SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS.
Nothing can be fairer to the eye than these “summer isles of Eden” lying
all about Venice, far and near. The water forever trembles and changes,
with every change of light, from one rainbow glory to another, as with
the restless hues of an opal; and even when the splendid tides recede,
and go down with the sea, they leave a heritage of beauty to the
empurpled mud of the shallows, all strewn with green, disheveled
sea-weed. The lagoons have almost as wide a bound as your vision. On the
east and west you can see their borders of sea-shore and main-land; but
looking north and south, there seems no end to the charm of their vast,
smooth, all-but melancholy expanses. Beyond their southern limit rise
the blue Euganean Hills, where Petrarch died; on the north loom
the Alps, white with snow. Dotting the stretches of lagoon in every
direction lie the islands--now piles of airy architecture that the water
seems to float under and bear upon its breast, now
“Sunny spots of greenery,”
with the bell-towers of demolished cloisters shadowily showing above
their trees;--for in the days of the Republic nearly every one of the
islands had its monastery and its church. At present the greater
number have been fortified by the Austrians, whose sentinel paces the
once-peaceful shores, and challenges all passers with his sharp “_Halt!
Wer da_!” and warns them not to approach too closely. Other islands have
been devoted to different utilitarian purposes, and few are able to keep
their distant promises of loveliness. One of the more faithful is the
island of San Clemente, on which the old convent church is yet standing,
empty and forlorn within, but without all draped in glossy ivy. After
I had learned to row in the gondolier fashion, I voyaged much in the
lagoon with my boat, and often stopped at this church. It has a curious
feature in the chapel of the Madonna di Loreto, which is built in the
middle of the nave, faced with marble, roofed, and isolated from the
walls of the main edifice on all sides. On the back of this there is
a bass-relief in bronze, representing the Nativity--a work much in
the spirit of the bass-reliefs in San Giovanni e Paolo; and one of
the chapels has an exquisite little altar, with gleaming columns of
porphyry. There has been no service in the church for many years;
and this altar had a strangely pathetic effect, won from the black
four-cornered cap of a priest that lay before it, like an offering. I
wondered who the priest was that wore it, and why he had left it there,
as if he had fled away in haste. I might have thought it looked like the
signal of the abdication of a system; the gondolier who was with me took
it up and reviled it as representative of _birbanti matricolati_, who
fed upon the poor, and in whose expulsion from that island he rejoiced.
But he had little reason to do so, since the last use of the place was
for the imprisonment of refractory ecclesiastics. Some of the tombs
of the Morosini are in San Clemente--villanous monuments, with bronze
Deaths popping out of apertures, and holding marble scrolls inscribed
with undying deeds. Indeed, nearly all the decorations of the poor old
church are horrible, and there is one statue in it meant for an angel,
with absolutely the most lascivious face I ever saw in marble.
The islands near Venice are all small, except the Giudecca (which is
properly a part of the city), the Lido, and Murano. The Giudecca,
from being anciently the bounds in which certain factious nobles were
confined, was later laid out in pleasure-gardens, and built up with
summer-palaces. The gardens still remain to some extent; but they are
now chiefly turned to practical account in raising vegetables and
fruits for the Venetian market, and the palaces have been converted into
warehouses and factories. This island produces a variety of beggar, the
most truculent and tenacious in all Venice, and it has a convent of lazy
Capuchin friars, who are likewise beggars. To them belongs the church of
the Redentore, which only the Madonnas of Bellini in the sacristy make
worthy to be seen,--though the island is hardly less famed for this
church than for the difficult etymology of its name.
At the eastern extremity of the Giudecca lies the Island of San Giorgio
Maggiore, with Palladio’s church of that name. There are some great
Tintorettos in the church, and I like the beautiful wood-carvings in
the choir. The island has a sad interest from the political prison into
which part of the old convent has been perverted; and the next island
eastward is the scarcely sadder abode of the mad. Then comes the fair
and happy seat of Armenian learning and piety, San Lazzaro, and then the
Lido.
