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/
■/^•e
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VENETIAN LIFE
By WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
ORIGINAL WATER COLORS
IN TWO VOLUMES
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L
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A Regatta
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WITH
ORl
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VENETIAN LIFE
BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
ORIGINAL WATER COLORS
VOLUME
II
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
HDCCCXCII
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Oopyrlght, 1866 and 1872,
Bt W. D. HOWSLLS.
Oopyxlght, 1886 and 1891,
Bt HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Ca
AU rights reserved.
HARVARD
lUNlVERSITYj
LIBRARY
MAR 161965
The Riverside Press, Cambridge^ Mass., U, S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton <& Company.
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CONTENTS AND LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAOK
Frontispiece. A Regatta . . . Childe Hassam
SOMB MeMOBABLB PliACES 7
GOMMESCE 30
' Wood-Boats and Dog^ana .... Rostt Turner 50
Venetian Holidays 57
Feeding the Pigeons in the Piazza. Childe Hassam 88
Chbistmas Holidays 104
The Rialto Market Childe Hassam 110
Loye-Makino and Marbyino; Baptisms and
BURLLLS 119
A Corner of the Rialto . . F. Hopkinson Smith 134
Venetian T&aits and Chabactebs 147
€k>ndoliers Childe Hassam 160
Society 187
The Venetian People . Rhoda Holmes NichoUs 220
OuB Last Yeab in Venice 239
" Amphihious Boys " . Bhoda Holmes NichoUs 254
Palazzo Qiustiniani Childe Hassam 268
The aqua-tinU were executed by Donald Ratnaayt Boettm.
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VENETIAN LIFE
XV
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES
E came away from the Ghetto,
as we had arrived, in a gentle
fall of goose-down, and, winding
crookedly through a dirty canal,
glided into purer air and cleaner waters.
I cannot well say how it was we came upon
the old Servite Convent, which I had often
looked for in vain, and which, associated
with the great name of Paolo Sarpi, is to me
one of the most memorable places in Venice.
We reached it, after passing by that old, old
palace, which was appointed in the early
ages of Venetian commerce for the recep-
tion of oriental traffic and traffickers, and
where it is said the Moorish merchants re-
sided till the later time of the Fondaco dei
Turchi on the Grand Canal. The facade of
the palace is richly sculptured ; and near one
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8 VENETIAN LIFE
comer is the bas-relief of a camel and his
turbaned driver, — in token, perhaps, that
man and beast (as orientals would under-
stand them) were here entertained.
We had lived long enough in Venice to
know that it was by no means worth while
to explore the interior of this old palace be-
cause the outside was attractive, and so we
left it ; and, turning a corner, found our-
selves in a shallow canal, with houses on one
side, and a grassy bank on the other. The
bank sloped gently from the water up to the
walls of some edifice, on which ruin seemed
to have fastened soon after the architect had
begim his work. The vast walls, embracing
several acres in their dose, rose only some
thirty or forty feet from the 'ground, — only
high enough, indeed, to join over the top of
the great Gothic gates, which pierced them
on two facades. There must have been bar-
racks near; for on the sward, under the
walls, muskets were stacked, and Austrian
soldiers were practising the bayonet-exercise
with long poles padded at the point. " jEVw,
j5W>ci, drei^ — vorwdrts ! Ein^ zwei^ drei^ —
ruckwdrts 1 " snarled the drill-sergeant, and
the dark-faced Hungarian soldiers — who
may have soon afterward prodded their Dan-
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SOME MEMORABLE PLACES 9
ish fellow-beings all the more effectively for
that day's training — stooped, writhed, and
leaped obedient. I, who had already caught
sight of a little tablet in the wall bearing
the name of Paolo Sarpi, could not feel the
propriety of the military performance on
that scene ; yet I was very glad, dismount-
ing from the gondola, to get by the soldiers
without being forced back at the padded
point of a pole, and offered no audible ob-
jection to their presence.
So passing to the other side, I found
entrance through a disused chapel to the
interior of the convent. The gates on the
outside were richly sculptured, and were rev-
erend and clean ; tufts of harsh grass grew
from their arches, and hung down like the
" overwhelming brows " of age. Within, at
first sight, I saw nothing but heaps of rub-
bish, piles of stone, and here and there a
mutilated statue. I remember two pathetic
caryatides, that seemed to have broken and
sunk under too heavy a weight for their gen-
tle beauty, and everywhere the unnamable
filth with which ruin is always dishonored
in Italy, and which makes the most pictur-
esque and historic places inaccessible to the
foot, and intolerable to the senses and the
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10 VENETIAN LIFE
sooL I was thinking with a savage indignar
tion on this incurable porcheria of the Ital-
ian poor (who are guilty of such desecra-
tions), when my eye fell upon an enclosed
space in one comer, where some odd-looking
boulders were heaped together. It was a
space about six feet in depth and twenty
feet square ; and the boulders, on closer in-
spection, turned out to be human skulls,
nestling on piles of human bones. In any
other land than Italy I think I should have
turned from the grisly sight with a cowardly
sickness and shuddering ; but here ! — Why,
heaven and earth seem to take the loss of
men so good-naturedly, — so many men have
died and passed away with their difficult,
ambitious, and troublesome little schemes, —
and the great mass of mankind is taken so
small account of in the course of destiny,
that the idea of death does not appear so
alien and repulsive as elsewhere, and the
presence of such evidences of our poor mor-
tality can scarcely offend sensibility. These
were doubtless the bones of the good Servite
friars who had been buried in their convent,
and had been digged up to make way for cer-
tain improvements now taking place within
its walls. I have no doubt that their deaths
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SOME MEMORABLE PLACES 11
were a rest to their bodies, to saj nothing of
their souls. If thej were at all in their lives
like those who have come after them, the sun
baked their bald brows in summer, and their
naked feet — poor feet! clapping round in
wooden-soled sandals over the frozen stones
of Venice — were swollen and gnawed with
chilblains in winter ; and no doubt some fat
friar of their number, looking all the droller
in his bare feet for the spectacles on his
nose, came down Calle Falier then, as now,
to collect the charity of bread and fuel, far
of tener than the dwellers in that aristocratic
precinct wished to see him.
The friars' skulls looked contented enough,
and smiled after the hearty manner of skulls ;
and some of the leg -bones were thrust
through the enclosing fence, and hung rak-
ishly over the top. As to their spirits, I
suppose they must have found out by this
time that these confused and shattered tab-
ernacles which they left behind them are
not nearly so corrupt and dead as the mo-
nastic system which still cumbers the earth.
People are building on the site of the old
convent a hospital for indigent and decrepit
women, where a religious sisterhood will
have care of the inmates. It is a good end
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12 VENETIAN LIFE
enough, but I think it would be the true
compensation if all the rubbish of the old
cloister were cleared from the area of those
walls, and a great garden planted in the
space, where lovers might whisper their wise
nonsense, and children might romp and
frolic, till the crumbling masonry forgot its
old office of imprisonment and the memory
of its prisoners. For here one could only
think of the moping and mumming herd of
monks, who were certainly not worth re-
membering, while the fame of Paolo Sarpi,
and the good which he did, refused to be
localized. That good is an inheritance which
has enriched the world; but the share of
Venice has been comparatively small in it,
and that of this old convent ground still less.
I rather wondered, indeed, that I should
have taken the trouble to look up the place ;
but it is a harmless, if even a very foolish,
pastime to go seeking for the sublime secret
of the glory of the palm in the earth where
it struck root and flourished. So far as the
life-long presence and the death of a man of
clear brain and true heart could hallow any
scene, this ground was holy ; for here Sarpi
lived, and here in his cell he died, a sim-
ple Servite friar, — he who had caught the
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SOME MEMORABLE PLACES 13
bolts of excommunication launched against
the Republic from Rome, and broken them
in his hand, — who had breathed upon the
mighty arm of the temporal power, and
withered it to the juiceless stock it now re*
mains. And jet I could not feel that the
ground was holy, and it did not make me
think of Sarpi ; and I believe that only those
travellers who invent in cold blood their im-
pressions of memorable places ever have re-
markable impressions to record.
Once, before the time of Sarpi, an excom-
munication was pronounced against the Re-
public with a result as terrible as that of the
later interdict was absurd. Venice took
possession, early in the fourteenth century,
of Ferrara, by virtue of a bargain which the
high contracting parties — the Republic and
an exiled claimant to the ducal crown of
Ferrara — had no right to make. The fa-
ther of the banished prince had displeased
him by marrying late in life, when the
thoughts of a good man should be turned on
other things, and the son compassed the
sire's death. For this the Ferrarese drove
him away, and as they would not take him
back to reign over them at the suggestion of
Venice, he resigned his rights in favor of
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14 VENETIAN LIFE
the Republic, and the Republic at once an-
nexed the city to its territories. The Fer-
rarese appealed to the Pope for his protec-
tion, and Clement Y., supporting an ancient
but long quiescent claim to Ferrara on the
part of the Church, called upon the Vene-
tians to surrender the city, and, on their re-
fusal, excommunicated them. All Christian
peoples were commanded "to arm against
the Venetians, to spoil them of their goods,
as separated from the union of Christians,
and as enemies of the Roman Church."
They were driven out of Ferrara, but their
troubles did not end with their loss of the
city. Giustina Renier-Michiel says the na-
tions, under the shelter of the Pope's per-
mission and command, "exercised against
them every species of cruelty: there was
no wrong or violence of which they were
not victims. All the rich merchandise which
they had in France, in Flanders, and in
other places was confiscated ; their mer-
chants were arrested, maltreated, and some
of them killed. Woe to us, if the Saracens
had been baptized Christians ! Our nation
would have been utterly destroyed. Such
was the ruin brought upon us by this ex-
communication that to this day it is a popu-
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SOME MEMORABLE PLACES 16
lar saying, concerning a man of gloomy as-
pect, * He looks as if he were bringing the
excommunication of Ferrara^ "
No proverb sprung from the popular ter-
ror commemorates the interdict of the Ee-
public which took place in 1606, and which,
I believe, does not survive in popular rec-
ollection at Venice. It was at first a col-
lision of the Venetian and Papal authorities
at Ferrara, and then an interference of the
Pope to prevent the execution of secular jus-
tice upon certain ecclesiastical ofiEenders in
Venetia, which resulted in the excommuni-
cation of the Republic, and finally in the
defeat of St. Peter and the triumph of St.
Mark. Chief among the ecclesiastical of-
fendei*s mentioned were the worthy Abbate
Brandolino of Narvesa, who was accused,
among other things, of poisoning his own
father ; and the good Canonico Saraceni
of Vicenza, who was repulsed in overtures
made to his beautiful cousin, and who re-
venged himself by defaming her character,
and "filthily defacing" the doors of her
palace. The abbate was arrested, and the
canon, on this lady's complaint to the Ten
at Venice, was thrown into prison, and the
weak and furious Pope Paul V., being re*
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16 VENETIAN LIFE
fused tbeir release by the Ten, excommuni-
cated the whole Republic.
In the same year, that is to say 1552, the
bane and antidote, Paul the Pope and Paul
Sarpi the friar, were sent into the world.
The latter grew in piety, fame, and learning,
and at the time the former began his quarrel
with the Republic there was none in Venice
so fit and prompt as Sarpi to stand forth in
her defence. He was at once taken into the
service of St. Mark, and his clear, acute
mind fashioned the spiritual weapons of the
Republic, and helped to shape the secular
measures taken to annul the interdict. As
soon as the bull of excommunication was is-
sued, the Republic instructed her officers to
stop every copy of it at the frontier, and it
was never read in any church in the Vene-
tian dominions. The Senate refused to re-
ceive it from the Papal Nuncio. All priests,
monks, and other servants of the Church, as
well as all secular persons, were commanded
to disregard it ; and refractory ecclesiastics
were forced to open their churches on pain
of death. The Jesuits and Capuchins were
banished ; and clerical intriguers, whom
Rome sent in swarms to corrupt social and
family relations, by declaring an end of
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SOME MEMORABLE PLACES 17
civil government in Venice, and preaching
among women disobedience to patriotic hus-
bands and fathers, were severely punished.
With internal safety thus provided for, the
Republic intrusted her moral, religious, and
political defence entirely to Sarpi, who de-
voted himself to his trust with fidelity, zeal,
and power.
It might have been expected that the
friend of Galileo, and the most learned and
enlightened man of his country, would have
taken the short and decisive method of dis-
carding all allegiance to Some as the most
logical resistance to the unjust interdict.
But the Venetians have ever been faithful
Catholics,^ and Sarpi was (or, according to
1 It is conyenient here to attest the truth of certain views
of religious sentiment in Italy, which Mr. Trollope, in his
Paul the Pope and Paid the Friar, quotes from an " Italian
author, by no means friendly to Catholicism, and very well
qualified to speak of the progress of opinions and tendencies
among his fellow-countrymen.*' This author is Bianchi
Giovini, who, speaking of modem Catholicism as the heir
of the old materialistic paganism, says: **■ The Italians have
identified themselves with this mode of religion. Cultivated
men find in it the truth there is in it, and the people find
what is agreeable to them. But both the former and the lat-
ter approve it as conformable to the national character. And
whatever may be the religious system which shall govern
our descendants twenty centuries hence, I venture to afiSrm
that the exterior forms of it will be pretty nearly the same
as those which prevail at present, and which did prevail
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20 VENETIAN LIFE
the Papal court ; one of them seized the lay-
brother, and another the patrician, while a
third dealt Sarpi innumerable dagger thrusta.
He fell as if dead, and the ruffians made off
in the confusion.
Sarpi had been fearfully wounded, but he
recovered. The action of the Republic in
this affair is a comforting refutation of the
saying that Republics are ungrateful, and
the common belief that Venice was particu-
larly so. The most strenuous and unpre-
cedented efforts were made to take the as-
sassins, and the most terrific penalties were
denounced against them. What was much
better, new honors were showered upon Sarpi,
and extraordinary and affectionate measures
were taken to provide for his safety.
And, in fine, he lived in the service of the
Republic, revered and beloved, till his seven-
tieth year, when he died with zeal for her
good shaping his last utterance: ^'I must
go to St. Mark, for it is late and I have
much to do."
Brave Sarpi, and brave Republic! Men
cannot honor them enough. For though the
terrors of the interdict were doubted to be
harmless even at that time, it had remained
for them to prove the interdict, then and
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aOME MEMORABLE PLACES 21
forever, an instrument as obsolete as the
catapult.
I was so curious as to make some inquiry
among the workmen on the old convent
ground whether any stone or other record
commemorative of Sarpi had been found in
the demolished ceUs. I hoped, not very
confidently, to gather some trace of his pres-
ence there, — to have, perhaps, the spot on
which he died shown me. To a man, they
were utterly ignorant of Sarpi, while affect-
ing in the Italian manner to be perfectly in-
formed on the subject. I was passed, with
my curiosity, from one to another, till I fell
into the hands of a kind of foreman, to
whom I put my questions anew. He was a
man of Napoleonic beard, and such fair red-
and-white complexion that he impressed me
as having escaped from a show of wax- works,
and I was not at all surprised to find him
a wax figure in point of intelligence. He
seemed to think my questions the greatest
misfortunes which had ever befallen him,
and to regard each suggestion of Sarpi —
tempo ddla Hepubblica — scomtmica di
Paolo Quinto — as an intolerable oppres-
sion. He could only tell me that on a cer-
tain spot (which he pointed out with his
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22 VENETIAN LIFE
foot) in the demolished church there had
been found a stone with Sarpi's name upon
it. The padrone, who had the contract
for building the new convent, had said,
" Truly, I have heard speak of this Sarpi ; "
but the stone had been broken, and he did
not know what had become of it.
And, in fact, the only thing that remem-
bered Sarpi, on the site of the convent
where he spent his life, died, and was buried,
was the little tablet on the outside of the
wall, of which the abbreviated Latin an-
nounced that he had been Theologue to the
Republic, and that his dust was now re-
moved to the island of San Michele. After
this failure, I had no humor to make re-
searches for the bridge on which the friar
was attacked by his assassins. But, indeed,
why should I look for it ? Finding it, could
I have kept in my mind the fine dramatic
picture I now have, of Sarpi returning to
his convent on a mild October evening,
weary with his long walk from St. Mark's,
and pacing with downcast eyes, — the old
patrician and the lay-brother at his side, and
the masked and stealthy assassins, with up-
lifted daggers, behind him ? Nay, I fear I
should have found the bridge with some scene
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SOME MEMORABLE PLACES 28
of modem life upon it, and brought away in
my remembrance an old woman with an oil-
bottle, or a straggling boy with a tumbler,
and a very little wine in it.
On our way home from the Servite Con-
vent, we stopped again near the comer and
bridge of Sior Antonio Rioba, — this time
to go into the house of Tintoretto, which
stands close at the right hand, on the same
quay. The house, indeed, might make some
pretensions to be called a palace : it is large,
and has a carved and balconied front, in
which are set a now illegible tablet describ-
ing it as the painter's dwelling, and a medal-
lion portrait of Robusti. It would have been
well if I had contented myself with this
goodly outside ; for penetrating, by a long,
narrow passage and complicated stairway, to
the interior of the house, I found that it had
nothing to offer me but the usual number of
commonplace rooms in the usual blighting
state of restoration. I must say that the
people of the house, considering they had
nothing in the world to show me, were kind
and patient under the intrusion, and an-
swered with very polite affirmation my dis-
couraged inquiry if this were really Tinto-
retto's house.
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24 VENETIAN LIFE
Their conduct was different from that of
the present inmates of Titian's house, near
the Fondamenta Nuove, in a little court at
the left of the church of the Jesuits. These
unreasonable persons think it an intolerable
bore that the enlightened travelling public
should break in upon their priTacy. They
put their heads out of the upper windows,
and assure the strangers that the house is as
utterly restored within as they behold it with-
out (and it i% extremely restored), that it
merely occupies the site of the painter's
dwelling, and that there is nothing whatever
to see in it. I never myself had the heart
to force an entrance after these protests;
but an acquaintance of the more obdurate
sex, whom I had the honor to accompany
thither, once did so, and came out with a
story of rafters of the original Titianic
kitchen being still visible in the new one.
After a lapse of two years I revisited the
house, and found that, so far from having
learned patience by frequent trial, the in-
mates had been apparently goaded into mad-
ness during the interval They seemed to
know of our approach by instinct, and thrust
their heads out, ready for protest, before we
were near enough to speak* The lazy, frowzy
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SOME MEMORABLE PLACES 26
women, the worthless men, and idle, loafing
boys of the neighborhood, gathered round to
witness the encounter ; but though repeatedly
commanded to ring (I was again in company
with ladies), and try to force the place, I
refused decidedly to do so. The garrison
were strengthening their position by plaster-
ing and renewed renovation, and I doubt
that by this time the original rafters are no
longer to be seen. A plasterer's boy, with a
fine sense of humor, stood clapping his trowel
on his board, inside the house, while we de-
bated retreat, and derisively invited us to en-
ter: "/Sworn pure^ signoret Questa e la
famosa casa del gran pittore^ Timmortale
TiziaTMy — suoni^ signore/^^ (Ring, by all
means, sir. This is the famous house of the
great painter, the immortal Titian. Ring!)
Da capo. We retired amid the scorn of
the populace. But indeed I could not blame
the inhabitants of Titian's house ; and were
I condemned to live in a place so famous as
to attract idle curiosity, flushed and insolent
with travel, I should go to the verge of man-
traps and shot-guns to protect myself.
This house, which is now hemmed in by
larger buildings of later date, had in the
painter's time an incomparably " lovely and
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26 VENETIAN LIFE
delightful situation." Standing near the
northern boundary of the city, it looked out
over the lagoon — across the quiet isle of
sepulchres, San Michele, across the smok-
ing chimneys of the Murano glass-works,
and the bell-towers of her churches, to the
long line of the sea-shore on the right and
to the main-land on the left ; and beyond
the nearer lagoon islands and the faintly
pencilled outlines of Torcello and Burano in
front to the sublime distance of the Alps,
shining in silver and purple, and resting
their snowy heads against the clouds. It
had a pleasant garden of flowers and trees,
into which the painter descended by an open
stairway, and in which he is said to have
studied the famous tree in The Death of
Peter Martyr. Here he entertained the
great and noble of his day, and here he
feasted and made merry with the gentle
sculptor Sansovino, and with their common
friend, the rascal-poet Aretino. The paint-
er's and the sculptor's wives knew each other,
and Sansovino's Paola was often in the house
of Cecilia Vecellio ; ^ and any one who is
1 The wife of Titian's youth was, according to Ticozzi,
named Lucia. It is in Mutinelli that I find allusion to Ceci-
lia. The author of the Annali Crbani, spealting of the friend-
ship and frequent meetings of Titian and Sansovino, says:
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80ME MEMORABLE PLACES 27
wise enough not to visit the place can easily
think of those ladies there, talking at an
open window that gives upon the pleasant
garden, where their husbands walk up and
down together in the purple evening light.
In the palace where Goldoni was bom a
servant showed me an entirely new room
near the roof, in which he said the great
dramatist had composed his immortal come-
dies. As I knew, however, that Goldoni had
left the house when a child, I could scarcely
believe what the cicerone said, though I was
glad he said it, and that he knew anything
at all of Goldoni. It is a fine old Gothic
palace on a small canal near the Frari, and
on the Calle dei Nomboli, just across from a
shop of indigestible pastry. It is known by
an inscription, and by the medallion of the
dramatist above the land-door ; and there is
no harm in looking in at the court on the
ground-floor, where you may be pleased with
the picturesque old stairway, wandering up-
ward I hardly know how high, and adorned
with many little heads of lions.
*''^vevano • • . allora ambedne di un amore fatto sacro dalle
leggi divine, essendo nioglie di Tiziano una Cecilia/* I would
not advise the reader to place too fond a trust in anything
concerning the house of Titian. Mutinelli refers to but one
house of the painter, while Ticozzi makes him proprietor of
two.
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28 VENETIAN LIFE
Several palaces dispute the honor of be-
ing Bianca Cappello's birthplace, but Mu-
tinelli awards the distinction to the palace
at Sant' Appollinare near the Ponte Storto.
One day a gondolier vaingloriously rowed
us to the water-gate of the edifice, through
a very narrow, damp, and uncleanly canal,
pretending that there was a beautiful stair-
case in its court. At the moment of our
arrival, however, Bianca happened to be
hanging out clothes from a window, and
shrilly disclaimed the staircase, attributing
this merit to another Palazzo Cappello. We
were less pleased with her appearance here
than with that portrait of her which we saw
on another occasion in the palace of a lady
of her name and blood. This lady has since
been married, and the name of Cappello is
now extinct.
The Palazzo Mocenigo, in which Byron
lived, is galvanized into ghastly newness by
recent repairs, and as it is one of the ugliest
palaces on the Grand Canal it has less claim
than ever upon one's interest. The custo-
dian shows people the rooms where the poet
wrote, dined, and slept, and I suppose it was
from the hideous basket-balcony over the
main door that one of his mistresses threw
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BOME MEMORABLE PLACES 29
herself into the canal. Another of these
interesting relics is pointed out in the small
butter-and-cheese shop which she keeps in
the street leading from Campo Sant' Angelo
to San Paterinan : she is a fat sinner, long
past beauty, bald, and somewhat melancholy
to behold. Indeed, Byron's memory is not
a presence which I approach with pleasure,
and I had most enjoyment in his palace when
I thought of good-natured little Thomas
Moore, who once visited his lordship there.
Byron himself hated the recollection of his
life in Venice, and I am sure no one else
need like it. But he is become a cosa di
Venezia^ and you cannot pass his palace
without having it pointed out to you by the
gondoliers. Early after my arrival in the
city I made the acquaintance of an old
smooth-shaven, smooth-mannered Venetian,
who said he had known Byron, and who told
me that he once swam with him from the
Port of San Nicold to his palace-door. The
distance is something over three miles ; but
if the swimmers came in with the sea, the
feat was not so great as it seems, for the
tide is as swift and strong as a mill-race. I
.think it would be impossible to make the
distance against the tide.
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COMMERCE
make an annual report in
September upon the Commer-
cial Transactions of the port
^as an official duty to which I
ooked forward at Venice with
a vague feeling of injury during a year of
almost uninterrupted tranquillity. It was
not because the preparation of the report was
an affair of so great labor that I shrank from
it, but because the material was wanting with
which to make a respectable show among my
consular peers in the large and handsomely
misprinted volume of Commercial Relations
annually issued by the enterprising Congres-
sional publishers. It grieved me that upstart
ports like Marseilles, Liverpool, and Bremen
should occupy so much larger space in this
important volume than my beloved Venice ;
and it was with a feeling of profound morti-
fication that I used to post my meagre account
of a commerce that once was greater than all
the rest of the world's together. I sometimes
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desperately eked out the material furnished
me in the statistics of the Venetian Chamber
of Commerce by an agricultural essay on
the disease of the grapes and its cure, or by
a few wretched figures representative of a
very slender mining interest in the province.
But at last I determined to end these dis-
pleasures, and to make such researches into
the history of her commerce as should fur-
nish me forth material for a report worthy
of the high place Venice held in my rever-
ence.
Indeed, it seemed to be by a sort of anach-
ronism that I had ever mentioned contem-
porary Venetian commerce; and I turned
with exultation from the phantom transac-
tions of the present to that solid and mag-
nificent prosperity of the past, of which the
long-enduring foundations were laid in the
earliest Christian times. For the new cities
formed by the fugitives from barbarian in-
vasion of the main-land, during the fifth
century, had hardly settled aroimd a com-
mon democratic government on the islands
of the lagoons, when they began to develop
maritime energies and resources; and long
before this government was fijially estab-
lished at Bialto (the ancient sea-port of
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82 VENETIAN LIFE
Padua), or Venice had become the capital
of the young Republic, the Veneti had thrift-
ily begun to turn the wild invaders of the
main-land to account, to traffic with them,
and to make treaties of commerce with their
rulers. Theodoric, the King of the Goths,
had fixed his capital at Ravenna, in the sixth
century, and would have been glad to intro-
duce Italian civilization among his people ;
but this warlike race were not prepared to
practise the useful arts, and although they
inhabited one of the most fruitful parts of
Italy, with ample borders of sea, they were
neither sailors nor tillers of the groimd.
The Venetians supplied them (at a fine
profit, no doubt) with the salt made in the
lagoons, and with wines brought from Istria.
The Goths viewed with especial amazement
their skill in the management of their river-
craft, by means of which the dauntless trad-
ers ascended the shallowest streams to pene-
trate the main-land, '^ running on the grass
of the meadows and between the stalks of
the harvest-field," — just as in this day our
own western steamers are known to run in a
heavy dew.
The Venetians continued to extend and
confirm their commerce with those helpless
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and hungry warriors, and were ready also to
open a lucrative trade with the Longobards
when they descended into Italy about the
year 570. They had, in fact, abetted the
Longobards in their war with the Greek
Emperor Justinian (who had opposed their
incursion), and in return the barbarians
gave them the right to hold great free marts
or fairs on the shores of the lagoons, whither
the people resorted from every part of the
Longobard kingdom to buy the salt of the
lagoons, grain from Istria and Dalmatia, and
slaves from every country.
The slave-trade, indeed, formed then one
of the most lucrative branches of Venetian
commerce, as now it forms the greatest stain
upon the annals of that commerce. The
islanders, however, were not alone guilty of
this infamous trade in men; other Italian
states made profit of it, and it may be said
to have been all but imiversaL But the
Venetians were the most deeply involved in
it, they pursued it the most unscrupulously,
and they relinquished it the last. The Pope
forbade and execrated their commerce, and
they sailed from the Papal ports with car-
goes of slaves for the infidels in Africa. In
spite of the prohibitions of their own govern-
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84 VENETIAN LIFE
meat, they bought Christians of kidnappers
throughout Europe, and purchased the cap-
tives of the pirates on the seas, to sell them
again to the Saracens. Nay, being an in-
genious people, they turned their honest
penny over and over again : they sold the
Christians to the Saracens, and then for
ceiiiain sums ransomed them and restored
them to their countries ; they sold Saracens
to the Christians, and plundered the infidels
in similar transactions of ransom and restora-
tion. It is not easy to fix the dates of the rise
or fall of this slave-trade ; but slavery con-
tinued in Venice as late as the fifteenth cen-
tury, and in earlier ages was so common that
every prosperous person had two or three
slaves.^ The corruption of the citizens at
this time is properly attributed in part to
the existence of slavery among them; and
Mutinelli goes so far as to declare that the
institution impressed permanent traits on the
populace, rendering them idle and indis-
posed to honest labor by degrading labor and
making it the office of bondmen.
1 Mutinelli, Dd Costume Venedano. The present sketch
of the history of Venetian commerce is based upon facts
chiefly drawn from Mutinelli*s delightful treatise, Del CotO'
merciodei Venezianu
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While this hateful and enormous traffic
in man was growing up, the Venetians
enriched themselves by many other more
blameless and legitimate forms of commerce,
and gradually gathered into their grasp that
whole trade of the East with Europe which
passed through their hands for so many
ages. After the dominion of the Franks
was established in Italy in the eighth cen-
tury, they began to supply that people, more
luxurious than the Lombards, with the costly
stuffs, the rich jewelry, and the perfumes of
Byzantium ; and held a great annual fair at
the imperial city of Pavia, where they sold
the Franks the manufactures of the polished
and effeminate Grreeks, and whence in re-
turn they carried back to the East the grain,
wine, wool, iron, lumber, and excellent armor
of Lombardy.
From the time when they had assisted the
Longobards against the Greeks, the Vene-
tians found it to their interest to cultivate
the friendship of the latter, until, in the
twelfth century, they mastered the people so
long caressed, and took their capital, imder
Enrico Dandolo. The privileges conceded
to the wily and thrifty republican traders by
the Greek Emperors were extraordinary in
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86 VENETIAN LIFE
their extent and value. Otho, the western
Caesar, having succeeded the Franks in the
dominion of Italy, had already absolved the
Venetians from the annual tribute paid the
Italian kings for the liberty of traffic, and
had declared their commerce free throughout
the Peninsula. In the mean time they had
attacked and beaten the pirates of Dalmatia,
and the Greeks now recognized their rule
all over Dalmatia, thus securing to the Re-
public every port on the eastern shores of
the Adriatic. Then, as they aided the
Greeks to repel the aggressions of the Sar-
acens and Normans, their commerce was
declared free in all the ports of the empire,
and they were allowed to trade without re-
striction in all the cities, and to build ware-
houses and dSp6t8 throughout the dominions
of the Greeks, wherever they chose. The
harvest they reaped from the vast field thus
opened to tiieir enterprise must have more
than compensated them for their losses in
the barbarization of the Italian continent by
the incessant civil wars which followed the
disruption of the Lombard League, when
trade and industry languished throughout
Italy. When the Crusaders had taken the
Holy Land, the King of Jerusalem bestowed
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upon the Venetians, in return for important
services against the infidel, the same privi-
leges conceded them by the Greek Emperor ;
and when, finally, Constantinople fell into
the hands of the Crusaders (whom they had
skilfully diverted from the reconquest of
Palestine to the siege of the Greek metrop-
olis), nearly all the Greek islands fell to the
share of Venice; and the Latin Emperors,
who succeeded the Greeks in dominion, gave
her such privileges as made her complete
mistress of the commerce of the Levant.
From this opulent traffic the insatiable
enterprise of the Republic turned, without
relinquishing the old, to new gains in the
farthest Orient. Against her trade the ex-
asperated infidel had closed the Egyptian
ports, but she did not scruple to coax the bar-
barous prince of the Scythian Tartars, newly
descended upon the shores of the Black Sea ;
and having secured his friendship, she pro-
ceeded, without imparting her design to her
Latin allies at Constantinople, to plant a
commercial colony at the mouth of the Don,
where the city of Azof stands. Through
this entrepSt^ thenceforward, Venetian en-
ergy, with Tartar favor, directed the entire
commerce of Asia with Europe, and in-
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88 VENETIAN LIFE
credibly enriched the Republic. The vast-
ness and importance of such a trade, even
at that day, when the wants of men were far
simpler and fewer than now, could hardly
be overstated ; and one nation then monop-
olized the traffic which is now free to the
whole world. The Venetians bought their
wares at the great marts of Samarcand, and
crossed the country of Tartary in caravans
to the shores of the Caspian Sea, where they
set sail and voyaged to the river Volga,
which they ascended to the point of its
closest proximity to the Don. Their goods
were then transported overland to the Don,
and were again carried by water down to
their mercantile colony at its mouth. Their
ships, having free access to the Black Sea,
could, after receiving their cargoes, return
direct to Venice. The products of every coun-
try of Asia were carried into Europe by these
dauntless traffickers, who, enlightened and
animated by the travels and discoveries of
Matteo, Nicol6, and Marco Polo, penetrated
the remotest regions, and brought away the
treasures which the prevalent fears and su-
perstitions of other nations would have de»
terred them from seeking, even if they had
possessed the means of access to them.
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The partial civilization of the age of chiv-
alry had now reached its climax, and the
class which had felt its refining effects was
that best able to gratify the tastes still un-
known to the great mass of the ignorant
and impoverished people. It was a splendid
time, and the robber counts and barons of
the continent, newly tamed and christianized
into knights, spent splendidly, as became
magnificent cavaliers serving noble ladies.
The Venetians, who seldom did merely heroic
things, who turned the Crusades to their
own account and made money out of the
Holy Land, and whom one always fancies
as having a half scorn of the noisy grandeur
of chivalry, were very glad to supply the
knights and ladies with the gorgeous stuffs,
precious stones, and costly perfumes of the
East ; and they now also began to establish
manufactories, and to practise the industrial
arts at home. Their jewellers and workers
in precious metals soon became famous
throughout Europe ; the glass-works of Mu-
rano rose into celebrity and importance
which they have never since lost (for they
still supply the world with beads) ; and they
began to weave stuffs of gold tissue at Ven-
ice, and silks so exquisitely dyed that no
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40 VENETIAN LIFE
cavalier or dame of perfect fashion was
content with any other. Besides this they
gilded leather for lining waUs, wove carpets,
and wrought miracles of ornament in wax,
— a material that modem taste is apt to dis-
dain, — while Venetian candles in chande-
liers of Venetian glass lighted up the palaces
of the whole civilized world.
The private enterprise of citizens was in
every way protected and encouraged by the
State, which did not, however, fail to make
due and just profit out of it. The ships of
the merchants always sailed to and from
Venice in fleets, at stated seasons, seven
fleets departing annually, — one for the
Greek dominions, a second for Azof, a third
for Trebizond, a fourth for Cyprus, a fifth
for Armenia, a sixth for Spain, France, the
Low Coimtries, and England, and a seventh
for Africa. Each squadron of traders was
accompanied and guarded from attacks of
corsairs and other enemies by a certain
number of the state galleys, let severally to
the highest bidders for the voyage, at a price
never less than about five hundred dollars of
our money. The galleys were all manned
and armed by the State, and the crew of
each amounted to three hundred persons;
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including a captain, four supercargoes, eight
pilots, two carpenters, two caulkers, a mas-
ter of the oars, fifty cross -bowmen, three
drummers, and two hundred rowers. The
State also appointed a commandant of the
whole squadron, with absolute authority to
hear complaints, decide controversies, and
pimish offences.
While the Republic was thus careful in
the protection and discipline of its citizens
in their commerce upon the seas, it was no
less zealous for their security and its own
dignity in their traffic with the continent of
Europe. In that rude day, neither the life
nor the property of the merchant who visited
the ultramontane countries was safe ; for the
sorry device which he practised, of taking
with him a train of apes, buffoons, dancers,
and singers, in order to divert his ferocious
patrons from robbery and murder, was not
always successfid. The Venetians, there-
fore, were forbidden by the State to trade
in those parts; and the Bohemians, Ger-
mans, and Hungarians, who wished to buy
their wares, were obliged to come to the
lagoons and buy them at the great marts
which were held in different parts of the
city and on the neighboring main-land. A
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42 VENETIAN LIFE
triple purpose was thus served, — the Vene-
tian merchants were protected in their lives
and goods, the national honor was saved
from insult, and many an honest zecchino
was turned by the innkeepers and others who
lodged and entertained the customers of the
merchants.
Five of these great fairs were held every
week, the chief market being at Bialto;
and the transactions in trade were caref uUy
supervised by the servants of the State.
