San Marco Piazza, a word to Paolo starts us laboriously toward the
outskirts of the flotilla. From the Royal Gardens to the _molo_ is a
matter of only a dozen plunges or so of the stout oar, spurred by an
offer of extra _lire_ for extra speed. Off flies our gondola, frowning
as superbly as ever did swan in the eye of Keats. We dart alongside
the wet quay beyond the Bridge of Sighs and one of those superannuated
old gondoliers called _rampini_ earns a _pourboire_ by steadying the
prow as we jump ashore at the base of the column of San Marco’s winged
lion. St. Theodore looks down placidly from the vantage-point above
his crocodile as we pass between these storied pillars—“fra Marco
e Todaro,” as the Venetians say when they mean “between pillar and
post.” The _piazzetta_ is already crowded and our hope of a table at
Florian’s is dwindling. Never did the stately Sansovino Library or the
airy colonnades and warm Moorish marbles of the Palace of the Doges
look finer, but past them we speed with no time for the scantiest of
glances at the famous quatrefoils and the thirty-six pillars with the
renowned capitals, and in we hurry to the broad and glorious piazza
and its flooding of light and life. Florian’s is in a state of siege.
Every table seems taken and hungry people by hundreds are clamoring
for places. The Quadri, across the square, would probably have had to
content us had not the efficacy of frequent past tips saved the day,
and my nightly waiter welcomes us with his dry and mirthless smile
and slips us into a snug harbor under the very guns of the enemy. My
companions are officers of the American squadron now lying at Triest
and they pass their professional opinion that the strategy was capital.
But though officers, they are _young_ officers, and Venice has captured
them hand and foot. Scarcely have we completed our supper-order when
the flowing strains of the Coronation March from “The Prophet” roll in
from the _molo_ in the _barca’s_ good night, and, as if it were riding
in on that splendid musical tide, the noisy, jubilant host of the
_festa_ comes pouring upon us.
And what a fascinating spectacle does this grand, unrivaled old square
then present! Were Byron here to-night he would still have to call
it “the pleasant place of all festivity.” No chance now to study the
designs in this vast flooring of marble or to coax a half-persuaded
pigeon on to your shoulder. In every part of its two hundred yards of
arcaded length, set with storied architecture so inspiring by beauty
and association that it moved even the self-contained Mr. Howells to
exclaim, “It makes you glad to be living in this world,” and under the
blaze of its rimming of clustered lights and shops and thronged cafés,
there storms and chatters a vigorous, cheery, light-hearted multitude
fresh from the stimulus of the glittering water pageant. It comes in
through the _piazzetta_ with such a rush that one looks for the band
and band-stand, too, to be swept the full length of the square and out
under the arches of the Royal Palace. Such laughing and uproar! Such
a sirocco of gestures and hailstorm of crackling exclamations! This
human tidal wave of the Adriatic pours down the middle, seethes along
the edges, and swirls and eddies in the remotest corners. One sees in
it happy, voluntary exiles from almost every part of the world, but
to-night the _festa_-loving Venetians predominate. Every local type
is here; from the languid patrician, come in from her country estate
and now sipping anise-water here at Florian’s, and the vapid and
scented fashionable youths with carnations in their buttonholes, to the
flashing, black-eyed shop-girls with red roses in their crisp black
hair and graceful mantilla shawls dropping back from their tossing
heads, and the vigorous, smiling artisans, easy and jaunty of gait,
with soft hats pushed back at every rakish angle on their curly heads.
How happy and transported Maria is to-night, in her new black skirt and
crimson bodice, and how the sultry red smoulders through the olive of
her cheeks as her little hands whirl in a tempest of gestures and the
lightnings of excitement play in her midnight eyes! And no less carried
away is Giovanni, beside her,—proud as Colleoni on the big bronze
horse,—though he lets her do most of the talking and contents himself
with approving in quick, expressive shrugs. All classes of society
are with us—“rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief”; and old Shylock
himself, who was most of these, “dreaming of money-bags.” Scraps of
gay, slurring song are continually bubbling over and flashes of wit and
snappy repartees go flying to and fro. Flower-girls thread the press
and insist upon pinning _boutonnières_ on the men, and street merchants
move about offering everything from curios to caramel-on-a-stick. A
crowd gathers about a blind old troubadour thrumming a dirty guitar
and struggling to force his rusty voice along the melodious course of
some popular _villotte_, and presently he will be led among the tables
before the cafés and _centesimi_ and silver _lire_ will jingle into his
ragged hat.