The Lido is the sea-shore, and thither in more cheerful days the
Venetians used to resort in great numbers on certain holidays, called
the Mondays of the Lido, to enjoy the sea-breeze and the country
scenery, and to lunch upon the flat tombs of the Hebrews, buried there
in exile from the consecrated Christian ground. On a summer’s day there
the sun glares down upon the sand and flat gravestones, and it seems
the most desolate place where one’s bones might be laid. The Protestants
were once also interred on the Lido, but now they rest (apart from the
Catholics, however) in the cemetery of San Michele.
The island is long and narrow: it stretches between the lagoons and the
sea, with a village at either end, and with bath-houses on the beach,
which is everywhere faced with forts. There are some poor little trees
there, and grass,--things which we were thrice a week grateful for, when
we went thither to bathe. I do not know whether it will give the place
further interest to say, that it was among the tombs of the Hebrews
Cooper’s ingenious Bravo had the incredible good luck to hide himself
from the _sbirri_ of the Republic; or to relate that it was the habit of
Lord Byron to gallop up and down the Lido in search of that conspicuous
solitude of which the sincere bard was fond.
One day of the first summer I spent in Venice (three years of Venetian
life afterward removed it back into times of the remotest antiquity), a
friend and I had the now-incredible enterprise to walk from one end of
the Lido to the other,--from the port of San Nicolò (through which the
Bucintoro passed when the Doges went to espouse the Adriatic) to the
port of Malamocco, at the southern extremity.
We began with that delicious bath which you may have in the Adriatic,
where the light surf breaks with a pensive cadence on the soft sand, all
strewn with brilliant shells. The Adriatic is the bluest water I have
ever seen; and it is an ineffable, lazy delight to lie and watch the
fishing sails of purple and yellow dotting its surface, and the greater
ships dipping down its utmost rim. It was particularly good to do this
after coming out of the water; but our American blood could not brook
much repose, and we got up presently, and started on our walk to the
little village of Malamocco, some three miles away. The double-headed
eagle keeps watch and ward from a continuous line of forts along the
shore, and the white-coated sentinels never cease to pace the bastions,
night or day. Their vision of the sea must not be interrupted by even so
much as the form of a stray passer; and as we went by the forts, we had
to descend from the sea-wall, and walk under it, until we got beyond the
sentry’s beat. The crimson poppies grow everywhere on this sandy little
isle, and they fringe the edges of the bastions with their bloom, as
if the “blood-red blossoms of war” had there sprung from the seeds of
battle sown in old forgotten fights. But otherwise the forts were not
very engaging in appearance. A sentry-box of yellow and black, a sentry,
a row of seaward frowning cannon--there was not much in all this to
interest us; and so we walked idly along, and looked either to the city
rising from the lagoons on one hand, or the ships going down the sea on
the other. In the fields, along the road, were vines and Indian corn;
but instead of those effigies of humanity, doubly fearful from their
wide unlikeness to any thing human, which we contrive to scare away
the birds, the devout peasant-folks had here displayed on poles the
instruments of the Passion of the Lord--the hammer, the cords, the
nails--which at once protected and blessed the fields. But I doubt if
even these would save them from the New-World pigs, and certainly the
fences here would not turn pork, for they are made of a matting of
reeds, woven together, and feebly secured to tremulous posts. The
fields were well cultivated, and the vines and garden vegetables looked
flourishing; but the corn was spindling, and had, I thought, a homesick
look, as if it dreamed vainly of wide ancestral bottom-lands, on
the mighty streams that run through the heart of the Great West. The
Italians call our corn _gran turco_, but I knew that it was for the West
that it yearned, and not for the East.
No doubt there were once finer dwellings than the peasants’ houses which
are now the only habitations on the Lido; and I suspect that a genteel
villa must formerly have stood near the farm-gate, which we found
surmounted by broken statues of Venus and Diana. The poor goddesses were
both headless, and some cruel fortune had struck off their hands, and
they looked strangely forlorn in the swaggering attitudes of the absurd
period of art to which they belonged: they extended their mutilated arms
toward the sea for pity, but it regarded them not; and we passed before
them scoffing at their bad taste, for we were hungry, and it was yet
some distance to Malamocco.
