"San Marco!" answered a number of soft, musical voices in unison; and there stood by my side a little crowd of Italians, their dark eyes sparkling and white teeth showing, evidently pleased at my adoration.
"San M-ahr-co, San M-ahr-co!" they drawled in delight. For once their pleasure was real; they did not break the spell upon me by holding out the hand for a pourboire.
St. Mark's is Moorish in design, and has a coloring both gorgeous and subdued. The richness of jewels and costly stones does not seem out of place here as in many Roman churches. Nothing could be too precious, too sumptuous, too rare, for this temple magnificent.
The piazza of St. Mark's is a square paved with trachyte and marble. It has the church on one side, and on the other sides, old white marble palaces, in the arcades of which are now found shops of world-wide renown. The piazzetta leads one, between the Doge's palace and Libreria Vecchia, to the Grand Canal.
Every evening a military band plays in the square, and it is like a vast, open-air drawing-room with a huge masquerade ball in full tilt.
We climbed the Campanile and saw, besides a beautiful sunset, the Alps, the Adriatic, and in the dim distance the Istrian Mountain rising out of the sea.
With but a day to give to Venice, or with a year at your disposal, there is only one thing to do—dream! Whether you rest in a gondola on the Lagune, drifting past the Bridge of Sighs, the Rialto, the Ghetto, or the Lido, listening to the gondolier calling out the names of the palaces as the boat glides by, or whether you stroll idly through the miles of churches and galleries containing the paintings, or sit in wondering awe before the vast area of mosaics in St. Mark's—it matters little—dream!
In truth, one cannot well avoid it, amid the "subtle, variable, inexpressible coloring of transparent alabaster, of polished Oriental marbles and of lusterless gold," as Ruskin puts it.
AU BORD DU LAC COMO:
Heavens! Just think of me writing "Como" at the top of my letters! I have pinched myself to see if I am really here. The unreality of it all recalls what Mr. Howells said after reading Ruskin: "Just after reading his description of St. Mark's, I, who had seen it every day for three years, began to doubt its existence." So I am beginning to doubt my own existence.