THE SERENADE.
Coming after the regatta, the serenade is a fresh delight. The anxieties are ended, and everybody can now enjoy the lovely evening, the cool breeze, the glimpses of exquisite palace interiors, of gondolas filled with ladies in festa costumes, and of decorations and illuminations everywhere.
Eight o'clock is the hour for beginning; and a large barge decorated with many green and red lamps arranged in pyramids and other more fanciful designs carries the orchestra and the singers. It starts from above the Rialto, and is soon surrounded by numberless gondolas. Each gondolier strives for the best position, and that is thought to be at the bow of the music barge. The whole mass of boats float with the tide; and as they come to the narrower part of the canal, neither barge nor any gondola can move forward or back.
Under the arch of the bridge the scene is like a good-natured pandemonium. The police bid the rowers do this and do that, but they only make a pretence of trying to obey. The police shout, "Avanti, avanti!" the boatmen repeat the cry, but nothing moves. At last the chief official, by means of a trumpet, gives an order to "pump," and at once a fire-engine on the barge throws a stream of water which loosens the block a little, and the barge advances a few feet. A very curious effect is produced by the different sorts of lights. The cold, colorless electric, the brilliant hues of the Bengal lights, and the soft glimmering from the stars in the clear blue above, bring out the statuesque figures of the gondoliers and the fronts of the palaces,—now like startling ghosts, again like blushing youths, and then as impalpable spirit-forms. They appear and disappear as the lights change and as the boats move. The gondoliers are mostly clothed in white, and seem like dream figures, as do the exquisite façades with their delicate tracery and ornament.
The serenade is apparently endless; for in spite of the pumping, its progress is very slow, and the barge will not reach the Salute until long past midnight. There the lights are put out, and the musicians released. Little attention is given to the music, which seems only to be a nucleus for this most novel and fantastic scene, from which one may easily escape by a side canal, and end the evening with one more spectacle.
THE ILLUMINATION.
This is the appropriate end of a really grand festival; and the scene in the Piazza is as beautiful, if not as exciting, as the race or the serenade. So brilliant is the light that not a detail of the architecture is lost. Every column, with all its ornament, each cornice, pillar, and curve is outlined by little jets of golden flame, and even of a deeper tint; and all these lights are flickering just enough to dazzle the eye with an effect like a rippling sea of fire. In weird contrast is the façade of San Marco, lighted by electricity. It is pale and unearthly, and its domes seem to be suspended in air. No wonder that the doves fly hither and thither in fright and amazement, and cluster in the darker Piazzetta, where they and we may thankfully rest our eyes and look out to San Giorgio, now all aflame with many-colored lamps.
Again to the Piazza, to note what we may not yet have seen. The two Procuratie and the Piazza walls are like sheets of fire, for the lamps of the square have globes of crimson glass. Surely nowhere else has one seen such color, so splendid and fascinating, so blinding and confusing, that late though it be we bid our good gondolier make a giro in the quiet canals, which seem to welcome us as old friends do, and restore the equilibrium which the regatta, the serenade, and the illumination have somewhat disturbed; and in this quiet there come back to us the lines we learned so long ago, writ by another pilgrim in this same Venice,—
I can repeople with the past,—and of
The present there is still for eye and thought,
And meditation chastened down, enough;
And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
And of the happiest moments which were wrought
Within the web of my existence, some
From thee, fair Venice! have their colors caught.
LORD BYRON.
THE MADONNA DELLA SALUTE.