It is little enough to say that no scene ever had a more romantic
setting. The quaint old Venetian quatrain does this famed spot scant
justice:—
“In St. Mark’s Place three standards you descry,
And chargers four that seem about to fly;
There is a timepiece which appears a tower,
And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.”
In the moonlight the sculptured and arcaded old buildings glow like
mellow ivory around three sides of it, and it is warmed and vitalized
by bustling cafés and brilliant shop windows set with tempting snares
of artful jewelry and cunningly wrought glass. Strong and proud the
great Campanile towers upward into the clear night, away above the tops
of the three tall flag-staffs. The sumptuous Cathedral, in its wealth
of glowing color and lavish adornment, makes one think of a vast heap
of glittering treasure piled up by returning Venetian pirates in answer
to the accustomed question, “What have you brought back for Marco?”
One can scarcely take his eyes off its lofty, yawning portals, its
gates of bronze, its forest of columns, its sweeping arches glowing in
every color of brilliant mosaics, its profusion of creamy sculptures,
its canopied saints and statued pinnacles and its great Byzantine
domes billowing into the purple sky. On the ancient clock tower of the
Merceria the fierce winged lion of St. Mark’s holds a resolute paw on
the open Gospels, and the bronze bellringers swing twelve ponderous
blows and hang up the hour of midnight on a dial of blue and gold.
As they pause at the completion of their labors and look down on the
sea of faces turned toward them from the Piazza they seem so nearly
galvanized into life that it would scarcely surprise one to hear them
shout, “What news of the argosies of Antonio?”
With the sparkling beauty of Venice so irresistible it is a terrible
temptation to my companions to hurry straight back to Triest and come
over with their battleship and, like dashing naval Lochinvars, force
an espousal of this incomparable Bride of the Sea. Vain thought! It is
Venice herself who has always done the espousing; fully to possess her
it must be on her own conditions of complete surrender.
How inevitable it seems at night that you must take the step; must cry
out, once and for all, to fellow voyagers on the Dead Lagoons of Life:
“Ho, brothers! No more of the drab and wretched wastes for me! I am for
beauty and romance—‘in Venice, all golden, to dream!’ I shall dwell in
this enchanted realm of _dolce far niente_ and float with my gondola
into the final Sunset. Companions on Life’s waters, ‘Ah, Stalì’!”
[Illustration]
PARIS
MIDNIGHT TO 1 A.M.
Like a practiced coquette, Paris, the world’s _enchanteresse_, reserves
for the supreme moments of midnight her rarest resources of gayety and
charm. Her last laughs are her best. And decidedly, she is dangerous
when laughing. Beyond question, her glowing eyes at midnight are
wonderfully sweet and beguiling; and hers is the skill to touch the
bright hours with the most delectable _couleur de rose_. There is
satisfaction for each desire. “Would monsieur sup?” The most amazing
cuisine in the world awaits your pleasure. “Would monsieur stroll?”
The sparkling lights and rustling trees of the fairest of boulevards
fairly drag you their way. “Would he drive?” You raise your hand; a
_fiacre_ dashes up; and soon the Bois and the Champs-Élysées, cool,
scented, dewy, receive you gladly to their enchanting retreats. “Would
he join a revel—just a little one?” _Cabarets_, _cafés-chantants_,
_bals publics_ were designed for no other purpose. “Would he look on
at life?” “_Garçon vite! Une demi-tasse—une; sur la terrasse!_”—and
heart could not ask for a madder, merrier, more absorbing spectacle
than that which will whirl and surge by the very edge of your little
round table. “Eh? Monsieur has a fancy for nature and solitude? _Mon
Dieu! C’est un original, celui-là! Mais_”—and you will find nowhere
gardens lovelier than those of the Tuileries, elegant with statues and
carpeted with flowers. Thus at every point the charmer wins. What is
left but surrender? She seems the very Queen of Heart’s Desire.
Of course, the night side of Paris is her most trivial side. But then
visitors have always refused to take her seriously at any time. No
matter how many wonderful achievements have been crying out to them all
day that this is one of the most extraordinary and advanced communities
to be found anywhere on the face of the earth, still they stubbornly
cling to the conviction that all is frivolity here and that night is
Paris’s supreme period and pleasure seeking her most conspicuous and
characteristic rôle. Accustomed to the droll ideas of foreigners,
and bothering little about them except to find occasional amusement,
Paris shrugs her shoulders in indifference and turns on more lights.
