A DAY-BREAK RAMBLE.
One summer morning the mosquitoes played for me with sleep, and won. It
was half-past four, and as it had often been my humor to see Venice at
that hour, I got up and sallied forth for a stroll through the city.
This morning walk did not lay the foundation of a habit of early rising
in me, but I nevertheless advise people always to get up at half-past
four, if they wish to receive the most vivid impressions, and to take
the most absorbing interest in every thing in the world. It was with a
feeling absolutely novel that I looked about me that morning, and
there was a breezy freshness and clearness in my perceptions altogether
delightful, and I fraternized so cordially with Nature that I do not
think, if I had sat down immediately after to write out the experience,
I should have at all patronized her, as I am afraid scribbling people
have sometimes the custom to do. I know that my feeling of brotherhood
in the case of two sparrows, which obliged me by hopping down from a
garden wall at the end of Calle Falier and promenading on the pavement,
was quite humble and sincere; and that I resented the ill-nature of a
cat,
“Whom love kept wakeful and the muse,”
and who at that hour was spitefully reviling the morn from a window
grating. As I went by the gate of the Canonico’s little garden,
the flowers saluted me with a breath of perfume,--I think the white
honey-suckle was first to offer me this politeness,--and the dumpy
little statues looked far more engaging than usual.
After passing the bridge, the first thing to do was to drink a cup of
coffee at the Caffè Ponte di Ferro, where the eyebrows of the waiter
expressed a mild surprise at my early presence. There was no one else
in the place but an old gentleman talking thoughtfully to himself on
the subject of two florins, while he poured his coffee into a glass of
water, before drinking it. As I lingered a moment over my cup, I was
reinforced by the appearance of a company of soldiers, marching to
parade in the Campo di Marte. Their officers went at their head,
laughing and chatting, and one of the lieutenants smoking a long pipe,
gave me a feeling of satisfaction only comparable to that which I
experienced shortly afterward in beholding a stoutly built small dog on
the Ponte di San Moisè. The creature was only a few inches high, and it
must have been through some mist of dreams yet hanging about me that
he impressed me as having something elephantine in his manner. When I
stooped down and patted him on the head, I felt colossal.
On my way to the Piazza, I stopped in the church of Saint Mary of the
Lily, where, in company with one other sinner, I found a relish in
the early sacristan’s deliberate manner of lighting the candles on the
altar. Saint Mary of the Lily has a façade in the taste of the declining
Renaissance. The interior is in perfect keeping, and all is hideous,
abominable, and abandoned. My fellow-sinner was kneeling, and repeating
his prayers. He now and then tapped himself absent-mindedly on the
breast and forehead, and gave a good deal of his attention to me as I
stood at the door, hat in hand. The hour and the place invested him with
so much interest, that I parted from him with emotion. My feelings were
next involved by an abrupt separation from a young English East-Indian,
whom I overheard asking the keeper of a caffè his way to the Campo di
Marte. He was a claret-colored young fellow, tall, and wearing folds
of white muslin around his hat. In another world I trust to know how he
liked the parade that morning.
I discovered that Piazza San Marco is every morning swept by troops
of ragged facchini, who gossip noisily and quarrelsomely together over
their work. Boot-blacks, also, were in attendance, and several followed
my progress through the square, in the vague hope that I would relent
and have my boots blacked. One peerless waiter stood alone amid the
desert elegance of Caffè Florian, which is never shut, day or night,
from year to year. At the Caffè of the Greeks, two individuals of the
Greek nation were drinking coffee.
I went upon the Molo, passing between the pillars of the Lion and the
Saint, and walked freely back and forth, taking in the glory of that
prospect of water and of vague islands breaking the silver of the
lagoons, like those scenes cunningly wrought in apparent relief on old
Venetian mirrors. I walked there freely, for though there were already
many gondoliers at the station, not one took me for a foreigner or
offered me a boat. At that hour, I was in myself so improbable, that if
they saw me at all, I must have appeared to them as a dream. My sense
of security was sweet, but it was false, for on going into the church
of St. Mark, the keener eye of the sacristan detected me. He instantly
offered to show me the Zeno Chapel; but I declined, preferring the
church, where I found the space before the high altar filled with
market-people come to hear the early mass. As I passed out of the
church, I witnessed the partial awaking of a Venetian gentleman who had
spent the night in a sitting posture, between the columns of the main
entrance. He looked puffy, scornful, and uncomfortable, and at
the moment of falling back to slumber, tried to smoke an unlighted
cigarette, which he held between his lips. I found none of the shops
open as I passed through the Merceria, and but for myself, and here and
there a laborer going to work, the busy thoroughfare seemed deserted. In
the mere wantonness of power, and the security of solitude, I indulged
myself in snapping several door-latches, which gave me a pleasure as
keen as that enjoyed in boyhood from passing a stick along the pickets
of a fence. I was in nowise abashed to be discovered in this amusement
by an old peasant-woman, bearing at either end of a yoke the usual
basket with bottles of milk packed in straw.
Entering Campo San Bartolomeo, I found trade already astir in that noisy
place; the voice of cheap bargains, which by noonday swells into an
intolerable uproar, was beginning to be heard. Having lived in Campo San
Bartolomeo, I recognized several familiar faces there, and particularly
noted among them that of a certain fruit-vender, who frequently swindled
me in my small dealings with him. He now sat before his stand, and for a
man of a fat and greasy presence, looked very fresh and brisk, and as if
he had passed a pleasant night.
On the other side of the Rialto Bridge, the market was preparing for
the purchasers. Butchers were arranging their shops; fruit-stands, and
stands for the sale of crockery, and--as I must say for want of a better
word, if there is any--notions, were in a state of tasteful readiness.
The person on the steps of the bridge who had exposed his stock of cheap
clothing and coarse felt hats on the parapet, had so far completed his
preparations as to have leisure to be talking himself hot and hoarse
with the neighboring barber. He was in a perfectly good humor, and was
merely giving a dramatic flavor to some question of six soldi.
At the landings of the market-place squadrons of boats loaded with
vegetables were arriving and unloading. Peasants were building
cabbages into pyramids; collective squashes and cucumbers were taking a
picturesque shape; wreaths of garlic and garlands of onions graced the
scene. All the people were clamoring at the tops of their voices; and
in the midst of the tumult and confusion, resting on heaps of
cabbage-leaves and garbage, men lay on their bellies sweetly sleeping.
Numbers of eating-houses were sending forth a savory smell, and
everywhere were breakfasters with bowls of sguassetto. In one of the
shops, somewhat prouder than the rest, a heated brunette was turning
sections of eel on a gridiron, and hurriedly coqueting with the
purchasers. Singularly calm amid all this bustle was the countenance
of the statue called the Gobbo, as I looked at it in the centre of the
market-place. The Gobbo (who is not a hunchback, either) was patiently
supporting his burden, and looking with a quiet, thoughtful frown upon
the ground, as if pondering some dream of change that had come to him
since the statutes of the haughty Republic were read aloud to the people
from the stone tribune on his shoulders.
Indeed, it was a morning for thoughtful meditation; and as I sat at the
feet of the four granite kings shortly after, waiting for the gate of
the ducal palace to be opened, that I might see the girls drawing the
water, I studied the group of the Judgment of Solomon, on the corner of
the palace, and arrived at an entirely new interpretation of that Bible
story, which I have now wholly forgotten.
The gate remained closed too long for my patience, and I turned away
from a scene momently losing its interest. The brilliant little shops
opened like hollyhocks as I went home; the swelling tide of life filled
the streets, and brought Venice back to my day-time remembrance, robbing
her of that keen, delightful charm with which she greeted my early
morning sense.