Among the magistracies especially appointed
for the orderly conduct of the foreign and
domestic commerce were the so-called Mer-
cantile Consuls (Ufficio dei Consoli del Mer-
canti)^ whose special duty it was to see that
the traffic of the nation received no hurt
from the schemes of any citizen or foreigner,
and to punish offences of this kind with
banishment and even graver penalties. They
measured every ship about to depart, to learn
if her cargo exceeded the lawful amount;
they guarded creditors against debtors, and
protected poor debtors against the rapacity
of creditors, and they punished thefts sus-
tained by the merchants. It is curious to
find, contemporary with this beneficent mag-
istracy, a charge of equal dignity exercised
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by the College of Reprisals. A citizen of-
fended in his person or property abroad de-
manded justice of the government of the
country in which the offence was committed.
If the demand was refused, it was repeated
by the Republic ; if still refused, then the
Republic, although at peace with the nation
froQi which the offence came, seized any
citizen of that country whom it could find,
and, through its CoDege of Reprisals, spoiled
him of sufficient property to pay the damage
done to its citizen. Finally, besides several
other magistracies resident in Venice, the
Republic appointed Consuls in its colonies
and some foreign ports, to superintend the
traffic of its citizens, and to compose their
controversies. The Consuls were paid out
of duties levied on the merchandise; they
were usually nobles, and acted with the ad-
vice and consent of twelve other Venetian
nobles or merchants.
At this time, and indeed throughout its
existence, the great lucrative monopoly of
the Republic was the salt manufactured in
the lagoons, and forced into every market
at rates that no other salt could compete
with. Wherever alien enterprise attempted
rivalry, it was instantly discouraged by Ven-
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44 VENETIAN LIFE
ice. There were troublesome salt mines, for
example, in Croatia ; and in 1381 the £e-
pubUc caused them to be closed by paying
the King of Hungary an annual pension of
seven thousand crowns of gold. The exact
income of the State, however, from the mo-
nopoly of salt, or from the various imposts
and duties levied upon merchandise, k is
now difficult to know, and it is impossible to
compute accurately the value or extent of
Venetian commerce at any one time. It
reached the acme of its prosperity under
Tommaso Mocenigo, who was Doge from 1414
to 1423. There were then three thousand
and three hundred vessels of the mercantile
marine, giving employment to thirty-three
thousand seamen, and netting to their own-
ers a profit of forty per cent, on the capital
invested. How great has been the decline
of this trade may be understood from the
fact that in 1863 it amounted, according to
the careful statistics of the Chamber of Com-
merce, to only $60,229,740, and that the
number of vessels now owned in Venice is
one hundred and fifty. As the total tonnage
of these is but 26,000, it may be inferred
that they are small craft, and in fact they
are nearly all coasting vessels. They no
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longer bring to Venice the drags and spices
and silks of Samarcand, or carry her own
rare manufactures to the ports of Western
Europe ; but they sail to and from her canals
with humble freights of grain, lumber, and
hemp. Almost as many Greek as Venetian
ships now visit the old queen, who once lev-
ied a tax upon every foreign vessel in her
Adriatic; and the shipping from the cities
of the kingdom of Italy exceeds hers by
ninety sail, while the tonnage of Great Brit-
ain is vastly greater. Her commerce has
not only wasted to the shadow of its former
magnitude, but it has also almost entirely
lost its distinctive character. Glass of Mu-
rano is still exported to a value of about two
millions of dollars annually ; but in this in-
dustry, as in nearly all others of the lagoons,
there is an annual decline* The trade of
the port falls off from one to three millions
of dollars yearly, and the manufacturing in-
terests of the province have dwindled in the
same proportion. So far as silk is con-
cerned, there has been an immediate cause
for the decrease in the disease which has
afflicted the cocoons for several years past.
Wine and oil are at present articles of im-
port solely, — the former because of a mal-
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46 VENETIAN LIFE
ady of the grape, the latter because of neg-
ligent cultivation of the olive.
A considerable number of persons are
still employed in the manufacture of objects
of taste and ornament; and in the Ruga
Yecchia at Bialto they yet make the famous
Venetian gold chain, which few visitors to
the city can have failed to notice hanging in
strands and wound upon spools in the shop
windows of the Old Procuratie and the
Bridge of Rialto. It is wrought of all de-
grees of fineness, and is always so flexile that
it may be folded and wound in any shape.
It is now no longer made in great quan-
tity, and is chiefly worn by contadine (as a
safe investment of their ready money) ^ and
old-fashioned people of the city, who display
the finer sort in skeins or strands. At Chi-
oggia, I remember to have seen a babe, at
its christening in church, literally manacled
and shackled with Venetian chain ; and the
little girl who came to us one day, to show
us the splendors in which she had appeared
1 Certain foreigners living in Venice were one day aston-
ished to find their maid-servant in possession of a mass of this
chain, and thought it their business to reprove her extrava-
gance. ** Signori,** she explained paradoxically, " if I keep
my money, I spend it; if I buy this chain, it is always
money (^ sempre soldiy*
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at a disputa (examination of children in
doctrine), was loaded with it. Formerly, in
the luxurious days of the Republic, it is said
the chain was made as fine as sewing-silk,
and worn embroidered on Genoa velvet by
the patrician dames. It had then a cruel
interest from the fact that its manufacture,
after a time, cost the artisans their eyesight,
so nice and subtle was the work. I could
not help noticing that the workmen at the
shops in the Ruga Yecchia still suffer in
their eyes, even though the work is much
coarser. I do not hope to describe the chain,
except by saying that the links are horse-
shoe and oval shaped, and are connected by
twos, — an oval being welded crosswise into
a horseshoe, and so on, each two being linked
loosely into the next.
An infinitely more important art, in which
Venice was distinguished a thousand years
ago, has recently been revived there by Sig-
ner Salviati, an enthusiast in mosaic paint*
ing. His establishment is on the Grand
Canal, not far from the Academy, and you
might go by the old palace quite unsuspi-
cious of the ancient art stirring with new life
in its breast. "A. Salviati, Awocato," is
the legend of the bell-pull, and you do not
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48 VENETIAN LIFE
by any means take this legal style for tliat
of the restorer of a neglected art, and a pos-
sessor of forgotten secrets in gilded glass and
*'*' smalts," as they term the small, delicate
rods of vitreous substance with which the
wonders of the art are achieved. But inside
of the palace are some two hundred artisans
at work, cutting the smalts and glass into
the minute fragments of which the mosaics
are made, grinding and smoothing these
fragments, polishing the completed works,
and reproducing, with incredible patience
and skill, the lights and shadows of the pic-
tures to be copied.
You first enter the rooms of those whose
talent distinguishes them as artists, and in
whose work all the wonderful neatness and
finish and long-suffering toil of the Byzan-
tines are visible, as well as original life and
inspiration alike impossible and profane to
the elder mosaicists. Each artist has at
hand a great variety of the slender stems
of smalts already mentioned, and, breaking
these into minute fragments as he proceeds,
he inserts them in the bed of cement pre-
pared to receive his picture, and thus coim-
terf eits in enduring mineral the perishable
work of the painter.
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In other rooms artisans are at work upon
various tasks of marqueterie^ — table-tops,
album-covers, paper-weights, brooches, pins,
and the like, — and in others they are saw-
ing the smalts and glass into strips, and
grinding the edges. Passing through yet
another room, where the finished mosaic-
works — of course not the pictorial mosaics
— are polished by machinery, we enter the
store-room, where the crowded shelves dis-
play blocks of smalts and glass of endless
variety of color. By far the greater number
of these colors are discoveries or improve-
ments of the venerable mosaicist Lorenzo
Badi, who has found again the Byzantine
secrets of counterfeiting, in vitreous paste,
aventurine (gold stone), onyx, chalcedony,
malachite, and other natural stones, and
who has been praised by the Academy of
Fine Arts in Venice for producing mosaics
even more durable in tint and workmanship
than those^ of the Byzantine artists.
In an upper story of the palace a room is
set apart for the exhibition of the many
beautiful and costly things which the art of
the establishment produces. Here, besides
pictures in mosaic, there are cimningly inlaid
tables and cabinets, caskets, rich vases of
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50 VENETIAN LIFE
chalcedony mounted in silver, and delicately
wrought jewelry, while the floor is covered
with a mosaic pavement ordered for the
Viceroy of Egypt. There are here, more-
over, to be seen the designs furnished by the
Crown Princess of Prussia for the mosaics
of the Queen's Chapel at Windsor. These,
like all other pictures and decorations in
mosaic, are completed in the establishment
on the Grand Canal, and are afterward put
up as wholes in the places intended for
them.
In Venice nothing in decay is strange.
But it is startling to find her in her old age
nourishing into fresh life an art that, after
feebly preserving the memory of painting
for so many centuries, had decorated her
prime only with the glories of its decline ; —
for Kugler ascribes the completion of the
mosaics of the church of St. Cyprian in
Murano to the year 882, and the earliest
mosaics of St. Mark's to the tenth or eleventh
centuries, when the Greek Church had al«
ready laid her ascetic hand on Byzantine
art, and fixed its conventional forms, para-
lyzed its motives, and forbidden its inspira-
tions.
I think, however, one would look about
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Wood-boats and Do^ana
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COMMERCE 61
him in vain for other evidences of a return-
ing prosperity in the lagoons. The old pros-
perity of Venice was based upon her mo-
nopoly of the most lucrative traffic in the
world, as we have already seen, — upon
her exclusive privileges in foreign countries,
upon the enlightened zeal of her govern-
ment, and upon men's imperfect knowledge
of geography, and the barbarism of the rest
of Europe, as well as upon the indefatigable
industry and intelligent enterprise of her
citizens. America was still undiscovered;
the overland route to India was the only
one known ; the people of the continent out-
side of Italy were unthrifty serfs, ruled
and ruined by unthrifty lords. The whole
world's ignorance, pride, and sloth were
Venetian gain; and the religious supersti-
tions of the day, which, gross as they were,
embodied perhaps its noblest and most hope-
ful sentiment, were a source of incalculable
profit to the sharp-witted mistress of the
Adriatic. It was the age of penances, pil-
grimages, and relic-hunting, and the wealth
which she wrung from the devotion of others
was exceedingly great. Her ships carried
the pilgrims to and from the Holy Land ;
her adventurers ransacked Palestine and
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52 VENETIAN LIFE
the whole Orient for the bones and memo-
rials of the saints ; and her merchants sold
the precious relics throughout Europe at an
immense advance upon first cost.
But the foundations of this prosperity
were at last sapped by the tide of wealth
which poured into Venice from every quarter
of the world. Her citizens brought back
the vices as well as the luxuries of the de-
bauched Orient, and the city became that
seat of splendid idleness and proud corrup-
tion which it continued till the Republic f elL
It is needless here to rehearse the story of
her magnificence and decay. At the time
when the hardy, himgry people of other na-
tions were opening paths to prosperity by
land and sea, the Venetians, gorged with
the spoils of ages, relinquished their old
habits of daring enterprise, and dropped
back into luxury and indolence. Their in-
cessant wars with the Genoese began, and
though they signally defeated the rival Re-
public in battle, Genoa finally excelled in
commerce. A Greek prince had arisen to
dispute the sovereignty of the Latin Em-
perors, whom the Venetians had helped to
place upon the Byzantine throne ; the Gen-
oese, seeing the favorable fortimes of the
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COMMERCE 68
Greek, threw the influence of their arms and
intrigues in his favor, and the Latins were
expelled from Constantinople in 1271. The
new Greek Emperor had promised to give
the sole navigation of the Black Sea to his
allies, together with the church and palaces
possessed by the Venetians in his capital,
and he bestowed also upon the Genoese the
city of Smyrna. It does not seem that he
fulfilled literally all his promises, for the
Venetians still continued to sail to and from
their colony of Tana, at the head of the Sea
of Azof, though it is certain that they had
no longer the sovereignty of those waters ;
and the Genoese now planted on the shores
of the Black Sea three large and important
colonies to serve as entrepSts for the trade
taken from their rivals. The oriental traffic
of the latter was maintained through Tana,
however, for nearly two centuries later,
when, in 1410, the Mongol Tartars, under
Tamerlane, fell upon the devoted colony,
took, sacked, burnt, and utterly destroyed it.
This was the first terrible blow to the most
magnificent commerce which the world had
ever seen, and which had endured for ages.
No wonder that, on the day of Tana's fall,
terrible portents of woe were seen at Venice,
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54 VENETIAN LIFE
— that meteors appeared, that demons rode
the air, that the winds and waters rose and
blew down houses and swallowed ships ! A
thousand persons are said to have perished
in the calamities which commemorated a
stroke so mortally disastrous to the national
grandeur. After that the Venetians humbly
divided with their ancient foes the possession
and maintenance of the Genoese colony of
Caffa, and continued, with greatly dimin-
ished glory, their traffic in the Black Sea ;
till the Turks having taken Constantinople,
and the Greeks having acquired under their
alien masters a zeal for commerce unknown
to them during the times of their native
princes, the Venetians were finally, on the
first pretext of war, expelled from those wa-
ters in which they had latterly maintained
themselves only by payment of heavy tribute
to the Turks*
In the mean time the industrial arts, in
which Venice had heretofore excelled, began
to be practised elsewhere, and the Floren-
tines and the English took that lead in the
manufactures of the world which the latter
still retain. The league of the Hanseatic
cities was established, and rose daily in im-
portance. At London, at Bruges, at Bergen,
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COMMERCE 56
and Novogorod banks were opened under
the protection and special favor of the Han-
seatic League ; its ships were preferred to
any other, and, the tide of commerce setting
northward, the cities of the League perse^r
cuted the foreigners who would have traded
in their ports. On the west, Barcelona be-
gan to dispute the preeminence of Venice in
the Mediterranean, and Spanish salt was
brought to Italy itself and sold by the enter-
prising Catalonians. Their corsairs vexed
Venetian commerce everywhere ; and in that
day, as in our own, private English enter-
prise was employed in piratical depredations
on the traffic of a friendly power.
The Portuguese also began to extend their
commerce, once so important, and catching
the rage for discovery then prevalent, in-
fested every sea in search of unknown land.
One of their navigators, sailing by a chart
which a monk named Fra Mauro, in his con-
vent on the island of San Michele, had put
together from the stories of travellers, and
his own guesses at geography, discovered the
Cape of Good Hope, and the trade of India
with Europe was turned in that direction,
and the old overland traffic perished. The
Venetian monopoly of this traffic had long
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56 VENETIAN LIFE
been gone; had its recovery been possible,
it would now have been useless to the declin-
ing prosperity of the RepubUo.
It remained for Christopher Columbus,
bom of that Genoese nation which had hated
the Venetians so long and so bitterly, to
make the discovery of America, and thus to
give the death-blow to the supremacy of
Venice. While all these discoveries were
taking place, the old queen of the seas had
been weighed down with many and unequal
wars. Her naval power had been every-
where crippled; her revenues had been re-
duced ; her possessions, one after one, had
been lopped away ; and at the time Colum-
bus was on his way to America, half Europe,
united in the League of Cambray, was at-
tempting to crush the Eepublic of Venice.
The whole world was now changed. Com-
merce sought new channels ; fortune smiled
on other nations. How Venice dragged on-
ward from the end of her commercial great-
ness, and tottered with a delusive splendor
to her political death, is surely one of the
saddest of stories, if not the sternest of les-
sons.
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J
xvn
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS
^HE national character of the
Venetians was so largely in-
fluenced by the display and
dissipation of the frequent fes-
tivals of the Republic that it
cannot be fairly estimated without taking
them into consideration, nor can the disuse
of these holidays (of which I have heretofore
spoken) be appreciated in all its import with-
out particular allusion to their number and
nature. They formed part of the aristo-
cratic polity of the old commonwealth, which
substituted popular indulgence for popular
liberty, and gave the people costly pleasures
in return for the priceless rights of which
they had been robbed, set up national pride
in the place of patriotism, and was as well
satisfied with a drunken joy in its subjects as
if they had possessed a true content.
Full notice of these holidays would be his-
tory^ of Venice, for each one had its origin
^ " Siccome/' says die editor of Ginstina Benier-Michiers
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58 VENETIAN LIFE
in some great event of her existence, and
they were so numerous as to commemorate
nearly every notable incident in her annals.
Though, as has been before observed, they
had nearly all a general religious character,
the Church, as usual in Venice, only seemed
to direct the ceremonies in its own honor,
while it really ministered to the political
glory of the oligarchy, which knew how to
manage its priests as well as its prince and
people. Nay, it happened in one case, at
least, that a religious anniversary was se-
lected by the Republic as the day on which
to put to shame before the populace certain
of the highest and reverendest dignitaries of
the Church. In 1162, Ulrich, the Patriarch
of Aquileja, seized, by a treacherous strata-
gem, the city of Grade, then subject to Ven-
Oriffine delle Feste Veneziane^ — ** Siccome rillustre Autrice
ha voluto applicare al suo lavoro il modesto titolo di Ongine
delle Feste Veneziane^ e siccome questo potrebbe porgere un*
idea assai diversa deir opera a chi non ne ha alcuna cogni-
zione, da quello che h sostanzialmente, si espone questo Epi-
tome, perchfe ogiiun vegga almeno in parte, che quest* opera
sarebbe del titolo di storia condegna, giacche essa non ^ che
una costante descrizione degli avveiiimenti piii important! e
luminosi della Repubblica di Venezia." The work in ques-
tion is one of much research and small philosophy, like most
books which Venetians have written upon Venice ; but it has
admirably served my purpose, and I am indebted to it for
most of the information contained in this chapter.
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 59
ice. The Venetians immediately besieged
and took the city, with the Patriarch and
twelve of his canons in it, and carried them
prisoners to the lagoons. The turbulent pa-
triarchs of Aquileja had long been disturb-
ers of the Republic's dominion, and the peo-
ple now determined to make an end of these
displeasures. They refused, therefore, to re-
lease the Patriarch, except on condition that
he should bind himself to send them an-
nually a bull and twelve fat hogs. It is not
known what meaning the Patriarch attached
to this singular ceremony; but with the
Venetians the bull was typical of himself,
and the swine of his canons, and they yearly
suffered death in these animals, which were
slaughtered during Shrovetide in the Piazza
San Marco, amid a great concourse of the
people, in the presence of the Doge and Sig-
nory. The locksmiths and other workers
in iron had distinguished themselves in the
recapture of Grado, and to their guild was
allotted the honor of putting to death the
bull and swine. Great art was shown in
striking off the bull's head at one blow, with-
out suffering the sword to touch the ground
after passing through the animal's neck ; the
swine were slain with lances. Athletic games
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60 VENETIAN LIFE
among the people succeeded, and the Doge
and his Senators attacked and destroyed,
with staves, several lightly bidlt wooden
castles, to symbolize the abasement of the
feudal power before the Republic. As the
centuries advanced, this part of the cere-
mony, together with the slaughter of the
swine, was disused ; in which fact Mr. Rus-
kin sees evidence of a corrupt disdain of
simple and healthy allegory on the part of
the proud Doges, but in which I think most
people will discern only a natural wish to
discontinue in more civilized times a puer^
ile barbarity. Mr. Ruskin himself finds no
evidence of " state pride " in the abolition of
the slaughter of the swine. The festival was
very popular and continued a long time,
though I believe not till the fall of the Re-
public.
Another tribute, equally humiliating to
those who paid it, was imposed upon the
Paduans for an insult offered to St. Mark,
and gave occasion for a national holiday,
some fifty years after the Patriarch of Aqui-
leja began atonement for his outrage. In
the year 1214, the citizens of Treviso made
an entertainment, to which they invited the
noble youth of the surrounding cities. In
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 61
the chief piazza of the town a castle of wood,
exquisitely decorated, was held against all
comers by a garrison of the fairest Trevisan
damsels. The weapons of defence were
flowers, fruits, bonbons, and the bright eyes
of the besieged ; while the missiles of attack
were much the same, with whatever added
virtue might lie in tender prayers and su-
gared supplications. Padua, Yicenza, Bas-
sano, and Venice sent their gallantest youths,
under their municipal banners, to take part
in this famous enterprise ; and the attack
was carried on by the leagued forces with
great vigor, but with no effect on the Castle
of Love, as it was called, till the Venetians
made a breach at a weak point. These
young men were better skilled in the arts of
war than their aUies ; they were richer, and
had come to Treviso decked in the spoils of
the recent sack of Constantinople, and at
the moment they neared the castle it is re-
ported that they corrupted the besieged by
throwing handf uls of gold into the tower.
Whether this be true or not, it is certain
that the conduct of the Venetians in some
manner roused the Paduans to insult, and
that the hot youths came to blows. In an
instant the standard of St. Mark was thrown
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62 VENETIAN LIFE
down and trampled under the feet of the
furious Paduans ; blood flowed, and the in-
dignant Trevisans drove the combatants out
of their city. The spark of war spreading
to the rival cities, the Paduans were soon
worsted, and three hundred of their number
were made prisoners. These they would
willingly have ransomed at any price, but
their enemies would not release them except
on the payment of two white pullets for
each warrior. The shameful ransom was
paid in the Piazza, to the inextinguishable
delight of the Venetians, who, never wanting
in sharp and biting wit, abandoned them-
selves to sarcastic exultation. They de-
manded that the Paduans should, like the
Patriarch, repeat the tribute annually ; but
the prudent Doge Ziani judged the single
humiliation sufficient, and refused to estab-
lish a yearly celebration of the feast.
One of the most famous occasional festi-
vals of Venice is described by Petrarch in a
Latin letter to his friend Pietro Bolognese.
It was in celebration of the reduction of the
Greeks of Candia, an island which in 1361
had recently been ceded to the Republic.
The Candiotes rose in general rebellion, but
were so promptly subdued that the news of
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VENETIAN HOLIDAY a 68
the outbreak scarcely anticipated the an-
nouncement of its suppression in Venice.
Petrarch was at this time the guest of the
Kepublic, and from his seat at the right
of the Doge on the gallery of St. Mark's
Church, in front of the bronze horses, he
witnessed the chivalric shows given in the
Piazza below, which was then unpaved, and
admirably adapted for equestrian feats of
arms. It is curious to read the poet's ac-
count of these in a city where there is now
no four-footed beast larger than a dog. But
in the age of chivalry even the Venetians
were moimted, and rode up and down their
narrow streets, and jousted in their great
campos.
Speaking of twenty-four noble and hand-
some youths, whose feats formed a chief part
of a show of which he " does not know if in
the whole world there has been seen the
equal," Petrarch says : " It was a gentle
sight to see so many youths decked in purple
and gold, as they ruled with the rein and
urged with the spur their coursers, moving
in glittering harness, with iron-shod feet
which scarcely seemed to touch the ground."
And it must have been a noble sight, in-
deed, to behold all this before the ^^ golden
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64 VENETIAN LIFE
facade of the temple," in a place so packed
with spectators " that a grain of barley could
not have fallen to the ground. The great
piazza, the church itself, the towers, the
roofs, the arcades, the windows, all were —
I will not say full, but running over, walled
and paved with people." At the right of
the church was built a great platform, on
which sat ^^ four hundred honestest gentle-
women, chosen from the flower of the nobil-
ity, and distinguished in their dress and
bearing, who, amid the continual homage
offered them morning, noon, and night, pre-
sented the image of a celestial congress."
Some noblemen, come hither by chance,
"from the part of Britain, comrades and
kinsmen of their king, were present," and
attracted the notice of the poet. The feasts
lasted many days, but on the third day Pe-
trarch excused himself to the Doge, plead-
ing, he says, his " ordinary occupations, al-
ready known to all."
Among remoter feasts in honor of national
triumphs was one on the Day of the Annun-
ciation, commemorative of the removal of the
capital of the Venetian isles to Rialto from
Malamocco, after King Pepin had burnt the
latter city, and when, advancing on Venice,
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VENETIAN HOLIDAY a 66
he was met in the lagoons and beaten by the
islanders and the tides : these by their re-
cession stranding his boats in the mud, and
those falling upon his helpless host with the
fury of an insulted and imperilled people.
The Doge annually assisted at mass in St.
Mark's in honor of the victory, but not long
afterward the celebration of it ceased, as
did that of a precisely similar defeat of the
Hungarians, who had just descended from
Asia into Europe. In 1339 there were great
rejoicings in the Piazza for the peace with
Mastino della Scala, who, beaten by the Ee-
public, ceded his city of Treviso to her.
Doubtless the most splendid of all the
occasional festivals was that held for the
Venetian share of the great Christian victory
at Lepanto over the Turks. All orders of
the State took part in it ; but the most re-
markable feature of the celebration was the
roofing of the Merceria, all the way from
St. Mark's to Eialto, with fine blue cloth,
studded with golden stars to represent the
firmament, as the shopkeepers imagined it.
The pictures of the famous painters of that
day, Titian, Tintoretto, Palma, and the rest,
were exposed under this canopy, at the end
near Uialto. Later, the Venetian victories
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66 VENETIAN LIFE
over the Turks at the Dardanelles were
celebrated by a regatta, in 1658; and Moro-
sini's brilliant reconquest of the Morea, in
1688, was the occasion of other magnificent
shows.
The whole world has now adopted, with
Yarious modifications, the picturesque and
exciting pastime of the regatta, which, ac-
cording to Mutinelli,^ originated among the
lagoons at a very early period, from a pecu-
liar feature in the military discipline of the
Bepublio. A target for practice with the bow
and cross-bow was set up every week on the
beach at the Lido, and nobles and plebeians
rowed thither in barges of thirty oars, vying
with each other in the speed and skill with
which the boats were driven. To divert the
popular discontent that followed the Serrar
del Consiglio and the suppression of Baja-
monte Tiepolo's conspiracy early in the four-
teenth century, the proficiency arising from
this rivalry was turned to account, and
the spectacle of the regatta was instituted.
Agreeably, however, to the aristocratic spirit
of the newly established oligarchy, the patri-
cians withdrew from the lists, and the re-
gatta became the affair exclusively of the
1 Annali UrbatU di Venezia,
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VENETIAN HOLIDATa 67
gondoliers. In other Italian cities, where
horse and donkey races were the favorite
amusement, the riders were of both sexes ;
and now at Venice women also entered into
the rivalry of the regatta. But in gallant
deference to their weakness, they were per-
mitted to begin the course at the mouth of
the Grand Canal before the Doganna di
Mare, while the men were obliged to start
from the Public Grardens. They followed
the Grand Canal to its opposite extremity,
beyond the present railway station, and there
doubling a pole planted in the water near
the Ponte della Croce, returned to the com-
mon goal before the Palazzo Foscari. Here
was erected an ornate scaffolding to which
the different prizes were attached. The first
boat carried off a red banner ; the next re-
ceived a green flag ; the third, a blue ; and
the fourth, a yellow one. With each of
these was given a purse, and with the last
was added, by way of gibe^ a live pig, a pic-
ture of which was painted on the yellow
banner. Every regatta included five courses,
in which single and double oared boats and
single and double oared gondolas succes-
sively competed, — the fifth contest being
that in which the women participated with
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68 VENETIAN LIFE
two-oared boats. Four prizes like those de-
scribed were awarded to the winners in each
course.
The regatta was celebrated with all the
pomp which the superb city could assume.
As soon as the govemment announced thad
it was to take place, the preparations of the
champions began. ^^From that time the
gondolier ceased to be a servant ; he became
almost an adoptive son ; " ^ his master giv-
ing him every possible assistance and en-
couragement in the daily exercises by which
he trained himself for the contest, and his
parish priest visiting him in his own house,
to bless his person, his boat, and the image
of the Madonna or other saint attached to
the gondola. When the great day arrived,
the Canalazzo swarmed with boats of every
kind. ^^ All the trades and callings," says
Giustina Renier-Michiel,^ with that pride in
the Venetian past which does not always
pass from verbosity to eloquence, ^^ had each
its boats appropriately mounted and adorned;
and private societies filled an hundred more.
The chief families among the nobility ap-
peared in their boats, on which they had lav-
ished their taste and wealth." The rowers
1 Fute Veneziane. « Fute Venegiane.
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 69
were dressed with the most profuse and elab-
orate luxury, and the barges were made to
represent historical and mythological con-
ceptions. ^' To this end the builders em-
ployed carving and sculpture, together with
all manner of costly stuffs of silk and velvet,
gorgeous fringes and tassels of silver and
gold, flowers, fruits, shrubs, mirrors, furs,
and plumage of rare birds. • . • Young pa-
tricians, in fleet and narrow craft, propelled
by swift rowers, preceded the champions
and cleared the way for them, obliging the
spectators vto withdraw on either side. . . •
They knelt on sumptuous cushions in the
prows of their gondolas, cross-bow in hand,
and launched little pellets of plaster at the
directors of such obstinate boats as failed
to obey their orders to retire. . . .
" To augment the brilliancy of the regatta
the nature of the place concurred. Let us
imagine that superb canal, flanked on either
side by a long line of edifices of every sort ;
with great numbers of marble palaces, —
nearly all of noble and majestic structure,
some admirable for an antique and Gothic
taste, some for the richest Greek and Boman
architecture, — their windows and balconies
decked with damasks, stuffs of the Levant,
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70 VENETIAN LIFE
tapestries, and velvets, the vivid colors of
which were animated still more by borders
and fringes of gold, and on which leaned
beautiful women richly dressed and wearing
tremulous and glittering jewels in their hair.
Wherever the eye turned, it beheld a vast
multitude at doorways, on the rivas, and
even on the roofs. Some of the spectators
occupied scaffoldings erected at favorable
points along the sides of the canal ; and the
patrician ladies did not disdain to leave
their palaces, and, entering their gondolas,
lose themselves among the infinite number of
the boats. • . •
" The cannons give the signal of depart-
ure. The boats dart over the water with the
rapidity of lightning. . . . They advance
and fall behind alternately. One champion
who seems to yield the way to a rival sud-
denly leaves him in the rear. The shouts
of his friends and kinsmen hail his advan-
tage, while others, already passing him, force
him to redouble his efforts. Some weaker
ones succumb midway, exhausted. . . . They
withdraw, and the kindly Venetian populace
will not aggravate their shame with jeers ;
the spectators glance at them compassion-
ately, and turn again to those still in the
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VEKETIAN HOLIDATa 71
lists. Here and there they encourage them
by waving handkerchiefs, and the women
toss their shawls in the air. Each patrician,
following dose upon his gondolier's boat,
incites him with his voice, salutes him by
name, and flatters his pride and spirit. . . .
The water foams under the repeated strokes
of the oars ; it leaps up in spray and falls
in showers on the backs of the rowers already
dripping with their own sweat. ... At last
behold the dauntless mortal who seizes the
red banner I His rival had almost clutched
it, but one mighty stroke of the oar gave
him the victory. . . . The air reverberates
with a clapping of hands so loud that at the
remotest point on the canal the moment of
triumph is known. The victors plant on
their agile boat the conquered flag, and in-
stead of thinking to rest their weary arms
take up the oars again and retrace their
course, to receive congratulations and ap-
plause."
The regattas were by no means of fre-
quent occurrence, for only forty-one took
place during some five centuries. The first
was given in 1315, and the last in 1857, in
honor of the luckless Archduke Maximilian's
marriage with Princess Charlotte of Belgium.
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The most sumptuous and magnificent regatta
of all was that given to the city in the year
1686, by Duke Ernest of Brunswick. This
excellent prince, having sold a great part of
his subjects to the Republic for use in its
wars against the Turk, generously spent their
price in the costly and edifying entertain-
ments of which Venice had already become
the scene. The Judgment of Paris and the
Triumph of the Marine Goddesses had been
represented at his expense on the Grand
Canal, with great acceptance, and now the
Triumph of Neptune formed a principal
feature in the gayeties of his regatta. Nearly
the whole of the salt-water mythology was
employed in the ceremony. An immense
wooden whale supporting a structure of dol-
phins and Tritons, surmounted by a statue
of Neptune, and drawn by sea-horses, moved
'from the Piazzetta to the Palazzo Foscari,
where numbers of sirens sported about in
every direction tiU the regatta began. The
whole company of the deities, very splen-
didly arrayed, then joined them as specta-
tors, and behaved in the manner affected by
gods and goddesses on these occasions. Mu-
tinelli ^ recounts the story with many sighs
1 Annali Urbani*
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 78
and sneers and great exactness ; bat it is not
interesting.
The miraculous recovery of the body of
St. Mark, in 1094, after it had been lost for
nearly two centuries, created a festive an-
niversary which was celebrated for a while
with great religious pomp ; but the rejoic-
ings were not separately continued in after
years. The festival was consolidated (if one
may so speak) with two others in honor of
the same saint, and the triple occasions were
commemorated by a single holiday. The
holidays annually distinguished by civil or
ecclesiastical displays were twenty-five in
number, of which only eleven were of relig-
ious origin, though all were of partly relig-
ious observance.
One of the most curious and interesting
of the former was of the earliest date, and
was continued till the last years of the
Republic. In 596, Narses, the general of
the Greek Emperor, was furnished by the
Venetians with means of transport by sea
from Aquileja to Ravenna for the army
which he was leading against the Ostro-
goths ; and he made a vow that, if success-
ful in his campaign, he would requite their
generosity by erecting two churches in Ven-
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ice. Accordingly, when he had beaten the
Ostrogoths, he caused two votive churches
to be built, — one to St. Theodore, on the
site of the present St. Mark's Church, and
another to San Geminiano, on the opposite
bank of the canal which then flowed there.
In lapse of time the citizens, desiring to en-
large their Piazza, removed the church of
San Geminiano back as far as the present
Fabbrica Nuova, which Napoleon built on
the site of the demolished temple, between
the western ends of the New and Old Procu-
ratie. The removal was eflfected without the
Pope's leave, which had been asked, but was
refused in these words : " The Holy Father
cannot sanction the commission of a sacri-
lege, though he can pardon it afterwards."
The pontiff, therefore, imposed on the Vene-
tians for penance that the Doge should pay
an annual visit forever to the church. On
the occasion of this visit the parish priest
met him at the door, and offered the holy
water to him; and then the Doge, having
assisted at mass, marched with his Signory
and the clergy of the church to its original
site, where the clergy demanded that it
should be rebuilt, and the Doge replied with
the promise, ^^Next year." A red stone
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VENETIAN HOLIDATS lb
was set in the pavement to mark the spot
where the Doge renewed this never-fuliilled
promise.^ The old church was destroyed by
fire, and Sansovino built, in 1506, the tem-
ple thrown down by Napoleon to make room
for his palace.
The 31st of January, on which day in 828
the body of St. Mark was brought from Al-
exandria to Venice, is still observed, though
the festival has lost aU the splendor which
it received from civil intervention. For a
thousand years the day was hallowed by a
solemn mass in St. Mark's, at which the
Doge and his Signory assisted.
The chief of the State annually paid a
number of festive visits, which were made
the occasion of as many holidays. To the
convent of San Zaccaria he went in com-
memoration of the visit paid to that retreat
by Pope Benedict III., in 855, when the
pontifE was so charmed by the piety and good-
1 As the author of the Feste Veneziane tells this stoiy, it is
less dramatic and characteristic. The clergy, she sa^'s, re-
minded the Doge of the occasion of his visit, and his obliga-
tion to renew it the following year, which he promised to do.
I cling to the version in the text, for it seems to me that the
Doge's perpetual promise to rebuild the church was a return
in kind for the Pope*s astute answer to the petition asking
him to allow its removal. So good a thing ought to be his-
tory.
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76 VENETIAN LIFE
ness of the fair nuns that, after his retom
to Borne, he sent them great store of relics
and indulgences. It thus became one of the
most popular of the holidays, and the peo-
ple repaired in great multitude with their
Doge to the convent, on each recurrence of
the day, that they might see the relics and
buy the indulgences. The nuns were of the
richest and noblest families of the city, and
on the Doge's first visit they presented him
with that bonnet which became the symbol
of his sovereignly. It was wrought of pure
gold, and set with precious stones of marvel-
lous great beauty and value; and in order
that the State might never seem forgetful of
the munificence which bestowed the gift, the
bonnet was annually taken from the treasury
and shown by the Doge himself to the Sis-
ters of San Zaccaria. The Doge Pietro Tra-
donico, to whom the bonnet was given, was
killed in a poptdar tumult on this holiday,
while going to the convent.
There was likewise a vast concourse of
people and traffic in indulgences at the
church of Santa Maria della Carita (now
the Academy of Fine Arts), on the anniver-
sary of the day when Pope Alexander III.,
in 1177, flying from the Emperor Barba-
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VENETIAN HOLIDAY a 77
rossa, found refuge in that monastery.^ He
bestowed great privileges upon it, and the
Venetians honored the event to the end of
their national existence.
One of the rare occasions during the year
when the Doge appeared officially in public
after nightfall was on St. Stephen's Day.