Brilliant, charming, and ingenious she creates what she prefers—an
atmosphere of gayety and beauty. And the visiting world purrs about
her in joy of a fascination it cannot find elsewhere and salves its
own patriotism with the conclusion that this is her principal _raison
d’être_.
As a matter of fact, the Parisians are masters of the art of living.
As their kitchen is the best, so is their drawing-room and study.
All the affairs of every day are handled with ease and grace, with
imagination and a kind of poetic skill that adorns even the ugly
and commonplace and invests them with attractiveness and charm. The
cheery light-heartedness that is a fundamental trait of Parisians
converts the life of their streets and parks into scenes delightful
either to contemplate or share. Indeed, they often seem to be only
grown-up children, so gracefully have they retained the fresh and
stimulating enthusiasm of youth—so rueful and pouting over a rainy
day; so exuberant over a bright one. And the best of it is that there
is an infection to their high spirits that passes into the observer
and clears his perception of the folly of worry and depression, and
shows him the value and availableness of optimism and good cheer. Such
is the glorious influence of a people whose attitude toward life is
essentially one of hope and zest.
No one is going to deny that the Parisian is vain. Indeed, his attitude
toward the rest of the earth, while patient and polite, is at bottom
patronizing and even a little supercilious. And sometimes, it must
be confessed, this gets on the visitor’s nerves. One cannot give out
admiration forever and rest content with getting none back. It is
easy to understand the mood of bitter derision into which even so
enthusiastic an admirer as Edmondo de Amicis fell when he wrathfully
wrote: “Three hundred ‘citizens’ hang over the side of a bridge to
see a dog washed; if a drum passes, a crowd collects; and a thousand
people, in one railway station, make a tremendous uproar by clapping
their hands, shouting, and laughing because one of the guards of the
train has lost his hat!” Yet De Amicis came shortly to see that this
is only the Parisian temperament, which he admired in so many other
of its manifestations, and that under it lie solid qualities of the
highest and rarest order. So he forgave Paris, as everyone does, and
took her again to his heart—albeit, I mistrust, with reservation and
a lingering grain of suspicion and perhaps something of the foreign
conviction that she is not always to be taken quite seriously.
[Illustration: PARIS, ON THE BOULEVARD]
To the vast majority of visitors Paris by night means the boulevards.
The beauty of these famed thoroughfares, the cosmopolitan and
fascinating sea of humanity that flows through them, the means
of amusement that abound, and all the many little refinements of
comfort and elegance to be seen on every hand place them in a class
by themselves among the city streets of the world. In the matter of
virility the life of the boulevards is amazing. Every one seems to be
at his keenest when he walks there. Anticipation is fairly skipping
on tiptoe. The old _boulevardier_, the traditional _flâneur_, has not
been disappointed of his evening’s diverting on-look these forty years
or more, and he can, therefore, clothed and gloved and caned _à la
mode_, proceed with his stroll in unhasting dignity, confident that the
usual amusing spectacle will unfold itself in good time. But the new
arrivals and the visitors of a few weeks show in their eager faces
that nothing is going to escape them and that a thorough debauch of
pleasure is the least they propose to make out of all the bewildering
light and life about them. From the Place de la Concorde to the Place
de la République a laughing, brilliant, light-hearted multitude pours
along all night with infinite bustle and chatter. Between twelve and
one o’clock it is at its gayest. The theatres and _cafés-concerts_
have emptied their audiences into the stream, which is swollen to the
very curb, and the driveways are whirling with an enormous outpouring
of busses, motors, and cabs. The size of the loads the hired victorias
and _fiacres_ will accommodate is determined solely by the inclination
and interest of the impertinent fat _cocher_ in the varnished plug
hat; and it is nothing to see a conveyance, that ordinarily carries
but two people, trundling merrily along behind a sprung-kneed nag,
with a man and several girls piled inside and all waving hands to the
crowd with the vastest _camaraderie_ imaginable. This is of a piece
with the universal high spirits and good humor that prevail along the
boulevards. It is all fun and frolic, and everybody is in it. The rows
of chairs and tables on the sidewalks before the cafés really make
the spectators a part of the show; and the groups before the artistic
little newspaper kiosks and the comfortable sitters on the green
benches along the curb are, in spite of themselves, part and parcel of
the big family, with something of the intimacy and allied interest of a
village street at fair-time. And it always seems fair-time in Paris by
night. The profusion of lights that have won it the title of “La Ville
Lumière” gives it an appearance of being perpetually _en fête_, and the
ebullient crowds complete the illusion.
