that only accentuate more clearly the superb lines of his figure. And yet one cannot call him a burden on society. On the contrary, Luigi has especial duties which he never neglects. Every morning at sunrise he is out on the bridge watching the Chioggia boats as they beat up past the Garden trying to make the red buoy in the channel behind San Giorgio, and enlarging on their seagoing qualities to an admiring group of bystanders. At noon he is plumped down in the midst of a bevy of wives and girls, flat on the pavement, his back against a doorway in some courtyard. The wives mend and patch, the girls string beads, and the children play around on the marble flagging, Luigi monopolizing all the talk and conducting all the gayety, the whole coterie listening. He makes love, and chaffs, and sings, and weaves romances, until the inquisitive sun peeps into the _patio_; then he is up and out on the bridge again, and so down the Riva, with the grace of an Apollo and the air of a thoroughbred.

When I think of all the sour tempers in the world, all the people with weak backs and chests and limbs, all the dyspeptics, all the bad livers and worse hearts, all the mean people and the sordid, all those who pose as philanthropists, professing to ooze sunshine and happiness from their very pores; all the down-trodden and the economical ones; all those on half pay and no work, and those on full pay and too little--and then look at this magnificent condensation of bone, muscle, and sinew; this Greek god of a tramp, unselfish, good-tempered, sunny-hearted, wanting nothing, having everything, envying nobody, happy as a lark, one continuous song all the day long; ready to catch a line, to mind a child, to carry a pail of water for any old woman, from the fountain in the Campo near by to the top of any house, no matter how high--when, I say, I think of this prince of good fellows leading his Adam-before-the-fall sort of existence, I seriously consider the advisability of my pensioning him for the remainder of his life on one _lira_ a day, a fabulous sum to him, merely to be sure that nothing in the future will ever spoil his temper and so rob me of the ecstasy of knowing and of being always able to find one supremely happy human creature on this earth.

But, as I have said, I am on my way to the Public Garden. Everybody else is going too. Step to the marble balustrade of this three-cornered Piazzetta and see if the prows of the gondolas are not all pointed that way. I am afoot, have left the Riva and am strolling down the _Via Garibaldi_, the widest street in Venice. There are no palaces here, only a double row of shops, their upper windows and balconies festooned with drying clothes, their doors choked with piles of fruit and merchandise. A little farther down is a marble bridge, and then the arching trees of the biggest and breeziest sweep of green in all Venice--the _Giardini Pubblici_--many acres in extent, bounded by a great wall surmounted by a marble balustrade more than a mile in length, and thickly planted with sycamores and flowering shrubs. Its water front commands the best view of the glory of a Venetian sunset.

This garden, for Venice, is really a very modern kind of public garden, after all. It was built in the beginning of the present century, about 1810, when the young Corsican directed one Giovanni Antonio Selva to demolish a group of monasteries incumbering the ground and from their débris to construct the foundations of this noble park, with its sea-wall, landings, and triumphal gate.

Whenever I stretch myself out under the grateful shade of these splendid trees, I always forgive the Corsican for robbing San Marco of its bronze horses and for riding his own up the incline of the Campanile, and even for leveling the monasteries.

And the Venetians of to-day are grateful too, however much their ancestors may have reviled the conqueror for his vandalism. All over its graveled walks you will find them lolling on the benches, grouped about the pretty caffès, taking their coffee or eating ices; leaning by the hour over the balustrade and watching the boats and little steamers. The children romp and play, the candy man and the sellers of sweet cakes ply their trade, and the vender with cool drinks stands over his curious four-legged tray, studded with bits of brass and old coins, and calls out his several mixtures. The officers are here, too, twisting their mustachios and fingering their cigarettes; fine ladies saunter along, preceded by their babies, half smothered in lace and borne on pillows in the arms of Italian peasants with red cap-ribbons touching the ground; and barefooted, frowzy-headed girls from the rookeries behind the Arsenal idle about, four or five abreast, their arms locked, mocking the sailors and filling the air with laughter.