He then repaired at dusk in his gilded
barge, with splendid attendance of nobles
and citizens, to the island church of San
Giorgio Maggiore, whither, in 1009, the
body of St. Stephen was brought from Con-
stantinople. On the first of May the Doge
visited the Convent of the Virgins (the con-
vent building now forms part of the Ar-
senal), where the abbess presented him with
a bouquet, and graceful and pleasing cere-
monies took place in commemoration of the
erection and endowment of the church. The
head of the State also annually assisted at
mass in St. Mark's, to celebrate the arrival
in Venice of St. Isidore's body, which the
Doge Domenico Michiel brought with him
from the East, at the end of twenty-six
years' war against the infidels ; and, finally,
1 Selvatico and Lazari, in their admirable Gwda Artiatica
t Storica di Venezaf say that the Pope merely lodged in the
monastery on the day when he signed the treaty of peace with
Barbarossa.
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78 VENETIAN LIFE
after the year 1485, when the Venetians
stole the bones of San Rocco from the Mil-
anese, and deposited them in the newly
finished Scuola di San Eocco, a ducal visit
was annually paid to that edifice.
Two only of the national religious festi-
vals yet survive the B^public, — that of the
church of the Bedentore on the Giudecca,
and that of the church of the Salute on the
Grand Canal, both votive churches, built in
commemoration of the city's deliverances
from the pest in 1578 and 1630. In their
general features the celebrations of the two
holidays are much alike ; but that of the
Salute is the less important of the two, and
is more entirely religious in its character.
A bridge of boats is annually thrown across
the Canalazzo, and on the day of the Puri-
fication the people throng to the Virgin's
shrine to express their gratitude for her
favor. This gratitude was so strong imme-
diately after the cessation of the pest in
1630 that the Senate, while the architects
were preparing their designs for the present
church, caused a wooden one to be built on
its site, and consecrated with ceremonies of
singular splendor. On the Festa del Beden-
tore (the third Sunday of July) a bridge of
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VENETIAN HOLIDATB 79
boats crosses the great canal of the Giudecca,
and vast throngs constantly pass it, day and
night. But though the small tradesmen who
deal in fried cakes, and in apples, peaches,
pears, and other fruits, make intolerable up-
roar behind their booths on the long quay
before the church; though the venders of
mulberries (for which the gardens of the
Giudecca are famous) fill the air with their
sweet jargoning (for their cries are like the
shrill notes of so many singing-birds) ;
though thousands of people pace up and
down, and come and go upon the bridge, yet
the Festa del Redentore has now none of
the old-time gayety it wore when the Vene-
tians thronged the gardens, and feasted,
sang, danced, and flirted the night away,
and at dawn went in their fleets of many-
lanterned boats, covering the lagoon with
fairy light, to behold the sunrise on the
Adriatic Sea.
Besides the religious festivals mentioned,
there were five banquets annually given by
the State on the several days of St. Mark,
St. Vitus, St. Jerome, and St. Stephen, and
the Day of the Ascension, all of which were
attended with religious observances. Good
Friday was especially hallowed by church
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80 VENETIAN LIFE
processions in each of the campos ; and St.
Martha's Day was occasion for junketings
on the Giudecca Canal, when a favorite fish,
being in season, was devotionally eaten.
The civil and political holidays which
lasted till the fall of the Bepublic were
eleven. One of the earliest was the anni-
versary of the recapture of the Venetian
Brides, who were snatched from their bride-
grooms at the altar of San Pietro di Castello,
by Triestine pirates. The class of citizens
most distinguished in the punishment of the
abductors was the trade of carpenters, who
lived chiefly in the parish of Santa Maria
Formosa ; and when the Doge, in his grat-
itude, bade them demand any reasonable
grace, the trade asked that he should pay
their quarter an annual visit. "But if it
rains ? " said the Doge. " We will give you
a hat to cover you," answered the carpen-
ters. " And if I am hungry ? " " We will
give you to eat and drink." So when the
Doge made his visit on the day of the Vir-
gin's Purification, he was given a hat of
gilded straw, a bottle of wine, and loaves of
bread. On this occasion the State bestowed
dowers upon twelve young girls among the
fairest and best of Venice (chosen two from
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 81
each of the six sections of the city), who
marched in procession to the church of Santa
Maria Formosa. But as time passed the
custom lost its simpKcity and purity : pretty
girls were said to make eyes at handsome
youths in the crowd, and scandals occurred
in public. Twelve wooden figures were then
substituted, but the procession in which they
were carried was followed by a disgusted
and hooting populace, and assailed with a
shower of turnips. The festivities, which
used to last eight days, with incredible mag-
nificence, fell into discredit, and were finally
abolished during the war when the Genoese
took Chioggia and threatened Venice, under
Doria. This was the famous Festa delle
Marie.
In 997 the Venetians beat the Narentines
at sea, and annexed all Istria, as far as Dal-
matia, to the Bepublic. On the day of the
Ascension, of the same year, the Doge, for
the first time, celebrated the dominion of
Venice over the Adriatic, though it was not
till some two hundred years later that the
Pope Alexander III. blessed the famous es-
pousals and confirmed the Eepublic in the
possession of the sea forever. "What,"
cries Giustina Benier-Michiel, turning to
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82 VENETIAN LIFE
speak of the holiday thus established, and
destined to be the proudest in the Venetian
calendar, — " what shall I say of the great-
est of all our solemnities, that of the Ascen-
sion ? Alas ! I myself saw Frenchmen and
Venetians, full of derision and insult, com-
bine to dismantle the Bucintoro and bum it
for the gold upon it I " ^ . . . (This was the
nuptial-ship in which the Doge went to wed
the sea, and the patriotic lady tells us con-
cerning the Bucintoro of her day) : " It was
in the form of a galley, and two hundred
feet long, with two decks. The first of these
was occupied by an hundred and sixty row-
ers, the handsomest and strongest of the
fleet, who sat four men to each oar, and
there awaited their orders ; forty other sailors
completed the crew. The upper deck was di-
vided lengthwise by a partition, pierced with
arched doorways, ornamented with gilded
figures, and covered with a roof supported
by caryatides, — the whole surmounted by a
canopy of crimson velvet embroidered with
gold. Under this were ninety seats, and at
the stem a still richer chamber for the
Doge's throne, over which drooped the ban-
1 That which follows is a translation of the report given by
Cesare Cantiii in his Orande Illuttradone del Lomhardo'
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VENETIAN SOLID AYS 88
ner of St. Mark. The prow was double-
beaked, and the sides of the vessel were en-
riched with figures of Justice, Peace, Sea,
Land, and other allegories and ornaments.
^^ Let me imagine those times, — it is the
habit of the old. At midday, having heard
mass in the chapel of the Collegio, the Doge
descends the Giant's Stairs, issues from the
Porta della Carta,^ and passes the booths of
the mercers and glass-venders erected for
the fair beginning that evening. He is pre-
ceded by eight standard-bearers with the
flags of the Republic, — red, blue, white,
and purple, — given by Alexander III. to
the Doge Ziani. Six trumpets of silver,
borne by as many boys, mix their notes with
the clangor of the bells of the city. Behind
come the retinues of the ambassadors in
Vt%t^^ of a conversation with the author of Ftstt Veneziane,
It is not necessary to remind readers of Venetian history that
Renier and Michiel were of the foremost names in the Golden
Book. She who bore them both was bom before the fall of
the Republic which she so much loved and lamented, and no
doubt felt more than the grief she expresses for the fate of
the last Bucintoro. It was destroyed, as she describes, in
1796, by the French Republicans and Venetian Democrats,
after the abdication of the oligarchy; but a fragment of its
mast yet remains, and is to be seen in the museum of the
Arsenal.
1 The gate of the Duca\ Palace which opens upon the Piaz-
zetU next St. Mark's.
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84 VENETIAN LIFE
sumptuous liveries, and the fifty Comanda-
dori in their flowing blue robes and red
caps ; then follow musicians, and the squires
of the Doge in black velvet ; then the guards
of the Doge, two chancellors, the secretary
of the Pregadi, a deacon clad in purple and
bearing a wax taper, six canons, three parish
priests in their sacerdotal robes, and the
Doge's chaplain dressed in crimson. The
grand chancellor is known by his crimson
vesture. Two squires bear the Doge's chair
and the cushion of cloth of gold. And the
Doge — the representative, and not the mas-
ter of his country; the executor, and not
the maker of the laws ; citizen and prince, re-
vered and guarded, sovereign of individuals,
servant of the State — comes clad in a long
mantle of ermine, cassock of blue, and vest
and hose of tocca d^oro^ with the golden
bonnet on his head, under the umbrella
borne by a squire, and surrounded by the
foreign ambassadors and the papal nuncio,
while his drawn sword is carried by a patri-
cian recently destined for some government
of land or sea, and soon to depart upon his
mission. In the rear comes a throng of
personages, — the grand captain of the city,
1 A gauze of gold and silk.
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VENETIAN HOLIDATS 85
the judges, the three chiefs of the Forty, the
Avogodori, the three chiefs of the Council
of Ten, the three censors, and the sixty of
the Senate with the sixty of the Aggiunta,
all in robes of crimson silk.
*^ On the Bacintoro, each takes the post
assigned him, and the prince ascends the
throne. The Admiral of the Arsenal and
the Lido stands in front as pilot; at the
helm is the Admiral of Malamocco, and
around him the ship-carpenters of the Ar-
senal. The Bucintoro, amid redoubled clamor
of bells and roar of cannon, quits the riva
and majestically ploughs the lagoon, sur-
rounded by innumerable boats of every form
and size.
" The Patriarch, who had already sent
several vases of flowers to do courtesy to the
company in the Bucintoro, joins them at the
island of Sant' Elena, and sprinkles their
course with holy water. So they reach the
port of Lido, whence they formerly issued
out upon the open sea ; but in my time they
paused there, turning the stem of the vessel
to the sea. Then the Doge, amid the thun-
ders of the artillery of the fort, took the ring
blessed by the Patriarch, — who now emp-
tied a cup of holy water into the sea, — and,
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86 VENETIAN LIFE
advancing into a little gallery behind his
throne, threw the ring into the waves, pro-
nouncing the words, Deaponsamus fe, mare^
m signum veri perpetuique dominii. Pro-
ceeding then to the church of San Nicoletto,
they listened to a solemn mass, and i-etumed
to Venice, where the dignitaries were enter-
tained at a banquet, while the multitude
peacefully dispersed among the labyrinths
of the booths erected for the fair." ^
This fair, which was established as early
as 1180, was an industrial exhibition of the
arts and trades peculiar to Venice, and was
repeated annually, with increasing osten-
tation, till the end, in 1796. Indeed, the
feasts of the Republic at last grew so nu-
merous that it became necessary, as we have
seen before, to make a single holiday pay a
double or triple debt of rejoicing. When
the Venetians recovered Chioggia after the
1 One of the sops thrown to the populace on this occasion,
as we learn from Mutinelli, was the admission to the train of
gilded barges following the Bucintoro of a boat bearing the
chief of the Nicolotti, one of the factions into which from
time immemorial the lower classes of Venice had been di-
vided. The distinction between the two parties seems to have
been purely geographical; for there is no apparent reason
why a man should have belonged to the Castellani except
that he lived in the eastern quarter of the city, or to the Ni-
colotti except that he lived in the western quarter. The gov-
ernment encouraged a rivahy not dangerous to itself, and for
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VENETIAN HO LID ATS 87
terrible war of 1380, the Senate refused to
yield them another festa^ and merely or-
dered that St. Mark's Day should be there-
after observed with some added ceremony :
there was already one festival commemora-
tive of a triumph over the Genoese (that of
San Giovanni Decollato, on whose day, in
1358, the Venetians beat the Genoese at
Negroponte), and the Senate declared that
this was sufficient. A curious custom, how-
ever, on the Sunday after Ascension, cele-
brated a remoter victory over the same ene-
mies, to which it is hard to attach any his-
toric probability. It is not known exactly
when the Genoese in immense force pene-
trated to Poveglia (one of the small islands
of the lagoons), nor why, being there, they
stopped to ask the islanders the best way of
getting to Venice. But tradition says that
the sly Povegliesi persuaded these silly Gen-
a long time the champions of the two sections met annually
and beat each other with rods. The form of contest was af-
terwards modified, and became a struggle for the possession
of certain bridges, in which the defeated were merely thrown
into the canals. I often passed the scene of the fiercest of
these curious battles at San Barnaba, where the Ponte de
Pugni is adorned with four feet of stone let into the pave-
ment, and defying each other from the four comers of the
bridge. Finally, even these contests were given up, and the
Castellan! and Nicolotti spent their rivalry in marvellous
acrobatic feats.
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88 VENETIAN LIFE
oese that the best method of navigating the
lagoons was by means of rafts, which they
constructed for them, and on which they sent
them afloat. About the time the Venetians
came out to meet the armada, the withes
binding the members of the rafts gave way,
and the Genoese who were not drowned in
the tides stuck in the mud, and were cut in
pieces like so many melons. No one will be
surprised to learn that not a soul of them
escaped, and that only the Povegliesi lived
to tell the tale. Special and considerable
privileges were conferred on them for their
part in this exploit, and were annually con-
firmed by the Doge, when a deputation of
the islanders called on him in his palace, and
hugged and kissed the devoted prince.
People who will sentimentalize over the
pigeons of St. Mark's may like to know
that they have been settled in the city ever
since 877. After the religious services on
Palm Sunday, it was anciently the custom
of the sacristans of St. Mark's to release
doves fettered with fragments of paper, and
thus partly disabled from flight, for the peo-
ple to scramble for in the Piazza. The peo-
ple fatted such of the birds as they caught,
and ate them at Easter, but those pigeons
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Feeding Ike IH^^eons in the Piazza
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 89
which escaped took refuge in the roof of the
church, where they gradually assumed a cer-
tain sacredness of character, and increased to
enormous numbers. They were fed by pro-
vision of the Republic, and being neglected
at the time of its fall many of them were
starved. But they now flourish on a bequest
left by a pious lady for their maintenance,
and on the largess of grain and polenta con-
stantly bestowed by strangers.
Besides the holidays mentioned, the 6th of
December was religiously observed in honor
of the taking of Constantinople, the Doge
assisting at mass in the ducal chapel of St.
Nicholas. He also annually visited, with his
Siguory in the state barges, and with great
concourse of people, the church of San Vito
on the 15th of June, in memory of the change
of the government from a democracy to an
oligarchy, and of the suppression of Baja-
monte Tiepolo's conspiracy. On St. Isidore's
Day he went with his Signory, and the relig-
ious confraternities, in torchlight procession,
to hear mass at St. Mark's in celebration
of the failure of Marin FaKer's plot. On
the 17th of January he visited by water the
hospital erected for invalid soldiers and sail-
ors, and thus commemorated the famous de-
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90 VENETIAN LIFE
fence of Scutari against the Turks, in 1413.
For the peace of 1516, concluded after the
dbsolution of the League of Cambray, he
went in his barge to the church of Santa
Marina, who had potently exerted her influ-
ence for the preservation of the Republic
against allied France, Austria, Spain, and
Rome. On St. Jerome's Day, when the
newly-elected members of the Council of
Ten took their seats, the Doge entertained
them with a banquet, and there were great
popular rejoicings over an affair in which
the people had no interest.
It is by a singular caprice of fortune that,
while not only all the Venetian holidays in
anywise connected with the glory of the Re-
public, but also those which peculiarly sig-
nalized her piety and gratitude, have ceased
to be, a festival common to the whole Catho-
lic world should still be observed in Venice
with extraordinary display. On the day of
Corpus Christi there is a superb ecclesiasti-
cal procession in the Piazza.
The great splendor of the solemnization is
said to date from the times when Enrico
Dandolo and his fellow-crusaders so far for-
got their purpose of taking Palestine from
the infidels as to take Constantinople from
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VENETIAN SOLID ATB 91
the schismatics. Up to that period the day
of Corpus Christi was honored by a proces-
sion from what was then the Cathedral of
San Pietro di Castello; but now all the
thirty parishes of the city, with their hun-
dred churches, have part in the procession,
which is of such great length as to take some
two hours in its progress round the Piazza.
Several days before the holiday workmen
begin to build, within the Place of St. Mark,
the colonnade through which the procession
is to pass ; they roof it with blue cotton cloth,
and adorn it with rolls of pasteboard repre-
senting garlands of palm. At last, on the
festive morning, the dwellers on the Grand
Canal are drawn to their balconies by the
apparition of boat-loads of facchini^ gor-
geous in scarlet robes, and bearing banners,
painted candles, and other movable elements
of devotion, with which they pass to the Pi-
azzetta, and thence into St. Mark's. They
reappear presently, and, with a guard of
Austrian troops to clear the way before
them, begin their march imder the canopy
of the colonnade.
When you have seen the Place of St.
Mark by night your eye has tasted its most
delicate delight. But then it is the delight
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given by a memoiy only, and it touches you
with sadness. You must see the Piazza to-
day, — every window fluttering with rich
stu£b and vivid colors ; the three great flag-
stalk ^ hanging their heavy flags ; the bril-
liant square alive with a holiday population,
with resplendent uniforms, witii Italian ges-
ture and movement, and that long, glitter-
ing procession, bearing slowly on the august
paraphernalia of the Church, — you must
see all this before you can enter into the
old heart of Venetian magnificence, and feel
its life about you.
To-day, the ancient church of San Pietro
di Castello comes first in the procession,
and, with a proud humility, the Basilica San
Marco last. Before each parochial division
goes a banner displaying the picture or
distinctive device of its titular saint, under
the shadow of which chants a priest ; there
are the hosts of the different churches, and
the gorgeous canopies under which they are
elevated; then come yoccAini dressed in scar-
let and bearing the painted candles, or the
long carved and gilded candlesticks; and
again facchini delicately robed in vestments
1 Once bearing the standards of Cyprus, Candia, and Ven-
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 93
of the purest white linen, with caps of azure,
green, and purple, and shod with sandals or
white shoes, carrying other apparatus of wor-
ship. Each banner and candlestick has a
fluttering leaf of tinsel paper attached to it,
and the procession makes a soft rustling as
it passes. The matter-of-fact character of
the external Church walks between those
symbolists, the candle-bearers, in the form
of persons who gather the dropping fatness
of the candles, and deposit it in a vase car-
ried for that purpose. Citizens march in
the procession with candles; and there are
charity schools which also take part, and
sing in the harsh, shrill manner of which I
think only little boys who have their heads
closely shorn are capable.
On all this we looked down from a win-
dow of the Old Procuratie, — of course with
that calm sense of superiority which people
are apt to have in regarding the solemnities
of a religion different from their own. But
that did not altogether prevent us from en-
joying what was really beautiful and charm-
ing in the scene. I thought most of the
priests very good and gentle looking, — and
in all respects they were much pleasanter to
the eye than the monks of the Carmelite
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order, who, in shaving their heads to simu-
late the Saviour's crown of thorns, produce
a hideous burlesque of the divine humilia-
tion. Yet many even of these had earnest
and sincere faces, and I could not think so
much as I ought, perhaps, of their idle life,
and the fleas in their coarse brown cloaks.
I confess, indeed, I felt rather a sadness than
an indignation at all that self-sacrifice to an
end of which I could but dimly see the use-
fulness. With some things in this grand
spectacle we were wholly charmed, and doubt-
less had most delight in the little child who
personated John the Baptist, and who was
quite naked, but for a fleece folded about
him: he bore the cross-headed staff in one
small hand, and led with the other a lamb
much tied up with blue ribbon. Here and
there in the procession little girls, exquisitely
dressed, and gifted by fond mothers with
wings and aureoles, walked, scattering flow-
ers. I likewise greatly relished the lively
holiday air of a company of airy old men,
the pensioners of some charity, who, in their
white linen trousers and blue coats, formed
a prominent feature of the display. Far
(rom being puffed up with their consequence,
they gossiped cheerfully with the spectators
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 95
in the pauses of the march, and made jests
to each other in that light-hearted^ careless
way observable in old men taken care of,
and with nothing before them to do worth
speaking of but to die. I must own that the
honest facchini who bore the candles were
equally affable, and even freer with their
jokes. But in this they formed a fine con-
trast to here and there a closely hooded dev-
otee, who, with hidden face and silent lips,
was carrying a taper for religion, and not,
like them, for money. I liked the great
good-natured crowd, so orderly and amiable;
and I enjoyed even that old citizen in the
procession who, when the Patriarch gave his
blessing, found it inconvenient to kneel, and
compromised by stretching one leg a great
way out behind him. These things, indeed,
quite took my mind off of the splendors ; and
I let the canopy of the Scuola di San Rocco
(worth 40,000 ducats) go by with scarce a
glance, and did not bestow much more atten-
tion upon the bi^lliant liveries of the Pa-
triarch's servants, — though the appearance
of these ecclesiastical flunkies is far more
impressive than that of any of their secular
brethren. They went gorgeously before the
Patriarch, who was surrounded by the richly
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96 VENETIAN LIFE
dressed clergy of St. Mark's, and by clouds
of incense rising from the smoking censers.
He walked under the canopy in his cardi-
nal's robes, and with his eye fixed upon the
Host.
All at once the procession halted, and the
Patriarch blessed the crowd, which knelt in
a profound silence. Then the military band
before him struck up an air from Un Ballo
in Maschera; the procession moved on to
the cathedral, and the crowd melted away.
The once magnificent day of the Ascen-
sion the Venetians now honor by closing all
shop-doors behind them and putting all
thought of labor out of their minds, and
going forth to enjoy themselves in the mild,
inexplosive fashion which seems to satisfy
Italian nature. It is the same on all the
feast days : then the city sinks into pro-
founder quiet; only beUs are noisy, and
where their clangor is so common as in Ven-
ice it seems at last to make friends with the
general stillness, and distijrbs none but peo-
ple of untranquil minds. We always go to
the Piazza San Marco when we seek pleas-
ure, and now, for eight days only of all the
year, we have there the great spectacle of
the Adoration of the Magi, performed every
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 97
hour by automata within the little golden-
railed gallery on the facade of the Giant's
Clock Tower. There the Virgin sits above
the azure circle of the zodiac, all heavily
gilded, and holding the Child, equally splen-
did. Through the doors on either side, usu-
ally occupied by the illuminated figures of
the hours, appears the procession, and disap-
pears. The stately giant on the summit of
the tower, at the hither side of the great
bell, solemnly strikes the hour — as a giant
should who has struck it for centuries —
with a grand, whole-arm movement, and a
slow, muscular pride. We look up, — we
tourists of the red-backed books; we peas-
ant-girls radiant with converging darts of
silver piercing the masses of our thick black
hair; we Austrian soldiers in white coats
and blue tights ; we voiceful sellers of the
cherries of Padua; and we calm loafers
about the many-pillared base of the church,
— we look up and see the Adoration. First
the trumpeter, blowing the world news of the
act; then the first king, turning softly to the
Virgin, and bowing; then the second, that
enthusiastic devotee, — the second, who lifts
his crown quite from his head ; last the
Ethiopian prince, gorgeous in green and gold,
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98 VENETIAN LIFE
who, I am sorry to say, burlesques the whole
solemnity. His devotion may be equally
heart-felt, but it is more jerky than that of
the others. He bows well and adequately,
but recovers his balance with a prodigious
start, altogether too suggestive of springs
and wheels. Perhaps there is a touch of thf*
pathetic in this grotesque fatality of the
black king, whose suffering race has always
held mankind between laughter and tears,
and has seldom done a fine thing without
leaving somewhere the neutralizing absurd-
ity; but if there is, the sentimental may
find it, not I. When the procession has dis-
appeared, we wait till the other giant has
struck the hour, and then we disperse.
If it is six o'clock, and the sea has begun
to breathe cool across the Basin of St. Mark,
we find our account in strolling upon the
long Riva degli Schiavoni towards the Pub-
lic Gardens. One would suppose, at first
thought, that here, on this magnificent quay,
with its glorious lookout over the lagoons,
the patricians would have built their finest
palaces; whereas there is hardly anything
but architectural shabbiness from the Ponte
della Paglia at one end to the Ponte Santa
Marina at the other. But there need be
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 99
nothing surprising in the fact, after all.
The feudal wealth and nobility of other
cities kept the base at a respectful distance
by means of lofty stone walls, and so shut
in their palaces and gardens. Here equal
seclusion could only be achieved by build-
ing flush upon the water, and therefore all
the finest palaces rise sheer from the ca-
nals ; and caffe^ shops, barracks, and pup-
pet-shows occupy the Riva degli Schiavoni.
Nevertheless, it is the favorite promenade of
the Venetians for the winter sunshine, and
at such times in the summer as when the
sun's rage is tempered. There is always
variety in the throng on the Riva, but the
fashionable part of it is the least interest-
ing: here and there a magnificent Greek
flashes through the crowd, in dazzling white
petticoats and gold - embroidered leggings
and jacket ; now and then a tall Dalmat or
a solemn Turk ; even the fishermen and the
peasants, and the lower orders of the people,
are picturesque ; but polite Venice is hope-
lessly given to the pride of the eyes, and
commits all the excesses of the French
modes. The Venetian dandy, when dressed
to his own satisfaction, is the worst dressed
man in the world. His hat curls outra-
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100 VENETIAN LIFE
geously in brim and sides ; his coat-sleeves
are extremely full, and the garment pinches
him at the waist ; his pantaloons flow forth
from the hips, and contract narrowly at the
boot, which is square-toed and made too long.
The whole effect is something not to be seen
elsewhere, and is well calculated to move
the beholder to desperation.^ The Venetian
fine lady, also, is prone to be superfine.
Her dress is as full of color as a Paolo
Veronese ; in these narrow streets, where it
is hard to expand an umbrella, she exagger-
ates hoops to the utmost; and she fatally
hides her ankles in pantalets.
In the wide thoroughfare leading from the
last bridge of the Riva to the gate of the
gardens there is always a clapping of wooden
shoes on the stones, a braying of hand-or-
gans, a shrieking of people who sell fish and
fruit, at once insufferable and indescribable.
The street is a rio terrd, — a filled-up canal,
— and, as always happens with rii terrain
is abandoned to the poorest classes, who
manifest themselves, as the poorest classes
are apt to do always, in groups of frowzy
women, small girls carrying large babies,
1 These exaggerations of the fashions of 1862 have been
succeeded by equal travesties of the present modes.
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VENETIAN HOLIDAYS 101
beggars, of course, and soldiers. I spoke of
f frtdt-sellers ; bat in this quarter the traffic
in pumpkin-seeds is the most popular, —
' the people finding these an inexpensive and
pleasant excess, when taken with a glass of
water flavored with anise.
The Gardens were made by Napoleon,
who demolished to that end some monaster-
ies cumbering the ground. They are pleas-
ant enough, and are not gardens at all, but
a park of formally -planted trees, — syca-
mores, chiefly. I do not remember to have
seen here any Venetians of the better class,
except on the Mondays-of-the-Garden, in
September. Usually the promenaders are
fishermen, Austrian corporals, loutish youth
of low degree, and women too old and too
poor to have anything to do. Strangers go
there, and the German visitors even drink
the exceptionable beer which is sold in the
wooden cottage on the little hillock at the
end of the Gardens. There is also a sta-
ble, where are the only horses in Venice.
They are let at a florin an hour, and I do
not know why the riders are always persons
of the Hebrew faith. In a word nothing
can be drearier than the company in the
Gardens, and nothing lovelier than the view
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102 VENETIAN LIFE
they command, — from the sunset on the
dome of the church of the Salute, all round
the broad sweep of lagoon, to the tower
at the port of San Nicold, where you catch
a glimpse of the Adriatic.
The company is commonly stupid, but
one evening, as we stroUed idly through the
walks, we came upon an interesting group —
forty or fifty sailors, soldiers, youth of the
people, gray-haired fishermen, and contadini
— sitting and lying on the grass, and listen-
ing with rapt attention to an old man reclin-
ing against a tree. I never saw a manner
of sweeter or easier dignity than the speak-
er's. Nature is so lavish of her grace to
these people that grow near her heart — the
sun ! Infinite study could not have taught
one Northern-bom the charm of oratory as
this old man displayed it. I listened, and
heard that he was speaking Tuscan. Do
you guess with what he was enchanting his
simple auditors? Nothing less than Or-
lando Furioso. They listened with the
hungriest delight, and when Ariosto's inter-
preter raised his finger and said, " Disse
I'imperatore," or, ''Orlando disse, Carlo-
mano mio," they hardly breathed.
On the Lunedl dei Giardinij already men^
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VENETIAN HOLIDAY a 103
tioned, all orders of the people flock thither,
and promenade, and banquet on the grass.
The trees get back the voices of their dryads,
and the children fill the aisles with glancing
movement and graceful sport.
Of course, the hand-K>rgan seeks hpre its
proper element, the populace, — but here it
brays to a peculiarly beautiful purpose. For
no sooner does it sound than the young girls
of the people wreathe themselves into dances,
and improvise the poetry of motion. Over
the grass they whirl, and up and down the
broad avenues, and no one of all the gentle
and peaceable crowd molests or makes them
afraid. It is a scene to make you believe in
Miriam dancing with Donatello there in that
old garden at Rome, and reveals a simple
beauty in the nature of the Italian poor,
which shall one day, I hope, be counted in
their favor when they are called to answer
for lying and swindling.
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xvni
CHRISTMAS HOLroAYS
j T often happens, even after the cold
has announced itself in Venice,
^ that the hesitating winter lingers
in the Tyrol, and a mellow Indian-
summer weather has possession of the first
weeks of December. There was nothing in
the December weather of 1863 to remind
us Northerners that Christmas was coming.
The skies were as blue as those of June, the
sun was warm, and the air was bland, with
only now and then a trenchant breath from
the Alps, coming like a delicate sarcasm from
loveliness unwilling to be thought insipidly
amiable. But if there was no warning in the
weather, there were other signs of Christmas-
time not to be mistaken : a certain foolish
leaping of the heart in one's own breast, as if
the dead raptures of childhood were stirred
in their graves by the return of the happy sea-
son ; and in Venice, in weary, forlorn Venice,
there was the half-unconscious tumult, the
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CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS 106
expectant bustle which cities feel at the ap-
proach of holidays. The little shops put on
their gayest airs ; there was a great clapping
and hammering on the stalls and booths
which were building in the campos; the
street-cries were more shrill and resonant
than ever, and the air was shaken with the
continual clangor of the church bells.
All this note of preparation is rather
bewildering to strangers, and is apt to dis-
order the best disciplined intentions of see-
ing Christmas as the Venetians keep it.
The public observance of the holiday in the
churches and on the streets is evident and
accessible to the most transient sojourner;
but it is curious proof of the dif&culty of
knowledge concerning the in-door life and
usages of the Italians that I had already
spent two Christmases in Venice without
learning anything of their home celebration
of the day. Perhaps a degree of like diffi-
culty attends like inquiry everywhere, for the
happiness of Christmas contracts the family
circle more exclusively than ever around the
home hearth, or the domestic scaldino^ as the
case may be. But, at any rate, I was quite
ready to say that the observance of Christ-
mas in Venice was altogether public, when I
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106 VENETIAN LIFE
thought it a measure of far-sighted prudence
to consult my barber.
In all Latin countries the barber is
a source of informatipn, which, skilfully
tapped, pours forth in a stream of endless
gossip and local intelligence. Every man
talks with his barber ; and perhaps a linger-
ing dignity clings to this artist from his
former profession of surgeon: it is certain
the barber here prattles on with a freedom
and importance perfectly admitted and re^
spected by the interlocutory count under his
razor.
Those who care to know how things passed
in an Italian barber shop three hundred
years ago may read it in Miss Evans's Ro-
mola; those who are willing to see Nello
alive and carrying on his art in Venice at
this day must go to be shaved at his shop
in the Frezzaria. Here there is a con-
tinual exchange of gossip, and I have often
listened with profit to the sage and piquant
remarks of the head barber and chief ciar-
lone on the different events of human life
brought to his notice. His shop is well
known as a centre of scandal, and I have
heard a fair Venetian declare that she had
cut from her list all acquaintance who go
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CBRI8TMA8 HOLIDAYS 107
there, as persons likely to become infected
with the worst habits of gossip.
To this Nello, however, I used to go only
when in the most brilliant humor for listen-
ing, and my authority on Christmas obser-
vances is another and humbler barber, but
not less a babbler, than the first. By birth,
I believe, he is a Mantuan, and he prides
himself on speaking Italian instead of Ve-
netian. He has a defective eye, which
obliges him to tack before bringing his razor
to bear, but which is all the more favorable
to conversation. On the whole, he is flat-
tered to be asked about Christmas in Venice,
and he first tells me that it is one of the
chief holidays of the year : —
" It is then, Signore, that the Venetians
have the custom to mak^ three sorts of pecu-
liar presents : Mustard, Fish, and Mandor-
lato. You must have seen the mustard in
the shop windows : it is a thick conserve of
fruits, fiavored with mustard ; and the raan-
dorlato is a candy made of honey, and filled
with almonds. Well, they buy fish, as many
as they will, and a vase of mustard, and a
box of mandorlato, and make presents of
them, one family to another, the day before
Christmas. It is not too much for a rich
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108 VENETIAN LIFE
family to present a hundred boxes of man-
dorlato and as many pots of mustard. These
are exchanged between friends in the city,
and Venetians also send them to acquaint-
ance in the country, whence the gift is re-
turned in cakes and eggs at Easter. Christ-
mas Eve people invite each other to great
dinners, and eat and drink, and make merry;
but there are only fish and vegetables, for it
is a meagre day, and jneats are forbidden.
This dinner lasts so long that, when it is
over, it is almost time to go to midnight
mass, which all must attend, or else hear
three masses on the morrow ; and no doubt
it was some delinquent who made our say-
ing, ' Long as a Christmas mass.' On Christ-
mas Day people dine at home, keeping
the day with family reunions. But the day
after ! Ah-heigh I That is the first of Car-
nival, and all the theatres are opened, and
there is no end to the. amusements, — or was
not, in the old time. Now, they never begin.
A week later comes the day of the Lord's
Circumcision, and then the next holiday is
Easter. The Nativity, the Circumcision, and
the Resurrection — behold ! these are the
three mysteries of the Christian faith. Of
what religion are the Americans, Signore ? '^
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CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS 109
I think I was justified in answering that
we were Christians. My barber was politely
surprised. ^' But there are so many different
religions/' he said, in excuse.
On the afternoon before Christmas I
walked through the thronged Mereeria to
the Eialto Bridge, where the timiultuous
mart which opens at Piazza San Marco cul-
minates in a deafening uproar of bargains.
At this time the Mereeria, or street of the
shops, presents the aspect of a fair, and is
arranged with a tastefulness and a cunning
ability to make the most of ever3rthing which
are seldom applied to the abundance of our
fairs at home. The shops in Venice are all
very small, and the streets of lofty houses
are so narrow and dark that whatever goods
are not exposed in the shop -windows are
brought to the door to be clamored over by
purchasers ; so that the Mereeria is roused
by unusual effort to produce a more pro-
nounced effect of traffic and noise than it
always wears ; but now the effort had been
made and the effect produced. The street
was choked with the throngs, through which
all sorts of peddlers battled their way and
cried their wares. In Campo San Barto-
lomeo, into which the Mereeria expands, at
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110 VENETIAN LIFE
the foot of Rialto Bridge, holiday traffic had
built enormous barricades of stalls, and en-
trenched itself behind booths, whence pur-
chasers were assailed with challenges to buy
bargains. More than half the campo was
paved with crockery from Rovigo and glass-
ware from Murano ; clothing of every sort,
and all kinds of small household wares, were
offered for sale ; and among the other booths,
in the proportion of two to one, were stalls
of the inevitable Christmas mustard and
mandorlato.
But I cared rather for the crowd than
what the crowd cared for, I had been long
ago obliged to throw aside my preconceived
notions of the Italian character, though they
were not, I believe, more absurd than the
impressions of others who have never stud-
ied Italian character in Italy. I hardly
know what of bacchantic joyousness I had
not attributed to them on their holidays : a
people living in a mild climate under such
a lovely sky, with wine cheap and abundant,
might not unreasonably have been expected
to put on a show of the greatest jollity when
enjoying themselves. Venetian crowds are
always perfectly gentle and kindly, but they
are also as a whole usually serious ; and this
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The JUalto Market
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1
i
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CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS lU
Christmas procession, moving up and down
the Mereeria, and to and fro between the
markets of Eialto, was in the fullest sense a
solemnity. It is true that the scene was
dramatic, but the drama was not consciously
comic. Whether these people bought or sold,
or talked together, or walked up and down
in silence, they were all equally in earnest.
The crowd, in spite of its noisy bustle and
passionate uproar, did not seem to me a
blithe or light-hearted crowd. Its sole ac-
tivity was that of traffic, for, far more dearly
than any Yankee, a Venetian loves a bar-
gain, and puts his whole heart into uphold-
ing and beating down demands.