This dirty little village was the capital of the Venetian islands before
King Pepin and his Franks burned it, and the shifting sands of empire
gathered solidly about the Rialto in Venice. It is a thousand years
since that time, and Malamocco has long been given over to fishermen’s
families and the soldiers of the forts. We found the latter lounging
about the unwholesome streets; and the former seated at their
thresholds, engaged in those pursuits of the chase which the use of a
fine-tooth comb would undignify to mere slaughter.
There is a church at Malamocco, but it was closed, and we could not find
the sacristan; so we went to the little restaurant, as the next best
place, and demanded something to eat. What had the padrone? He answered
pretty much to the same effect as the innkeeper in “Don Quixote,” who
told his guests that they could have any thing that walked on the earth,
or swam in the sea, or flew in the air. We would take, then, some fish,
or a bit of veal, or some mutton chops. The padrone sweetly shrugged the
shoulders of apology. There was nothing of all this, but what would we
say to some liver or gizzards of chickens, fried upon the instant and
ready the next breath? No, we did not want them; so we compromised on
some ham fried in a batter of eggs, and reeking with its own fatness.
The truth is, it was a very bad little lunch we made, and nothing
redeemed it but the amiability of the smiling padrone and the bustling
padrona, who served us as kings and princes. It was a clean hostelry,
though, and that was a merit in Malamocco, of which the chief modern
virtue is that it cannot hold you long. No doubt it was more interesting
in other times. In the days when the Venetians chose it for their
capital, it was a walled town, and fortified with towers. It has been
more than once inundated by the sea, and it might again be washed out
with advantage.
In the spring, two years after my visit to Malamocco, we people in Casa
Falier made a long-intended expedition to the island of Torcello, which
is perhaps the most interesting of the islands of the lagoons. We had
talked of it all winter, and had acquired enough property there to put
up some light Spanish castles on the desolate site of the ancient city,
that, so many years ago, sickened of the swamp air and died. A Count
from Torcello is the title which Venetian persiflage gives to improbable
noblemen; and thus even the pride of the dead Republic of Torcello has
passed into matter of scornful jest, as that of the dead Republic of
Venice may likewise in its day.
When we leave the riva of Casa Falier, we pass down the Grand Canal,
cross the Basin of St. Mark, and enter one of the narrow canals
that intersect the Riva degli Schiavoni, whence we wind and deviate
southwestward till we emerge near the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, on
the Fondamenta Nuove. On our way we notice that a tree, hanging over the
water from a little garden, is in full leaf, and at Murano we see the
tender bloom of peaches and the drifted blossom of cherry-trees.
As we go by the Cemetery of San Michele, Piero the gondolier and
Giovanna improve us with a little solemn pleasantry.
“It is a small place,” says Piero, “but there is room enough for all
Venice in it.”
“It is true,” assents Giovanna, “and here we poor folks become
landholders at last.”
At Murano we stop a moment to look at the old Duomo, and to enjoy its
quaint mosaics within, and the fine and graceful spirit of the _apsis_
without. It is very old, this architecture; but the eternal youth of the
beautiful belongs to it, and there is scarce a stone fallen from it that
I would replace.
The manufacture of glass at Murano, of which the origin is so remote,
may be said to form the only branch of industry which still flourishes
in the lagoons. Muranese beads are exported to all quarters in vast
quantities, and the process of making them is one of the things that
strangers feel they must see when visiting Venice. The famous mirrors
are no longer made, and the glass has deteriorated in quality, as well
as in the beauty of the thousand curious forms it took. The test of the
old glass, which is now imitated a great deal, is its extreme lightness.
