He gathered up his tooth-picks, replaced them in his little tray, walked away half a dozen steps—then returned.
"Signore sall have him for four sous."
He pocketed the coins and passed away, and I became possessed of a Venetian memento which I afterwards found could be bought in any of the shops for half what I paid for it. Nevertheless, it was a cheap lesson in the Italian retail trade, which I afterwards profited by.
The reader will recollect that the promenading, and the lounge at the tables in the square, is undisturbed by horses and vehicles. There are no horses in Venice. If one by chance should be brought there, he would be exhibited as a show. The shops around the square are frequented by travellers for the purchase of Venetian jewelry, glass beads, and glass ware.
Little silver gondolas, scarf-pins, with the winged lion in gold, and mosaics, inlaid with figures of beetles, are much bought by tourists. So are the little mother-of-pearl-looking shells, strung together in necklaces and bracelets, and hawked round by the pedlers. But let no one who visits Venice leave without buying some of Carlo Ponti's photographs, the best and cheapest in the world, unless he has changed since we were in his shop, 52 St. Mark's Square. These photographic views were of rare beauty, and of all the interesting views in Venice, public buildings, exteriors and interiors; also all the great paintings, besides views of buildings and paintings in the great galleries of other cities. These beautiful large-sized views, which bring back what they so faithfully represent vividly to mind, we purchased at from thirty to seventy-five cents each. In New York and Boston the price was from three to five dollars each.
We have sauntered all around the great Square of St. Mark, have waited till the hour of two was struck, and seen the cloud of pigeons that come, with their rush of wings like a shower, down to the pavement at one end of the square, to be fed with their daily ration of corn by the government, punctually at the stroke; we have stood before the three huge pedestals of bronze, which are a dozen or twenty feet high, and look like elegantly-wrought gigantic candlesticks, the candles being the tall masts that rise therefrom, from the peaks of which, in the days of Venetian glory, floated the silken gonfalons emblematical of the three dominions under the republic—Venice, Cyprus, and the Morea. These beautifully-wrought pedestals exhibit in bass-relief figures of Tritons, ships, and sea-nymphs at their base, with a circle of the everlasting winged lions further up towards the centre, and above them ornamental leaves and flowers enclosing the medallion portrait of one of the doges.
We entered the Campanile, or bell-tower, after admiring the statues about the base, with some doubts about undertaking its ascent, fearing such a getting up stairs as its lofty altitude would call for. To our surprise, however, we found that there were no stairs whatever, the ascent being made by a brick-paved walk, laid in a series of zigzags, each a gradual ascent from the other. So up we went, the whole three hundred and twenty feet,—a long walk,—to the great pyramid above, and enjoyed a superb view of Venice, and the Gulf of Venice, from the top.
But the lion of Venice (not the winged one) is the grand old Church of St. Mark, with its five great arched doorways, surrounded by magnificent frescoes, its elegant columns, and bronze horses, of historic fame, looking out into the square. This church is said to be a mixture of Grecian and Roman architecture, but its domes give it a suggestion of Saracenic style.
The three huge masts, with their bronze pedestals, stand directly in front of it, and the pavement of the square before the church is fancifully laid out. One great beauty about the entrances is the double row of numerous little columns of various kinds of marble, beautifully wrought. I counted of these fifty-two in the lower tier. They are supported by the same number above, and in the arches of the five doorways are great mosaics, in bright colors, representing the Last Judgment, the Entombment of St. Mark, &c. Above these, over the huge arches of the doors, except the central one, are other rich mosaics, representing the Descent from the Cross, the Ascension, &c. A marble gallery and railing run above the great arches of the doorways; and over the central one, in front of a huge arched window of many-hued glass, stand the four bronze horses of which so much has been written. They are said to have been brought to Rome by Augustus after his victory over Antony, to have adorned a triumphal arch there, and been successively removed by Nero the fiddler, Domitian the fly-catcher, and Trajan, forum and wall-builder, to arches of their own. The Emperor Constantine then carried them to his new capital, Constantinople, which, hundreds of years after, fell into the hands of the Turks, but which, in turn, was taken by the crusaders in the fourth crusade, in 1206, whence they were wrenched from where they stood by knightly plunderers, and brought to Venice, to be again pulled down by the great modern crusader, Napoleon. France, after having them trotting forth from the top of the Arc du Carrousel for eighteen years, had to trot them back to Venice. So that these horses in their day, which is a space of fifteen hundred years, have travelled about the world to some extent. These bronze steeds weigh nearly two thousand pounds each.
Above the upper mosaics, the horses, and upper arches, the fringe or decoration of the arches is crammed and crowded with fret-work, statuary, and ornament. Six open-work, ornamental steeples enclose colossal statues of saints, a fringe and fret-work of angels, palm-branches, saints, and scroll-work run all along the top of the arches; upon the points of four stand four other saintly statues; on the point over the great arch is the statue of St. Mark; under him is his winged lion, with his paw upon the Book, and in every conceivable nook and corner a statue, mosaic, or carving, making this great temple one of florid display, while it is rich with the plundered spoils of the crusaders, wrenched from mosques of the Moslem, and from Constantine's capital, when it fell into their hands. Everywhere in this church the visitor sees evidence of this plunder of the East, or, as the old crusaders might have said, "reclamation from the Moslems." One of the great bronze doors leading into the spacious vestibule is said to have been one brought from the Mosque of St. Sophia in 1203; and the vaulted roof of this vestibule is filled with beautiful mosaic representations of Scripture subjects, while around its walls are elegant columns of rare marbles, brought from the East. The huge portals of entrance are of bronze, and besides the one mentioned above is the elegant central one, of a sort of Moorish workmanship, with its panels inlaid with figures and carvings in silver.