Ducal Palace--golden bubbles, lung out upon a sky of ripe blue.
Arches of white and scarlet flowers, pillars of porphyry, columns of
jasper, open loggias of deep-green serpentine flaked with snow. In
the architraves, stones chipped and patterned, the blues studded with
greens, the greens circling round yellows, reds of every depth, clear
purples, heliotropes clouded into a vague white. Above them, all
about them, the restless movement of carven stone; it is involuted
and grotesque, it is acanthus leaves and roses, it is palm branches
and vine tendrils, it is feathers and the tails of birds, all blowing
on a day of _scirocco_. Angels rise among the swirling acanthus
leaves, angels and leaves weaving an upstarting line, ending in the
great star of Christ struck upon the edge of a golden dome. Saint
Mark's Church, gazing down the length of the chequered Piazza,
thrusting itself upon the black and white pavement, rising out of the
flat tiles in a rattle of colours, soaring toward the full sky like a
broken prism whirling at last into the gold bubbles of its five wide
domes. The Campanile mounts above it, but the Campanile is only
brick, even if it has a pointed top which you cannot see without
lying on your back. The pigeons can fly up to it, but the pigeons
prefer the angles and hollows of the sculptured church.
Saint Mark's Church--and over the chief arch, among the capitals of
foaming leaves and bent grasses, trample four great horses. They are
of gold, of gilding so fine that it has not faded. They are
tarnished here and there, but their fair colour overcomes the green
corroding and is a blinding to the eyes in sunshine. Four
magnificent, muscular horses, lightly stepping upon traceried
columns, one forefoot raised to launch them forward. They stand over
the high door, caught back a moment before springing, held an instant
to the perfection of a movement about to begin, and the pigeons
circle round them brushing against their sides like wind.
But, dear me, Saint Mark's is the only thing in the Piazza that is
not talking, and walking to and fro, and cheapening shoe buckles at a
stall, and playing panfil and bassetta at little round tables by the
wall, and singing to guitars, and whistling to poodles, and shouting
to acquaintances, and giving orders to servants, and whispering a
scandal behind fans, and carrying tomatoes in copper pans, and flying
on messages, and lying to creditors, and spying on suspects, and
colliding with masked loungers, and crying out the merits of fried
fish, caught when the tide comes leaping through the Tre Porti. A
dish of tea at a coffee-house, and then cross one leg over the other
and wait. She will be here by seven o'clock, and a faithful
_cicisbeo_ has her charms to muse upon until then. Ah, Venice,
chattering, flattering, occupied Venice, what are the sculptured
angels and golden horses to you. You are far too busy to glance at
them. They are chiefly remarkable as curiosities, for whoever saw a
real angel, and as to a real horse--"I saw a stuffed one for a
_soldo_, the other day, in the Campo San Polo. _Un elephanto_,
Gastone, taller than my shoulder and the eyes were made of glass,
they would pass for perfect any day."
Ah, the beautiful palaces, with their gateways of gilded iron frilled
into arms and coronets, quilled into shooting leaves and tendrils,
filled with rosettes, fretted by heraldic emblems! Ah, the beautiful
taste, which wastes no time on heavy stone, but cuts flowers, and
foliage, and flourishes, and ribbons out of--stucco! Bows of stucco
glued about a ceiling by Tiepolo, and ranged underneath, frail
white-and-gold, rose-and-gold, green-and-gold chairs, fair consoles
of polished lacquer supporting great mirrors of Murano. Hangings of
blue silk with silver fringes, behind your folds, la Signora Benzona
accords a favour to the Cavalier Giuseppe Trevis. Upon a
salmon-coloured sofa striped with pistachio-green, the Cavaliera
Contarini flirts with both her _cicisbei_ at once, in a charming
impartiality. Kisses? Ah, indeed, certainly kisses. Hands tickling
against hands? But assuredly, one for each of you. The heel of a
left slipper caught against a buckled shoe, the toe of a right foot
pressed beneath a broader sole; but the toll is finished. "Tut!
Tut! Gentlemen! With the other present! Have you no delicacy?
To-night perhaps, after the Ridotto, we will take a giro in my
gondola as far as Malamocco, Signor Bianchi. And to-morrow, Carlo
Pin, will you go to church with me? There is something in the tones
of an organ, I know not what exactly, but it has its effect."