I suppose the charming notion that glass was once wrought at Murano of
such fineness that it burst into fragments if poison were poured into
it, must be fabulous. And yet it would have been an excellent thing in
the good old toxicological days of Italy; and people of noble family
would have found a sensitive goblet of this sort as sovereign against
the arts of venomers as an exclusive diet of boiled eggs. The city of
Murano has dwindled from thirty to five thousand in population. It is
intersected by a system of canals like Venice, and has a Grand Canal of
its own, of as stately breadth as that of the capital. The finer houses
are built on this canal; but the beautiful palaces, once occupied in
_villeggiatura_ by the noble Venetians, are now inhabited by herds of
poor, or converted into glass-works. The famous Cardinal Bembo and other
literati made the island their retreat, and beautified it with gardens
and fountains. Casa Priuli in that day was, according to Venetian ideas,
“a terrestrial Paradise,” and a proper haunt of “nymphs and demi-gods.”
But the wealth, the learning, and the elegance of former times, which
planted “groves of Academe” at Murano, have passed away, and the fair
pleasure-gardens are now weed-grown wastes, or turned into honest
cabbage and potato patches. It is a poor, dreary little town, with an
inexplicable charm in its decay. The city arms are still displayed upon
the public buildings (for Murano was ruled, independently of Venice, by
its own council); and the heraldic cock, with a snake in its beak, has
yet a lusty and haughty air amid the ruin of the place.
The way in which the spring made itself felt upon the lagoon was full of
curious delight. It was not so early in the season that we should know
the spring by the first raw warmth in the air, and there was as yet
no assurance of her presence in the growth--later so luxuriant--of the
coarse grasses of the shallows. But somehow the spring was there, giving
us new life with every breath. There were fewer gulls than usual, and
those we saw sailed far overhead, debating departure. There was deeper
languor in the laziness of the soldiers of finance, as they lounged and
slept upon their floating custom houses in every channel of the lagoons;
and the hollow voices of the boatmen, yelling to each other as their
wont is, had an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over
all, the heavens had put on their summer blue, in promise of that
delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half the year, and which
makes every other climate seem niggard of sunshine and azure skies.
I know we have beautiful days at home--days of which the sumptuous
splendor used to take my memory with unspeakable longing and regret even
in Italy;--but we do not have, week after week, month after month, that
“Blue, unclouded weather,”
which, at Venice, contents all your senses, and makes you exult to be
alive with the inarticulate gladness of children, or of the swallows
that there all day wheel and dart through the air, and shriek out a
delight too intense and precipitate for song.
The island of Torcello is some five miles away from Venice, in the
northern lagoon. The city was founded far back in the troubled morning
of Christian civilization, by refugees from barbarian invasion, and
built with stones quarried from the ruins of old Altinum, over which
Attila had passed desolating. During the first ages of its existence
Torcello enjoyed the doubtful advantage of protection from the Greek
emperors, but fell afterward under the domination of Venice. In the
thirteenth century the _debris_ of the river that emptied into the
lagoon there began to choke up the wholesome salt canals, and to poison
the air with swampy malaria; and in the seventeenth century the city had
so dwindled that the Venetian _podestà_ removed his residence from
the depopulated island to Burano,--though the bishopric established
immediately after the settlement of the refugees at Torcello continued
there till 1814, to the satisfaction, no doubt, of the frogs and
mosquitoes that had long inherited the former citizens.
I confess that I know little more of the history of Torcello than I
found in my guide-book. There I read that the city had once stately
civic and religious edifices, and that in the tenth century the Emperor
Porphorygenitus called it “_magnum emporium Torcellanorum_.” The
much-restored cathedral of the seventh century, a little church, a
building supposed to have been the public palace, and other edifices so
ruinous and so old that their exact use in other days is not now known,
are all that remain of the _magnum emporium_, except some lines of
moldering wall that wander along the canals, and through pastures and
vineyards, in the last imbecile stages of dilapidation and decay. There
is a lofty bell-tower, also, from which, no doubt, the Torcellani
used to descry afar off the devouring hordes of the barbarians on the
main-land, and prepare for defense. As their city was never actually
invaded, I am at a loss to account for the so-called Throne of Attila,
which stands in the grass-grown piazza before the cathedral; and I fear
that it may really have been after all only the seat which the ancient
Tribunes of Torcello occupied on public occasions. It is a stone
arm-chair, of a rude stateliness, and though I questioned its
authenticity, I went and sat down in it a little while, to give myself
the benefit of a doubt in case Attila had really pressed the same seat.