Across the Bridge began the vegetable
and fruit market, where whole Hollands of
cabbage and Spains of onions opened on the
view, with every other succulent and tooth-
some growth; and beyond this we entered
the glory of Eialto, the fish-market, which
is now more lavishly supplied than at any
other season. It was picturesque and full
of gorgeous color, for the fish of Venice seem
all to catch the rainbow hues of the lagoon.
There is a certain kind of red mullet, called
triglia^ which is as rich and tender in its
dyes as if it had never swam in water less
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112 VENETIAN LIFE
glorious than that which crimsons under Oc-
tober sunsets. But a fish-market, even at
Bialto, with fishermen in scarlet caps and
triglie in sunset splendors, is only a fish-
market, after all : it is wet and slimy under
foot, and the inniunerable gigantic eels,
writhing everywhere, set the soul asquirm,
and soon -sated curiosity slides willingly
away.
We had an appointment with a young
Venetian lady to attend midnight mass at the
church of San Moisd, and thither about half
past eleven we went to welcome in Christ-
mas. The church of San Moisd is in the
highest style of the Eenaissance art, which
is, I believe, the lowest style of any other.
The richly sculptured fagade is divided into
stories ; the fluted columns are stilted upon
pedestals, and their lines are broken by the
bands which encircle them like broad barrel-
hoops. At every possible point theatrical
saints and angels, only sustained from fall-
ing to the ground by iron bars let into their
backs, start from the niches and cling to the
sculpture. The outside of the church is in
every way detestable, and the inside is con-
sistently bad. All the side-altars have broken
arches, and the high altar is built of rough
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CHRiaTMAa HOLIDAYS 113
blocks of marble to represent Mount Sinai,
on which a melodramatic statue of Moses
receives the tables of the law from God the
Father, with frescoed seraphim in the back-
ground. For the same reason, I suppose,
that the devout prefer a hideous Bambino
and a Madonna in crinoline to the most
graceful artistic conception of those sacred
personages, San Moisd is the most popular
church for the midnight mass in Venice,
and there is no mass at all in St. Mark's,
where its magnificence would be so pecu-
liarly impressive.
On Christmas Eve, then, this church was
crowded, and the doorways were constantly
thronged with people passing in and out. I
was puzzled to see so many young men pres-
ent, for Young Italy is not usually in great
number at church; but a friend explained
the anomaly : " After the guests at our
Christmas Eve dinners have well eaten and
drunken, they all go to mass in at least one
church, and the younger offer a multiplied
devotion by going to all. It is a good thing
in some ways, for by this means they man-
age to see every pretty face in the city,
which that night has specially prepared it-
self to be seen." And from this slender
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114 VENETIAN LIFE
text my friend began to discourse at large
about these Christmas Eve dinners, and
chiefly how jollily the priests fared, ending
with the devout wish, " Would God had
made me nephew of a canonico ! " The great
dinners of the priests are a favorite theme
with Italian talkers ; but I doubt it is after
all only a habit of speech. The priests are
too numerous to feed sumptuously in most
cases.
We had a good place to see and hear, sit-
ting in the middle of the main aisle, directly
over the dust of John Law, who alighted in
Venice when his great Mississippi bubble
burst, and died here, and now sleeps peace-
fully under a marble tablet in the ugly church
of San Moisd. The thought of that busy,
ambitious life, come to this unscheming re-
pose under our feet, — so far from the scene
of its hopes, successes, and defeats, — gave
its own touch of solemnity to the time and
place, and helped the offended sense of pro-
priety through the bursts of operatic music
which interspersed the mass. But on the
whole, the music was good and the function
sufficiently impressive, — what with the
gloom of the temple everywhere starred with
tapers, and the grand altar lighted to the
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CHRI8TMA8 HOLIDATS 115
mountain-top. The singing of the priests
also was here much better than I had found
it elsewhere in Venice.
The equality of all classes in church is a
noticeable thing always in Italy, but on
this Christmas Eve it was unusually evident.
The rags of the beggar brushed the silks of
luxury, as the wearers knelt side by side on
the marble floor; and on the night when
God was bom to poverty on earth, the rich
seemed to feel that they drew nearer Him in
the neighborhood of the poor. In these
costly temples of the eldest Christianity, the
poor seem to enter upon their inheritance
of the future, for it is they who frequent
them most and possess them with the deep-
est sense of ownership. The withered old
woman, who creeps into St. Mark's with her
scaldino in her hand, takes visible possession
of its magnificence as God's and hers, and
Catholic wealth and rank would hardly, if
challenged, dispute her claim.
Even the longest mass comes to an end at
last, and those of our party who could credit
themselves with no gain of masses against
the morrow received the benediction at San
MoisS with pecidiar unction. We all issued
forth, and passing through the lines of young
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118 VENETIAN LIFE
and blessings to all who pass. It is an im-
memorial custom, and it is one in which all
but the quite comfortable classes participate.
The facchini in every square take up their
collections ; the gondoliers have their plates
prepared for contribution at every ferry ; at
every caffe and restaurant begging-boxes ap-
peal to charity. Whoever has lifted hand in
your service in any way during the past year
expects a reward on New Yean's for the com-
plaisance, and in some cases the shop-keepers
send to wish you a hd capo d^anno^ with the
same practical end in view. On New Year's
Eve and morning bands oi facchini and gon-
doliers go about howling vivas under chari-
table windows till they open and drop ahus.
The Piazza is invaded by the legions of beg-
gary, and held in overpowering numbers
against all comers ; and to traverse it is like
a progress through a lazar-house.
Beyond encouraging so gross an abuse as
this, I do not know that Venice celebrates
New Year's in a peculiar manner. It is a
festa^ and there are masses, of course. Pres-
ents are exchanged, which consist chiefly of
Dks, printed for the season, and brilliant
kside and dull within, like all annuals.
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XIX
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING; BAPTISMS
AND BURIALS
HE Venetians have had a prac-
tical and strictly business-like
way of arranging marriages
from the earliest times. The
shrewdest provision has al-
ways been made for the dower and for the
good of the State; private and public in-
terest being consulted, the small matters of
affections have been left to the chances of
association ; and it does not seem that Ve-
netian society has ever dealt severely with
husbands or wives whom incompatibilities
forced to seek consolation outside of matri-
mony. Herodotus relates that the Illyrian
Veneti sold their daughters at auction to
the highest bidder ; and the fair being thus
comfortably placed in life, the hard-favored
were given to whomsoever would take them,
with such dower as might be considered a
reasonable compensation. The auction was
discontinued in Christian times, but mar-
riage contracts still partook of the form of
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120 VENETIAN LIFE
a public and half-mercantile transaction. At
a comparatively late period Venetian fathers
went with their daughters to a great annual
matrimonial fair at San Pietro di Castello
Olivolo, and the youth of the lagoons repaired
thither to choose wives from the number of
the maidens. These were all dressed in
white, with hair loose about the neck, and
each bore her dower in a little box, slung
over her shoulder by a ribbon. It is to be
supposed that there was conmionly a previ-
ous understanding between each damsel and
some youth in the crowd : as soon as all had
paired off, the bishop gave them a sermon
and his benediction, and the young men
gathered up their brides and boxes, and went
away wedded. It was on one of these occa-
sions, in the year 944, that the Triestine
pirates stole the Brides of Venice with their
dowers, and gave occasion to the Festa delle
Marie, already described, and to Rogers's
poem, which everybody pretends to have
read.
This going to San Pietro's, selecting a wife
and marrying her on the spot, out of hand,
could only have been the contrivance of a
straightforward, practical race. Among the
common people betrothals were managed
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LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING 121
with even greater ease and despatch, till a
very late day in history ; and in the record
of a certain trial which took place in 1443
there is an account of one of these brief and
unceremonious courtships. Donna Cata-
russa, who gives evidence, and whom I take
to have been a worthless, idle gossip, was
one day sitting at her door, when Piero di
Trento passed, selling brooms, and said to
her, "Madonna, find me some nice girl."
To which Donna Catarussa replied, " Ugly
fool! do you^take me for a go-between?"
" No," said Piero, " not that ; I mean a girl
to be my wife." And as Donna Catarussa
thought at once of a suitable match, she
said, " In faith of God, I know one for you.
Come again to-morrow." So they both met
next day, and the woman chosen by Donna
Catarussa being asked, " Wouldst thou like
to have Piero for thy husband, as God com-
mands and Holy Church?" she answered,
"Yes." And Peter being asked the like
question answered, "Why, yes, certainly."
And they went off and had the wedding
feast. A number of these betrothals takes
place in the last scene of Goldoni's Baruffe
Chiozzotte, where the belligerent women and
their lovers take hands in the public streets,
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122 VENETIAN LIFE
and, saluting each other as man and wife, are
affianced, and get married as quickly as pos-
sible : —
" Checa (to Tofolo). Take my hand.
''Tofolo. Wife!
" Checa. Husband !
''Tofolo. Hurra 1"
The betrothals of the Venetian nobles
were celebrated with as much pomp and
ceremony as could possibly distinguish them
from those of the people, and there was
much more polite indifference to the inclina-
tions of the parties inmiediately concerned.
The contract was often concluded before the
betrothed had seen each other, by means of
a third person, when the amount of the
dower was fixed. The bridegroom elect, hav-
ing verbally agreed with the parents of the
bride, repaired at an early day to the court-
yard of the Ducal Palace, where the match
was published, and where he shook hands
with his kinsmen and friends. On the day
fixed for signing the contract the bride's
father invited to his house the bridegroom
and all his friends, and hither came the
high officers of state to compliment the
future husband. He, with the father of his
betrothed, met the guests at the door of the
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LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING 123
palace, and conducted them to the grand
saloon, which no woman was allowed (^i
figuril) at this time to enter. When the
company was seated, the bride, clad in white,
was led from her rooms and presented. She
wore a crown of pearls and brilliants on her
head, and her hair, mixed with long threads
of gold, fell loose about her shoulders, as you
may see it in Carpaccio's pictures of the
Espousals of St. Ursula. Her ear-rings were
pendants of three pearls set in gold ; her
neck and throat were bare but for a collar
of lace and gems, from which slid a fine jew-
elled chain into her bosom. Over her breast
she wore a stomacher of cloth of gold, to
which were attached her sleeves, open £rom
the elbow to the hand. The formal words
of espousal being pronounced, the bride
paced slowly round the hall to the music of
fifes and trumpets, and made a gentle incli-
nation to each of the guests; and then re-
turned to her chamber, from which she issued
again on the arrival of any tardy friend, and
repeated the ceremony. After all this, she
descended to the court-yard, where she was
received by gentlewomen, her friends, and
placed on a raised seat (which was covered
with rich stuffs) in an open gondola, and
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124 VENETIAN LIFE
thus, followed by a fleet of attendant gon-
dolas, went to visit all the convents in which
there were kinspeople of herself or her be-
trothed. The excessive publicity of these
ceremonies was supposed to strengthen the
validity of the marriage contract. At an
early day after the espousals the betrothed,
preceded by musicians and followed by rela-
tives and friends, went at dawn to be mar-
ried in the church, — the bridegroom wear-
ing a toga, and the bride a dress of white
silk or crimson velvet, with jewels in her hair,
and pearls embroidered on her robes. Visits
of congratulation followed, and on the same
day a public feast was given in honor of the
wedding, to which at least three hundred
persons were always invited, and at which
the number, quality, and cost of the dishes
were carefully regulated by the Republic's
laws. On this occasion, one or more per-
sons were chosen as governors of the feast,
and after the tables were removed a mock-
heroic character appeared, and recounted
with absurd exaggeration the deeds of the
ancestors of the bride and groom. The next
morning ristorativi of sweetmeats and con-
fectionery were presented to the happy cou-
ple, by whom the presents were returned in
kind.
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A splendor so exceptional, even in the
most splendid age of the most splendid city,
as that which marked the nuptial feasts of
the unhappy Jacopo Foscari could not be
left unnoticed in this place. He espoused
Lucrezia, daughter of Lionardo Contarini, a
noble as rich and magnificent as Jacopo's
own father, the Doge ; and, on the 29tb of
January, 1441, the noble Eustachio Balbi
being chosen lord of the feasts, the bride-
groom, the bride's brother, and eighteen
other patrician youths assembled in the
Palazzo Balbi, whence they went on horse-
back to conduct Lucrezia to the Ducal Pal-
ace. They were all sumptuously dressed in
crimson velvet and silver brocade of Alex-
andria, and rode chargers superbly caparl-
sohed. Other noble friends attended them ;
musicians went before ; a troop of soldiers
brought up the rear. They thus proceeded
to the court-yard of the Ducal Palace, and
then, returning, traversed the Piazza, and
threading the devious little streets to the
Campo San Samuele, there crossed the
Grand Canal upon a bridge of boats to San
Bamaba opposite, where the Contarini lived.
On their arrival at this place the bride, sup-
ported by two Procuratori di San Marco,
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126 VENETIAN LIFE
and attended by sixty ladies, descended to
the churcli and heard mass, after which an
oration was delivered in Campo San Bamaba
before the Doge, the ambassadors, and a
multitude of nobles and people, in praise of
the spouses and their families. The bride
then returned to her father's house, and
jousts took place in the campos of Santa
Maria Formosa and San Polo (the largest
in the city), and in the Piazza San Marco.
The Doge gave a great banquet, and at its
close one hundred and fifty ladies proceeded
to the bride's palace in the Bucintoro, where
one hundred other ladies joined them, to-
gether with Lucrezia, who, seated between
Francesco Sforza (then general-in-chief of
the Eepublic's armies) and the Florentine
ambassador, was conducted, amid the shouts
of the people and the sound of trumpets, to
the Ducal Palace. The Doge received her
at the riva of the Piazzetta, and, with Sforza
and Balbi, led her to the foot of the palace
stairs, where the Dogaressa, with sixty la-
dies, welcomed her. A state supper ended
this day's rejoicings, and on the following
day a tournament took place in the Piazza,
for a prize of cloth of gold, which was of-
fered by Sforza. Forty knights contested
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LOVE-MAKINO AND MARRTINQ 127
the prize, and supped afterward with the
Doge. . On the next day there were proces-
sions of boats, with music, on the Grand
Canal; on the fourth and last day there
were other jousts for prizes offered by the
jewellers and Florentine merchants ; and
every night there were dancing and feasting
in the Ducal Palace. The Doge was him-
self the giver of the last tournament, and
with this the festivities came to an end.
I have read an account by an old-fash-
ioned English traveller of a Venetian mar-
riage which he saw, sixty or seventy years
ago, at the church of San Giorgio Maggiore :
"After a crowd of nobles," he says, "in
their usual black robes, had been some time
in attendance, the gondolas, appearing, ex-
hibited a fine show, though all of them were
painted of a sable hue, in consequence of
a sumptuary law, which is very necessary
in this place, to prevent an expense which
many who could not bear it would incur;
nevertheless, the barcariolU or boatmen, were
dressed in handsome liveries ; the gondolas
followed one another in a line, each carrying
two ladies, who were likewise dressed in
black. As they landed they arranged them-
selves in order, forming a line from the gate
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128 VENETIAN LIFE
to the great altar. At length the bride, ar-
rayed in white as the symbol of innocence,
led by the bridesman, ascended the stairs of
the landing-place. There she received the
compliments of the bridegroom, in his black
toga, who walked at her right hand to the al-
tar, where they and all the company kneeled.
I was often afraid the poor young creature
would have sunk upon the ground before
she arrived, for she trembled with great
agitation, while she made her low courte-
sies from side to side : however, the ceremony
was no sooner performed than she seemed to
recover her spirits, and looked matrimony
in the face with a determined smile. In-
deed, in all appearance she had nothing to
fear from her husband, whose age and as-
pect were not at all formidable ; accordingly
she tripped back to the gondola with great
activity and resolution, and the procession
ended as it began. Though there was some-
thing attractive in this aquatic parade, the
black hue of the boats and the company pre-
sented to a stranger, like me, the idea of a
funeral rather than a wedding. My expec-
tation was raised too high by the previous
description of the Italians, who are much
given to hyperbole, who gave me to under-
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LOVE-MAKING AND MARRY INO 129
stand that this procession would far exceed
anything I had ever seen. When I reflect
upon this rhodomontade," disdainfully adds
Mr. Drummond, ^^ I cannot help compar-
ing, in my memory, the paltry procession of
the Venetian marriage with a very august
occurrence of which I was eye-witness in
Sweden," and which, being the reception
of their Swedish Majesties by the British
fleet, I am sure the reader will not ask me
to quote.
With change of government, changes of
civilization following the revolutions, and
the decay of wealth among the Venetian
nobles, almost all their splendid customs
have passed away, and the habit of making
wedding presents of sweetmeats and confec-
tionery is perhaps the only relic which has
descended from the picturesque past to the
present time. These gifts are still exchanged
not only by nobles, but by all commoners
according to their means, and are sometimes
a source of very profuse outlay. It is the
habit to send the candies in the elegant and
costly paper caskets which the confectioners
sell, and the sum of a thousand florins
scarcely suffices to pass the courtesy round
a moderately large circle of friends.
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With the nobility and with the richest
commoners marriage is still greatly a matter
of contract, and is arranged without much
reference to the principals, though it is now
scarcely probable in any case that they have
not seen each other. But with all other
classes, except the poorest, who cannot and
do not seclude the youth of either sex from
each other, and with whom, consequently,
romantic contrivance and subterfuge would
be superfluous, love is made to-day in Ven-
ice as in the capa y espada comedies of
the Spaniards, and the business is carried
on with all the cumbrous machinery of con-
fidants, billets-doux, and stolen interviews.
Let us take our nominal friends, Marco
and Todaro, and attend them in their solemn
promenade under the arcades of the Pro-
curatie, or upon the Molo, whither they go
every evening to taste the air and to look at
the ladies, while the Austrians and the other
foreigners listen to the military music in the
Piazza. They are both young, our friends ;
they have both glossy silk hats ; they have
both light canes and an innocent swagger.
Inconceivably mild are these youth, and in
their talk indescribably small and common-
place.
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They look at the ladies, and suddenly
Todaro feels the consuming ardors of love.
Todaro (to Marco). Here, dear! Be-
hold this beautiful blonde here ! Beautiful
as an angel ! But what loveliness !
Marco. But where ?
Todaro. It is enough. Let us go. I fol-
low her.
Such is the force of the passion in southern
hearts. They follow that beautiful blonde,
who, marching demurely in front of the
gray-mustached papa and the fat mamma,
after the fashion in Venice, is electricaUy
conscious of pursuit. They follow her dur-
ing the whole evening, and, at a distance,
softly follow her home, where the burning
Todaro photographs the number of the house
upon the sensitized tablets of his souL
This is the first great step in love: he
has seen his adored one, and he knows that
he loves her with an inextinguishable ardor.
The next advance is to be decided between
himself and the faithful Marco, and is to be
debated over many cups of black coffee, not
to name glasses of sugar-and-water and the
like exciting beverages. The friends may
now find out the caffi which the Biondina
frequents with her parents, and to which
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182 VENETIAN LIFE
Todaro may go every evening and feast Hs
eyes upon her loveliness, never making his
regard known by any word, till some night,
when he has followed her home, he steals
speech with her as he stands in the street
under her balcony, — and looks sufficiently
sheepish as people detect him on their late
return from the theatre.^ Or, if the friends
do not take this course in their courtship
(for they are both engaged in the wooing),
they decide that Todaro, after walking back
and forth a sufficient number of times in the
street where the Biondina lives, shall write
her a tender letter, to demand if she be dis-
posed to correspond his love. This billet
must always be conveyed to her by her serv-
ing-maid, who must be bribed by Marco for
the purpose. At every juncture Marco must
be consulted, and acquainted with every step
of progress ; and no doubt the Biondina has
some lively Moretta for her friend, to whom
she confides her part of the love-affair in all
its intricacy.
It may likewise happen that Todaro shall
go to see the Biondina in church, whither,
but for her presence, he would hardly go,
1 The love-making scenes in Goldoni's comedy of H Bugi-
ardo are photographically faithful to present usage in Venice
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LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING 188
and that there, though he may not have
speech with her, he shall still fan the ardors
of her curiosity and pity by persistent sighs.
It must be confessed that if the Biondina is
not pleased with his looks, his devotion must
assume the character of an intolerable bore
to her, and that to see him everywhere at
her heels; to behold him leaning against
the pillar near which she kneels at church,
the head of his stick in his mouth, and his
attitude carefully taken with a view to cap-
tivation; to be always in deadly fear lest
she shall meet him in promenade, or, turn-
ing round at the caffe^ encounter his plead-
ing gaze, — that all this must drive the Bion-
dina to a state bordering upon blasphemy
and finger-nails. Ma^ conie si fa ? Ci vuol
pazienza 1 This is the sole course open to
ingenuous youth in Venice, where confessed
and unashamed acquaintance between young
people is extremely difficult; and so this
blind pursuit must go on, till the Biondi-
na's inclinations are at last laboriously ascer-
tained.
Suppose the Biondina consents to be
loved? Then Todaro has just and proper
inquiries to make concerning her dower, and
if her fortune is as pleasing as herself, he
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134 VENETIAN LIFE
has odIj to demand her in marriage of her
father, and after that to make her acquain-
tance.
One day a Venetian friend of mine, who
spoke a little English, came to me with a
joyous air, and said : —
" 1 am in lofe."
The recipient of repeated confidences of
this kind from the same person, I listened
with tempered effusion,
" It is a blonde again ? "
" Yes, you have right ; blonde again."
" And pretty ? "
" Oh, but beautiful. I lofe her — come si
dice I — immenaamentey
"And where did you see her? Where
did you make her acquaintance ? "
"I have not make the acquaintance. I
see her pass with his f azer every night on
Eialto Bridge. We did not spoke yet —
only with the eyes. The lady is not of Ven-
ice. She has four thousand florins. It is
not much — no. But ! "
Is not this love at first sight almost idyllic?
Is it not also a sublime prudence to know
the lady's fortune better than herself, before
herself ? These passionate, headlong Italians
look well to the main chance before they
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A Comer of ike RiaUo
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i
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LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING 136
leap into matrimonj, and you may be sure
Todaro knows, in black and white, what the
Biondina has to her fortune before he weds
her. Aft^r that may come the marriage,
and the sonnet written by the next of friend-
ship, and printed to hang up in all the shop-
windows, celebrating the auspicious event.
If he be rich, or can write nobile after his
Christian name, perhaps some abbate, ele-
gantly addicted to verses and alive to grate-
ful consequences, may publish a poem, ele-
gantly printed by the matchless printers at
Eovigo, and send it to all the bridegroom's
friends. It is not the only event which the
facile Venetian Muse shall sing for him. If
his child is brought happily through the
measles by Dottor Cavasangue, the Nine
shall celebrate the fact. If he takes any
public honor or scholastic degree, it is equal
occasion for verses; and when he dies the
mortuary rhyme shall follow him. Indeed,
almost every occurrence — a boy's success at
school, an advocate's triumphal passage of
the perils of examination at Padua, a priest's
first mass, a nun's novitiate, a birth, an am-
putation — is the subject of tuneful effusion,
and no less the occasion of a visit from the
facchini of the neighboring campo, who as-
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186 VENETIAN LIFE
semble with blare of trumpets and tumult
of voices around the victim's door, and pro-
claim bis skill or good fortune, and break
into vivas that never end till he bribes their
enthusiasm into silence. The naive common*
placeness of feeling in all matrimonial trans-
actions, in spite of the gloss which the oper-
atic methods of courtship threw about them,
was a source of endless amusement, as it
stole out in different ways. ** You know my
friend Marco ? " asked an acquaintance one
day. " Well, we are looking out a wife for
him. He does n't want to marry, but his
father insists ; and he has begged us to find
somebody. There are three of us on the
lookout. But he hates women, and is very
hard to suit. Ben I Ci vuol pazienza 1 "
It rarely happens now that the religious
part of the marriage ceremony is not per-
formed in church, though it may be per-
formed at the house of the bride. In this
case, it usually takes place in the evening,
and the spouses attend five o'clock mass next
morning. But if the marriage takes place
at the church, it must be between five and
eleven in the morning, and the blessing is
commonly pronounced about six o'clock.
Civil marriage is still unknown among the
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BAPTISMS AND BURIALS 137
Venetians. It is entirely the afiEair of the
Church, in which the bans are published be-
forehand, and which exacts from the can-
didates a preliminary visit to their parish
priest, for examination in their catechism,
and for instruction in religion when they are
defective in knowledge of the kind. There
is no longer any civil publication of the be-
trothals, and the hand-shaking in the court
of the Ducal Palace has long been disused,
I cannot help thinking that the ceremony
must have been a great affliction, and that
in the Republican times at Venice a bride-
groom must have fared nearly as hard as a
President elect in our times at home.
There was a curious display on occasion of
births among the nobility in former times.
The room of the young mother was deco-
rated with a profusion of paintings, sculp-
ture, and jewelry ; and, while yet in bed, she
received the congratulations of her friends,
and regaled them with sweetmeats served in
vases of gold and silver.
The child of noble parents had always at
least two godfathers, and sometimes as many
as a hundred and fifty ; but in order that
the relationship of godfather (which is the
same, according to the canonical law, as a tie
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188 VENETIAN LIFE
of consanguinity) should not prevent desira-
ble matrimony between nobles, no patrician
was allowed to be godfather to another^s
child. Consequently the compare was usu-
ally a client of the noble parent, and was
not expected to make any present to the god-
child, whose father, on the day following the
baptism, sent him a piece of marchpane, in
acknowledgment of their relationship. No
women were present at the baptism except
those who had charge of the babe. After
the fall of the Kepublic, the French custom
of baptism in the parents' house was intro-
duced, as well as the custom, on the god-
father's part, of giving a present, — usually
of sugar-plums and silver toys. But I think
that most baptisms still take place in church,
if I may judge from the numbers of tight
little glass cases I have noticed, — half bed
and half coffin, — containing little eight-day-
old Venetians, closely swathed in mummy-
like bandages, and borne to and from the
churches by mysterious old women. The
ceremony of baptism itself does not appar-
ently differ from that in other Catholic coun-
tries, and is performed, like all religious ser-
vices in Italy, without a ray of religious
feeling or solemnity of any kind.
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BAPTISM a AND BURIALS 189
For many centuries funeral services in
Venice have been conducted by the Scuole
del Sacramento, instituted for that purpose.
To one of these societies the friends of the
defunct pay a certain sum, and the associa-
tion engages to inter the dead and bear all
the expenses of the ceremony, the dignity of
which is regulated by the priest of the parish
in which the deceased lived. The rite is
now most generally undertaken by the Scu-
ola di San Rocco. The funeral train is of
ten or twenty yaccAi/ii, wearing tunics of
white, with caps and capes of red, and bear-
ing the society's long, gilded candlesticks
of wood, with lighted tapers. Priests fol-
low them, chanting prayers, and then comes
the bier, with a gilt crown lying on the
coffin, if the dead be a babe^ to indicate
the triumph of innocence. Formerly hired
mourners attended, and a candle weighing a
pound was given to any one who chose to
carry it in the procession.
Anciently there was great show of mourn-
ing in Venice for the dead, when, according
to Mutinelli, the friends and kinsmen of the
deceased, having seen his body deposited in
the church, " fell to weeping and howling,
tore their hair and rent their clothes, and
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140 VENETIAN LIFE
withdrew forever from that church, thence-
forth become for them a place of abominar
tion.'' Decenter customs prevailed in after-
times, and there was a pathetic dignity in
the ceremony of condolence among patri-
cians: the mourners, on the day following
the interment, repaired to the porticos of
Rialto and the court of the Ducal Palace,
and their friends came, one after one, and
expressed their sympathy by a mute pres-
sure of the hand.
Death, however, is hushed up as much as
possible in modem Venice. The corpse is
hurried from the house of mourning to the
parish church, where the friends, after the
funeral service, take leave of it. Then it is
placed in a boat and carried to the burial-
ground, where it is quickly interred. I was
fortunate, therefore, in witnessing a cheerful
funeral, at which I one day casually assisted,
at San Michele. There was a church on
this island as early as the tenth century, and
in the thirteenth century it fell into the
possession of the Comandulensen Friars.
They built a monastery on it, which became
famous as a seat of learning, and gave much
erudite scholarship to the world. In later
times Pope Gregory XVI. carried his pro-
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BAPTISMS AND BURIALS 141
found learning from San Michele to the
Vatican. The present church is in the Re-
naissance style, but not very offensively so,
and has some indifferent paintings. The
arcades and the courts around which it is
built contain funeral monuments as unutter-
ably ugly and tasteless as anything of the
kind I ever saw at home ; but the dead, for
the most part, lie in graves marked merely
by little iron crosses in the narrow and roof-
less space walled in from the lagoon, which
laps sluggishly at the foot of the masonry
with the impulses of the tide. The old mon-
astery was abolished in 1810, and there is
now a convent of Reformed Benedictines on
the island, who perform the last service for
the dead.
On the day of which I speak, I was taking
a friend to see the objects of interest at San
Michele, which I had seen before, and the
funeral procession touched at the riva of the
church just as we arrived. The procession
was of one gondola only, and the pall-bear-
ers were four pleasant ruffians in scarlet
robes of cotton, hooded, and girdled at the
waist. They were accompanied by a priest
of a broad and jolly countenance, two grin-
ning boys, and finally the corpse itself,
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142 VENETIAN LIFE
severely habited in an under-dress of black
box, but wearing an outer garment of red
velvet, bordered and tasselled gayly. The
pleasant ruffians (who all wore smoking-caps
with some other name) placed this holiday
corpse upon a bier, and after a lively dispute
with our gondolier, in which the compliments
of the day were passed in the usual terms of
Venetian chaff, lifted the bier on shore and
set it down. The priest followed with the
two boys, whom he rebuked for levity, simul-
taneously tripping over the Latin of a prayer,
with his eyes fixed on our harmless little
party as if we were a funeral, and the dead
in the black box an indifferent spectator.
Then he popped down upon his knees and
made us a lively little supplication, while a
blind beggar scuffled for a lost soldo about
his feet, and the gondoliers quarrelled volu-
bly. After which he threw off his surplice
with the air of one who should say his day's
work was done, and preceded the coffin into
the church.
We had hardly deposited the bier upon
the floor in the centre of the nave, when two
pale young friars appeared, throwing off
their hooded cloaks of coarse brown, as they
passed to the sacristy, and reappearing in
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BAPTISMS AND BURIALS 148
their rope-girdled gowns. One of them bore
a lighted taper in his right hand and a book
in his left ; the other had also a taper, but a
pot of holy water instead of the book.
They are very handsome young men, these
monks, with heavy, sad eyes and graceful,
slender figures, which their monastic life
will presently overload with gross humanity
full of coarse appetites. They go and stand
beside the bier, giving a curious touch of so-
lemnity to a scene composed of the four
pleasant rufiBans in the loaferish postures
which they have learned as facchini waiting
for jobs, of the two boys with inattentive
grins, and of the priest with wandering eyes,
kneeling behind them.
A weak, thin-voiced organ pipes huskily
from its damp loft ; the monk hurries rap-
idly over the Latin text of the service, while
** His breath to heaven like vapor goes ''
on the chilly, humid air ; and the other monk
makes the responses, giving and taking the
sprinkler, which his chief shakes vaguely in
the direction of the cofBn. They both bow
their heads, — shaven down to the temples,
to simulate His crown of thorns. Silence.
The organ is still ; the priest has vanished ;
the tapers are blown out; the pall-bearers
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lay hold of the bier, and raise it to their
shoulders; the boys slouch into procession
behind them; the monks glide softly and
dispiritedly away. The soul is prepared for
eternal life, and the body for the grave.
The ruffians are expansively gay on reach-
ing the open air again. They laugh, they
call " Ci6 ! " ^ continually, and banter each
other as they trot to the grave.
The boys follow them, gambolling among
the little iron crosses, and trying if here and
there one of them may not be overthrown.
We two strangers follow the boys.
But here the pall-bearers become puzzled :
on the right is an open trench, on the left is
an open trench.
" Presence of the Devil I To which grave
1 Literally, That in Italian, and meaning in Venetian,
You I Heigh ! To talk in Cib ciappa is to assame insolent
familiarity or anbounded good fellowship with the person ad-
dressed. A Venetian says Cid a thousand times in a day,
and hails every one but his superior in that way. I think it
is hardly the Italian pronoun, but rather a contraction of
Veccio (vecchio), Old fellow ! It is common with all classes
of the people : parents use it in speaking to their children,
and brothers and sisters call one another Cib. It is a saluta-
tion between friends, who cry out Cib ! as they pass in the
street. Acquaintances, men who meet after separation, rush
together with "-4A CidP^ Then they kiss on the right
cheek, " Cib!'' on the left, " CibP' on the lips, " Cidf Bon
diCib!"
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BAPTISMS AND BURIALS 145
does this dead belong ? " They discuss, they
dispute, they quarrel.
From the side of the wall, as if he rose
from the sea, appears the grave-digger, with
his shovel on his shoulder, — slouching to-
ward us.
" Ah heigh ! Cid^ the grave - digger I
Where does this dead belong?"
" Body of Bacchus, what potatoes ! Here,
in this trench to the right."
They set down the bier there, gladly.
They strip away the cofl&n's gay upper gar-
ment; they leave but the under-dress of
black box, painted to that favor with pitch.
They shove it into the grave-digger's arms,
where he stands in the trench, in the soft
earth, rich with bones. He lets it slide
swiftly to the ground — thump ! Eccofatto !
The two boys pick up the empty bier, and
dance merrily away with it to the riva gate,
feigning a little play after the manner of
children, — " Oh, what a beautiful dead ! "
The eldest of the pleasant ruffians is all
the pleasanter for sciampagnin^ and can
hardly be persuaded to go out at the right
gate.
We strangers stay behind a little, to con-
sult with another spectator, — Venetian, this.
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146 VENETIAN LIFE
" Who is the dead man, signore ? "
" It is a woman, poor little thing ! Dead
in childbed. The baby is in there with
her."
It has been a cheerful funeral, and yet we
are not in great spirits as we go back to the
city.
For my part, I do not think the cry of
sea-gulls on a gloomy day is a joyous sound ;
and the sight of those theatrical angels, with
their shameless, unfinished backs, flying off
the top of the rococo facade of the church of
the Jesuits, has always been a spectacle to
fill me with despondency and foreboding.
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHABACTEBS
[ N a small canal, not far from the
railroad station, the gondoliers
show you a house, by no means
notable (except for the noble
statue of a knight, occupying a niche in one
comer), as the house of Othello. It was
once the palace of the patrician family Moro,
a name well known in the annals of the Re-
public, and one which, it has been suggested,
misled Shakespeare into the invention of a
Moor of Venice. Whether this is possibly
the fact, or whether there is any tradition
of a tragic incident in the history of the
Moro family similar to that upon which the
play is founded, I do not know ; but it is
certain that the story of Othello, very nearly
as Shakespeare tells it, is popularly known
in Venice; and the gondoliers have fixed
upon the Casa Moro in question as the edi-
fice best calculated to give satisfaction to
strangers in search of the True and the
Memorable. The statue is happily dark-
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148 VENETIAN LIFE
ened by time, and thus serves admirably to
represent Othello's complexion, and to place
beyond the shadow of a doubt the fact of
his residence in the house. Indeed, what
can you say to the gondolier, who, in answer
to your cavils, points to the knight, with the
convincing argument, ^^ There is his statue I "
One day I was taken to see this house, in
company with some friends, and when it had
been victoriously pointed out, as usual, we
asked meekly, " Who was Othello ? "
" Othello, Signori," answered the gondo-
lier, " was a general of the Republic, in the
old times. He was an African, and black ;
but nevertheless the State valued him, and
he beat the Turks in many battles. Well,
Signori, this General OtheUo had a very
young and beautiful wife, and his wife's
cousin (aic/) Cassio was his major-domo,
or, as some say, his lieutenant. But after a
while happens along (capita) another soldier
of Othello, who wants Cassio's employment,
and so accuses him to the general of corrupt-
ing his wife. Very well, Signori ! Without
thinking an instant, Othello, being made so,
flew into a passion (si riacaldd la testacy
and killed his wife ; and then when her inno<
cence came out, he killed himself and that
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VENETIAN TBAITS AND CHARACTERS 149
liar ; and the State confiscated his goods, he
being a very rich man. There has been a
tragedy written about all this, you know."
"But how is it called? Who wrote it?"
"Oh! in regard to that, then, I don't
know. Some Englishman."
"Shakespeare?"
" I don't know, Signori. But if you doubt
what I tell you, go to any bookseller, and
say, * Favor me with the tragedy of Othello.'
He will give it you, and there you will find
it all written out just as I tell it."
