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.