"You rang, _Illustrissima_?" "Of course I rang, Stupid, did you
think it was the cat?" "Your nobility desires?" "The time,
Blockhead, what is the time?" "Past seven, _Illustrissima_." "Ye
Gods, how time passes when one sleeps! Bring my chocolate at once,
and call Giannina." With a yawn, the lady rises, just as the sun
fades away from the flying figure of Fortune on the top of the
Dogana. "Candles, Moracchio." And the misty mirrors prick and
pulsate with reflections of blurred flame. Flame-points, and behind
them the puce-coloured curtains of a bed; an escritoire with
feathered pens and Spanish wax; a table with rouge-pots and
powder-boxes; a lady, naked as a Venus, slipping into a silk shift.
In the misty mirrors, she is all curves and colour, all slenderness
and tapering, all languor and vivacity. Even Giannina murmurs, "_Che
bella Madonna mia!_" as she pulls the shift into place. But the door
is ajar, a mere harmless crack to make a fuss about. "Only one eye,
_Cara Mia_, I assure you the other saw nothing but the panel. I ask
for so much, and I have only taken the pleasure of one little eye. I
must kiss them, _Signora Bellissima_, two little red berries, like
the fruit of the _potentillas_ in the grass at Sant' Elena. _Musica!
Musica!_ The barque of music is coming down the canal. Sit on my
knee a moment, the Casino can wait; and after you have won a thousand
zecchini, will you be a second Danae and go with me to the early
morning market? Then you shall come home and sleep all day in the
great bed among the roses I shall buy for you. With your gold?
Perhaps, my dearest tease, the luck has deserted me lately. But
there are ways of paying, are there not, and I am an honourable man."
The great horses of Saint Mark's trot softly forward on their
sculptured pedestals, without moving. Behind them, the glass of the
arched window is dark, but the Piazza is a bowl of lights, a
tambourine of little bell-stroke laughter. The golden horses step
forward, dimly shimmering in the light of the lamps below, and the
pigeons sleep quietly on the stands at their feet.
Green Lion of Saint Mark upon your high pedestal! Winged Lion of
Saint Mark, your head turned over the blinding Lagoons to the blue
Lido, your tail pointing down the sweeping flow of the Grand Canal!
What do you see, Green Lion of the Patron Saint? Boats? Masts?
Quaint paintings on the broad bows of bragozzi, orange sails
contra-crossing one another over tossing ripples. Gondolas tipping
to the oars of the _barcajuoli_, slipping under the Ponte della
Paglia, dipping between sardine _topi_, skipping past the Piazzetta,
curving away to the Giudecca, where it lies beyond the crystal
pinnacles of Santa Maria della Salute and San Giorgio Maggiore which
has the lustre of roses.
What do you smell, Lion? Boiling hot chestnuts, fried cuttles, fried
puffs of pastry; the pungent odour of salt water and of dead fish;
the nostalgic aroma of sandal-wood and myrrh, of musk, of leopard
skins and the twin tusks of elephants.
And you, great Lion of the Ducal Palace, what goes on at your feet?
People knotted together or scattering, pattering over the old stones
in impertinent satin slippers, flippantly tapping the pavement with
red heels. Whirls of people circle like the pigeons, knots of people
spot the greyness of the stones, ribbons of people file along the
colonnades, rayed lines of people between the Procuratie stripe the
pavement sideways, criss-cross, at oblique angles. Spangles snap and
fade; gems glitter. A gentleman in a buttercup-coloured coat goes by
with a bouquet. A sea-green gown brocaded with cherry and violet
stays an instant before a stall to buy a packet of ambergris.
Pilgrims with staffs and cockles knock the stones as they shuffle
along, a water-carrier shouts out a song. A scarlet sacristan
jingles his keys; purple robes of justices saunter at ease. Messer
Goldoni hustles by to a rehearsal, and three famous _castrati_, i
Signori Pacchierotti, Aprili, Rubenelli, rustle their mantles and
adjust their masks, ogling the ladies with gold lorgnons. Blind men
sniffle into flageolets, marionette men hurry on to a distant Campo
in a flurry of cotton streamers. If Venice is a flowing of water, it
is also a flowing of people. All Europe runs into this wide square.
There is Monsieur Montesquieu, just from France, taking notes on the
sly; there is Mrs. Piozzi, from England, with an eye to everything,
even chicken-coops; Herr Goethe, from the Court at Weimar, trying to
overcome a fit of mental indigestion; Madame Vigée le Brun,
questioning the merit of her work and that of Rosalba Carriera. You
have much to watch, Lion, the whole earth cannot match the pageant of
this great square, in the limpid sun-shot air, between the towering
Campanile and the blaze of Saint Mark's angels. Star-fish patterns,
jelly-fish rounds of colour, if the sea quivers with variety so does
the Piazza. But above, on the façade of the jewelled church, the
horses do not change. They stand vigorous and immovable, stepping
lightly as though poised upon glass. Metal horses set upon shifting
shards of glass, and the soft diphthongs of the Venetian dialect
float over them like wind.