But the Grand Boulevards have no monopoly of the night attractiveness
of the city. All over town stretch broad, clean streets with shade
trees and double lines of lights and rows of stone and stucco
houses. In the main these houses resemble each other rather closely;
slate-colored, Mansard-roofed, and with shallow iron balconies running
full length of the second, fourth, and fifth stories. By night they
fairly exhale an atmosphere of tranquillity and peace. There are,
besides, hundreds of beautiful roomy squares, flooded with light
and set with comfortable benches that are seldom without contented
occupants. Such a notable one as the Place de la Concorde is without
its equal in any city. It costs the three and a quarter millions of
people who live in and about Paris more than $70,000,000 a year to
maintain their city’s reputation for beauty; and not a sou of it is
begrudged. For Paris is the whole world to most of them, and many a
Parisian politician had rather be Prefect of the Seine and rule this
town than president of the whole Republic. And with what reason! “It
is a world-city,” said Goethe, “where the crossing of every bridge or
every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a
piece of history has been unfolded.”
Whoever turns from the boulevards for a space will learn of other kinds
of life that are in full cry at midnight. What of the studio revelries
of the Quartier Latin? There abound jollity and earnestness and strong
friendships with few of the gilded accessories of the _Rive Droite_.
The brightest of these scenes are often the most meagre in setting. A
group of jovial, smoking, singing companions—and about them an easel
and sketching-board, a dingy divan, a few battered chairs, a stove in
the corner with the remains of the last meal, a huddle of draperies and
hangings, fragments of casts and uncompleted sketches on the walls, and
a corner table piled with a dusty litter of squeezed-out paint-tubes,
broken brushes, magazine illustrations, a dog-eared book or two, and a
generous strewing of cigarette butts. The cleanest things in sight are
a freshly scraped palette and a sheaf of brushes stuck in a half-filled
jar of water. With so much of equipment your merry, care-free artist
squeezes the orange of life to its smallest drop, and cares not a sou
how the whole world wags, provided all is well between the Place de
l’Observatoire and the Seine.
Then, again, were you to pass some pleasant house on a quiet avenue
where an evening’s party is ending, you could not help but linger under
the windows in delight to hear some tender song of Massenet’s, some
soothing _berceuse_ of Ropartz’s, a haunting plaint of Saint-Saëns or a
vitalizing torrent of Chaminade’s.
And perhaps where you might most expect just such a scene as this,
behind the closely-drawn window draperies of some handsome apartment,
there is gathered around a broad green table a group of flushed,
excited men to whom a hard-eyed _croupier_ is singing the abominable
siren song of “Faites vos jeux,” “Les jeux sont faits,” “Rien ne va
plus.” It seems quiet and peaceful enough. You could scarcely believe
that there hangs above it the shadow of the little gray Morgue down
behind Notre-Dame!
Before returning to the giddy boulevards for a final _petit-verre_
and an exchange of pleasantries with café acquaintances, one likes
to finish a cigar in an aimless ramble through such placid scenes as
these. Not only may he so indulge the pleasing diversion of speculating
over the kinds of home life that go on within these houses, but
incidentally he escapes the tumult of the maelstrom for a few calm
moments, and eventually sees for himself what a pity it is that so many
night fascinations should abound in Paris and be enjoyed by so few.
He may like to draw moral conclusions from the peace-loving pigeons
nesting in the war-glorifying reliefs of the gigantic and towering Arc
de Triomphe, or take satisfied note of the monuments of the victories
of peace that dot the broad avenues that radiate from it. One such
monument is always under the eyes of the _boulevardiers_ in the form
of that most glorious of all temples to music, the Paris Opera House.
It is especially impressive by night, with the shadows blending
columns and statues in bewildering beauty, and high-lights from the
street lamps glinting on sculptured balustrades and cornices, chalking
the edges of half-hidden arches and penciling the delicate detail of
medallions and reliefs. Nor, it must be allowed, are devotees often
wanting for that fair Greek temple of La Madeleine—so chaste and of
such imposing dignity, rimmed with giant columns and embowered in
verdure.
