XVII
HAPS AND HAPPENINGS
Beau Rivage, Venice, May 25th.
As we first saw Venice from the train, across a stretch of green marsh, its domes, spires, churches, and bridges seemed to rise out of the water just as you see them in Turner's pictures, with such an atmosphere as that great artist knew how to paint, veiling the delicate ethereal beauty of this bride of the sea. We were aroused from our rapt contemplation of the scene before us by the bustle and commotion of the arrival of the train and questions about luggage, hotels, and the proper fees to be given to the men who pushed our gondola off from the landing. If ever trunks are endurable it is when, as in Venice, one glides away with them in a gondola over summer seas.
There was some sort of a celebration last night, something special, I mean, for Venice must always appear more or less en fête. When we stepped into a gondola after dinner, the many boats with their gay pennons of all colors and the skiffs with their rich brown and yellow sails made the Grand Canal appear like a carnival of nations. And what a background for a carnival is the Canalazzo, as the Venetians call it, with its long vista of palaces, their pali painted in various colors, the Dogana surmounted by its curious weathercock, Fortune, aptly typifying the vicissitudes of Venice, Santa Maria della Salute glowing in the evening light with the shades of a bride rose, San Giorgio of a deep red, the Doge's Palace with its long, low water-front, the Bridge of Sighs spanning the dark canal that lies between a palace and a prison, and out on the open Piazzetta the two huge granite pillars which we see in so many pictures! One of these pillars is surmounted by the statue of St. Theodore, an ancient and now deposed patron saint of Venice, the other by the Lion of St. Mark, eager, watchful, dominant, clearly defined against the blue of the sky—for here the twilight lasts long, and far into the night the sky is of an exquisite, translucent blue such as one usually sees far north, much farther north than Venice. This is a part of the atmospheric charm, which makes it as impossible to describe this city of pearl and opaline tints and golden and crimson glows as it is to put the colors of a sunset on paper. Later the moon rose, and we floated over a silver sea, while strains of music, the cries of the gondoliers, and the songs of pleasure-parties were wafted to us across the water. Zelphine's eyes shone with rapturous delight; the excitement of the stimulating air and the beauty of the scene sent the red blood to Angela's cheeks until they flushed to as deep a rose as under the fire of the Count de B.'s most extravagant compliments, and I—well, I have no idea of how I looked, I only know that I felt as if every craving for beauty that I had known in all my life was satisfied entirely.
Miss Morris, who had already experienced her first thrills of delight "upon such a night as this," watched us in silence and we were thus spared the distraction of voluble enthusiasm; of deep, restrained enthusiasm there was quite enough for one gondola.
May 27th.
We are lodged in a pleasant, airy hotel on the Grand Canal where it begins to widen out toward the sea, and opposite the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. This hotel is not absolutely in the canal, like most of the houses of this "water-logged town," as some Western traveller dubbed it, but has a strip of pavement in front, just enough dry land to make us realize that we still belong to the earth. On general principles I should say that the Venetians never sleep, for over the stone flagging between our hotel and the Canalazzo people are tramping all night, laughing, chatting, and singing. And we, in sympathy with them, sit by the windows for hours, feeling that the nights are too radiantly beautiful to be devoted to so prosaic a business as sleeping, which, as Angela remarks, "can be done in any old place." The child has so considerately refrained from having "the time of her life" in Italy and from measuring things generally by "galores," that we occasionally allow her to indulge in an innocent bit of slang.
May 28th.