There are two Venices, the one we walk upon, and the one which wavers
up to us inverted from the water of the canals. The silver prow of a
gondola winds round a wall, and in the moss-brown water another
gondola joins it, bottom to bottom, with the teeth of the prow
infinitely repeated. A cypress closes the end of a _rio_, and driven
into the thick water another cypress spindles beneath us, and the
wake of our boat leaves its foliage cut to tatters as it passes on.
We plough through the veined pinks and subdued scarlets of the
façades of palaces; we sheer a path through a spotted sky and blunt
the tip of a soaring campanile. Are we swimming in the heavens,
turned legend and constellation? Truly it seems so. "How you go on,
Cavalier, certainly you are a foreigner to notice such things. The
Lido, Giuseppe. I have a nostalgia for flowers to-day, and besides,
abroad so early in the afternoon--what shocking style! The custom of
the country, my dear Sir, here we go to bed by sunlight as you will
see."
Sweep out of the broad canal, turn to the hanging snow summits. Oh,
the beautiful silver light, the blue light shimmering with silver.
The clear sunlight on rose brick and amber marble. The sky so pale
it is white, so bright it is yellow, so cloudless it is blue. Oh,
the shafts of sapphire striping the wide water, the specks of gold
dancing along it, the diamond roses opening and shutting upon its
surface! Some one is singing in a distant boat:
"_Amanti, ci vuole costanza in amor'
Amando,
Penando,
Si speri, si, si._"
The lady shrugs her shoulders. "These fishermen are very droll.
What do the _canaglia_ know about love. Breeding, yes, that is
certainly their affair, but love! _Più presto_, Giuseppe. How the
sun burns!" Rock over the streaked Lagoon, gondola, pock the blue
strips with white, shock purple shadows through the silver strata,
set blocks of iris cannoning against gold. This is the rainbow over
which we are floating, and the heart-shaped city behind us is a
reliquary of old ivory laid upon azure silk. Your hand, Signor the
Foreigner, be careful lest she wet those fine French stockings, they
cost I do not know how much a pair. Now run away across the Lido,
gathering violets and periwinkles. The lady has a whim for a
_villeggiatura_, and why not? Those scarlet pomegranate blossoms
will look well in her hair to-night at the opera. But one cannot
linger long, already the Dolomites are turning pink, and there is a
whole night ahead of us to be cajoled somehow. A mile away from
Venice and it is too far. "_Felicissima notte!_" Wax candles shine
in the windows. The little stars of the gondola lanterns glide
between dark walls. Broken moonlight shivers in the canals. And the
masks come out, thronging the streets and squares with a chequer-work
of black cloaks and white faces. Little white faces floating like
pond-lilies above the water. Floating faces adrift over unfathomable
depths. Have you ever heard the words, _Libertà, Independenza, e
Eguaglianza_? "What stuff and nonsense! Of course I have read your
great writer, Rousseau; I cried my heart out over '_La Nouvelle
Héloise_,' but in practice! Wake my servants, the lazy fellows are
always asleep, you will find them curled up on the stairs most
likely. It is time we went to the _Mendicanti_ to hear the oratorio.
Ah, but those poor orphans sing with a charm! It makes one weep to
hear them, only the old _Maestro di Capella_ will beat time with his
music on the grill. It is quite ridiculous, they could go through it
perfectly without him. _Misericordia!_ The red light! That is the
gondola of the Supreme Tribunal taking some poor soul to the Piombi;
God protect him! But it does not concern us, my friend. _Ridiamo a
duetto!_" Little tinkling drops from the oars of the boatmen, little
tinkling laughter wafted across the moonlight.
Four horses parading in front of a splendid church. Four ancient
horses with ears pointed forward, listening. One foot is raised,
they advance without moving. To what do they listen? To the
serenades they have heard so often? _Cavatine, canzonette_, dance
songs, hymns, for six hundred years the songs of Venice have drifted
past them, lightly, as the wings of pigeons. And month by month the
old moon has sailed over them, as she did in Constantinople, as she
did in Rome.