As soon as our gondola touched the grassy shores at Torcello, Giovanna’s
children, Beppi and Nina, whom we had brought with us to give a first
experience of trees and flowers and mother earth, leaped from the boat
and took possession of land and water. By a curious fatality the little
girl, who was bred safely amid the hundred canals of Venice, signalized
her absence from their perils by presently falling into the only
canal in Torcello, whence she was taken dripping, to be confined at
a farm-house during the rest of our stay. The children were wild with
pleasure, being absolutely new to the country, and ran over the island,
plucking bouquets of weeds and flowers by armsful. A rake, borne afield
upon the shoulder of a peasant, afterwhile fascinated the Venetian
Beppi, and drew him away to study its strange and wonderful uses.
The simple inhabitants of Torcello came forth with gifts, or rather
bargains, of flowers, to meet their discoverers, and, in a little while,
exhausted our soldi. They also attended us in full force when we sat
down to lunch,--the old, the young men and maidens, and the little
children, all alike sallow, tattered, and dirty. Under these
circumstances, a sense of the idyllic and the patriarchal gave zest to
our collation, and moved us to bestow, in a splendid manner, fragments
of the feast among the poor Torcellani. Knowing the abstemiousness
of Italians everywhere, and seeing the hungry fashion in which the
islanders clutched our gifts and devoured them, it was our doubt whether
any one of them had ever experienced perfect repletion. I incline to
think that a chronic famine gnawed their entrails, and that they never
filled their bellies but with draughts of the east wind disdained of
Job. The smaller among them even scrambled with the dog for the bones,
until a little girl was bitten, when a terrific tumult arose, and the
dog was driven home by the whole multitude. The children presently
returned. They all had that gift of beauty which Nature seldom denies to
the children of their race; but being, as I said, so dirty, their
beauty shone forth chiefly from their large soft eyes. They had a very
graceful, bashful archness of manner, and they insinuated beggary so
winningly, that it would have been impossible for hungry people to deny
them. As for us, having lunched, we gave them every thing that remained,
and went off to feast our enthusiasm for art and antiquity in the
cathedral.
Of course, I have not the least intention of describing it. I remember
best among its wonders the bearing of certain impenitents in one of
the mosaics on the walls, whom the earnest early artist had meant to
represent as suffering in the flames of torment. I think, however, I
have never seen complacence equal to that of these sinners, unless it
was in the countenances of the seven fat kine, which, as represented in
the vestibule of St. Mark’s, wear an air of the sleepiest and laziest
enjoyment, while the seven lean kine, having just come up from the
river, devour steaks from their bleeding haunches. There are other
mosaics in the Torcello cathedral, especially those in the _apsis_ and
in one of the side chapels, which are in a beautiful spirit of art, and
form the widest possible contrast to the eighteenth-century high altar,
with its insane and ribald angels flying off at the sides, and poising
themselves in the rope-dancing attitudes favored by statues of heavenly
persons in the decline of the Renaissance. The choir is peculiarly
built, in the form of a half-circle, with seats rising one above
another, as in an amphitheatre, and a flight of steps ascending to the
bishop’s seat above all,--after the manner of the earliest Christian
churches. The partition parapet before the high altar is of almost
transparent marble, delicately and quaintly sculptured with peacocks and
lions, as the Byzantines loved to carve them; and the capitals of the
columns dividing the naves are of infinite richness. Part of the marble
pulpit has a curious bass-relief, said to be representative of the
worship of Mercury; and indeed the Torcellani owe much of the beauty of
their Duomo to unrequited antiquity. (They came to be robbed in their
turn: for the opulence of their churches was so great that in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the severest penalties had to be
enacted against those who stole from them. No one will be surprised to
learn that the clergy themselves participated in these spoliations; but
I believe no ecclesiastic was ever lashed in the piazza, or deprived of
an eye or a hand for his offense.) The Duomo has the peculiar Catholic
interest, and the horrible fascination, of a dead saint’s mortal part in
a glass case.