This gondolier confirmed the authenticity
of his story by showing us the house of
Cassio near the Kialto Bridge, and I have
no doubt he would also have pointed out that
of lago if we had wished it.
But as a general thing, the lore of the
gondoUers is not rich nor very great. They
are a loquacious and a gossiping race, but
they love better to have a quiet chat at the
tops of their voices, as they loaf idly at the
ferries, or to scream repartees across the
Grrand Canal, than to tell stories. In all
history that relates to localities they are
sufficiently versed to find the notable places
for strangers, but beyond this they trouble
themselves as little with the past as with the
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160 VENETIAN LIFE
future. Three tragic legends, however, they
know, and will tell with the most amusing
effect, namely: Biasio, luganegher^ the In-
nocent Baker-Boy, and Veneranda Porta.
The first of these legends is that of a
sausage-maker who flourished in Venice some
centuries ago, and who improved the quality
of the broth which the luganegheri make of
their scraps and sell to the gondoliers, by
cutting up into it now and then a child of
some neighbor. He was finally detected by
a gondolier who discovered a little finger in
his broth, and being brought to justice was
dragged through the city at the heels of a
wild horse. This most uncomfortable char-
acter appears to be the first hero in the ro-
mance of the gondoliers, and he certainly de-
serves to rank with that long line of imag-
inary personages who have made childhood
so wretched and tractable. The second is
the Innocent Baker-Boy already named, who
was put to death on suspicion of having
murdered a noble, because in the dead man's
heart was found a dagger fitting a sheath
which the baker had picked up in the street,
on the morning of the murder, and kept in
his possession. Many years afterwards, a
malefactor who died in Padua coufessed the
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CffABACTERS 161
murder, and thereupon two lamps were
lighted before a shrine in the southern fa-
cade of St. Mark's Church, — one for the
murdered nobleman's soul, and the other for
that of the innocent boy. Such is the gon-
doliers' story, and the lamps still bum every
night before the shrine from dark till dawn,
in witness of its truth. The fact of the mur-
der and its guiltless expiation is an incident
of Venetian history, and it is said that the
Council of the Ten never pronounced a sen-
tence of death thereafter till they had been
solemnly warned by one of their number
with " Hicordatevi del povero Fomaretto I "
(Remember the poor Baker-Boy !) The poet
Dall 'Ongaro has woven the story into a
beautiful and touching tragedy; but I be-
lieve the poet is still to be bom who shall
take from the gondoliers their Veneranda
Porta, and place her historic figure in dra-
matic literature. Veneranda Porta was a
lady of the days of the E^public, between
whom and her husband existed an incom-
patibility. This was increased by the course
of Signora Porta in taking a lover, and it at
last led to the assassination of the husband
by the paramours. The head of the mur-
dered man was found in one of the canals,
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152 VENETIAN LIFE
and being exposed, as the old costom i^eas,
upon the granite pedestal at the comer of
St. Mark's Church, it was recognized by his
brother, who found among the papers on
which the long hair was curled fragments of
a letter he had written to the deceased. The
crime was traced to the paramours, and, be-
ing brought before the Ten, they were both
condemned to be hanged between the col-
umns of the Piazzetta. The gondoliers re-
late that when the sentence was pronounced
Veneranda said to the Chief of the Ten,
" But as for me this sentence will never be
carried out. You cannot hang a woman.
Consider the impropriety 1 " The Venetian
rulers were wise men in their generation,
and far from being balked by this question
of delicacy, the Chief replied, solving it,
"My dear, you shall be hanged in my
breeches."
It is very coarse salt which keeps one of
these stories; another is remembered be-
cause it concerns one of the people ; and an-
other for its abomination and horror. The
incidents of Venetian history which take the
fancy and touch the sensibility of the world
seem hardly known to the gondoliers, the
most intelligent and quick-witted of the
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 158
populace, and themselves the very stuff that
some romantic dreams of Venice are made
of. However sad the fact, it is undeni-
able that the stories of the sausage-maker
whose broth was flavored with murder, and
the baker-boy who suffered guiltlessly, and
that savage jest at the expense of the mur-
deress, interest these people more than the
high, well-bom sorrows of the Foscari, the
tragic fate of Carmagnola, or the story of
Falier, — which last they know partly, how-
ever, because of the scandal about Falier's
wife. Yet after all, though the gondoliers
are not the gondoliers of imaginative lit-
erature, they have qualities which recom-
mended them to my liking, and I look back
upon my acquaintance with two or three of
them in a very friendly spirit. Compared
with the truculent hackmen, who prey upon
the travelling public in all other cities of the
civilized world, they are eminently intelligent
and amiable. Rogues they are, of course,
for small dishonesties are the breath in the
nostrils of conmion carriers by land or water,
everywhere ; but the trickery of the gon-
doliers is so good-natured and simple that
it can hardly offend. A very ordinary jocu-
lar sagacity defeats their profoundest pur-
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164 VENETIAN LIFE
poses of swindling, and no one enjoys their
exposure half so much as themselyes, while
a faint prospect of future employment puri-
fies them of every trait of dishonesty. I had
only one troublesome experience with them,
and that was in the case of the old gondo-
lier who taught me to row. He, when 1 had
no longer need of his services, plimged into
drunkenness, and came and dismissed me
one day with every mark of ignominy. But
he afterwards forgave me, and saluted me
kindly when we met.
The immediate goal of every gondolier's
ambition is to serve, no matter for how short
a time, an Inglese, by which generic title
nearly all foreigners except Germans are
known to him. The Inglese, whether he be
EngUsh or American, is apt to make the
tour of the whole city in a gondola, and to
give handsome drink money at the end;
whereas your Tedesco frugally walks to
every place accessible by land, or when, in a
party of six or eight, he takes a gondola,
plants himself upon the letter of the tariff,
and will give no more than the rate fixed by
law. The gondolier is therefore flowingly
polite to the Inglese, and he is even civil to
the Tedesco ; but he is not at all bound in
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 155
courtesy to that provincial Italian who comes
from the country to Venice, bargains furi-
ously for his boat, and commonly pays under
the tariff. The Venetian who does not him-
self keep ^ gondola seldom hires one, and
even on this rare occasion makes no lavish
demand such as, " How much do you want
for taking me to the railway station ? " Lest
the fervid imagination of the gondolier rise
to zwanzigers and florins, and a tedious dis-
pute ensue, he asks, " How many centissimi
do you want ? " and the contract is made
for a number of ^ soldi.
The number of private gondolas owned in
Venice is not very great. The custom is
rather to hire a gondolier with his boat.
The exclusive use of the gondola is thus se-
cured, and the gondolier gives his services
as a domestic when off his special duty. He
waits at table, goes marketing, takes the
children to school, and serves the ladies as
footman, for five francs a day, himself pay-
ing the proprietor of the gondola about a
franc daily for the boat. In former times,
when Venice was rich and prosperous, many
noble families kept six or seven gondolas;
and what with this service, and the numer-
ous galardays of the Republic, when the
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166 VENETIAN LIFE
whole city took boat for the Lido, or the
Giudecca, or Murano, and the gondoliers
were allowed to exact any pay they could,
they were a numerous and prosperous class.
But these times have passed from Venice
forever, and though the gondoliers are still,
counting the boatmen of Giudecca and Lido,
some thousands in number, there are com-
paratively few young men among them, and
their gains are meagre.
In the little city of Venice, where the dia-
lect spoken at Canareggio or Castello is a
different tongue from that heard imder the
Procuratie of St. Mark's Place, the boatmen
of the several quarters of the city of course
vary greatly in character and appearance;
and the gondolier who lounges at the base
of the columns of the Piazzetta, and airily
invites the Inglesi to tours of the Grand
Canal, is of quite a different type from
the weather-beaten harcaiuolo who croaks
" Barca 1 " at the promenaders on the Zat-
tere. But all, as I say, are simple and harm-
less enough, and however loudly they quar-
rel among themselves, they never pass from
the defamation of their female relatives to
blows. As for the game of knives, as it is
said to be played at Naples, and as About
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 157
describes it at Some, I doubt if it is much
known to the populace of Venice. Only
the doctors let blood there, — though from
their lancets it flows pretty freely and con-
stantly.
It is true that the gondolier loves best of
everything a clamorous quarrel, carried on
with the canal between him and his antago-
nist ; but next to this he loves to spend his
leisure at the ferry in talking of eating and
of money, and he does not differ from many
of his fellow-citizens in choice of topics. I
have seldom caught a casual expression from
passers in the streets of Venice which did not
relate in some way to gold Napoleons, zwan-
zigers, florins, or soldi, or else to wine and
polenta. I note this trait in the Venetians,
which Goldoni observed in the Milanese a
hundred years ago, and which I incline to
believe is conmion to all Italians. The gon-
doliers talk a great deal in figure and hyper-
bole, and their jocose chaff is quite inscru-
table, even to some classes of Venetians.
With foreigners, to whom the silence and
easy progress of the gondola gives them the
opportunity to talk, they are fond of using a
word or two of French. They are quick at
repartee, and have a clever answer ready
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168 VENETIAN LIFE
for most occasions. I was one day bargain-
ing for a boat to the Lido, whither I refused
to be taken in a shabby gondola, or at a rate
higher than seventy-five soldi for the trip.
At last the patience of the gondoliers was
exhausted, and one of them called out,
" Somebody fetch the Bucintoro, and take
this gentleman to the Lido for seventy-five
soldi ! " (The Bucintoro being the magnifi-
cent barge in which the Doge went to wed
the Adriatic.)
The skill with which the gondoliers man-
age their graceful craft is always admired
by strangers, and is certainly remarkable.
The gondola is very long and slender, and
rises high from the water at either end.
Both bow and stem are sharp, the former
being ornamented with that deeply serrated
blade of steel which it is the pride of the gon-
dolier to keep bright as silver, and the poop
having a small platform not far behind the
cabin, on which he stands when he rows.
The danger of collision has always obliged
Venetian boatmen to face the bow, and the
stroke with the oar (for the gondolier uses
only a single oar) is made by pushing, and
not by pulling. No small degree of art (as
I learnt from experience) is thus required
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 159
to keep the gondola's head straight, — all
the strokes being made on one side, — and
the sculling return of the oar-blade prepara-
tory for each new stroke is extremely diffi-
cult to effect. Under the hands of the gon-
dolier, however, the gondola seems a living
thing, full of grace and winning movement.
The wood-work of the little cabin is elabo*
rately carved, and it is usually furnished
with mirrors and seats luxuriously cushioned.
The sensation of the gondola's progress felt
by the occupant of the cabin, as he falls
back upon these cushions, may be described,
to the female apprehension at least, as ^^ too
divine." The cabin is removable at pleas-
ure, and is generally taken off and replaced
by awnings in smnmer. But in the evening,
when the fair Venetians go out in their gon-
dolas to take the air, even this awning is
dispensed with, and the long, slender boat
glides darkly down the Grand Canal, bear-
ing its dazzling freight of white tulle^ pale-
faced, black-eyed beauty, and flashing jew-
els, in full view.
As for the singing of the gondoliers, they
are the only class of Venetians who have
not good voices, and I am scarcely inclined
to regret the silence which long ago fell
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160 VENETIAN LIFE
upon them. I am quite satisfied with the
peculiar note of warning which they utter as
they approach the comer of a canal, and
which, meaning simply, " To the Eight," or
" To the Left," is the most pathetic and
melancholy sound in the world. If, putting
aside my own comfort, I have sometimes
wished, for the sake of a dear, sentimental
old friend at home, who loves such idle illu-
sions with an ardor imbecoming his years,
that I might hear the voice
'^ of Adria's gondolier,
By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep,*'
I must still confess that I never did hear it
imder similar circumstances, except in con-
versation across half a mile of lagoon, when,
as usual, the burden of the lay was polenta
or soldi.
A recent Venetian writer, describing the
character of the lower classes of Venice,
says : *' No one can deny that our populace
is loquacious and quick-witted ; but, on the
other hand, no one can deny that it is re-
gardless of improvement. Venice, a city
exceptional in its construction, its customs,
and its habits, has also an exceptional pop-
ulace. It still feels, although sixty-eight
years have passed, the influence of the sys-
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ij
Gondoliers
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. i
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 161
tern of the fallen Republic, of that oligarchic
government, which, affording almost every
day some amusement to the people, left
them no time to think of their offended
rights. . . . Since 1859 Venice has resem-
bled a sepulchre of the living, — squalor
and beggary gaining ground with each day,
and commerce, with few exceptions, con-
verted into monopoly ; yet the populace re-
mains attached to its old habits, and will
have its pleasure. If the earnings are little,
what then? Must one die of ennui? The
caffe is depopulated : not so the drinking-
house. The last day before the drawing of
the lottery, the offices are thronged with
fathers and mothers of families, who stint
their children of bread to buy dearly a few
hours of golden illusion. ... At the worst,
there is the Monte di Pieta, as a last re-
sort."
It is true, as this writer says, that the
pleasure-loving populace looks back fondly
to the old Republican times of feasting and
holidays ; but there is certainly no truth
any more in the old idea that any part of
Italy is a place wher^ people may be " idle
with impunity," or make amusement the se-
rious business of lite. I can remember that
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162 VENETIAN LIFE
the book from which I received my first im-
pressions of geography was illuminated with
a picture professing to represent Italian cus-
toms. The spirit of inquiry had long before
caused me to doubt the exact fidelity of this
representation ; but it cost me a pang to
learn that the picture was utterly delusive.
It has been no part of my experience in
Venice to see an Italian sitting upon the
ground, and strumming thei guitar, while
two gayly dressed peasants danced to the
music. Indeed, the indolence of Venetians
is listless and silent, not playful or joyous ;
and as I learned to know their life more
intimately, I came to understand that in
many cases they are idle from despair of
finding work, and that indolence is as much
their fate as their fault. Any diligence of
theirs is surprising to us of northern and
free lands, because their climate subdues and
enervates us, and because we can see before
them no career open to intelligent industry.
"With the poorest, work is necessarily a
hand-to-hand struggle against hunger ; with
those who would not absolutely starve with-
out it, work is an inexplicable passion.
Partly because the ways of these people
are so childlike and simple in many things,
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 163
and partly from one's own swindling ten-
dency to take one's self in (a tendency really
fatal to all sincerity of judgment, and in-
calculably mischievous to such downfallen
peoples as have felt the baleful effects of the
world's sentimental, impotent sympathy),
there is something pathetic in the patient
content with which Italians work. They
have naturally so large a capacity for enjoy-
ment that the degree of self-denial involved
in labor seems exorbitant, and one feels that
these children, so loved of Nature, and so
gifted by her, are harshly dealt with by their
stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there
ought to be tioith in the silly old picture, if
there is none, and I would willingly make-
believe to credit it, if I could. I am glad
that they at least work in old-world, awk-
ward, picturesque ways, and not in common-
place, handy, modem fashion. Neither the
habits nor the implements of labor are
changed since the progress of the Republic
ceased, and her heart began to die within
her. All sorts of mechanics' tools are clumsy
and inconvenient : the turner's lathe moves
by broken impulses ; door-hinges are made
to order, and lift the door from the ground
as it opens upon them ; all nails and tacks
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164 VENETIAN LIFE
are hand-made ; window-sashes are contrived
to be glazed without putty, and the panes
are put in from the top, so that to repair a
broken glass the whole sash is taken apart ;
cooking-stoves are unknown to the native
cooks, who work at an open fire, with crane
and dangling pot-hooks ; furniture is put to-
gether with wooden pegs instead of screws ;
you do not buy a door-lock at a hardware
store, — you get a fahbro to make it, and
he comes with a leathern satchel full of tools
to fit and finish it on the door. The wheel-
barrow of this civilization is peculiarly won-
derful in construction, with a prodigious
wooden wheel, and a ponderous, incapable
body. The canals are dredged with scoops
mounted on long poles, and manned each by
three or four Chiozzotti. There never was
a pile-driving machine known in Venice;
nor a steam-tug in all the channels of the
lagoons, through which the largest craft are
towed to and from the ports by row-boats.
In the model of the sea-going vessels there
has apparently been little change from the
first. Yet in spite of all this backwardness
in invention, the city is full of beautiful
workmanship in every branch of artificing,
and the Venetians are still the best sailors
in the Adriatic.
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 165
I do not offer the idea as a contribution
to statistics, but it seems to me that the most
active branch of industry in Venice is pluck-
ing fowls. In summer the people all work
on their thresholds, and in their windows,
and as nearly out-of-doors as the narrowness
of the streets will let them ; and it is hard
to pass through any part of the city without
coming to a poulterer's shop, in the door of
which inevitably sits a boy, tugging at the
plumage of some wretched bird. He is sel-
dom to be seen except in that crisis of pluck-
ing when he seems to have all but finished ;
yet he seems never to accomplish the fact
perfectly. Perhaps it is part of his hard
fate that the feathers shall grow again under
his hand as fast as he plucks them away:
at the restaurants, I know, the quantity of
plumage one devours in consuming roast
chicken is surprising — at first. The birds
are always very lean, too, and have but a
languid and weary look, in spite of the ardent
manner in which the boy clasps them while
at work. It may be that the Venetians do
not like fat poultry. Their turkeys, espe-
cially, are of that emaciation which is at-
tributed among ourselves only to the turkey
of Job ; and as for the geese and ducks, they
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166 VENETIAN LIFE
can only interest anatomists. It is as if the
long ages of incursion and oppression wliich
have impoverished and devastated Italy had
at last taken effect upon the poultry, and
made it as poor as the population.
I do not want to give too exclusive an im-
pression of Venetian industry, however, for
now I remember the Venetian lasagnoni^
whom I never saw doing anything, and who
certainly abound in respectable numbers.
The laaagnone is a loafer, as an Italian
can be a loafer, without the admixture of
ruffianism, which blemishes most loafers of
northern race. He may be quite worthless,
and even impertinent, but he cannot be a
rowdy, — that pleasing blossom on the nose
of our fast, high-fed, thick-blooded civiliza-
tion. In Venice he must not be confounded
with other loiterers at the caffe ; not with
the natty people who talk politics intermina-
bly over little cups of black coffee ; not with
those old habituSa^ who sit forever under the
Procuratie, their hands folded upon the tops
of their sticks, and staring at the ladies who
pass with a curious steadfastness and know-
ing skepticism of gaze not pleasing in the
dim eyes of age ; certainly, the last persons
who bear any likeness to the lasagnone are
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 167
the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces
comically anglicized by leg-of-mutton whis-
kers. The truth is, the lasagnone does not
flourish in the best caffe ; he comes to per-
fection in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly
not rich. It often happens that a glass of
water, flavored with a little anisette, is the
order over which he sits a whole evening.
He knows the waiter intimately, and does
not call him " Shop ! " {Bottegd) as less
familiar people do, but Gigi, or Beppi, as
the waiter is pretty sure to be named. " Be-
hold ! " he says, when the servant places his
modest drink before him, " who is that love-
liest blonde there ? " Or to his fellow-Za«a-
gnone: "She regards me! I have broken
her the heart I " This is his sole business
and mission, the cruel lasagnone^ — to break
ladies the heart. He spares no condition,
— neither rank nor wealth is any defence
against him. I often wonder what is in that
note he continually shows to his friend. The
confession of some broken heart, I think.
When he has folded it, and put it away, he
chuckles "J.A, cara 1 " and sucks at his long,
slender Virginia cigar. It is unlighted, for
fire consmnes cigars. I never see him read
the papers, — neither the Italian papers nor
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168 VENETIAN LIFE
the Parisian journals, though if he can get
Galignani he is glad, and he likes to pretend
to a knowledge of English, uttering upon
occasion, with great relish, such distinctively
English words as " Yes " and " Not," and
to the waiter, " A-litde-fire-if-you-please."
He sits very late in the caffe^ and he touches
his hat — his curly French hat — to the
company as he goes out with a mild swag-
ger, his cane held lightly in his left hand,
his coat cut snugly to show his hips, and
genteelly swaying with the motion of his
body. He is a dandy, of course, — all Ital-
ians are dandies, — but his vanity is per-
fectly harmless, and his heart is not bad.
He would go half an hour out of his way to
put you in the direction of the Piazza. A
little thing can make him happy : to stand
in the pit at the opera, and gaze at the ladies
in the lower boxes ; to attend the Marion-
ette, or the Malibran Theatre, and imperil
the peace of pretty seamstresses and con^o-
dinas ; to stand at the church doors and
ogle the fair saints as they pass out. Go,
harmless lasagnone^ to thy lodging in some
mysterious height, and break hearts if thou
wilt. They are quickly mended.
Of other vagabonds in Venice, if I had
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 169
my choice, I think I must select a certain
ruffian who deals in dog-flesh, as the nearest
my ideal of what a vagabond should be in
all respects. He stands habitually under the
Old Procuratie, beside a basket of small
puppies in that snuffling and quivering state
which appears to be the favorite condition
of very young dogs, and occupies himself
in conversation with an adjacent dealer in
grapes and peaches, or sometimes fastidiously
engages in trimming the hair upon the closely
shaven bodies of the dogs ; for in Venice it
is the ambition of every dog to look as much
like the Lion of St. Mark as the nature of
the case will permit. My vagabond at times,
makes expeditions to the groups of travellers
always seated in summer before the CaflEd
Horian, appearing at such times with a very
small puppy, — neatly poised upon the palm
of his hand, and winking pensively, — which
he advertises to the company as a " Beauti-
ful Beast," or a " Lovely Babe," according
to the inspiration of his light and pleasant
fancy. I think the latter term is used gen-
erally as a means of ingratiation with the
ladies, to whom my vagabond always shows
a demeanor of agreeable gallantry. I never
saw him sell any of these dogs, nor ever in
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170 VENETIAN LIFE
the least oast down by Hs failure to do so.
His air is grave, bat not severe; there is
even, at times, a certain playfulness in his
manner, possibly attributable to sciUmpor
gnin. His curling black locks, together with
his velveteen jacket and pantaloons, are oiled
and glossy, and his beard is cut in the French
imperial mode. His personal presence is
unwholesome, and it is chiefly his moral per-
fection as a vagabond that makes him fasci-
nating. One is so confident, however, of his
fitness for his position and business, and of
his entire contentment with it, that it is im-
possible not to exult in him.
He is not without self-respect. I doubt,
it would be hard to find any Venetian of any
vocation, however base, who forgets that he
too is a man and a brother. There is enough
servility in the language, — it is the fashion
of the Italian tongue, with its Tu for inferi-
ors. Vol for intimates and friendly equals,
and Lei for superiors, — but in the manner
there is none, and there is a sense of equality
in the ordinary intercourse of the Venetians,
at once apparent to foreigners.
All ranks are orderly; the spirit of ag*
gression seems not to exist among them,
and the very boys and dogs in Venice are
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 171
SO well behaved that I have never seen the
slightest disposition in them to quarrel. Of
course, it is of the street-boy — the hirio
chinOj the boy in his natural, unreclaimed
state — that I speak. This state is here, in
winter, marked by a clouded countenance,
bare head, tatters, and wooden-soled shoes
open at the heels ; in summer by a preter-
natural purity of person, by abandon to the
amphibious pleasure of leaping off the bridges
into the canals, and by an insatiable appe-
tite for polenta^ fried minnows, and water-
melons.
When one of these boys takes to beggary,
as a great many of them do, out of a spirit
of adventure and wish to pass the time, he
carries out the enterprise with splendid dar-
ing. A favorite artifice is to approach
Charity with a slice of polenta in one hand,
and, with the other extended, implore a soldo
to buy cheese to eat with the polenta. The
street-boys also often perform the duties of
the gransierij who draw your gondola to
shore, and keep it firm with a hook. To this
order of beggar I usually gave ; but one day
at the railway station I had no soldi, and as
I did not wish to render my friend discon-
tented with future alms by giving silver, I
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172 VENETIAN LIFE
deliberately apologized, praying him to ex-
cuse me, and promising him for another
time. I cannot forget the lofty courtesy
with which he returned, " S'accomodi pur^
Signor I " They have sometimes a sense of
humor, these poor swindlers, and can enjoy
the exposure of their own enormities. An
amiable rogue drew our gondola to land
one evening when we went too late to see
the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. The
sacristan made us free of a perfectly dark
church, and we rewarded him as if it had
been noonday. On our return to the gon-
dola, the same beggar whom we had just
feed held out his hat for another alms.
" But we have just paid you," we cried in
an agony of grief and desperation. "/Si,
Signori 1 " he admitted, with an air of ar-
gument, " ^ liefto. Ma^ la chiesa I " (Yes,
gentlemen, it is true. But the church !) he
added, with confidential insinuation and a
patronizing wave of the hand toward the ed-
ifice, as if he had been San Giorgio himself,
and held the church as a source of revenue.
This was too much, and we laughed him to
scorn; at which, beholding the amusing
abomination of his conduct, h^ himself joined
in our laugh with a cheerfulness that won
our hearts.
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 173
Beggary is attended by no disgrace in It-
^ aly, and it therefore comes that no mendi-
cant is without a proper degree of the self-
respect common to all classes. Indeed, the
habit of taking gifts of money is so general
and shameless that the street beggars must
be diffident souls indeed if they hesitated to
ask for it. A perfectly well-dressed and
well-mannered man will take ten soldi from
you for a trifling service, and not consider
himself in the least abased. The detestable
custom of largess, instead of wages, still ob-
tains in so great degree in Venice that a
physician, when asked for his account, re-
plies : " What you please to give." Know-
ing these customs, I hope I have never acted
discourteously to the street beggars of Ven-
ice, even when I gave them nothing, and I
know that only one of them ever so far for-
got himself as to curse me for not giving.
Him, however, I think to have been out of
his right mind at the time.
There were two mad beggars in the parish
of San Stefano whom I should be sorry to
leave unmentioned here. One, who presided
chiefly over the Campo San Stefano, pro-
fessed to be also B^facchino^ but I never saw
him employed, except in addressing select
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174 VENETIAN LIFE
circles of idlers whom a brawling noise al-
ways draws together in Venice. He had been «
a soldier, and he sometimes put himself at
the head of a file of Croats passing through
the campo, and gave them the word of com-
mand, to the great amusement of those
swarthy barbarians. He was a good deal in
drink, and when in this state was proud to
go before any ladies who might be passing,
and dear away the boys and idlers, to make
room for them. When not occupied in any
of these ways, he commonly slept in the ar-
cades of the old convent.
But the mad beggar of Campo Sant' An-
gelo seemed to have a finer sense of what
became him as a madman and a beggar, and
never made himself obnoxious by his noise.
He was, in fact, very fat and amiable, and
in the summer lay asleep, for the most part,
at a certain street comer which belonged to
him. When awake he was a man of ex-
tremely complaisant presence, and suffered
no lady to go by without a compliment to
her complexion, her blonde hair, or her
beautiful eyes, whichever it might be. He
got money for these attentions, and people
paid him for any sort of witticism. One
day he said to the richest young dandy of
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 175
the city, " Pah I you stomach me with your
perfumes and fine airs," for which he re-
ceived half a florin. His remarks to gentle-
men had usually this sarcastic flavor. I am
sorry to say that so excellent a madman was
often drunk and unable to fulfil his duties to
society.
There are, of course, laws against mendi-
cancy in Venice, and they are, of course,
never enforced. Beggars abound every-
where, and nobody molests them. There was
long a troop of weird sisters in Campo San
Stefano, who picked up a livelihood from
the foreigners passing to and from the
Academy of Fine Arts. They addressed
people with the title of Count, and no doubt
gained something by this sort of heraldry,
though there are counts in Venice almost as
poor as themselves, and titles are not dis-
tinctions. The Venetian seldom gives to
beggars; he says deliberately, "iVb go^^
(I have nothing), or " Quando ritomerd "
(when I return), and never comes back that
way. I noticed that professional hunger
and cold took this sort of denial very pa-
tiently, as they did every other; but I confess
I had never the heart to practise it. In my
walks to the Public Gardens there was a
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176 VENETIAN LIFE
venerable old man, with the beard and bear-
ing of a patriarch, whom I encountered on
the last bridge of the Kiva, and who there
asked alms of me. When I gave him a
soldo, he returned me a blessing which I
would be ashamed to take in the United
States for half a dollar ; and when the soldo
was in some inaccessible pocket, and I begged
him to await my coming back, he said sweetly,
"Very well. Signer, I will be here." And
I must say, to his credit, that he never broke
his promise, nor suffered me, for shame's
sake, to break mine. He was quite a treas-
ure to me in this respect, and assisted me
to form habits of punctuality.
That exuberance of manner which one
notes, the first thing, in his intercourse with
Venetians characterizes all classes, but is
most excessive and relishing in the poor.
There is a vast deal of ceremony with every
order, and one hardly knows what to do with
the numbers of compliments it is necessary
to respond to. A Venetian does not come
to see you, he comes to revere you ; he not
only asks if you be well when he meets you,
but he bids you remain well at parting, and
desires you to salute for him all common
friends; he reverences you at leave-taking;
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 177
he will sometimes consent to incommode you
with a visit ; he will relieve you of the dis-
turbance when he rises to go. All spontane-
ous wishes which must, with us, take original
forms, for lack of the complimentary phrase,
are formally expressed by him : good appe-
tite to you, when you go to dinner; much en-
joyment, when you go to the theatre ; a pleas-
ant walk, if you meet in promenade. He is
your servant at meeting and parting; he
begs to be commanded when he has misun-
derstood you. But courtesy takes its highest
flights, as I hinted, from the poorest com-
pany. Acquaintances of this sort, when not
on the Cid ciappa footing, or that of the
familiar thee and thou, always address each
other in Lei (lordship), or J57o, as the Vene-
tians have it ; and their compliment-making
at encounter and separation is endless : I sa-
lute you ! Remain well ! Master ! Mistress !
(^Paronl Paronal) being repeated as long
as the polite persons are within hearing.
One day, as we passed through the crowded
Merceria, an old Venetian friend of mine,
who trod upon the dress of a young person
before us, called out, " Scusate^ bella gio-
vane I " (Pardon, beautiful girl !) She was
not so fair nor so young as I have seen
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178 VENETIAN LIFE
women ; but she half turned her face with a
f orgivhig smile, and seemed pleased with the
accident that had won her the amiable apol-
ogy. The waiter of the caffi frequented by
the people says to the ladies for whom he
places seats, ^^Take this place, beautiful
blonde ; " or, " Sit here, lovely brunette,"
as it happens.
A Venetian who enters or leaves any place
of public resort touches his hat to the com-
pany, and one day at the restaurant some
ladies, who had been dining there, said ^^ Com-
plimenti f " on going out, with a grace that
went near to make the beefsteak tender. It
IS this uncostly gentleness of bearing which
gives a winning impression of the whole peo-
ple, whatever selfishness or real discourtesy
lie beneath it. At home it sometimes seems
that we are in such haste to live and be done
with it, we have no time to be polite. Or is
popular politeness merely a vice of servile
peoples ? And is it altogether better to be
rude ? I wish it were not. If you are lost
in his city (and you are pretty sure to be
lost there, continually), a Venetian will go
with you wherever you wish. And he will
do this amiable little service out of what one
may say old civilization has established in *
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 179
place of goodness of heart, but which is per-
haps not so different from it.
You hear people in the streets bless each
other in the most dramatic fashion. I once
caught these parting words between an old
man and a young girl : —
Giovanetta. Revered sir I (^Patron rive-
rito /)
Vecchio. (With that peculiar backward
wave and beneficent wag of the hand, only
possible to Italians.) Blessed child! (^Bene'
dettaf)
It was in a crowd, but no one turned round
at the utterance of terms which Anglo-Sax-
ons would scarcely use in their most emo-
tional moments. The old gentleman who
sells boxes for the theatre in the Old Procu-
ratie always gave me his benediction when I
took a box.
There is equal exuberance of invective,
and I have heard many fine maledictions on
the Venetian streets, but I recollect none
more elaborate than that of a gondolier who,
after listening peacefully to a quarrel be-
tween two other boatmen, suddenly took part
against one of them, and saluted him with,
" Ahl baptized son of a dog! And if I had
been present at thy baptism, I would have
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180 VENETIAN LIFE
dashed thy brains out against the baptismal
font!"
All the theatrical forms of passion were
visible in a scene I witnessed in a little
street near San Samuele, where I found the
neighborhood assembled at doors and win-
dows in honor of a wordy battle between
two poor women. One of these had been
forced in-doors by her prudent husband,
and the other upbraided her across the mar-
ital barrier. The assailant was washing,
and twenty times she left her tub to revile
the besieged, who thrust her long arms
over those of her husband, and turned
each reproach back upon her who uttered it,
thus: —
A ssailant Beast I
Besieged. Thou I
A. Fool!
B. Thou!
A. Liar!
B. Thou!
JEvia inseguitof At last the assailant,
beating her breast with both hands, and
tempestuously swaying her person back and
forth, wreaked her scorn in one wild out-
burst of vituperation, and returned finally
to her tub, wisely saying, on the purple
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 181
verge of asphyxiation, " O, non discorro piil
non gente.^^
I returned half an hour later, and she
was laughing and playing sweetly with her
babe.
It suits the passionate nature of the Ital-
ians to have incredible ado about buying
and selling, and a day's shopping is a sort
of campaign, from which the shopper re-
turns plundered and discomfited, or laden
with the spoil of vanquished shopmen.
The embattled conmiercial transaction is
conducted in this wise : —
The shopper enters, and prices a given
article. The shopman names a sum of
which only the fervid imagination of the
South could conceive as corresponding to
the value of the goods.
The purchaser instantly starts back with
a wail of horror and indignation, and the
shopman throws himself forward over the
counter with a protest that, far from being
dear, the article is ruinously cheap at the
price stated, though they may nevertheless
agree for something less.
What, then, is the very most ultimate
price?
Properly, the very most ultimate price is
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182 VENETIAN LIFE
BO muoL (Say, the smallest trifle under
the price first asked.)
The purchaser moves toward the door.
He comes back, and offers one third of the
very most ultimate price.
The shopman, with a gentle desperation,
declares that the thing cost him as much.
He cannot really take the offer. He r^rets,
but he cannot. That the gentleman would
say something more I So much, for exam-
ple. That he regard the stuff, its quality,
fashion, beauty.
The gentleman laughs him to scorn. Ah,
heigh! and, coming forward, he picks up
the article and reviles it. Out of the mode,
old, fragile, ugly of its kind.
The shopman defends his wares. There
is not such quantity and quality elsewhere
in Venice. But if the gentleman will give
even so much (still something preposter^
ous), he may have it, though truly its sale
for that money is utter ruin.
The shopper walks straight to the door.
The shopman calls him back from the thresh-
old, or sends his boy to call him back from
the street.
Let him accommodate himself, — which is
to say, take the thing at his own price.
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 183
He takes it.
The shopman says cheerfully, " Servo
The purchaser responds, " B(m d% I Pa-
tron t " (Good day ! my Master !)
Thus, as I said, every bargain is a battle,
and every purchase a triumph or a defeat.
The whole thing is understood ; the oppos-
ing forces know perfectly well all that is to
be done beforehand, and retire after the con-
test, like the captured knights in Morgante
Maggiore, "calm as oil," however furious
and deadly their struggle may have appeared
to strangers.
Foreigners soon discern, however, that
there is no bloodshed in such encounters,
and enter into them with a zeal as great as
that of natives, though with less skill. I
knew one American who prided himself on
such matters, and who haughtily closed a
certain bargain without words, as he called
it. The shopman offered several articles,
for which he demanded prices amounting in
all to ninety-three francs. His wary cus-
tomer rapidly computed the total, and re-
plied, " Without words, now, I 'U give you
a hundred francs for the lot." With a pen-
sive elevation of the eyebrows and a reluo-
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184 VENETIAN LIFE
tant shrug of the shoulders, the shopman
suffered him to take them.
Your Venetian is simpatico^ if he is any-
thing. He is always ready to feel and to
express the deepest concern, and I rather
think he likes to have his sensibilities ap-
pealed to, as a pleasant and healthful exer-
cise for them. His sympathy begins at
home, and he generously pities himself as
the victim of a combination of misfortunes
which leave him citizen of a country without
liberty, without commerce, without money,
without hope. He next pities his fellow-
citizens, who are as desperately situated as
himself. Then he pities the degradation,
corruption, and despair into which the city
has fallen. And I think his compassion is
the most hopeless thing in his character.
That alone is touched ; that alone is moved ;
and when its impulse ceases he and every-
thing about him remain just as before.