Saint Stephen's Day, and the Carnival! For weeks now Venice will be
amused. Folly to think of anything but fun. Toot the fifes! Bang
the drums! Did you ever see anything so jolly in all your life
before? Keep your elbows to your sides, there isn't room to square
them. "My! What a flare! Rockets in broad daylight! I declare
they make the old horses of Saint Mark's blush pink when they burst.
Thirsty? So am I, what will you have? Wine or oranges? Don't
jostle so, old fellow, we can look in the window as well as you. See
that apothecary's stall, isn't that a gay festoon? Curse me, if it
isn't made of leeches; what will these shopkeepers do next! That
mask has a well-turned ankle. Good evening, my charmer. You are as
beautiful as a parrot, as white as linen, as light as a rabbit. Ay!
O-o-h! The she-camel! She aimed her _confetti_ right at my eye.
Come on, Tito, let's go and see them behead the bull. Hold on a
minute though, somebody's pulling my cloak. Just one little squeeze,
Beauty, you shouldn't tweak a man's cloak if you don't want to be
squeezed. You plump little pudding, you little pecking pigeon, I'll
get more next time. Wow! Here comes Arlecchino. Push back, push
back, the comedians are coming. Stow in your fat belly,
_'lustrissimo_, you take up room enough for two."
Somebody beats a gong, and three drummers cleave a path through the
crowd. Bang! _Bang!_ BANG! So loud it splits the hearing.
Mattachino leaps down the path. He is in white, with red lacings and
red shoes. On his arm is a basket of eggs. Right, left, into the
crowd, skim the eggs. Duck--jump--it is no use. Plump, on some
one's front; pat, against some one's hat. The eggs crack, and
scented waters run out of them, filling the air with the sweet smells
of musk and bergamot. But here is a wheel of colours rolling down
the path. Clown! Clown! It is Arlecchino, in his patched coat. It
was green and he has botched it with red, or is it yellow, or
possibly blue. It is hard to tell, he turns so fast. Three
somersaults, and he comes up standing, and makes a long nose, and
sweeps off his hat with the hare's fud, and glares solemnly into the
eyes of a gentleman in spectacles. "Sir," says Arlecchino, "have you
by chance a toothache? I can tell you how to cure it. Take an
apple, cut it into four equal parts, put one of these into your
mouth, and thrust your head into an oven until the apple is baked. I
swear on my honour you will never have the toothache again." Zip!
Sizz! No use in the cane. A pirouette and he is away again. A
hand-spring, a double cut-under, and the parti-coloured rags are only
a tag bouncing up out of surging black mantles. But there is
something more wonderful yet. Set your faces to the Piazzetta,
people; push, slam, jam, to keep your places. "A balloon is going up
from the Dogana del Mare, a balloon like a moon or something else
starry. A meteor, a comet, I don't really know what; it looks, so
they say, like a huge apricot, or a pear--yes, that's surely the
thing--blushing red, mellow yellow, a fruit on the wing, garlanded
with streamers and tails, all a-whirl and a-flutter. Cut the string
and she sails, till she lands in the gutter." "How do you know she
lands in the gutter, Booby?" "Where else should she land, unless in
the sea?" "You're a fool, I suppose you sat up all night writing
that doggerel." "Not at all, it is an improvisation." "Here, keep
back, you can't push past me with your talk. Oh! Look! Look!"
That is a balloon. It rises slowly--slowly--above the Dogana. It
wavers, dips, and poises; it mounts in the silver air, it floats
without direction; suspended in movement, it hangs, a clear pear of
red and yellow, opposite the melting, opal-tinted city. And the
reflection of it also floats, perfect in colour but cooler, perfect
in outline but more vague, in the glassy water of the Grand Canal.
The blue sky sustains it; the blue water encloses it. Then balloon
and reflection swing gently seaward. One ascends, the other
descends. Each dwindles to a speck. Ah, the semblance is gone, the
water has nothing; but the sky focusses about a point of fire, a
formless iridescence sailing higher, become a mere burning, until
that too is absorbed in the brilliance of the clouds.
You cheer, people, but you do not know for what. A beautiful toy?
Undoubtedly you think so. Shout yourselves hoarse, you who have
conquered the sea, do you underestimate the air? Joke, laugh,
purblind populace. You have been vouchsafed an awful vision, and you
do nothing but clap your hands.