An arcade runs along the facade of the cathedral, and around the side
and front of the adjoining church of Santa Fosca, which is likewise very
old. But we found nothing in it but a dusty, cadaverous stench, and so
we came away and ascended the campanile. From the top of this you have
a view of the lagoon, in all its iridescent hues, and of the heaven-blue
sea. Here, looking toward the main-land, I would have been glad to
experience the feelings of the Torcellani of old, as they descried the
smoking advance of Huns or Vandals. But the finer emotions are like
gifted children, and are seldom equal to occasions. I am ashamed to say
that mine got no further than Castle Bluebeard, with Lady Bluebeard’s
sister looking out for her brothers, and tearfully responding to Lady
B.’s repeated and agonized entreaty, “O sister, do you see them yet?”
The old woman who had opened the door of the campanile was surprised
into hospitality by the sum of money we gave her, and took us through
her house (which was certainly very neat and clean) into her garden,
where she explained the nature of many familiar trees and shrubs to us
poor Venetians.
We went back home over the twilight lagoon, and Giovanna expressed the
general feeling when she said: “_Torsello xe beo--no si pol negar--la
campagna xe bea; ma, benedetta la mia Venezia!_”
(The country is beautiful--it can’t be denied--Torcello is beautiful;
but blessed be my Venice!)
The panorama of the southern lagoon is best seen in a voyage to
Chioggia, or Ciozza, the quaint and historic little city that lies
twenty miles away from Venice, at one of the ports of the harbor. The
Giant Sea-wall, built there by the Republic in her decline, is a work of
Roman grandeur, which impresses you more deeply than any other monument
of the past with a sense of her former industrial and commercial
greatness. Strips of village border the narrow Littorale all the way
to Chioggia, and on the right lie the islands of the lagoon. Chioggia
itself is hardly more than a village,--a Venice in miniature, like
Murano, with canals and boats and bridges. But here the character of
life is more amphibious than in brine-bound Venice; and though there is
no horse to be seen in the central streets of Chioggia, peasants’ teams
penetrate her borders by means of a long bridge from the main-land.
Of course Chioggia has passed through the customary vicissitudes of
Italian towns, and has been depopulated at divers times by pestilence,
famine, and war. It suffered cruelly in the war with the Genoese in
1380, when it was taken by those enemies of St. Mark; and its people
were so wasted by the struggle that the Venetians, on regaining it, were
obliged to invite immigration to repopulate its emptiness. I do not know
how great comfort the Chiozzotti of that unhappy day took in the fact
that some of the earliest experiments with cannon were made in the
contest that destroyed them, but I can hardly offer them less tribute
than to mention it here. At present the place is peopled almost entirely
by sailors and fishermen, whose wives are more famous for their beauty
than their amiability. Goldoni’s “Baruffe Chiozzotte” is an amusing and
vivid picture of the daily battles which the high-spirited ladies of
the city fought in the dramatist’s [Footnote: Goldoni’s family went from
Venice to Chioggia when the dramatist was very young. The description
of his life there form some of the most interesting chapters of his
Memoirs.] time, and which are said to be of frequent occurrence at this
day. The Chiozzotte are the only women of this part of Italy who still
preserve a semblance of national costume; and this remnant of more
picturesque times consists merely of a skirt of white, which, being open
in front, is drawn from the waist over the head and gathered in the hand
under the chin, giving to the flashing black eyes and swarthy features
of the youthful wearer a look of very dangerous slyness and cunning.
The dialect of the Chiozzotti is said to be that of the early Venetians,
with an admixture of Greek, and it is infinitely more sweet and musical
than the dialect now spoken in Venice. “Whether derived,” says the
author of the “Fiore di Venezia,” alluding to the speech of these
peculiar people, “from those who first settled these shores, or
resulting from other physical and moral causes, it is certain that the
tone of the voice is here more varied and powerful: the mouth is thrown
wide open in speaking; a passion, a lament mingles with laughter itself,
and there is a continual _ritornello_ of words previously spoken. But
this speech is full of energy; whoever would study brief and strong
modes of expression should come here.”