With the poor, this sensibility is amus-
ingly mischievous. They never speak of
one of their own class without adding some
such ejaculation as " Poor fellow 1 " or,
" Poor little creature ! " They pity all
wretchedness, no matter from what cause,
and the greatest rogue has their compassion
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VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS 185
when under a cloud. It is all but impossible
to punish thieves in Venice, where they are
very bold and numerous ; for the police are
too much occupied with political surveillance
to give due attention to mere cutpurses and
housebreakers, and even when they make an
arrest people can hardly be got to bear wit-
ness against their unhappy prisoner. Po-
vareto anca lu I There is no work and no
money : people must do something ; so they
steal. Ci vuol pazienza! Bear witness
against an ill-fated fellow-sufferer? God
forbid! Stop a thief? I think a burglar
might run from Sialto to San Marco, and
not one compassionate soul in the Merceria
would do aught to arrest him — povareto I
Thieves came to the house of a friend of
mine at noonday, when his servant was out.
They tied their boat to his landing, entered
his house, filled their boat with plunder from
it, and rowed out into the canal. The neigh-
bors on the floor above saw them, and cried,
"Thieves I thieves!" It was in the most
frequented part of the Grand Canal, where
scores of boats passed and repassed ; but no
one molested the thieves, and these povareti
escaped with their booty.^
1 The rogues, it must be confessed, are often very polite.
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186 VENETIAN LIFE
One night, in a little street through which
we passed to our ferry, there came a wild
rush before us, of a woman screaming for
help, and pursued by her husband with a
knife in his hand ; their children, shrieking
piteously, came after them. The street was
crowded with people and soldiers, but no one
put out his hand ; and the man presently
overtook his wife and stabbed her in the
back. We only knew of the rush, but what
it all meant we could not tell till we saw the
woman bleeding from the stab, which, hap-
pily, was slight. Inquiry of the bystanders
developed the facts, but, singularly enough,
scarcely a word of pity. It was entirely a
family affair, it seemed : the man, poor little
fellow, had a mistress, and his wife had mad-
dened him with reproaches. Come si fa ?
He had to stab her. The woman's case was
not one that appealed to popular compassion,
and the only words of pity for her which I
heard were expressed by the wife of a fruit-
erer, whom her husband angrily silenced.
This same friend of mine one day found a man in the act of
getting down into a boat with his favorite singing bird in its
cage. *♦ What are you doing with that bird ?*' he thought
himself authorized to inquire. The thief looked about him a
moment, and, perceiving himself detected, handed back the
cage with a cool *' La scusi ! '* (Beg pardon ! ) as if its removal
had been a trifling inadvertence.
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XXI
SOCIETY
T was natural that the Venetians,
whose State lay upon the borders
of the Greek Empire, and whose
greatest commerce was with the
Orient, should be influenced by the Constan-
tinopolitan civilization. Mutinelli records
that in the twelfth century they had many
religious ofl&ces and observances in common
with the Greeks, especially the homily, or
sermon, which formed a very prominent
part of the service of worship. At this
time, also, when the rupture of the Lombard
League had left other Italian cities to fall
back into incessant local wars, and barbar-
ized their customs, the people of Venice
dressed richly and delicately, after the
Greek fashion. They combed and dressed
their hair, and wore the long, pointed Greek
beard ; ^ and though these Byzantine modes
fell, for the most part, into disuse, in after-
^ A Foscarini, in 1687, was the last patrician who wore
the beard.
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188 VENETIAN LIFE
time, there is still a peculiarity of dress
among the women of the Venetian poor
which is said to have been inherited from
the oriental costumes of Constantinople;
namely, that high-heeled, sharp-toed slipper,
or sandal, which covers the front of the foot,
and drops from the heel at every step, re-
quiring no slight art in the wearer to keep it
on at alL
The philosophic vision, accustomed to re-
late trifling particulars to important general-
ities, may perhaps see another relic of By-
zantine civilization among the Venetians in
that jealous restraint which they put upon all
the social movements of young girls, and the
great liberty which they allow to married
women. It is true that their damsels are
now no longer imprisoned under the parental
roof, as they were in times when they never
left its shelter but to go, closely veiled, to
communion in the church, on Christmas and
£aster ; but it is still quite impossible that
any young lady should go out alone. Indeed,
she would scarcely be secure from insult in
broad day, if she did so. She goes out with
her governess, and, even with this protection,
she cannot be too guarded and circumspect
in her bearing ; for in Venice a woman has
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SOCIETY 189
to encounter upon the public street a rude
license of glance, from men of all ages and
conditions, which falls little short of outrage.
They stare at her as she approaches ; and I
have seen them turn and contemplate ladies
as they passed them, keeping a few paces
in advance, with a leisurely sidelong gait.
Something of this insolence might be forgiven
to thoughtless, hot-blooded youth ; but the
gross and knowing leer that the elders of the
Piazza and the caffe put on at the approach
of a pretty girl is an ordeal which few wo-
men, not as thoroughly inured to it as the
Venetians, would care to encounter. How-
ever, as I never heard the trial complained
of by any but foreigners, I suppose it is not
regarded by Italians as intolerable; and it
is certain that an audible compliment, upon
the street, to a pretty girl of the poor is by
no means an affront.
The arts of pleasing and of coquetry come
by nature to the gentler sex ; and if in Italy
they add to them a habit of intrigue, I won-
der how much they are to blame, never be-
ing in any wise trusted? They do not differ
from persons of any age or sex in that coun-
try, if the world has been as justly, as it has
always been firmly, persuaded that the peo*
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190 VENETIAN LIFE
pie of Italy are effete in point of good faith.
I have seen much to justify this opinion, and
something also to confute it ; and as long as
Garibaldi lives, I shall not let myself believe
that a race which could produce a man so
signally truthful and single-hearted is a race
of liars and cheats. I think the student of
their character should also be slow to up-
braid Italians for their duplicity, without
admitting, in palliation of the fault, facts of
long ages of alien and domestic oppression,
in politics and religion, which must account
for a vast deal of every kind of evil in Italy.
Yet after exception and palliation has been
duly made, it must be confessed that in Italy
it does not seem to be thought shameful to
tell lies, and that there the standard of sin-
cerity, compared with that of the English or
American, is low, as the Italian standard of
morality in other respects is also compara-
tively low.
With the women, bred in idleness and
ignorance, the imputed national untruthful-
ness takes the form naturally to be expected,
and contributes to a state of things which
must be examined with the greatest caution
and reservation by every one but the Italians
themselves. Goethe says that there is no
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BOCIETY 191
society so corrupt that a man may not live
virtuously in it ; and I think the immorality
of any people will not be directly and wholly
seen by the stranger who does not seek it.
Certainly, the experience and acquaintance
of a foreigner in Italy must have been most
unfortunate, if they confirm all the stories
of corruption told by Italians themselves.
A little generous distrust is best in matters
of this kind ; but while I strengthen my in-
credulity concerning the utter depravation
of Venetian society in one respect, I am
not disposed to deal so leniently with it in
others. The state of things is bad in Venice,
not because all women in society are impure,
but because the Italian theory of morals
does not admit the existence of opportunity
without sin. It is by rare chance that a
young girl makes acquaintance with young
men in society ; she seldom talks with them
at the parties to which she is sometimes
taken by her mother, and they do not call
upon her at her home ; while for her to walk
alone with a young man would be vastly
more scandalous than much worse things,
and is, consequently, unheard of. The Ital-
ians say freely they cannot trust their wo-
men as northern women are trusted; and
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192 VENETIAN LIFE
some Italian women frankly confess that
their sex would be worse if it were trusted
more. But the truth does not appear in this
shallow suspicion and this shallow self-con-
viction ; and one who cares to have a just
estimate of this matter must by no means
believe all the evil he hears. There may
be much corruption in society, but there is
infinitely more wrong in the habits of idle
gossip and guilty scandal, which eat all sense
of shame and pity out of the heart of Ven-
ice. There is no parallel to the prying,
tattling, backbiting littleness of the place
elsewhere in the world. A small country
village in America or England has its med-
dlesomeness, but not its worldly, wicked
sharpness. Figure the meanness of a chim-
ney-comer gossip added to the bitter shrewd-
ness and witty penetration of a gifted rou6^
and you have some idea of Venetian scan-
dal In that city, where all the nobler or-
gans of expression are closed by political
conditions, the viler channels run continual
filth and poison, and the people, shut out
from public and free discussion of religious
and political themes, occupy themselves with
private slander, and rend each other in their
abject desperation. As it is part of the ex-
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80CIETT 193
isting political demonstration to avoid the
opera and theatre, the Venetians are de-
prived of these harmless distractions ; balls
and evening parties, at which people, in
other countries, do nothing worse than bore
each other, are almost imknown, for the
same reason ; and when persons meet in so-
ciety, it is too often to retail personalities, or
Italian politics made as unintelligible and as
like local gossip as possible. The talk which
is small and noxious in private circles is the
same thing at the caffh^ when the dread of
spies does not reduce the talkers to a dreary
silence. Not permitted to feel the currents
of literature and the great world's thought
in religion freshly and directly, they seldom
speak of these things, except in that tone of
obsolete superiority which Italians are still
prone to affect, as the monopolists of culture.
As to Art, the Venetians are insensible to it
and ignorant of it, here in the very atmos-
phere of Art, to a degree absolutely amusing.
I would as soon think of asking a fish's
opinion of water as of asking a Venetian's
notion of architecture or painting, unless
he were himself a professed artist or critic.
Admitting, however, that a great part of
the corruption of society is imputed, there
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194 VENETIAN LIFE ,
still remains, no doubt, a great deal of real
immorality to be accounted for. This, I
think, is often to be attributed to the bad
system of female education, and the habits
of idleness in which women are bred* In-
deed, to Americans, the whole system of
Italian education seems calculated to reduce
women to a state of imbecile captivity before
marriage ; and I have no fault to find with
the Italians that they are jealous in guarding
those whom they have unfitted to protect
themselves, but have rather to blame them
that, after marriage, their women are thrown
at once upon society, when worse than help-
less against its temptations. Except with
those people who attempt to maintain a cer-
tain appearance in public upon insufficient
means (and there are too many of these in
Venice, as everywhere else), and who spare
in every other way that they may spend on
dress, it does not often happen that Venetian
ladies are housekeepers. Servants are cheap
and numerous, as they are uncleanly and un-
trustworthy, and the Venetians prefer to
keep them ^ rather than take part in house-
1 A clerk or employ^ with a salary of fifty cents a day
keeps a maid-servant, that his wife may fulfil to society the
important dat}' of doing nothing.
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SOCIETY 195
wifely duties, and, since diey must lavish
upon dress and show, to suffer from cold
and hunger in their fireless houses and at
their meagre boards. In this way the young
girls, kept imprisoned from the world, in-
stead of learning cookery and other domestic
arts, have the grievous burden of idleness
added to that of their solitary confinement,
not only among the rich and noble, but
among that large class which is neither and
wishes to appear both.^ Their idle thoughts,
not drilled by study nor occupied with work,
run upon the freedom which marriage shall
bring them, and form a distorted image of
1 The poet Gray, genteelly making the g^nd tour in 1740,
wrote to his father from Florence: ** The only thing the Ital-
ians shine in is their reception of strangers. At such times
everything is magnificence: the more remarkable as in their
ordinary coarse of life they are parsimonious to a degree of
nastiness. I saw in one of the vastest palaces of Rome (that
of the Prince Pamtilio), the apartment which he himself in-
habited, a bed that most servants in England would disdain
to lie in, and furniture much like that of a soph at Cam-
bridge. This man is worth 30,000/. a year." Italian nature
has changed so little in a century that all this would hold
admirably true of Italian life at this time. The goodly out-
side in religion, in morals, in everything, is too much the
ambition of Italy; this achieved, she is content to endure any
pang of self-denial, and sell what little comfort she knows —
it is mostly imported, like the word, from England — to
strangers at fabulous prices. In Italy the luxuries of life are
cheap, and the conveniences unknown or excessively dear.
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196 VENETIAN LIFE
the world, of which they know as little as of
their own undisciplined selves. Denied the
just and wholesome amusements of society
during their girlhood, it is scarcely a matter
of surprise that they should throw them-
selves into the giddiest whirl of its excite-
ment when marriage sets them free to do
so.
I have said I do not think Venetians who
give each other bad names are always to be
credited, and I have no doubt that many a
reputation in Venice is stained while the
victim remains without guilt. A questioned
reputation is, however, no great social ca-
lamity. It forms no bar to society, and few
people are so cruel as to blame it, though
all discuss it. And it is here that the harsh-
ness of American and English society to-
ward the erring woman (harshness which is
not injustice, but half-justice only) contrasts
visibly to our advantage over the bad nawetS
and lenity of the Italians. The carefully
secluded Italian girl is accustomed to hear
of things and speak of things which, with
us, parents strive in every way to keep from
their daughters' knowledge ; and while her
sense of delicacy is thus early blunted, while
she is thus used to know good and evil, she
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aociETT 197
hears her father and mother comment on the
sinful errors of a friend or neighbor who
visits them and meets them every day in so-
ciety. How can the impunity of the guilt
which she believes to exist around her but
sometimes have its effect, and ripen, with
opportunity, into wrong ? Nay, if the girl
reveres her parents at all, how can she think
the sin which they caress in the sinner is so
very bad? If, however, she escape all these
early influences of depravation ; if her idle-
ness and solitude and precocious knowledge
leave her unvitiated ; if, when she goes into
society, it is by marriage with a man who is
neither a dotard nor a fortune-seeker, and
who remains constant and does not tempt
her, by neglect, to forebode offence and to
inflict anticipative reprisals, yet her purity
goes uncredited, as her guilt would go un-
punished; scandal makes haste to blacken
her name to the prevailing hue ; and whether
she has sin or not, those with sin will cast,
not the stone that breaks and kills, but the
filth that sticks and stinks. The wife must
continue the long social exile of her girlhood
if she would not be the prey of scandaL
The cavcUiere servente no longer exists, but
gossip now attributes often more than one
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198 VENETIAN LIFE
lover in his place, and society has the croel
demency to wink at the license. Nothing
is in worse taste than jealousy, and, conse-
quently, though intrigue sometimes causes
stabbing, and the like, among low people, it
is rarely noticed by persons of good breed-
ing. It seems to me that in Venetian soci-
ety the reform must begin, not with disso-
lute life, but with the social toleration of the
impure, and with the wanton habits of scan-
dal, which make all other life incredible,
and deny to virtue the triumph of fair fame.
I confess that what I saw of the innocent
amusements of this society was not enough
to convince me of their brilliancy and at-
tractiveness ; but I doubt if a foreigner can
be a trustworthy judge of these things, and*
perhaps a sketch drawn by an alien hand, in
the best faith, might have an air of carica-
ture. I would not, therefore, like to trust
my own impression of social diversions.
They were, very probably, much more lively
and brilliant than I thought them. But
Italians assembled anywhere, except at. the
theatre or the caffe^ have a certain stiffness,
all the more surprising because tradition has
always led one to expect exactly the reverse
of them. I have seen nothing equal to the
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SOCIETY 199
formality of this people, who deride colder
nations for inflexible manners ; and I have
certainly never seen society in any small
town in America so ill at ease as I have seen
society in Venice, writhing under self-im-
posed restraints. At a musical soirSe^ at-
tended by the class of people who at home
would have been chatty and sociable, given
to making acquaintance and to keeping up
acquaintance, — the young men harmlessly
talking and walking with the young ladies,
and the old people listening together, while
constant movement and intercourse kept life
in the assembly, and there was some real
pleasure felt amidst a good deal of unavoid-
able suffering, — I say, I found such a soi-
rSe in Venice to be a spectacle of ladies
planted in formal rows of low-necks and
white dresses around the four sides of one
room, and of gentlemen restively imprisoned
in dress-coats and white gloves in another.
During the music all these devoted people
listened attentively, and at the end the ladies
lapsed back into their chairs and fanned
themselves, while the gentlemen walked up
and down the floor of their cell, and stopped,
two by two, at the door of the ladies' room,
glanced mournfully athwart the moral bar-
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200 VENETIAN LIFE
rier which divided them, and sadly and de-
jectedly tamed away. Amazed at this sin-
golar species of social enjoyment, I inquired
afterward, of a Venetian lady, if evening
parties in Venice were usually such ordeals,
and was discouraged to learn that what I
had seen was scarcely an exaggeration of
prevailing torments. Commonly people do
not know each other, and it is difficult for
the younger to procure introductions; and
when there is previous acquaintance, the
presence of some commanding spirit is neces-
sary to break the ice of propriety, and sub-
stitute enjoyment for correctness of behavior.
Even at dancing parties, where it would
seem that the poetry of motion might do
something to soften the rigid bosom of Vene-
tian deportment, the poor young people sep-
arate after each dance, and take each sex its
appointed prison, till the next quadrille of-
fers them a temporary liberation. For my
own part, I cannot wonder that young men
fly these virtuous scenes, and throng the
rooms of those pleasant women of the demi-
monde^ who only exact from them that they
shall be natural and agreeable; I cannot
wonder that their fair partners in wretched-
ness seize the first opportunity to revenge
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SOCIETY 201
themselves upon the propriety which has so
cruelly used them. It is said that the assem-
blies of the Jews, while quite as unexception-
able in character, are far more sociable and
lively than those of the Christians. The
young Hebrews are frequently intelligent,
well-bred, and witty, with a savoir faire
which their Christian brethren lack. But,
indeed, the young Venetian is, at that age
when all men are owlish, ignorant, and vapid,
the most owlish, ignorant, and vapid man in
the world. He talks, not milk-and-water,
but warm water alone, a little sweetened;
and, until he has grown wicked, has very
little good in him.
Most ladies of fashion receive calls on a
certain day of each week, when it is made a
matter of pride to receive as many calls as
possible. The number sometimes reaches
three hundred, when nobody sits down, and
few exchange more than a word with the
hostess. In winter, the stove is heated on
these reception days, and little cups of black
coffee are passed round to the company;
in summer lemonade is substituted for the
coffee ; but in all seasons a thin, waferish
slice of toasted rusk (the Venetian baicolo)
is offered to each guest with the drink. At
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202 VENETIAN LIFE
receptions where the sparsity of the company
permits the lady of the house to be seen,
she is commonly visible on a sofa, surrounded
by visitors in a half circle. Nobody stays
more than ten or fifteen minutes, and I have
sometimes found even this brief time of
much greater apparent length, and apt to
produce a low state of nerves, from which
one seldom recovers before dinner. Gentle-
men, however, do not much frequent these
receptions ; and I assert again the diffidence
I should feel in offering this glance at Vene-
tian social enjoyment as conveying a just
and full idea of it. There is no doubt that
the Venetians find delight in their assemblies,
where a stranger seeks it in vain. I dare
say they would not think . our own reimions
brilliant, and that, looking obliquely (as a
foreigner must) on the most sensible faces
at one of our evening parties, they might
mistake the look of pathetic dejection visible
in them as the expression of people rather
bored by their pleasure than otherwise.
The conversazioni are of all sorts, from
the conversazioni of the rigid proprietarians,
where people sit down to a kind of hopeless
whist, at a soldo the point, and say noth-
ing, to the conversazioni of the demi-monde
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SOCIETY 203
where they say anything. There are per-
sons in Venice, as well as everywhere else,
of new-fashioned modes of thinking, and
these strive to give a greater life and ease to
their assemblies by attracting as many young
men as possible ; and in their families gentle-
men are welcome to visit, and to talk with the
young ladies in the presence of their mothers.
But though such people are no more accused
of impropriety than the straitest of the old-
fashioned, they are not regarded with the
greatest esteem, and their daughters do not
so readily find husbands. The Italians are
fickle, the women say ; they get soon tired
of their wives after marriage, and when they
see much of ladies before marriage they get
tired of them then, and never make them
their wives. So it is much better to see
nothing of a possible husband till you actu-
ally have him. I do not think conversazioni
of any kind are popular with young men,
however ; they like better to go to the caffe^
and the people you meet at private houses
are none the less interesting for being old
or middle-aged. A great many of the best
families, at present, receive no company at
all, and see their friends only in the most
private manner ; though there are still cul-
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204 VENETIAN LIFE
tivated circles to which proper introduction
gives the stranger (who has no Austrian
acquaintance) access. But unless he have
thorough knowledge of Italian politics lo-
calized to apply to Venice, an interest in
the affairs, fortunes, and misfortunes of his
neighbors, and an acquaintance with the
Venetian dialect, I doubt if he will be able
to enjoy himself in the places so cautiously
opened to him. Even in the most cultivated
society, the dialect is habitually spoken ; and
if Italian is used, it is only in compliment
to some foreigner present, for whose sake,
also, topics of general interest are sometimes
chosen.
The best society is now composed of the
families of professional men, such as the ad-
vocates, the physicians, and the richer sort
of merchants. The shopkeepers, master-
artisans, and others, whom industry and
thrift distinguish from the populace, seem
not to have any social life, in the American
sense. They are wholly devoted to af^irs,
and partly from choice', and partly from
necessity, are sordid and grasping. It is
their class which has to fight hardest for life
in Europe, and they give no quarter to those
above or below them. The shop is their
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SOCIETY 206
sole thought and interest, and they never,
never sink it. But, since they have habits
of diligence, and, as far as they are per-
mitted, of enterprise, they seem to be in
great part the stuff from which a prosperous
State is to be rebuilt in Venice, if ever the
fallen edifice rise again. They have some-
times a certain independence of character
which a better condition of things and fur-
ther education would perhaps lift into hon-
esty ; though as yet they seem not to scru-
ple to take any unfair advantage, and not
to know that commercial success can never
rest permanently on a system of bad f aitL
Below this class is the populace, between
which and the patrician order a relation
something like Soman clientage existed,
contributing greatly to the maintenance of
exclusively aristocratic power in the State.
The greatest conspiracy (that of Marin Fa-
lier) which the commons ever moved against
the oligarchy was revealed to one of the
nobility by his plebeian creature, or client ;
and the government rewarded by every
species of indulgence a class in which it
had extinguished even the desire of popular
liberty. The heirs of the servile baseness
which such a system as this must create are
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206 VENETIAN LIFE
not yet extinct. There is still a helplessness
in many of the servant class, and a disposi-
tion to look for largess as well as wages,
which are the traits naturally resulting from
a state of voluntary submission to others.
The nobles, as the government, enervated
and debauched the character of the poor by
public shows and countless holidays ; as in-
dividuals, they taught them to depend upon
patrician favor, and not upon their own ple-
beian industry, for support The lesson was
an evil one, hard to be unlearned, and it is
yet to be forgotten in Venice. Certain traits
of soft and familiar dependence give great
charm to the populace ; but their existence
makes the student doubtful of a future to
which the plebeians themselves look forward
with perfect hope and confidence. It may
be that they are right, and will really rise to
the dignity of men, when free government
shaU have taught them that the laborer is
worthy of his hire — after he has earned it.
This has been the result, to some degree, in
the kingdom of Italy, where the people have
found that freedom, like happiness, means
work.
Undoubtedly the best people in the best
society of Venice are the advocates, an or.
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BOCIETY 207
der of consequence even in the times of the
Eepublic, though then shut out from partici-
pation in public affairs by a native govern-
ment, as now by a foreign one. Acquaint-
ance with several members of this profession
impressed me with a sense of its liberality of
thought and feeling, where all liberal think-
ing and feeling must be done by stealth, and
where the common intelligence of the world
sheds its light through multiplied barriers.
Daniele Manin, the President of the Re-
public of 1848, was of this class, which, by
virtue of its learning, enlightenment, and
talent, occupies a place in the esteem and
regard of the Venetian people far above
that held by the effete aristocracy. The
better part of the nobility, indeed, is merged
in the professional class, and some of the
most historic names are now preceded by
the learned titles of Doctor and Advocate,
rather than the cheap dignity of Count, of-
fered by the Austrian government to all the
patricians who chose to ask for it, when Aus-
trian rule was extended over their country.
The physicians rank next to the advocates,
and are usually men learned in their pro-
fession, however erroneous and old-fash-
ioned some of their theories of practice may
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208 VENETIAN LIFE
be. Like the advocates, they are often men
of letters : they write for the journals, and
publish little pamphlets on those topics of
local history which it is so much the fashion
to treat in Venice. No one makes a profes-
sion of authorship. The returns of an au-
thor's work would be too uncertain, and its
restrictions and penalties would be too vex-
atious and serious; and so literary topics
are only occasionally treated by those whose
main energies are bent in another direction.
The doctors are very num^ous, and a
considerable number of them are Hebrews,
who, even in the old jealous times, exercised
the noble art of medicine, and who now rank
very highly among their professional breth-
ren. These physicians haunt the neat and
tasteful apothecary shops, where they sit
upon the benching that passes round the in-
terior, read the newspapers, and discuss the
politics of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Amer-
ica, with all the zest that you may observe
to characterize their discussions in Goldoni's
plays. There they spend their evenings and
many hours of every day, and thither the
sick send to call them, — each physician
resorting to a particular apothecary's, and
keeping his name inscribed on a brass plate
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SOCIETY
against the wall, above the head of the drug-
gist, who presides over the reunions of the
doctors, while his apprentice pestles away at
their prescriptions.
In 1786 there were, what with priests,
monks, and nuns, a multitude of persons
of ecclesiastical profession in Venice ; and
though many convents and monasteries were
abolished by Napoleon, the priests are still
very numerous, and some monastic establish-
ments have been revived under Austrian
rule. The high officers of the Church are,
of course, well paid, but most of the priest-
hood live miserably enough. They receive
from the government a daily stipend of
about thirty-five soldi, and they celebrate
mass, when they can get something to do in
that way, for forty soldi. Unless, then, they
have private income from their own family,
or have pay for the education of some rich
man's son or daughter, they must fare slen-
derly.
There is much said, in and out of Venice,
about their influence in society ; but this is
greatly modified, and I think is chiefly exer-
cised upon the women of the old-fashioned
families.^ I need hardly repeat the well-
1 It is DO longer usual for girls to be educated in convents,
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210 VENETIAN LIFE
known fact that all the moral power of the
Boman Church over the younger men is
gone ; these seldom attend mass, and almost
never go to confession, and the priests are
their scorn and by-word. Their example, in
some degree, must be much followed also
by women ; and though women must every-
where make more public professions of re-
ligion than men, in order to retain social
standing, I doubt if the priests have a very
firm hold upon the fears or reverence of the
sisters and wives of liberal Venetians.
If, however, they contribute in any wise to
keep down the people, they are themselves
enslaved to their superiors and to each other.
No priest can leave the city of Venice with-
out permission of the Patriarch. He is cut
off as much as possible from his own kins-
people, and subjected to the constant surveil-
lance of his class. Obliged to maintain a
respectable appearance on twenty cents a
day ; hampered and hindered from all per-
sonal liberty and private friendship, and
and most young ladies of the better classes, up to the age of
thirteen or fourteen years, receive their schooling in secular
establishments, whither they go every day for study, or
where they sometimes live, as in our boarding-schools, and
where they are taught the usual accomplishments, greater at-
tention being paid to French and music than to other thinga
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SOCIETY 211
hated by the great mass of the people, I
hardly think the Venetian priest is to be en-
vied in his life. For my own part, knowing
these things, I was not able to cherish to-
ward the priests those feelings of scornful
severity which swell many Protestant bos-
oms ; and so far as I made their acquaint-
ance, I found them kind and amiable. One
ecclesiastic, at least, I may describe as one
of the most agreeable and cultivated gentle-
men I ever met.
Those who fare best among the priests are
the Jesuits, who returned from repeated
banishment with the Austrians in this cen-
tury. Their influence is very extended, and
the confessional is their forte. Venetians
say that with the old and the old-fashioned
these crafty priests suggest remorse and im-
pose penances; that with the young men
and the latter-day thinkers they are men
of the world, and pass off pleasant sins as
trifles. All the students of the government
schools are obliged by law to confess twice
a month, and are given printed certificates
of confession, in blank, which the confessor
fills up and stamps with the seal of the
Church. Most of them go to confess at the
church of the Jesuits, who are glad to hear
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212 VENETIAN LIFE
the cock-and-bull story invented by the sto-
dent, and to cultivate his friendship by an
easy penance and a liberal tone. Thid in-
genuous young man of course despises the
confessional. He goes to confess because the
law obliges him to do so ; but the law cannot
dictate what he must confess. Therefore,
he ventures as near downright burlesque as
he dares, and (if the account he gives of the
matter be true) puts off his confessor with
some well-known fact, as that he has blas-
phemed. Of course he has blasphemed,
blasphemy being as conmion as the forms
of salutation in Venice. So the priest, who
wishes him to come again, and to found
some sort of influence over him, says, " Oh
dear, dear ! This is very bad. Blasphemy
is deadly sin. If you must swear, swear
by the heathen gods : say Body of Diana,
instead of Body of God ; Presence of the
Devil, instead of Blood of Mary. Then
there is no harm done." The students laugh
over the pleasant absurdity together, and
usually agree upon the matter of their semi-
monthly confessions beforehand.
As I have hinted, the young men do not
love the government or the Church; and
though I account for the loss of much high
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BOCIETT 213
hope and generous sympathy in growth from
youth to middle age, I cannot see how, when
they have replaced their fathers, the present
religious and political discontent is to be
modified. Nay, I believe it must become
worse. The middle-aged men of Venice
grew up in times of comparative quiet, when
she did not so much care who ruled over
her, and negatively, at least, they honored
the Church. They may now hate the foreign
rule, but there are many considerations of
timidity and many effects of education to
temper their hate. They may dislike the
priests, but they revere the Church. The
young men of to-day are bred in a different
school, and all their thoughts are of opposi-
tion to the government and of war upon the
Church, which they detest and ridicule. The
fact that their education is still in the hands
of the priests in some measure does not
render them more tractable. They have no
fears to be wrought upon by their clerical
professors, who seldom have sought to act
upon their nobler qualities. The influence
of the priesthood is again limited by the fact
that the teachers in the free schools of the
city, to which the poor send their children,
are generally not priests ; and ecclesiastics
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214 VENETIAN LIFE
are no longer so commonly the private tators
of the children of the rich as they once
were, when they lived with the family, and
exercised a direct and important influence
on it. Express permission from the Pope
is now necessary to the maintenance of a
family chaplain, and the office is nearly dis-
used.^
The Bepublic was extremely jealous of the
political power of the priests, who could not
hold secular office in its time. A curious
punishment was inflicted upon the priest who
proved false to his own vows of chastity, and
there is a most amusing old ballad — by no
means cleanly in its language — purporting
to be the lament of a priest suspended in the
iron cage, appointed for the purpose, from
the belfry of the Campanile San Marco, and
enduring the jeers and insults of the mob be-
low. We may suppose that with advancing
corruption (if corruption has indeed ad-
vanced from remote to later times) this pun-
ishment was disused for want of room to
hang out the delinquents. In the last cen-
tury, especially, the nuns and monks led a
1 In early days every noble Venetian family had its chap-
Iain, who, on the occasion of great dinners and suppers, re-
mained in the kitchen, and received as one of his perquisites
the fragments that came tack from the table.
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BOCIETT 215
pleasant life. You may see in the old pictures
of Fietro Longhi and his school how, at the
aristocratic and fashionable convent of San
Zaccaria, the lady nuns received their friends
and acquaintances of this world in the ante-
room, where the dames and their cavaliers
flirted and drank coffee, and the gentlemen
coquetted with the brides of heaven through
their grated windows.
Among other privileges of the Church,
abolished in Venice long ago, was that an-
cient right of the monks of St. Anthony, Ab-
bot, by which their herds of swine were made
free of the whole city. These animals, en-
veloped in an odor of sanctity, wandered
here and there, and were piously fed by de-
vout people, imtil the year 1409, when, be-
ing found dangerous to children and incon-
venient to everybody, they were made the
subject of a special decree, which deprived
them of their freedom of movement. The
Republic was always limiting the privileges
of the Church ! It is known how, when the
holy inquisition was established in its do-
minions in 1249, the State stipulated that
great part of the process against heresy
should be conducted by secular functionaries,
and that the sentence should rest with the
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216 VENETIAN LIFE
Doge and his councillors, — a kind of in-
quisition with claws clipped and teeth filed,
as one may say, and the only sort ever per-
mitted in Venice. At present there is no
absolute disfavor shown to the clergy ; but,
as we have seen, many a pleasant island,
which the monks of old reclaimed from the
salty marshes, and planted with gardens and
vineyards, now bears only the ruins of their
convents, or else, converted into a fortress
or government dSp6t^ is all thistly with bay-
onets. Anciently, moreover, there were many
little groves in different parts of the city,
where the pleasant clergy, of what Mr. Ens-
kin would have us believe the pure and re-
ligious days of Venice, met and made merry
so riotously together by night that the higher
officers of the Church were forced to pro-
hibit their little soirSes.
An old custom of rejoicing over the in-
stallation of a new parish priest is still to be
seen in almost primitive quaintness. The
people of each parish — nobles, citizens, and
plebeians alike — formerly elected their own
priest, and, till the year 1576, they used to
perambulate the city to the soimd of drums,
with banners flying, after an election, and
proclaim the name of their favorite. On
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aociETT 217
the day of the parroco^s induction his por-
trait was placed over the church door, and
after the celebration of the morning mass
a breakfast was given, which grew to be so
splendid in time that in the fifteenth century
a statute limited its profusion. In the after-
noon, the new parroco^ preceded by a band
of military music, visited all the streets and
courts of his parish, and then, as now, all
the windows of the parish were decorated
with brilliant tapestries, and other gay-col-
ored cloths and pictures. In those times, as
in these, there was an illumination at night,
throngs of people in the campo of the church,
and booths for traffic in cakes of flour and
raisins, — fried in lard upon the spot, and
sold smoking hot, with immense uproar on
the part of the merchant; and for three
days afterward the parish bells were sounded
in concert.
The difficulty of ascertaining anything
with certainty in Venice attends in a degree
peculiarly great the effort to learn exactly
the present influence and standing of the
nobility as a class. One is tempted, on ob-
serving the free and unembarrassed bearing
of all ranks of people toward each other, to
say that no sense of difference exists, and
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218 VENETIAN LIFE
I do not think there is ever shown, among
Italians, either the aggressive pride or the
abject meanness which marks the intercourse
of people and nobles elsewhere in Europe ;
and I have not seen the distinction of rich
and poor made so brutally in Italy as some-
times in our own aoirdisant democratic soci-
ety at home. There is, indeed, that equaliiy
in Italian fibre which I believe fits the nation
for democratic institutions better than any
other, and which is perhaps partly the result
of their ancient civilization. At any rate, it
fascinates a stranger to see people so mutu-
ally gentle and deferential, and must often
be a matter of surprise to the Anglo-Saxon,
in whose race, reclaimed &om barbarism
more recently, the native wild beast is still
so strong as to sometimes inform the man-
ner. The imeducated Anglo-Saxon is a sav-
age ; the Italian, though bom to utter igno-
rance, poverty, and depravity, is a civilized
man. I do not say that his civilization is of
a high order, or that the civilization of the
most cultivated Italian is at all comparable
to that of a gentleman among ourselves.
The Italian's education, however profound,
has left his passions undisciplined while it
has carefully polished his manner ; he yields
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SOCIETY 219
lightly to temptation, he loses his self-con-
trol, he blasphemes habitually; his gentle-
ness is conventional, his civilization not
individual. With us, the education of a
gentleman (I do not mean a person bom to
wealth or station, but any man who has
trained himself in morals or religion, in let-
ters, and in the world} disciplines the im-
pulses, and leaves the good manner to grow
naturally out of habits of self-command and
consequent habitual self-respect.
The natural equality of the Italians isvisi*
ble in their community of good looks as well
as good manners. They have never, per-
haps, that high beauty of sensitive expression
which is found among Englishmen and
Americans (preferably among the latter),
but it very rarely happens that tihey are bru-
tally ugly ; and the man of low rank and
mean vocation has often a beauty of as fine
sort as the man of education and refinement.
If they changed clothes, and the poor man
could be persuaded to wash himself, they
might successfully masquerade, one for an-
other. The plebeian Italian, inspired by
the national vanity, bears himself as proudly
as the noble, without at all aggressing in his
manner. His beauty, like that of the wo-
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220 VENETIAN LIFE
men of his class, is world-old, — the beauty
of the pictures and the statues: the ideal
types of loveliness are realized in Italy ; the
saints and heroes, the madonnas and nymphs,
come true to the stranger at every encounter
with living faces. In Venice, particularly,
the carriage of the women, of whatever rank,
is very free and noble, and the servant is
sometimes to be distinguished from the mis-
tress only by her dress and by her labor-
coarsened hands, — certainly not always by
her dirty finger-nails and foul teeth; for
though the clean shirt is now generally in
Italy, some lesser virtues are still unknown :
the nail-brush and tooth-brush are of but in-
frequent use ; the four-pronged fork is still
imperfectly understood, and as a nation
the Italians may be said to eat with their
knives.