That is over, and here is Pantalone calling to you. "Going--going--I
am selling my furniture. Two dozen chairs of fine holland; fourteen
tables of almond paste; six majolica mattresses full of scrapings of
haycocks; a semolina bedcover; six truffled cushions; two pavilions
of spider-web trimmed with tassels made from the moustaches of Swiss
door-keepers. Oh! The Moon! The Moon! The good little yellow
moon, no bigger than an omelet of eight eggs. Come, I will throw in
the moon. A quarter-ducat for the moon, good people. Take your
opportunity."
Great gold horses, quietly stepping above the little mandarin
figures, strong horses above the whirling porcelain figures, are the
pigeons the only birds in Venice? Have the swallows told you
nothing, flying from the West?
The bells of Saint Mark's Church ring midnight. The carnival is over.
In the deserted square, the pavement is littered with feathers,
_confetti_, orange-peel, and pumpkin-seeds. But the golden horses on
the balcony over the high door trot forward, without moving, and the
shadow of the arch above them is thrown farther and farther forward
as the moon drops toward the Lagoon.
Bronze armies marching on a sea-shell city. Slanted muskets filing
over the passes of tall Alps. Who is this man who leads you, carven
in new bronze, supple as metal still cooling, firm as metal from a
fresh-broken mold? A bright bronze general heading armies. The
tread of his grenadiers is awful, continuous. How will it be in the
streets of the glass city? These men are the flying letters of a new
gospel. They are the tablets of another law. Twenty-eight, this
general! Ah, but the metal is well compounded. He has been
victorious in fourteen pitched battles and seventy fights; he has
taken five hundred field pieces, and two thousand of heavy calibre;
he has sent thirty millions back to the treasury of France. The
Kings of Naples and Sardinia write him friendly letters; the Pope and
the Duke of Parma weary themselves with compliments. The English
have retired from Genoa, Leghorn, and Corsica.
Little glass masks, have you heard nothing of this man? What of the
new French ambassador, Citizen Lallemont? You have seen his
gondoliers and the _tricolore_ cockade in their caps? It is a
puzzling business, but you can hardly expect us to be alarmed, we
have been a republic for centuries. Still, these new ideas are
intriguing, they say several gentlemen have adopted them. "Alvise
Pisani, my Dear, and Abbate Colalto, also Bragadin, and Soranza, and
Labbia. Oh, there was much talk about it last night. Such strange
notions! But the cockade is very pretty. I have the ribbon, and I
am going to make a few. Signora Fontana gave me the pattern."
Columbus discovered America. Ah, it was then you should have made
your cockades. Is it Bonaparte or the Cape of Good Hope which has
compassed your destiny? Little porcelain figures, can you stand the
shock of bronze?
No, evidently. The quills of the Senate secretaries are worn blunt,
writing note after note to the General of the Armies. But still he
marches forward, and his soldiers, dressed as peasants, have invaded
Breschia and Bergamo. And what a man! Never satisfied. He must
have this--that--and other things as well. He must have guns,
cannon, horses, mules, food, forage. What is all this talk of a
Cisalpine Republic? The Senate wavers like so many sea anemones in
an advancing tide. Ascension Day is approaching. Shall the Doge go
in the _Bucentoro_ to wed the sea "in token of real and perpetual
dominion"? The Senate dictates, the secretaries write, and the
_Arsenalotti_ polish the brasses of the _Bucentoro_ and wait.
Brightly shine the overpolished brasses of the _Bucentoro_, but the
ships in the Arsenal are in bad repair and the crews wanting.
It is Holy Saturday in Venice, and solemn processions march to the
churches. The slow chanting of choirs rises above the floating city,
but in the Citizen Lallemont's apartments is a jangling of spurred
heels, a clanking of cavalry sabres. General Junot arrived in the
small hours of the night. Holy Saturday is nothing to a reformed
Frenchman; the General's business will not wait, he must see the
Signory at once. Desert your churches, convene the College in haste.
A bronze man cannot be opposed by a Senate of glass. Is it for
fantasy that so many people are wearing the _tricolore_, or is it
politeness to the visiting general? But what does he say? French
soldiers murdered! Nonsense, a mere street row between Bergamese.
But Junot thunders and clanks his sabre. A sword is a terrible thing
in a cabinet of biscuit figurines. Let that pass. He has gone. But
Venice is shaken. The stately palaces totter on their rotting piles,
the _campi_ buzz with voices, the Piazza undulates to a gesticulating
multitude. Only the pigeons wheel unconcernedly about the Campanile,
and the great horses stand, poised and majestic, beneath the mounting
angels of Saint Mark's Church.