Chioggia was once the residence of noble and distinguished persons,
among whom was the painter Rosalba Carrera, famed throughout Europe for
her crayon miniatures; and the place produced in the sixteenth century
the great maestro Giuseppe Zarlino, “who passes,” says Cantù, “for the
restorer of modern music,” and “whose ‘Orfeo’ heralded the invention
of the musical drama.” This composer claimed for his birthplace the
doubtful honor of the institution of the order of the Capuchins, which
he declared to have been founded by Fra Paolo (Giovanni Sambi) of
Chioggia. There is not much now to see in poor little Chioggia except
its common people, who, after a few minutes’ contemplation, can hardly
interest any one but the artist. There are no dwellings in the town
which approach palatial grandeur, and nothing in the Renaissance
churches to claim attention, unless it be an attributive Bellini in
one of them. Yet if you have the courage to climb the bell-tower of
the cathedral, you get from its summit the loveliest imaginable view of
many-purpled lagoon and silver-flashing sea; and if you are sufficiently
acquainted with Italy and Italians to observe a curious fact, and care
to study the subject, you may note the great difference between the
inhabitants of Chioggia and those of Palestrina,--an island divided from
Chioggia by a half mile of lagoon, and by quite different costume, type
of face, and accent.
Just between Chioggia and the sea lies the lazy town of Sottomarina, and
I should say that the population of Sottomarina chiefly spent its time
in lounging up and down the Sea-wall; while that of Chioggia, when not
professionally engaged with the net, gave its leisure to playing _mora_
[Footnote: Mora is the game which the Italians play with their fingers,
one throwing out two, three, or four fingers, as the case may be, and
calling the number at the same instant. If (so I understood the game)
the player mistakes the number of fingers he throws out, he loses; if he
hits the number with both voice and fingers he wins. It is played with
tempestuous interest, and is altogether fiendish in appearance.] in the
shade, or pitilessly pursuing strangers, and offering them boats. For my
own part, I refused the subtlest advances of this kind which were made
me in Chiozzotto, but fell a helpless prey to a boatman who addressed me
in some words of wonderful English, and then rowed me to the Sea-wall at
about thrice the usual fare.
These primitive people are bent, in their out-of-the-world, remote way,
upon fleecing the passing stranger quite as earnestly as other Italians,
and they naïvely improve every occasion for plunder. As we passed up the
shady side of their wide street, we came upon a plump little blond boy,
lying asleep on the stones, with his head upon his arm; and as no
one was near, the artist of our party stopped to sketch the sleeper.
Atmospheric knowledge of the fact spread rapidly, and in a few minutes
we were the centre of a general assembly of the people of Chioggia,
who discussed us, and the artist’s treatment of her subject, in open
congress. They handed round the airy chaff as usual, but were very
orderly and respectful, nevertheless,--one father of the place quelling
every tendency to tumult by kicking his next neighbor, who passed on the
penalty till, by this simple and ingenious process, the guilty cause of
the trouble was infallibly reached and kicked at last. I placed a number
of soldi in the boy’s hand, to the visible sensation of the crowd, and
then we moved away and left him, heading, as we went, a procession of
Chiozzotti, who could not make up their minds to relinquish us till
we took refuge in a church. When we came out the procession had
disappeared, but all round the church door, and picturesquely scattered
upon the pavement in every direction, lay boys asleep, with their
heads upon their arms. As we passed laughing through the midst of these
slumberers, they rose and followed us with cries of “_Mi tiri zu! Mi
tiri zu!_” (Take me down! Take me down!) They ran ahead, and fell asleep
again in our path, and round every corner we came upon a sleeping boy;
and, indeed, we never got out of that atmosphere of slumber till we
returned to the steamer for Venice, when Chioggia shook off her drowsy
stupor, and began to tempt us to throw soldi into the water, to be dived
for by her awakened children.