The Venetian, then, seeing so little differ-
ence between himself and others, whatever
his rank may be, has, as I said, little temp-
tation to arrogance or servility. The effects
of the old relationship of patron and client
are amusingly noticeable in the superior as
well as the inferior; a rich man's depend-
ents are perfectly free with advice and com-
ment, and it sometimes happens that he likes
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J
The Venetian People
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SOCIETY 221
to hear their lively talk, and at home se-
cretly consorts with his servants. The for-
mer social differences between commoners
and patricians (which, I think, judging from
the natural temper of the race, must have
been greatly modified at all times by conces-
sion and exception) may be said to have
quite disappeared in point of fact ; the no-
bility is now almost as effete socially as it is
politically. There is still a number of his-
toric families, which are in a certain degree
exclusive ; but rich parvenus have adiflission
to their friendship, and commoners in good
circumstances are permitted their acquaint-
ance; the ladies of this patrician society
visit ladies of less rank, and receive them
at their great parties, though not at more
sacred assemblies, where they see only each
other.
The Venetians have a habit of saying their
best families are in exile, but this is not
meant to be taken literally. Many of the best
families are yet in the city, living in perfect
retirement, or very often merged in the mid-
dle class, and become men of professions and
active, useful lives. Of these nobles (they
usually belong to the families which did not
care to ask nobility of Austria, and are there-
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222 VENETIAN LIFE
fore untitled) ^ the citizens are affectionately
proud, while I have heard from them nothing
but contempt and ridicule of the patricians
who, upon a wretched pension or meagre
government office, attempt to maintain patri-
cian distinction. Such nobles are usually
Austriacanti in their politics, and behind the
age in everything ; while there are other de-
scendants of patrician families mingled at
last with the very populace, sharing their
ignorance and degradation, and feeling with
them. These sometimes exercise the most
menial employments : I knew one noble lord
who had been ayhccAmo, and I heard of an-
other who was a street-sweeper. Conte che
non conta^ non conta niente? says the sneer-
ing Italian proverb; and it would be little
less than miraculous if a nobility like that
of modern Venice maintained superior state
and regard in the eyes of the quick-witted,
intelligent, sarcastic commonalty*
1 The only title conferred on any patrician of Venice dur-
ing the Republic was Cavaliere, and this was conferred by a
legislative act in reward of distinguished service. The names
of the nobility were written in the Golden Book of the Re-
public, and they were addressed as Illustrissimo or Eccel-
lenza. They also signed themselves nobiUf between the
Christian name and surname, as it is still the habit of the
untitled nobility to ao.
* A count who does n't count (money) counts for nothing.
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SOCIETY 223
The few opulent patricians are by no means
the most violent of Italianissimi. They own
lands and houses, and as property is unsafe
when revolutionary feeling is rife, their pa-
triotism is tempered. The wealth amassed
in early times by the vast and enterprising
commerce of the country was, when not dis-
sipated in riotous splendor, invested in real
estate upon the main-land as the Republic
grew in territory, and the income of the no-
bles is now &om the rents of these lands.
They reside upon their estates during the
season of the mlleggiatura^ which includes
the months of September and October, when
every one who can possibly leave the city
goes into the country. Then the patricians
betake themselves to their villas near Padua,
Vicenza, Bassano, and Treviso, and people
the sad-colored, weather-worn stucco hermit-
ages, where the mutilated statues, swagger-
ing above the gates, forlornly commemorate
days when it was a far finer thing to be a
noble than it is now. I say the villas look
dreary and lonesome as places can be made
to look in Italy, what with their high garden
walls, their long, low piles of stabling, and
the passSe indecency of their nymphs and
fauns, foolishly strutting in the attitudes of
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224 VENETIAN LIFE
the silly and sinful old Past ; and it most be
but a dull life that the noble proprietory lead
there.
It is better, no doubt, on the banks of the
Brenta, where there are still so many villas
as to form a street of these seats of luxury,
almost the whole length of the canal, from
Fusina to Padua. I am not certain that
they have a right to the place which they
hold in literature and sentiment, and yet
there is something very charming about them,
with their gardens, and chapels, and statues,
and shaded walks. We went to see them
one day early in October, and found them
every one, when habitable, inhabited, and
wearing a cheerful look, that made their
proximity to Venice incredible. As we re-
turned home after dark, we saw the ladies
from the villas walking unattended along
the road, and giving the scene an air of home-
like peace and trustfulness which I had not
found before in Italy ; while the windows of
the houses were brilliantly lighted, as if peo-
ple lived in them ; whereas, you seldom see a
light in Venetian palaces. I am not sure that
I did not like better, however, the villas that
were empty and ruinous, and the gardens that
had run wild, and the statues that had lost
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SOCIETY 225
legs and arms. Some of the ingenious pro-
prietors had enterprisingly whitewashed their
statues, and there was a horrible primness
about certain of the well-kept gardens which
offended me. Most of the houses were not
large, but there was here and there a palace
as grand as any in the city. Such was the
great villa of the Contarini of the Lions,
which was in every way superb, with two
great lions of stone guarding its portals, and
a gravel walk, over-arched with stately trees,
stretching a quarter of a mile before it. At
the moment I was walking down this aisle I
met a clean-shaven old canonico, with red
legs and red-tasselled hat, and with a book
under his arm, and a meditative look, whom
I here thank for being so venerably pictur-
esque. The palace itself was shut up, and
I wish I had known, when I saw it, that it
had a ghostly underground passage from its
cellar to the chapel, wherein, when you get
half way, your light goes out, and you con-
sequently never reach the chapel.
This is at Mira; but the greatest of all
the villas is the magnificent country-seat of
the family Pisani at Stra, which now, with
scarcely any addition to its splendor, serves
for the residence of the abdicated Emperor
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226 VENETIAN LIFE
of Austria. There is such pride in the vast-
ness of this edifice and its gardens as im-
presses you with the material greatness which
found expression in it, and never raises a re-
gret that it has utterly passed away. You
wander around through the aisles of trim-cut
lime-trees, bullied and overborne by the in-
solent statues, and expect at every turn to
come upon intriguing spectres in bag-wigs, im-
mense hoops and patches. How can you feel
sympathy for those dull and wicked ghosts
of eighteenth-century corruption ? There is
rottenness enough in the world without dig-
ging up old putridity and sentimentalizing
on it ; and I doubt if you will care to know
much of the way in which the noble owner
of such a villa ascended the Brenta at the
season of the villeggiatura in his great gilded
barge, all carven outside with the dumpling
loves and loose nymphs of the period, with
fruits, and flowers, and what not ; and within,
luxuriously cushioned and furnished, and
stocked with good things for pleasure making
in the gross old fashion.^ King Cole was not
a merrier old soul than lUustrissimo of that
day ; he outspent princes ; and his agent, while
1 Matinelli, Gli UUimi CinquanV Anni deOa RejnUMica
di Venezia,
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30CIETT 227
he harried the tenants to supply his master's
demands, plundered lUustrissimo frightfully.
Illustrissimo never looked at accounts. He
said to his steward, " Caro veccio^ fe vu.
Mi remeto a quel che fe vuJ^ (Old fellow,
you attend to it. I shall be satisfied with
what you do.) So the poor agent had no
other course but to swindle him, which he
did; and Illustrissimo, when he died, died
poor, and left his lordly debts and vices to
his sons.
In Venice, the noble stiU lives sometimes
in his ancestral palace, dimly occupying
the halls where his forefathers flourished in
so much splendor. I can conceive, indeed,
of no state of things more flattering to hu-
man pride than that which surrounded the
patrician of the old aristocratic Republic.
The house in which he dwelt was the palace
of a king, in luxury of appointment and
magnificence of size. Troops of servants
that ministered to his state peopled its vast
extent; and the gondolas that carried his
grandeur abroad were moored in little fleets
to the piles that rose before his palace,
painted with the family arms and colors.
The palace itself stood usually on the Grand
Canal, and rose sheer from the water, giving
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228 VENETIAN LIFE
the noble that haughty inaccessibility which
the lord of the main-land achieved only by
building lofty walls and multiplying gates.
The architecture was as costly in its orna-
ment as wild Gothic fancy, or Renaissance
luxury of bad taste, could make it; and
when the palace front was not of sculptured
marble, the painter's pencil filled it with
the delight of color. The main-land noble's
house was half a fortress, and formed his
stronghold in times of popular tiunult or
family fray ; but at Venice the strong arm
of St. Mark suppressed all turbulence in a
city secure from foreign war ; and the peace-
ful arts rejoiced in undisturbed possession of
the palaces, which rose in the most delicate
and fantastic beauty, and mirrored in the
brine a dream of sea-deep strangeness and
richness. You see much of the beauty yet,
but the pride and opulence which called it
into being are gone forever.
Most palaces, whether of the Gothic or
classicistic period, have the same internal
arrangement of halls and chambers, and are
commonly built of two lofty and two low
stories. On the groimd floor, or water level,
is a hall running back from the gate to a
bit of garden at the other side of the palace;
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BOCIETT 229
and on either side of this hall, which in old
times was hung with the family trophies of
the chase and war, are the porter's lodge and
gondoliers' rooms. On the first and second
stories are the family apartments, openmg
on either side from great halls, of the same
extent as that below, but with loftier roofs,
of heavy rafters gilded or painted. The
fourth floor is of the same arrangement, but
has a lower roof, and was devoted to the
better class of servants. Of the two stories
used by the family, the third is the loftier
and airier, and was occupied in summer;
the second was the winter apartment. On
either hand the rooms open in suites.
"We have seen something of the cere-
monies, public and private, which gave pe-
culiar gayety and brilliance to the life of the
Venetians of former days; but in his po-
litical character the noble had yet greater
consequence. He was part of the proudest,
strongest, and securest system of his time.
He was a king with the fellowship of kings,
flattered with the equality of an aristocracy
which was master of itself, and of its nomi-
nal head. During the earlier times it was
his office to go daily to Rialto and instruct
the people in their political rights and duties
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280 VENETIAN LIFE
loT four hours ; and even when the duties
became everything and the rights nothing
(after the Serrar del Consiglio), the friendly
habit of daily intercourse between patricians
and citizens was still kept up at the s^ne
place. Once each week, and on every holi-
day, the noble took his seat in the Grrand
Council (the most august assembly in the
world, without doubt), or the Ten, or the
Three, according to his office in the State, —
holding his place in the Council by right of
birth, and in the other bodies by election of
his peers.
Although the patricians were kept as one
family apart from the people, and jealously
guarded in their aristocratic purity by the
State, they were only equals of the poorest
before the laws of their own creation, and
their condescension to the people was fre-
quent and great Indeed, the Venetians of
all classes are social creatures, loving talk
ands gossip, and these constant habits of in-
tercourse must have done much to produce
that equality of manner now observable in
them. Their amusements were for a long
time the same, the nobles taking part in the
public holidays, and in the popular exercises
of rowing and swinmiing. In the earlier
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SOCIETY 281
times, hunting in the lagoons was a favorite
diversion ; but as the decay of the Republic
advanced, and the patrician blossomed into
the fine gentleman of the last century, these
hearty sports were relinquished, and every-
thing was voted vulgar but masking in car-
nival, dancing and gaming at Bidotto, and
intriguing everywhere.
The accounts which Venetian writers give
of Bepublican society in the eighteenth cen-
tury form a chronique scandaleuse which
need not be minutely copied here. Much
may be learned of Venetian manners of this
time from the comedies of Goldoni; and
the faithlessness of society may be argued
from the fact that in these plays, which con-
tain nothing salacious or indecent, there is
scarcely a character of any rank who scruples
to tell lies ; and the truth is not to be found
in works intended to school the public to
virtue. The ingenious old playwright's me-
moirs are full of gossip concerning that poor
old Venice which is now no more ; and the
worthy autobiographer, Casanova, also gives
much information about things that had best
not be known.
As the Republic drew near its fall, in
1797, there was little left in its dominant
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282 VENETIAN LIFE
class worth saving, if we may believe the
testimony of Venetians, which MutineUi
brings to bear upon the point in his An-
nali Urbani, and his History of the Last
Fifiy Years of the Republic. Long pros-
perity and prodigious opulence had done
their worst, and the patricians, and the low-
est orders of the people, their creatures and
dependents, were thoroughly corrupt ; while
the men of professions began to assume that
station which they now hold. The days of
a fashionable patrician of those times began
at a little before sunset, and ended with the
following dawn. Bising from his bed, he
dressed himself in dainty linen, and placed
himself in the hands of the hair-dresser to
be combed, oiled, perfumed, and powdered ;
and then sallied forth for a stroll through the
Merceria, where this excellent husband and
father made tasteful purchases to be carried
to the lady he served. At dinner, which he
took about seven or eight, his board was cov-
ered with the most tempting viands, and sur-
rounded by needy parasites, who detailed the
spicy scandals of the day in payment of their
dinner, while the children of the host were
confided to the care of the corrupt and negli-
gent servants. After dinner, the father went
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B0C1BT7 288
to the theatre, or to the casino, and spent the
night over cards and wine, in the society of
dissolute women ; and renewed on the mor-
row the routine of his useful existence. The
education of the children of the man of fash-
ion was confided to a priest, who lived in his
family, and called himself an abbate, after
the mode of the abbSs of French society ; he
had winning manners with the ladies, indul-
gent habits with his pupils, and dressed his
elegant person in silks of Lyons and Eng-
lish broadcloths. In the pleasant old days
he flitted from palace to villa, dining and
supping, and flattering the ladies, and tap-
ping the lid of his jewelled snuff-box in all
fashionable companies. He was the cadet
of a patrician family (when not the ambi-
tious son of a low family), with a polite
taste for idleness and intrigue, for whom no
secular sinecure could be found in the State,
and who obliged the Church by accepting
orders. Whether in the palace on the Grand
Canal, or the villa on the Brenta, this gentle
and engaging priest was surely the most
agreeable person to be met, and the most
dangerous to ladies' hearts, with his rich suit
of black, and his smug, clean-shaven face,
and his jewelled hands, and his sweet, sedu-
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234 VENETIAN LIFE
cing manners. Alas ! the world is changed !
The priests whom you see playing tre-setU
now at the conversazioni are altogether dif-
ferent men, and the delightful abbate is as
much out of fashion as the bag-wig or the
queue. When in fashion he loved the the-
ati*e, and often showed himself there at the
side of his noble patron's wife. Nay, in
that time the theatre was so prized by the
Church that a popular preacher thought it
becoming to declare from his pulpit that to
compose well his hearers should study the
comedies of Goldoni, and his hearers were
the posterity of that devout old aristocracy
which never undertook a journey without
first receiving the holy sacrament ; which had
built the churches and endowed them from
private wealth !
Ignorance, as well as vice, was the mode
in those elegant days, and it is related that a
charming lady of good society once addressed
a foreign savant at her conversazione^ and
begged him to favor the company with a lit-
tle music, because, having heard that he was
virttiouSy she had no other association with
the word than its technical use in Italy to
indicate a professional singer as a virttioso.
A father of a family who kept no abbate
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80CIETT 236
for the education of Ids children ingenious-
ly taught them himself. "Father," asked
one of his children, " what are the stars ? "
" The stars are stars, and little things that
shine as thou seest." " Then they are can-
dles, perhaps?" **Make thy account that
they are candles exactly." " Of wax or tal-
low ? " pursues the boy. " What ! tallow-
candles in heaven? No, certainly — wax,
wax ! "
These, and many other scandalous stories,
the Venetian writers recoimt of the last days
of their Republic, and the picture they pro-
duce is one of the most shameless ignorance,
the most polite corruption, the most imblush-
ing baseness. I have no doubt that the pic-
ture is full of national exaggeration. In-
deed, the method of Mutinelli (who I be-
lieve intends to tell the truth) in writing
social history is altogether too credulous and
incautious. It is well enough to study con-
temporary comedy for light upon past so-
ciety, but satirical ballads and lampoons, and
scurrilous letters cannot be accepted as his-
torical authority. Still there is no question
but Venice was very corrupt. As you read
of her people in the last century, one by
one the ideas of family faith and domestic
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286 VENETIAN LIFE
purity fade away ; one by one the beliefs in
public virtue are dissipated; until at last
you are glad to fly the study, close the filthy
pages, and take refuge in doubt of the wri-
ters, who declare that they must needs dis-
grace Venice with facts since her children
have dishonored her in their lives. " Such
as we see them," they say, " were the patri-
cians, such the people of Venice, after the
middle of the eighteenth century. The Ve-
netians might be considered as extinguished ;
the marvellous city, the pomp only of the
Venetians, existed."
Shall we believe this? Let each choose
for himself. At that very time the taste and
wealth of a Venetian noble fostered the gen-
ius of Canova; and then, when their captains
starved the ragged soldiers of the Bepublio
to feed their own idleness and vice, when
the soldiers dismantled her forts to sell the
guns to the Turk, when her sailors rioted
on shore and her ships rotted in her ports,
she had still military virtue enough to pro-
duce that Emo, who beat back the Algerine
corsairs from the commerce of Christendom,
and attacked them in their stronghold, as of
old her galleys beat back the Turks. Alas !
there was not the virtue in her statesmen to
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SOCIETY 287
respond to this greatness in the hero. One
of their last public acts was to break his
heart with insult and to crave peace of the
pirates whom he had cowed. It remained
for the helpless Doge and the abject patri-
cians, terrified at a threat of war, to declare
the Republic at an end, and San Marco was
no more.
I love Republics too well to lament the
fall of Venice. And yet, Pax tibi^ Marcel
If I have been slow to praise, I shall not
hasten to condemn, a whole nation. Indeed,
so much occurs to me to qualify with con-
trary sense what I have written concerning
Venice, that I wonder if, after all, I have
not been treating throughout less of the rule
than of the exception. It is a doubt which
must force itself upon every fair and tem-
perate man who attempts to describe another
people's life and character; and I confess
that it troubles me so sorely now, at the end
of my work, that I would fain pray the gen-
tle reader to believe much more good and
much less evil of the Venetians than I have
said. I am glad that it remains for me to
express a faith and hope in them for the
future, founded upon their present political
feeling, which, however tainted with self-
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238 VENETIAN LIFE
interest in the case of many, is no doubt
with the great majority a high and true feel-
ing of patriotism. And it is impossible to
/believe that a people which can maintain the
stem and unyielding attitude now main-
tained by the Venetians toward an alien
government disposed to make them any con-
eession short of freedom, in order to win
them into voluntary submission, can be want-
ing in the great qualities which distinguish
living peoples from those passed hopelessly
into history and sentiment. In truth, glan-
cing back over the whole career of the na-
tion, I can discern in it nothing so admira-
ble, so dignified, so steadfastly brave, as its
present sacrifice of all that makes life easy
and joyous, to the attainment of a good
which shall make life noble.
The Venetians desire now, and first of all
things, Liberty, knowing that in slavery
men can learn no virtues ; and I think them
fit, with all their errors and defects, to be
free now, because men are never fit to be
slaves.
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XXII
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE
(As U seems Seven Years after)
'HE last of four years which it
was our fortune to live in the
city of Venice was passed un-
der the roof of one of her most
beautiful and memorable pal-
aces, namely, the Palazzo Giustiniani, whither
we went, as has been told in an earlier chap-
ter of this book, to escape the encroaching
nepotism of Giovanna, the flower of serving-
women. The experience now, in Cambridge,
Mass., refuses to consort with ordinary re-
membrances, and has such a fantastic pref-
erence for the company of rather vivid and
circumstantial dreams, that it is with no very
strong hope of making it seem real that I '
shall venture to speak of it.
The Giustiniani were a family of patri-
cians very famous during the times of a Re-
public that gave so many splendid names to
history, and the race was preserved to the
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240 VENETIAN LIFE
honor and service of St Mark by one of the
most romantic facts of his annals. Daring
a war with the Greek Emperor, in the
twelfth century, every known Giustiniani was
slain, and the heroic strain seemed lost for-
ever. But the State that mourned them be-
thought itself of a half'forgotten monk of
their house, who was wasting his life in the
Convent of San Nicold ; he was drawn forth
from this seclusion, and, the permission of
Bome being won, he was married to the
daughter of the reigning Doge. From them
descended the Giustiniani of aftertimes, who
still exist; indeed, in the year 1865 there
came one day a gentleman of the family,
and tried to buy from our landlord that part
of the palace which we so humbly and insuf-
ficiently inhabited. It is said that as the
unfrocked friar and his wife declined in life,
they separated, and, as if in doubt of what
had been done for the State through them,
retired each into a convent, Giustiniani go-
ing back to San Nicold, and dying at last to
the murmur of the Adriatic waves along the
Lido's sands.
Next after this Giustiniani I like best to
think of that latest hero of the family who
had the sad fortune to live when the ancient
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 241
Republic fell at a threat of Napoleon, and
who alone among her nobles had the cour-
age to meet with a manly spirit the insolent
menaces of the conqueror. The Giustiniani
governed Treviso for the Senate ; he refused,
when Napoleon ordered him from his pres-
ence, to quit Treviso without the command
of the Senate ; he flung back th& taunts of
bad faith cast upon the Venetians; and
when Napoleon changed his tone from that
of disdain to one of compliment, and prom-
ised that in the general disaster he was pre-
paring for Venice Giustiniani should be
spared, the latter generously replied that he
had been a friend of the French only because
the Senate was so ; as to the inmiunity of-
fered, all was lost to him in the loss of his
country, and he should blush for his wealth
if it remained intact amidst the ruin of his
countrymen.
The family grew in riches and renown
from age to age, and, some four centuries
after the marriage of the monk, they reared
the three beautiful Gothic palaces, in the
noblest site on the Grand Canal, whence on
one hand you can look down to the Rialto
Bridge, and on the other far up towards the
church of the Salute and the Basin of Saint
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242 VENETIAN LIFE
Mark. The architects were those Buoni,
father and son, who did some of the most
beautif ol work on the Ducal Palace, and
who wrought in an equal inspiration upon
these homes of the Giustiniani, building the
delicate Gothic arches of the windows, with
their slender columns and their graceful
balconies, and crowning all with the airy
battlements.
The largest of the three palaces became
later the property of the Foscari family, and
here dwelt with his father that unhappy
Jacopo Foscari, who after thrice suffering
torture by the State for a murder he never
did, at last died in exile ; hither came the
old Doge Foscari, who had consented to this
cruel error of the State, and who after a life
spent in its service was deposed and dis-
graced before his death ; and hither, when
he lay dead, came remorseful Venice, and
claimed for sumptuous obsequies the dust
which his widow yielded with bitter re-
proaches. Here the family faded away gen-
eration by generation, till (according to the
tale told us) early in this century, when the
ultimate male survivor of the line had died,
under a f abe name, in London, where he had
been some sort of obscure actor, there were
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 243
but two old maiden sisters left, who, lapsing
into imbecility, were shown to strangers by
the rascal servants as the last of the Foscari ;
and here in our time was quartered a regi-
ment of Austrian troops, whose neatly pipe-
clayed belts decorated the balconies on which
the princely ladies of the house had rested
their jewelled arms in other days.
The Foscari added a story to the palace
to distinguish it from the two other palaces
Giustiniani, but these remain to the present
day as they were originally planned. That
in which we lived was called Palazzo Gius-
tiniani of the Bishops, because one of the
family was the first Patriarch of Venice.
After his death he was made a saint by the
Pope ; and it is related that he was not only
a very pious, but a very good man. In his
last hours he admitted his beloved people to
his chamber, where he meekly lay upon a
pallet of straw, and at the moment he ex-
pired, two monks in the solitude of their
cloister heard an angelical harmony in the
air : the clergy performed his obsequies not
in black, funereal robes, but in white gar-
ments, and crowned with laurel, and bearing
gilded torches, and although the Patriarch
had died of a malignant fever, his body was
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244 VENETIAN LIFE
miraculously preserved incorrupt during the
sixty-five days that the obsequies lasted. The
other branch of the family was called the
Giustiniani of the Jewels, from the splendor
of their dress ; but neither palace now shel^
ters any of their magnificent race. The edi^
fice on our right was exclusively occupied
by a noble Viennese lady, who, as we heard,
— vaguely, in the right Venetian fashion, —
had been a ballet-dancer in her youth, and
who now in her matronly days dwelt apart
from her husband, the Russian count, and
had gondoliers in blue silk, and the finest
gondola on the Grand Canal, but was a
plump, florid lady, looking long past beauty,
even as we saw her from our balcony.
Our own palace — as we absurdly grew
to call it — was owned and inhabited in a
manner much more proper to modem Ven-
ice, the proprietorship being about equally
divided between our own landlord and a
very well known Venetian painter, son of a
painter still more famous. This artist was
a very courteous old gentleman, who went
with Italian and clock-like regularity every
evening in summer to a certain caffe^ where
he seemed to make it a point of conscience
to sip one sherbet, and to read the Journal
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 246
des Ddbats. In his coming and going we
met him so often that we became friends,
and he asked us many times to visit him,
and see his father's pictures, and some fa-
mous frescos with which his part of the pal-
ace was adorned. It was a characteristic
trait of our life, that though we constantly
meant to avail ourselves of this kindness, we
never did so. But we continued in the en-
joyment of the beautiful garden which this
gentleman owned at the rear of the palace
and on which our chamber windows looked.
It was full of oleanders and roses, and other
bright and odorous blooms, which we could
enjoy perfectly well without knowing their
names ; and I could hardly say whether the
garden was more charming when it was in
its summer glory, or when, on some rare
winter day, a breath from the mountains
had clothed its tender boughs and sprays
with a light and evanescent flowering of
snow. At any season the lofty palace walls
rose over it, and shut it in a pensive seclu-
sion which was loved by the old mother of
the painter and by his elderly maiden sister.
These often walked on its moss-grown paths,
silent as the roses and oleanders to which
one could have fancied the blossom of their
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246 VENETIAN LIFE
youth had flown ; and sometimes there came
to them there grave, black-gowned priests,
— for the painter's was a devout family, —
and talked with them in tones almost as
tranquil as the silence was, save when one
of the ecclesiastics placidly took snuff, — it
is a dogma of the Church for priests to take
snuff in Italy, — and thereafter, upon a pro-
longed search for his handkerchief, blew a
resounding nose. So far as we knew, the
garden walls circumscribed the whole life of
these ladies ; and I am afraid that such top-
ics of this world as they touched upon with
their priests must have been deplorably
small.
Their kinsman owned part of the story
under us, and both of the stories above us ;
he had the advantage of the garden over
our landlord ; but he had not so grand a
gondola-gate as we, and in some other re-
spects I incline to think that our part of the
ediflce was the finer. It is certain that no
mention is made of any such beautiful hall
in the property of the painter as is noted
in that of our landlord, by the historian of
a Hundred Palaces of Venice, — a work
for which I subscribed, and then for my
merit was honored by a visit from the au«
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OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE 247
thor, who read aloud to me in a deep and
sonorous voice the annals of our temporary
home. This hall occupied half the space of
the whole floor ; but it was altogether sur-
rounded by rooms of various shapes and
sizes, except upon one side of its length,
where it gave, through Gothic windows of
vari-colored glass, upon a small court below,
— a green-mouldy little court, further damp-
ened by a cistern, which had the usual curb
of a single carven block of marble. The
roof of this stately sala was traversed by a
long series of painted rafters, which in the
halls of nearly all Venetian palaces are left
exposed, and painted or carved and gilded.
A suite of stately rooms closed the hall from
the Grand Canal, and one of these formed
our parlor ; on the side opposite the Gothic
windows was a vast aristocratic kitchen,
which, with its rows of shining coppers, its
great chimney-place well advanced toward
the middle of the floor, and its tall gloomy
windows, still affects my imagination as one
of the most patrician rooms which I ever
saw ; at the back of the hall were those cham-
bers of ours overlooking the garden of which
I have already spoken, and another kitchen,
less noble than the first, but still sufficiently
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248 VENETIAN LIFE
grandiose to make most New World kitchens
seem very meekly minute and unimpressive.
Between the two kitchens was another court,
with another cistern, from which the paint-
er's family drew water with a bucket on a
long rope, which, when let down from the
fourth story, appeared to be dropped from
the clouds, and descended with a noise little
less alarming than thunder.
wAltogether the most surprising object in
the great 8ala was a sewing-machine, and we
should have been inconsolably outraged by
its presence there, amid so much that was
merely venerable and beautiful, but for the
fact that it was in a state of harmonious and
hopeless disrepair, and, from its general con-
trivance, gave us the idea that it had never
been of any use. It was, in fact, kept as a
sort of curiosity by the landlord, who ex-
hibited it to the admiration of his Venetian
friends.
The reader will doubtless have imagined,
from what I have been saying, that the Pa-
lazzo Giustiniani had not all that machinery
which we know in our houses here as modem
improvements. It had nothing of the kind,
and life there was, as in most houses in
Italy, a kind of permanent camping out
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 249
When I remember the small amount of car-
peting, of furniture, and of upholstery we
enjoyed, it appears to me pathetic ; and yet,
I am not sure that it was not the wisest way
to live. I know that we had compensation
in things not purchasable here for money.
If the furniture of the principal bedroom
was somewhat scanty, its dimensions were
unstinted, the ceiling was fifteen feet high,
and was divided into rich and heavy panels,
adorned each with a mighty rosette of carved
and gilded wood two feet across. The parlor
had not its original decorations in our time,
but it had once had so noble a carved ceiling
that it was found worth while to take it
down and sell it into England ; and it still
had two grand Venetian mirrors, a vast and
very good painting of a miracle of St. An-
thony, and imitation-antique tables and arm-
chairs. The last were frolicked all over
with carven nymphs and cupids; but they
were of such frail construction that they
were not meant to be sat in, much less to be
removed from the wall against which they
stood ; and more than one of our American
visitors was dismayed at having these proud
articles of furniture go to pieces upon his
attempt to use them like mere arm-chairs of
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260 VENETIAN LIFE
ordinary life. Scarcely less impressiye- or
useless than these was a monumental plas-
ter-stove, surmounted by a bust of ^£scula-
pius; when this was broken by accident,
we cheaply repaired the loss with a bust of
Homer (the dealer in the next campo being
out of ^sculapiuses) which no one could
have told from the bust it replaced; and
this and the other artistic glories of the
room made us quite forget all possible blem-
ishes and defects. And will the reader men-
tion any house with modem improvements
in America which has also windows, with
pointed arches of marble, opening upon bal-
conies that overhang the Grand Canal ?
For our new apartment, which consisted
of six rooms, furnished with every article
necessary for Venetian housekeeping, we
paid one dollar a day, which in the inno-
cence of our hearts we thought rather dear,
though we were somewhat consoled by re-
flecting that this extravagant outlay secured
us the finest position on the Grand CanaL
We did not mean to keep house as we had
in Casa Falier, and perhaps a sketch of our
easier mSnage may not be out of place.
Breakfast was prepared in the house, for in
that blessed climate all you care for in the
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OUR LABT TEAR IN VENICE 261
s
morning is a cup of coffee, with a little
bread and butter, a musk-melon, and some
clusters of white grapes, more or less. Then
we had our dinners sent in warm from a
cook's who had learned his noble art in
France ; he furnished a dinner of five courses
for three persons at a cost of about eighty
cents ; and they were dinners so happily con-
ceived and so justly executed, that I cannot
accuse myself of an excess of sentiment
when I confess that I sigh for them to this
day. Then as for our immaterial tea, we
always took that at the Caffd Florian in the
Piazza of Saint Mark, where we drank a
cup of black coffee and ate an ice, while all
the world promenaded by and the Austrian
bands made heavenly music.
Those bands no longer play in Venice,
and I believe that they are not the only
charm which she has lost in exchanging Aus-
trian servitude for Italian freedom ; though
I should be sorry to think that freedom was
not worth all other charms* The poor Vene-
tians used to be very rigorous (as I have
elsewhere related) about the music of their
oppressors, and would not come into the
Piazza until it had ceased and the Austrian
promenaders had disappeared, when they
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252 VENETIAN LIFE
sat down at Florian's, and listened to such
bands of strolling singers and minstrels
ajs chose to give them a concord of sweet
sounds, without foreign admixture. We, in
our neutrality, were wont to sit out both en-
tertainments, and then go home well toward
midnight, through the sleepy little streets,
and over the bridges that spanned the nar-
row canals, dreaming in the shadows of the
palaces.
We moved with half-conscious steps till
we came to the silver expanse of the Grand
Canal, where, at the ferry, darkled a little
brood of black gondolas, into one of which
we got, and were rowed noiselessly to the
thither side, where we took our way toward
the land-gate of our palace through the nar-
row streets of the parish of San Bamaba,
and the campo before the ugly facade of the
church ; or else we were rowed directly to
the water-gate, where we got out on the steps
worn by the feet of the Giustiniani of old,
and wandered upward through the darkness
of the stairway, which gave them a far dif-
ferent welcome of servants and lights when
they returned from an evening's pleasure
in the Piazza. It seemed scarcely just ; but
then those Giustiniani were dead, and we
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OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE 268
were alive, and that was one advantage;
and, besides, the loneliness and desolation of
the palace had a peculiar charm, and were
at any rate cheaper than its former splendor
could have been. I am afraid that people
who live abroad in the palaces of extinct
nobles do not keep this important fact suf-
ficiently in mind ; and as the Palazzo Grius-
tiniani is still let in furnished lodgings, and
it is quite possible that some of my readers
may be going to spend next summer in it, I
venture to remind them that if they have to
draw somewhat upon their fancy for patrician
accommodations there, it will cost them far
less in money than it did the original pro-
prietors, who contributed to our selfish pleas-
ure by the very thought of their romantic
absence and picturesque decay. In fact, the
Past is everywhere like the cake of proverb :
you cannot enjoy it and have it.
And here I am reminded of another pleas-
ure of modem dwellers in Venetian palaces,
which could hardly have been indulged by
the patricians of old, and which is hardly
imaginable by people of this day, whose front
doors open upon dry land : I mean to say
the privilege of sea-bathing from one's own
threshold. From the beginning of June
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264 VENETIAN LIFE
till far into September all the canals of
Venice are populated by the amphibious
boys, who clamor about in the brine, or
poise themselyes for a leap from the tops
of bridges, or show their fine, statuesque
figures, bronzed by the ardent sun, against
the facades of empty palaces, where they
hover among the marble sculptures, and
meditate a headlong plunge. It is only the
Venetian ladies, in fact, who do not share
this healthful amusement. Fathers of fami-
lies, like so many plump, domestic drakes,
lead forth their aquatic broods, teaching the
little ones to swim by the aid of various
floats, and delighting in the gambols of the
larger ducklings. When the tide comes in
fresh and strong from the £ea the water in
the Grand Canal is pure and refreshing;
and at these tunes it is a singular pleasure
to leap from one's door-step into the swift
current, and spend a halt-hour, very in-
formally, among one's neighbors there. The
Venetian bathing-dress is a mere sketch of
the pantaloons of ordinary life ; and when
I used to stand upon our balcony, and see
some bearded head ducking me a polite salu-
tation from a pair of broad, brown shoulders
that showed above the water, I was not
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE. 266
always able to recognize my acquaintance,
deprived of bis factitious identity of clotbes.
But I always knew a certain stately consul-
general by a vast expanse of baldness upon
the top of bis bead ; and it must be owned, I
think, that this form of social assembly was,
with all its disadvBntages, a novel and viva-
cious spectacle. The Venetian ladies, when
they bathed, went to the Lido, or else to
the bath-houses in front of the Ducal Palace,
where they saturated themselves a good part
of the day, and drank coffee, and, possibly,
gossiped.
I think that our balconies at Palazzo Gius-
tiniani were even better places to see the
life of the Grand Canal from than the bal-
cony of Casa Falier, which we had just left.
Here at least we had a greater stretch of
the Canal, looking, as we could, up either
side of its angle. Here, too, we had more
gondola stations in sight, and as we were
nearer the Rialto, there was more picturesque
passing of the market-boats. But if we saw
more of this life, we did not see it in greater
variety, for I think we had already exhausted
this. There was a movement all night long.
If I woke at three or four o'clock, and offered
myself the novel spectacle of the Canal at
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266 VENETIAN LIFE
that hour, I saw the heavy-laden barges go
by to the Kialto, with now and then also a
good-sized coasting schooner making lazily
for the lagoons, with its ruddy fire already
kindled for cooking the morning's meal, and
looking very enviably cosey. After our own
breakfast we began to watch for the gondolas
of the tourists of different nations, whom we
came to distinguish at a glance. Then the
boats of the various artisans went by, the
carpenter's, the mason's, the plasterer's, with
those that sold fuel, and vegetables, and fruit,
and fish, to any household that arrested them.