After like fashion does night enhance the beauty of the great, rambling
Louvre—though this may only be Diana’s way of paying tribute to the
Arts and of venerating the sacred shrine of a sister divinity, that
serenest and sublimest of goddesses, the Venus de Milo. There is
certainly something of almost ethereal comeliness by night to those
long vistas of columns and arcades, to the shadowy sculptures of the
pavilions, the lines of graceful caryatids and the blustering triumphal
groups of the pediments. One might fancy the Louvre wearing a look of
grave disapproval over the hubbub that drifts in from the boulevards
were he not aware how carefully it treasures so many pictorial
skeletons in its own closets. Boucher and Watteau are on record with
infinitely worse scenes than these. But now it has the appearance of
some palace capitol of Shadowland; and before it in perfect sympathy
lies its beautiful dream-kingdom, the hushed and fragrant gardens of
the Tuileries,—fair as the golden Hesperides,—fresh with fountains,
silvered in patches with little shining lakes, marquetried in flowers,
and peopled with shadowy forms of pallid marble.
From a Seine bridge one notes the wizard liberties the reckless
moon takes with the colonnaded dome of the sombre Panthéon. And,
more astonishing still, the magic tricks it plays with the adorned
and enormous bulk of Notre Dame—now veiling, now revealing massive
buttress and delicate rose-window, some recessed arch tucked full
of sculptured saints all snugly foot to head, or a goblin band of
hideous gargoyles that leer ghoulishly down from out the purple
haze of the towers. One could well wish, however, for a closer view
of that exquisite survivor of the Valois kings, the peerless Tour
Saint-Jacques, at the first sight of which the most indifferent exclaim
with delight over so rare a vision of grace and lace-like beauty, over
long slender windows delicately foliated, over traceries of stone
like petrified festoons, and an ensemble so suggestive of some dainty
ivory-carving a million times enlarged. With a glimpse of the round
pointed towers of the dread Conciergerie comes something of the horror
of the days of the Terror, and one fancies ghastly forms beckoning him
at the windows with white, frightened faces and hanging hair and eyes
with hideous rings, and delicate praying hands upheld to passers-by,
and iron bars clutched by the little white fingers of Marie Antoinette
and her court.
From such a gruesome fancy it is a relief to turn and look down on
the dark rippling Seine and watch the wavy ribbons of light swim
quiveringly out from the bridge lamps. And there in the cool of their
stone wharves, still panting and perspiring from the violent exertions
of the earlier evening, lie the fat little open-deck steamers that
haul the lovers home. For many a happy pair this day has been dining
deliciously _à deux_ under the gay terrace awnings of one or another
of the romantic, flower-embowered inns that overlook the river all the
way from Charenton to gray old Argenteuil, where Héloïse in her nunnery
fought her losing fight against love and the memory of Abélard. Some of
these steamers appear alarmingly apoplectic, so that one wonders how
they have managed to wheeze safely under all those low arches with the
garlanded “N’s” and past so many formidable buttresses all sculptured
cap-a-pie.
If now you turn and look upward and about you, lo! the heaped
and cluttered roofs of Paris—the most fantastic and romantic of
spectacles! It is singular, almost startling, to see how they stare
down as though to study you, and with apparently as much curious
intentness and dark suspicion as you do them. There must be whole
volumes of stories to each of them. Out of the ponderous Mansard roofs
impudent, leering little dormer windows wink down and squint up, each
with his rakish peaked roof like a jockey cap over one ear. And up
above even them are whole groves of blackened chimney-stacks leaning
all askew, like barricades for _sansculottes_. You look expectantly to
see miserable white Pierrot come forth, guitar in hand, and sing sadly
of Colombine to the pallid moon.
Suddenly, to the right, the lift of a cloud unveils the bronze dome of
the solemn Hôtel des Invalides, and your heart beats high with thoughts
of the marvelous man who lies under it among his tattered battle-flags
on a pavement inscribed with his victories. It is a sobering reflection
that now in the darkness and stillness of that chamber the only eyes
that are looking down on his porphyry sarcophagus are those of the
bronze Christ that hangs on the cross in the little side chapel of the
tomb.