So much for S. Mark's Square by night. With thousands of persons, to think of S. Mark's Square by day is chiefly to think of pigeons. Many a visitor to Venice who cannot remember the details of a single painting there can show you a photograph of herself with pigeons on her shoulders and arms. Photographers and dealers in maize are here all day to effect these pretty conjunctions; but the Kodak has seriously impaired their profits. The birds are smaller than our London monsters and not quite so brilliantly burnished. How many there are I have no idea; but since they are sacred, their numbers must be ever increasing. Why they are sacred is something of a mystery. One story states that the great Enrico Dandolo had carrier-pigeons with him in the East which conveyed the grand tidings of victories to Venice; another says that the same heroic old man was put in possession of valuable strategic information by means of a carrier-pigeon, and on returning to Venice proclaimed it a bird to be reverenced. There was once a custom of loosing a number of pigeons among the crowd in the Piazza on Palm Sunday. The birds being weighted floundered downwards and were caught and killed for the pot; but such as escaped were held to have earned their liberty for ever.
THE PRESENTATION
from the painting by titian
In the Accademia
At night no doubt the pigeons roost among S. Mark's statuary and on convenient ledges in the neighbourhood; by day, when not on the pavement of the Piazza, the bulk of the flock are dotted about among the reliefs of the Atrio, facing S. Mark's.
They have no timidity, but by a kind of honourable understanding they all affect to be startled by the bells at certain hours and the midday gun, and ascend in a grey cloud for a few seconds.
They are never so engaging as when flying double, bird and shadow, against the Campanile.
Their collective cooing fills the air and makes the Piazza's day music.
Venetians crossing the Piazza walk straight on, through the birds, like Moses crossing the Red Sea; the foreigners pick their way.
What with S. Mark's and the pigeons, the Campanile and coffee, few visitors have any time to inquire as to the other buildings of the Piazza. Nor are they of much interest. Briefly they are the Old Procuratie, which forms the side on which the clock is, the Atrio or Nuova Fabbrica opposite S. Mark's, and the New Procuratie on the Campanile side. The Old Procuratie, whose main row of windows I once counted, making either a hundred or a hundred and one, is now offices and, above, residences. Here once abode the nine procurators of Venice who, under the Doge, ruled the city.