From noon till three or four o'clock the
Canal was comparatively deserted ; but be-
fore twilight it was thronged again by people
riding out in their open gondolas to take the
air after the day's fervor. After nightfall
they ceased, till only at long intervals a sol-
itary lamp, stealing over the dark surface,
gave token of the movement of some gondola
bent upon an errand that could not fail to
seem mysterious or fail to be matter of fact.
We never wearied of this oft-repeated vari-
ety, nor of our balcony in any way; and
when the moon shone in through the lovely
arched window and sketched its exquisite
outline on the floor, we were as happy as
moonshine could make us.
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OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE 257
Were we otherwise content? As concerns
Venice, it is very hard to say, and I do not
know that I shall ever be able to say with
certainty. For all the entertainment it af-
forded us, it was a very lonely life, and we
felt the sadness of the city in many fine and
not instantly recognizable ways. English-
men who lived there bade us beware of spend-
ing the whole year in Venice, which they de-
clared apt to result in a morbid depression
of the spirits. I believe they attributed this
to the air of the place, but I think it was
more than half owing to her mood, to her
old, ghostly, aimless life. She was, indeed,
a phantom of the past, haunting our modem
world, — serene, inexpressibly beautiful, yet
inscrutably and unspeakably sad. Hemem-
bering the charm that was in her, we often
sigh for the renewal of our own vague life
there, — a shadow within the shadow ; but re-
membering also her deep melancholy, an in-
voluntary shiver creeps over us, and we are
glad not to be there. Perhaps some of you
who have spent a summer day or a siunmer
week in Venice do not recognize this feel-
ing ; but if you will remain there, not four
years as we did, but a year or six months
even, it will ever afterwards be only too
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258 VENETIAN LIFE.
plain. All changes, all events, were affected
by the inevitable local melancholy ; the day
was as pensive amidst that populous silence
as the night ; the winter not more pathetic
than the long, tranquil, lovely summer. We
rarely sentimentalized consciously, and still
more seldom openly, abput the present state
of Venice as contrasted with her past glory.
I am glad to say that we despised the con-
ventional poetastery about her; but I believe
that we had so far lived into sympathy with
her, that, whether we realized it or not, we
took the tone of her dispiritedness, and as-
sumed a part of the common experience of
loss and of hopelessness. History, if you
live where it was created, is a far subtler in-
fluence than you suspect ; and I would not
say how much Venetian history, amidst the
monuments of her glory and the witnesses
of her fall, had to do in secret and tacit ways
with the prevailing sentiment of existence,
which I now distinctly recognize to have been
a melancholy one. No doubt this sentiment
was deepened by every freshly added asso-
ciation with memorable places; and each
fact, each great name and career, each
strange tradition as it rose out of the past
for us and shed its pale lustre upon the
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 269
present, touched us with a pathos which we
could neither trace nor analyze.
I do not know how much the modem Ve-
netians had to do with this impression, but
something I have no question. They were
then under Austrian rule; and in spite of
much that was puerile and theatrical in it,
there was something very affecting in their
attitude of what may best be described as
passive defiance. This alone made them
heroic, but it also made them tedious. They
rarely talked of anything but politics ; and
as I have elsewhere said, they wei*e very
jealous to have every one declare himself
of their opinion. Hemmed in by this jeal-
ousy on one side, and by a heavy and rebel-
lious sense of the wrongful presence of the
Austrian troops and the Austrian spies on
the other, we forever felt dimly constrained
by something, we could not say precisely
what, and we only knew what, when we went
sometimes on a journey into free Italy, and
threw off the irksome caution we had main-
tained both as to patriotic and alien tyrants.
This political misery circumscribed our
acquaintance very much, and reduced the
circle of our friendship to three or four
families, who were content to know our sym-
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260 VENETIAN LIFE
pathies without exacting constant expression
of them. So we learned to depend mainly
upon passing Americans for our society ; we
hailed with rapture the arrival of a gondola
distinguished by the easy hats of our country-
men and the pretty faces and pretty dresses
of our coimtrywomen. It was in the days
of our war; and talking together over its
events, we felt a brotherhood with every
other American.
Of course, in these circumstances, we made
thorough acquaintance with the people about
us in the palace. The landlord had come
somehow into a profitable knowledge of
Anglo-Saxon foibles and susceptibilities ;
but his lodgings were charming, and I rec-
ognize the principle that it is not for lit-
erature to make its prey of any possibly
conscious object. For this reason, I am like-
wise mostly silent concerning a certain at-
tachS of the palace, the right-hand man and
intimate associate of the landlord. He was
the descendant of one of the most ancient
and noble families of Italy, — a family of
popes and cardinals, of princes and minis-
ters, which in him was diminished and tar-
nished in an almost inexplicable degree. He
was not at all worldly-wise, but he was a man
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ODR LABT TEAR IN VENICE 261
of great learning, and of a capacity for ac-
quiring knowledge that I have never seen
surpassed. He possessed, I think, not many
shirts on earth ; but he spoke three or four
I^uiguages, and wrote very pretty sonnets in
Italian and German. He was one of the
friendliest and willingest souls living, and
as generous as utter destitution can make a
man; yet he had a proper spirit, and val-
ued himself upon his name. Sometimes he
brought his great-grandfather to the palace ;
a brisk old gentleman in his nineties, who
had seen the fall of the Bepublic and three
other revolutions in Venice, but had con-
trived to keep a government pension through
all, and now smiled with unabated cheerful-
ness upon a world which he seemed likely
never to leave.
The palace-servants were two, the gondo-
lier and a sort of housekeeper, — a hand-
some, swarthy woman, with beautiful white
teeth and liquid black eyes. She was the
mother of a pretty little boy, who was going
to bring himself up for a priest, and whose
chief amusement was saying mimic masses
to an imaginary congregation. She was
perfectly statuesque and obliging, and we had
no right, as lovers of the beautiful or as
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262 VENETIAN LIFE
lodgers, to complain of her, whatever her
faults might have been. As to the gondo-
lier, who was a very important personage in
our palatial household, he was a handsome,
bashful, well-mannered fellow, with a good-
natured blue eye and a neatly waxed mus-
tache. He had been ten years a soldier in
the Austrian army, and was, from his own
account and from all I saw of him, one of
the least courageous men in the world ; but
then no part of the Austrian system tends
to make men brave, and I could easily
imagine that before it had done with one it
might give him reasons enough to be timid
all the rest of his life. Piero had not very
much to do, and he spent the greater part of
his leisure in a sort of lazy flirtation with the
women about the kitchen fire, or in the gon-
dola, in which he sometimes gave them the
air. We always liked him ; I should have
trusted him in any sort of way, except one that
involved danger. It once happened that
burglars attempted to enter our rooms, and
Piero declared to us that he knew the men ;
but before the police, he swore that he knew
nothing about them. Afterwards he re-
turned privately to his first assertion, and
accounted for his conduct by saying that if
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 268
he had borne witness against the burglars,
he was afraid that their friends would jump
on his back (^saltarmi adosso)^ as he phrased
it, in the dark ; for by this sort of terrorism
the poor and the wicked have long been
bound together in Italy. Piero was a hu«
morist in his dry way, and made a jest of
his own caution ; but his favorite joke was,
when he dressed himself with particular care,
to tell the women that he was going to pay
a visit to the Princess Clary, then the star
of Austrian society. This mild pleasantry
was repeated indefinitely with never-f sdling
efEect.
More interesting to us than all the rest
was our own servant, Bettina, who came to
us from a village on the main-land. She
was very dark, so dark and so Southern in
appearance as almost to verge upon the
negro type ; yet she bore the English-sound-
ing name of Scarbro, and how she ever came
by it remains a puzzle to this day, for she
was one of the most pure and entire of Ital-
ians. I mean this was her maiden name ;
she was married to a trumpeter in the Aus-
trian service, whose Bohemian name she was
unable to pronounce, and consequently never
gave us. She was a woman of very few
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264 VENETIAN LIFE
ideas indeed, but perfectly honest and good*
hearted. She was pious, in her peasant fash-
ion, and in her walks about the city did not
fail to bless the baby before every picture
of the Madonna. She provided it with an
engraved portrait of that Holy Nail which
was venerated in the neighboring church of
San Pantaleon ; and she apparently aimed
to supply it with playthings of a religious
and saving character, like that piece of ivory
which resembled a small torso, and which
Bettina described as "A bit of the Lord,
Signer," and it was, in fact, a fragment
of an ivory crucifix, which she had some-
where picked up. To Bettina's mind, man-
kind broadly divided themselves into two
races, Italians and Germans, to which latter
she held that we Americans in some sort be-
longed. She believed that America lay a
little to the south of Vienna, and in her
heart I think she was persuaded that the
real national complexion was black, and that
the innumerable white Americans she saw at
our house were merely a multitude of ex-
ceptions. But with all her ignorance, she
had no superstitions of a gloomy kind : the
only ghost she seemed ever to have heard of
was the spectre of an American ship captain
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 266
which a friend of Piero's had seen at the
Lido. She was perfectly kind and obedient,
and was deeply attached in an inarticulate
way to the baby, which was indeed the pet
of the whole palace. This young lady ruled
arbitrarily over them all, and was forever
being kissed and adored. When Piero went
out to the wine-shop for a little temperate
dissipation, he took her with him on his
shoulder, and exhibited her to the admiring
gondoliers of his acquaintance ; there was
no puppet-show, no church festival, in that
region to which she was not carried; and
when Bettina, and Giulia, and all the idle
women of the neighborhood assembled on a
Saturday afternoon in the narrow alley be-
hind the palace (where they dressed one an-
other's thick black hair in fine braids soaked
in milk, and built it up to last the whole of
the next week), the baby was the cynosure
of all hearts and eyes. But her supremacy
was yet more distinguished when, late at
night, the household gave itself a feast of
snails stewed in oil and garlic in the vast
kitchen. There her anxious parents have
found her seated in the middle of the table
with the bowl of snails before her, and
armed with a great spoon, while her vassals
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266 VENETIAN LIFE
sat ronnd, and grinned their fondness and
delight in her small tyrannies ; and the im-
mense room, dimly lit, with the mystical im-
plements of cookery glimmering from the
wall, showed like some witch's cavern, where
a particularly small sorceress was presiding
over the concoction of an evil potion or the
weaving of a powerful spell.
From time to time we had fellow-lodgers,
who were always more or less interesting
and mysterious. Among the rest there was
once a French lady, who languished, during
her stay, under the disfavor of the police,
and for whose sake there was a sentinel with
a fixed bayonet stationed day and night at
the palace gate. At last, one night, this
French lady escaped by a rope-ladder from
her chamber window, and thus no doubt satis-
fied alike the female instinct for intrigue and
elopement and the political agitator's love of
a mysterious disappearance. It was under-
stood dimly that she was an author, and had
written a book displeasing to the police.
Then there was the German baroness and
her son and daughter, the last very beauti-
ful and much courted by handsome Austrian
officers ; the son rather weak-minded, and a
great care to his sister and mother, from his
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OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE 267
propensity to fall in love and many below
his station ; the mother very red-faced and
fat, a good-natured old creature who gambled
the summer months away at Hombourg and
Baden, and in the winter resorted to Venice
to make a match for her pretty daughter.
Then, moreover, there was that English
family, between whom and ourselves there
was the reluctance and antipathy, personal
and national, which exists between all right-
minded Englishmen and Americans. No
Italian can understand this just and natural
condition, and it was the constant aim of
our landlord to make us acquainted. So
one day when he found a member of each
of these unfriendly families on the neutral
ground of the grand sala^ he introduced
them. They had, happily, the piano-forte
between them, and I flatter myself that the
insulting coldness and indifference with
which they received each other's names car-
ried to our landlord's bosom a dismay never
before felt by a good-natured and well-mean-
ing man.
The piano-forte which I have mentioned
belonged to the landlord, who was fond of
music and of all fine and beautiful things ;
and now and then he gave a musical soirSe^
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268 VENETIAN LIFE
which was attended, more or less surrepti-
tiously, by the young people of his acquaint-
ance. I do not think he was always quite
candid in giving his invitations, for on one
occasion a certain count, who had taken ref-
uge from the glare of the sola in our parlor
for the purpose of concealing the very loud-
plaided pantaloons he wore, explained pa-
thetically that he had no idea it was a party,
and that he had been so long out of society,
for patriotic reasons, that he had no longer
a dress suit. But to us they were very de-
lightful entertainments, no less from the
great variety of character they afforded than
from the really charming and excellent mu-
sic which the different amateurs made ; for
we had airs from all the famous operas, and
the instrumentation was by a gifted young
composer. Besides, the gayeiy seemed to
recall in some degree the old, brilliant life
of the palace, and at least showed us how
well it was adapted to social magnificence
and display.
We enjoyed our whole year in Palazzo
Giustiniani, though some of the days were
too long and some too short, as everywhere.
From heat we hardly suffered at all, so per-
fectly did the vast and lofty rooms answer
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Palazzo Giiistiniani
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OUR LABT TEAR IN VENICE 269
to the purpose of their builders in this re-
spect. A current of sea air drew through
to the painter's garden by day, and by night
there was scarcely a mosquito of the myriads
that infested some parts of Venice. In win-
ter it was not so welL Then we shuffled
about in wadded gowns and boots lined with
sheep-skin, — the woolly side in, as in the
song. The passage of the sola was some-
thing to be dreaded, and we shivered as
fleetly through it as we could, and were all
the colder for the deceitful warmth of the
colors which the sun cast upon the stone
floor from the window opening on the court.
I do not remember any one event of our
life more exciting than that attempted bur-
glary of which I have spoken. In a city
where the police gave their best attention to
political offenders, there were naturally a
great many rogues, and the Venetian rogues,
if not distinguished for the more heroic
crimes, were very skilful in what I may call
the genre branch of robbing rooms through
open windows, and committing all kinds of
safe domestic depredations. It was judged
best to acquaint Justice (as they call law in
jo Latin countries) with the attempt upon our
property, and I found her officers housed in
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270 VENETIAN LIFE
a small room of the Doge's palace, clerkly
men in velvet skull-caps, driving loath quills
over the rough ofiBcial paper of those regions.
After an exchange of diplomatic courtesies,
the commissary took my statement of the
affair down in writing, pertinent to which
were my father's name, place, and business,
with a full and satisfactory personal history
oi myself down to the period of the attempted
burglary. This, I said, occurred one morn-
ing about daylight, when I saw the head of
the burglar peering above the window-sill,
and the hand of the burglar extended to
prey upon my wardrobe,
" Excuse me. Signer Console," interrupted
the commissary, " how could you see him ? "
" Why, there was nothing in the world to
prevent me. The window was open."
" The window was open ! " gasped the
commissary. ^^ Do you mean that you sleep
with your windows open ? "
" Most certainly ! "
^^ Pardon ! " said the commissary, suspi-
ciously. " Do all Americans sleep with their
windows open ? "
'^ I may venture to say that they all do, in
summer," I answered; ^^at least, it's the
general custom."
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OUR LA8T TEAR IN VENICE 271
Such a thing as this indulgence in fresh
air seemed altogether foreign to the conunis-
sary's experience; and but for my ofiBcial
dignity, I am sure that I should have been
effectually browbeaten by him. As it was,
he threw himself back in his arm-chair and
stared at me fixedly for some moments.
Then he recovered himself with another
" Perdoni t " and, turning to his clerk, said,
" Write down that, according to the Ameri-
can custom^ they were sleeping with their
windows open." But I know that the com-
missary, for all his politeness, considered this
habit a relic of the times when we Americans
all abode in wigwams ; and I suppose it par-
alyzed his energies in the effort to bring the
burglars to justice, for I have never heard
anything of them from that day to this.
The truth is, it was a very uneventful
year ; and I am the better satisfied with it
as an average Venetian year on that account.
We sometimes varied the pensive monotony
by a short visit to the cities of the main-
land; but we always came back to it wil-
lingly, and I think we unconsciously ab-
horred any interruption of it. The days, as
they followed each other, were wonderfully
alike, in every respect. For eight months
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272
VENETIAN LIFE
of summer they were alike in their clear-
skied, sweet-breathed loveliness ; in the au-
tumn, there where the melancholy of the
falling leaf could not spread its contagion to
the sculptured foliage of Gothic art, the days
were alike in their sentiment of tranquil ob-
livion and resignation, which was as autum-
nal as any aspect of woods or fields could
have been ; in the winter they were alike in
their dreariness and discomfort. As I re-
member, we spent by far the greater part of
our time in going to the Piazza, and we were
devoted Florianisti, as the Italians call those
that lounge habitually at the CaffS Florian.
We went every evening to the Piazza, as a
matter of course ; if the morning was long,
we went to the Piazza ; if we did not know
what to do with the afternoon, we went to
the Piazza; if we had friends with us, we
went to the Piazza; if we were alone, we
went to the Piazza ; and there was no mood
or circumstances in which it did not seem a
natural and fitting thing to go to the Piazza.
There were all the prettiest shops ; there were
all the finest caff e a ; there was the incom-
parable Church of St. Mark ; there was the
whole world of Venice.
Of course, we had other devices besides
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OUR LABT TEAR TN VENICE 278
going to the Piazza ; and sometimes we spent
entire weeks in visiting the churches, one after
another, and studying their artistic treas-
ures, down to the smallest scrap of an old
master in their darkest chapel ; their history,
their stoijed tombs, their fictitious associa-
tions. Very few churches escaped, I believe,
except such as had been turned into barracks,
and were guarded by an incorruptible Aus-
trian sentinel. For such churches as did
escape, we have a kind of envious longing
to this day, and should find it hard to like
anybody who had succeeded better in visiting
them. There is, for example, the church of
San Giobbe, the doors of which we haunted
with more patience than that of the titulary
saint : now the sacristan was out ; now the
church was shut up for repairs ; now it was
Holy Week and the pictures were veiled;
we had to leave Venice at last without a
sight of San Giobbe's three Saints by Bor-
done, and Madonna by Bellini, which, un-
seen, outvalue all the other Saints and Ma-
donnas that we looked at ; and I am sure
that life can never become so aimless, but
we shall still have the desire of some day
going to see the church of San Giobbe. If
we read some famous episode of Venetian
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274 VENETIAN LIFE
history, we made it the immediate care of
our lives to visit the scene of its occurrence ;
if Ruskin told us of some recondite beauty
of sculpture hid away in some unthought-of
palace court, we invaded that palace at once ;
if in entirely purposeless strolls through the
city we came upon anything that touched
the fancy or piqued curiosity, there was no
gate or bar proof against our bribes. What
strange old nests of ruin, what marvellous
homes of solitude and dilapidation, did we
not wander into! What boarded-up win-
dows peer through, what gloomy recesses
penetrate! I have lumber enough in my
memory stored from such rambles to load
the nightmares of a generation, and stuff for
the dreams of a whole people. Does any
gentleman or lady wish to write a romance ?
Sir or madam, I know just the mouldy and
sunless alley for your villain to stab his victim
in, the canal in which to plunge his body,
the staircase and the hall for the subsequent
wanderings of his ghost ; and all these scenes
and localities I will sell at half the cost price;
as also, balconies for flirtation, gondolas for
intrigue and elopement, confessionals for the
betrayal of guilty secrets. I have an assort
ment of bad and beautiful faces and pictur-
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 276
esque attitudes and effective tones of voice ;
and a large stock of sympathetic sculptures
and furniture and dresses, with other articles
too numerous to mention, all warranted Ve-
netian, and suitable to every style of romance.
Who bids ? Nay, I cannot sell, nor you buy.
Each memory, as I hold it up for inspection,
loses its subtle beauty and value, and turns
common and poor in my hawker's fingers.
Yet I must needs try to fix here the re-
membrance of two or three palaces, of which
our fancy took the fondest hold, and to which
it yet most fondly clings. It cannot locate
them all, and least of all can it place that
vast old palace, somewhere near Cannaregio,
which faced upon a campo^ with lofty win-
dows blinded by rough boards, and empty
from top to bottom. It was of the later
Kenaissance in style, and we imagined it
built in the Kepublic's declining years by
some ruinous noble, whose extravagance for-
bade his posterity to live in it, for it had
that peculiarly forlorn air which belongs to
a thing decayed without being worn out.
We entered its coolness and dampness, and
wandered up the wide marble staircase, past
the vacant niches of departed statuary, and
came on the third floor to a grand portal
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276 VENETIAN LIFE
which was closed against ns by a barrier of
lumber. But this could not hinder us from
looking within, and we were aware that we
stood upon the threshold of our ruinous
noble's great banqueting-hall, where he used
to give his magnificent feste da hcdlo, Lus-
trissimo was long gone with all his guests ;
but there in the roof were the amazing
frescos of Tiepolo's school, which had smiled
down on them, as now they smiled on us ;
great piles of architecture, airy tops of pal-
aces, swimming in summer sky, and wan-
toned over by a joyous populace of divini-
ties of the lovelier sex that had nothing but
their loveliness to clothe them and keep them
afloat ; the whole grandiose and superb be-
yond the effect of words, and luminous with
delicious color. How it all rioted there with
its inextinguishable beauty in the solitude
and silence, from day to day, from year to
year, while men died, and systems passed,
and nothing remained unchanged but the
instincts of youth and love that inspired it!
It was music and wine and wit ; it was so
warm and glowing that it made the sunlight
cold; and it seemed ever after a secret of
gladness and beauty that the sad old palace
was keeping in its heart against the time
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OUR LABT TEAR IN VENICE 277
to which Venice looks forward when her
splendor and opulence shall be indestructibly
renewed.
There is a ball-room in the Palazsso Pisani^
which some of my readers may have passed
through on their way to the studio of the
charming old Prussian painter, Nerly; the
frescos of this are dim and faded and dusty,
and impress you with a sense of irreparable
decay, but the noble proportions and the
princely air of the place are inalienable,
while the palace stands. Here might have
danced that Contarini who, when his wife's
necklace of pearls fell upon the floor in the
way of her partner, the King of Denmark,
advanced and ground it into powder with his
foot, that the king might not be troubled to
avoid treading on it ; and here, doubtless,
many a gorgeous masquerade had been in
the long Venetian carnival ; and what pas-
sion and intrigue and jealousy, who knows?
Now the palace was let in apartments, and
was otherwise a barrack, and in the great
court, steadfast as any of the marble statues,
stood the Austrian sentineL One of the
statues was a figure veiled from head to foot,
at the base of which it was hard not to im-
agine lovers, masked and hooded, and for-
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278 VENETIAN LIFE
ever hurriedly whispering their secrets in the
shadow cast in perpetual moonlight.
Yet another ball-room in yet another pal-
ace opens to memory, but this is all bright
and fresh with recent decoration. In the blue
vaulted roof shine stars of gold ; the walls
are gay with dainty frescos ; a gallery en-
circles the whole, and from this drops a light
stairway, slim-railed, and guarded at the foot
by torch-bearing statues of swarthy Eastern
girls ; through the glass doors at the other
side glimmers the green and red of a garden.
It was a place to be young in, to dance
in, dream in, make love in ; but it was no
more a surprise than the whole palace to
which it belonged, and which there in that
tattered and poverty-stricken old Venice was
a vision of untarnished splendor and pros-
perous fortune. It was richly furnished
throughout all its vast extent, adorned with
every caprice and delight of art, and ap-
pointed with every modem comfort. The
foot was hushed by costly carpets, the eye
was flattered by a thousand beauties and
prettinesses. In the grates the fires were
laid and ready to be lighted; the candles
stood upon the mantels ; the toilet-linen was
arranged for instant use in the luxurious
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OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE 279
ohambers ; but from basement to roof the
palace was a solitude ; no guest came there,
no one dwelt there save the custodian ; the
eccentric lady of whose possessions it formed
a part abode in a little house behind the pal-
ace, and on her door-plate had written her
vanitas vanitatum in the sarcastic inscrip-
tion, " John Humdrum, Esquire."
Of course she was Inglese; and that
other lady, who was selling off the furniture
of her palace, and was so amiable a guide
to its wonders in her curious broken English,
was Hungarian. Her great pride and joy,
amidst the objects of vertu and the works of
art, was a set of ^^ Punch," which she made
us admire, and which she prized the more
because she had always been allowed to re-
ceive it when the government prohibited it
to everybody else. But we were Americans,
she said; and had we ever seen this book?
She held up the " The Potiphar Papers," a
volume which must have been inexpressibly
amused and bewildered to find itself there,
in that curious little old lady's hand.
Shall I go on and tell of the palace in
which our strange friend Padre L dwelt,
and the rooms of which he had filled up with
the fruits of his passion for the arts and sci-
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280 VENETIAN LIFE
ences ; the ante-room he had frescoed to rep-
resent a grape -arbor with a midtitude of
clusters overhead ; the parlor with his oil-
paintings on the walls, and the piano and me-
lodeon arranged so that Padre L— could
play upon them both at once; the oratory
turned forge, and harboring the most al-
chemic-looking apparatus of all kinds; the
other rooms in which he had stored his in-
ventions in portable furniture, steam-propul-
sion, rifled cannon, and perpetual motion;
the attic with the camera by which one could
photograph one's self, — shall I tell of this,
and yet other palaces? I think there is
enough already ; and I have begun to doubt
somewhat the truth of my reminiscences, as
I advise the reader to do.
Besides, I feel that the words fail to give
all the truth that is in them ; and if I can-
not make them serve my purpose as to the
palaces, how should I hope to impart through
them my sense of the glory and loveliness of
Venetian art ? I could not give the imagina-
tion and the power of Tintoretto as we felt
it, nor the serene beauty, the gracious lux-
ury of Titian, nor the opulence, the worldly
magnificence of Paolo Veronese. There hang
their mighty works forever, high above the
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OUB LAST TEAR IN VENICE 281
reach of any palaverer; they smile their
stately welcome from the altars and palace-
walls, upon whoever approaches them in the
sincerity and love of beauty that produced
them ; and thither you must thus go if
you would know them. Like fragments of
dreams, like the fleeting
** Images of glimmering dawn,''
I am from time to time aware, amid the
work-day world, of some happiness from
them, some face or form, some drift of a
princely robe or ethereal drapery, some au-
g^t shape of painted architecture, some un-
namable delight of color ; but to describe
them more strictly and explicitly, how should
I undertake ?
There was the exhaustion following every
form of intense pleasure, in their contempla-
tion, such a wear of vision and thought, that
I could not call the life we led in looking
at them an idle one, even if it had no result
in after times ; so I will not say that it
was to severer occupation our minds turned
more and more in our growing desire to re-
turn home. For my own part personally I
felt keenly the fictitious and transitory char-
acter of official life. I knew that if I had
become fit to serve the government by four
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282 VENETIAN LIFE
years' residence in Venice, that was a good
reason why the government, according to our
admirable system, should dismiss me, and
send some perfectly unqualified person to
take my place ; and in my heart also I knew
that there was almost nothing for me to
do where I was, and I dreaded the easily
formed habit of receiving a salary for no
service performed. I reminded myself that,
soon or late, I must go back to the old fash-
ion of earning money, and that it had better
be sooner than later. Therefore, though for
some reasons it was the saddest and strang-
est thing in the world to do, I was on the
whole rejoiced when a leave of absence came,
and we prepared to quit Venice.
Never had the city seemed so dream-like
and unreal as in this light of farewell, —
this tearful glimmer which our love and re-
gret cast upon it. As in a maze, we haunted
once more and for the last time the scenes
we had known so long, and spent our final
phantasmal evening in the Piazza ; looked,
through the moonlight, our mute adieu to isl-
ands and lagoons, to church and tower ; and
then returned to our own palace, and stood
long upon the balconies that overhimg the
Grand Canal. There the future became as
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OUR LAST TEAR IN VENICE 283
incredible and improbable as the past ; and
if we had often felt the incongruity of our
coming to live in such a place, now, with ten-
fold force, we felt the cruel absurdity of pro-
posing to live anywhere else. We had be-
come part of Venice ; and how could such
atoms of her fantastic personality ever min-
gle with the a^ien and unsympathetic world ?
The next morning the whole palace house-
hold bestirred itself to accompany us to the
station ; the landlord in his best hat and
coat, our noble friend in phenomenal linen,
Giulia and her little boy, Bettina shedding
bitter tears over the baby, and Piero, sad
but firm, bending over the oar and driving
us swiftly forward. The first turn of the
Canal shut the Palazzo Giustiniani from our
lingering gaze, a few more curves and wind-
ings brought us to the station. The tickets
were bought, the baggage was registered;
the little oddly assorted company drew itself
up in a line, and received with tears our
husky adieux. I feared there might be a re-
mote purpose in the hearts of the landlord
and his retainer to embrace and kiss me, af-
ter the Italian manner, but if there was, by
a final inspiration they spared me the ordeal.
Piero turned away to his gondola ; the two
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284 VENETIAN LIFE
other men moved aside; Bettimt gave one
long, hungering, devouring hug to the baby ;
and as we hurried mto the waiting-room, we
saw her, as upon a stage, standing without
the barrier, supported and sobbing in the
arms of GKuUa.
It was well to be gone, but I cannot say
we were glad to be going.
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INDEX
Abbati, thejii. 233, 234.
Alexander m., Pope, iL 76.
Annual state banquets, it 79.
Armenian college, i. 257 to 262.
Armenian liten& and literature,
L 226 to 256.
Attilas chair, L 235.
Augustinian convent, court of
the,L21L
Baptisms, patrician, iL 137, 138.
Barbarossa, iL 76.
Bembo, Cardinal, L 231 ; his pal-
ace, L 266.
Benedict UI., Pope, ii. 75.
Betrothals, plebeian, iL 120, 121.
Bianca Gappello*s house, iL 28.
Bonnet of the Doge, ii. 76.
Brides, rape of the Venetian, iL
120.
Bridge of Sighs, i. 13.
Bucintoro, the, ii. 82, 83.
Burattini, i. 96, 97.
Burial-ground at San Michele, iL
140 to 146; of the Jews on
Lido, L 223.
Byron, i. 224, 248 ; his house, IL
28.
Byzantine fashions and influence,
ii. 187.
Camp!, the. L 81.
Canova, ii. 236.
Capuchins, Order of, founded, L
243 ; banished, ii. 16.
Carmelites, Church of the, i
205.
Carnival, L 17, 26, 162.
Carraras, the, L 16, 212.
Casa di Ricovero, L 203.
Castellani and Nicolotti, IL 86.
Castle of Love, iL 61.
Chioggia, L 240, 241; costume
in,L243.
Chiozzotti, Famous, L 241 to
246.
Christmas, IL 104, 116; presents,
iL 107, 108; fairs, iL 109;
masses, iL 113 to 116.
Clement v.. Pope, ii. 14.
Clock Tower, L 70 ; Magi of the,
ii. 97. -6 -»
Comitate Yeneto, L 22, 23.
Commedia a bracdo, L 99 to 101.
Commerce, iL 30; with the
Gotlis, ii. 32 ; with the Longo-
bards, iL 33; in slaves, U.^;
with the Franks, ii. 35; in the
Greek Empire, ii. 35 ; with the
East, ii. 3iS; amount of, past
and present. iL 44; in relics,
ii. 51; declme of. ii. 52; fall
of, in the Orient, ii. 52.
Corpus Christi, iL 90 to 96.
Dandolo, Enrico, Ii. 35, 90.
Doria, Andrea, i. 162, ii. 8L
Ducal palace, i. 14, 15, 69.
Ducal state visits, iL 75 to 78.
Erao, iL 236.
Ernest, Duke of Brunswick, iL
72. ^
Espousals of the sea, ii. 82 to
Excommunication of Ferrara, iL
13 to 16.
Falier, Marin, L 16 to 17, 127,
128, U. 89.
Fenice, Theatre, i. 89.
Florian, Caflfft, L 27, 73, 180.
Foscari, Jacopo, i. 16 ; his mar-
riage, ii. 125 to 129.
Fresco, the, i. 170.
Funeral rites, ancient and mod-
em, ii. 139 to 141.
Gardens, the Public. iL 101;
Mondays at the, ii. 102.
Ghetto, the, L 209 to 279.
Giant Sea- Wall, the, L 240.
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286
INDEX
Oiant*8 Stain, LIT.
Oiudecoa, laUnd of the, L 222.
Ooldonl, i. 99, 242, ii. 157;
house of, ii. 27.
Gondoliers, IL 147 to 160.
Onuid Canal, L 34, 58, 120, 163,
a. 67 to 72.
Grand Council, ii. 230.
Gregory XVI., Pope, iL 140.
Hatred of Austria, i. 18 to 29.
Ice, year of the, L 61 to 63.
Inquisition, U. 215.
Interdict of 1606, iL 16 to 20.
Jesuits, Church of the, L 57;
banished, ii. 26; influence of,
ii. 211.
Jews, exile and former disabili-
ties of, i. 267 to 271; ceme-
tery of the, L 218.
Law, tomb of John, ii. 114.
Lepanto, Fight of, celebrated, ii.
Lido, Island of the, L 223 to 227.
Luther, L 212.
Malamocoo, i. 224, 227, ii. 64.
Malibran Theatre, i. 94, 95.
Manin, Daniele, ii. 207.
Marco e Todaro, L 66.
Marie, Festa delle, ii. 81.
Marionette Theatre, i. 95 to 106.
Marriage customs, early, ii. 119 ;
ceremonies, modem, ii. 136 ;
patrician, ii. 122 to 124.
Mastino della 0cala, ii. 65.
Mechithar. i. 247.
Mer^ria, ii. 109.
Michiel, The Doge Domenico, ii.
77 ; Giustina Benier - Michiel,
ii.81.
Mocenigo, Tommaso, Ii. 44.
Molo, i. 69.
Monte de Pieti, i. 149.
Murano, i. 229 to 232, ii. 39, 45.
Musical conservatories, i. 91, 93.
New Year's Day, ii. 117.
Nobles, i. 25, ii. 216 to 224.
Othello's house, ii. 147.
Otho, the Emperor, ii. 36.
Palaces, ii. 227, 228.
Palestrina, i. 244.
Paul v.. Pope, U. 15.
Pephi, King, ii. 64.
Petrardi, L 162 ; his account of
a joust in the Piazza, ii. 63,
Piazza and caif ^, L 68 to 77, 16L
179, U. 91.
Piazzetta,L 69.
Pigeons of St. Mark, iL 88.
Pigs of St. Anthony, iL 215.
Pisani, Vittore, i. 16.
Polo, Marco, ii. 38.
Pov^liesi, the, iL 87.
Pozzi, the, L 15.
Priests, ii. 209 to 217.
Prisons, the criminal, L 14.
Procuratie, L 69.
Redentore, Festa deL L 222, a
78, 79.
Regattas, the, iL 66 to 72.
Bialto, i. 117 ; market, i. 182.
Biva degli Schiavoni, L 69, 86,
iL98.
Salviati, mosaic establishment of,
iL 47 to 60.
San Bartolomeo, Campo, L 81 to
86.
San Clemente, Island of, L 220.
San Geminiano, removal of the
Church of, iL 74.
San Giorgio Maggiore, Church
of, L 222.
San Giovanni e Paolo, Church of,
L208.
San Lazzaro, Convent of, L 60,
247.
San Mois^, Church of, ii. 112.
San NicoI6 del Tolentini, Church
of, i. 207.
San Pietro di Castello, iL 80, 91,
92,120.
San Rocco, Scuola di, iL 139;
theft of body of, ii. 78.
San Stef ano. Church of, L 211 ;
day of, iL 116.
Santa Maria del Giglio, Church
of, i. 179.
Santa Maria deU* Orto, Church
of, L 272.
Santa Maria della Salute, Church
of, L 207, ii. 78.
Santa Maria Fermosa, Church o^
ii. 80.
San Zaccaria, Convent of, it 7&
215.
1 Sarpi, Paolo, iL 7.
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INDEX
287
Bervfte GoDTont, IL 7.
8f orzs, Francesco, ii 126.
Bior Antonio Bioba, i. 270.
Soldini maaaes, L 20a
Sottomarina, i. 244.
Bpaniah synagogue, L 275.
Speech!, Caffl,! 76.
St. Mark, Church of, i. 24, 66,
70, 200 to 204, U. 161 ; body
of, a. 73, 75.
ButtU, Caff^, i 76.
Tamerlane, iL 63.
of , iL 37 ; faU of ,
Xheodoric, King of the Gotha,
iL32.
Tiepolo, Bajamonte. it 66. 80.
Tintoretto, tomb of, L 272, 273;
houne of, iL 23.
Titian, house of , ii. 24.
TorceUo, L 233 to 240.
Tradonico, Pietro, the Dose, fi.
76.
Ulrich, Patriarch of Aqoilflla, fi.
58. — t *-t
Villa Pisani at Stra, iL 225.
yaias, iL 223; on the Bienta,
ii.226.
Zeno, Carlo, L 16.
Ziani, the I>oge, iL 62, 88b
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