The painters come, of course—all kinds of painters, for all kinds of subjects. Every morning, all over the canals and quays, you find a new growth of white umbrellas, like mushrooms, sprung up in the night. Since the days of Canaletto these men have painted and repainted these same stretches of water, palace, and sky. Once under the spell of her presence, they are never again free from the fascinations of this Mistress of the Adriatic. Many of the older men are long since dead and forgotten, but the work of those of to-day you know: Ziem first, nearly all his life a worshiper of the wall of the Public Garden; and Rico and Ruskin and Whistler. Their names are legion. They have all had a corner at Florian’s. No matter what their nationality or specialty, they speak the common language of the brush. Old Professor Croisac knows them all. He has just risen again to salute Marks, a painter of sunrises, who has never yet recovered from his first thrill of delight when early one morning his gondolier rowed him down the lagoon and made fast to a cluster of spiles off the Public Garden. When the sun rose behind the sycamores and threw a flood of gold across the sleeping city, and flashed upon the sails of the fishing-boats drifting up from the Lido, Marks lost his heart. He is still tied up every summer to that same cluster of spiles, painting the glory of the morning sky and the drifting boats. He will never want to paint anything else. He will not listen to you when you tell him of the sunsets up the Giudecca, or the soft pearly light of the dawn silvering the Salute, or the picturesque life of the fisher-folk of Malamocco.
“My dear boy,” he breaks out, “get up to-morrow morning at five and come down to the Garden, and just see one sunrise—only one. We had a lemon-yellow and pale emerald sky this morning, with dabs of rose-leaves, that would have paralyzed you.”
Do not laugh at the painter’s enthusiasm. This white goddess of the sea has a thousand lovers, and, like all other lovers the world over, each one believes that he alone holds the key to her heart.
IN AN OLD GARDEN
YOU think, perhaps, there are no gardens in Venice; that it is all a sweep of palace front and shimmering sea; that save for the oleanders bursting into bloom near the Iron Bridge, and the great trees of the Public Garden shading the flower-bordered walks, there are no half-neglected tangles where rose and vine run riot; where the plash of the fountain is heard in the stillness of the night, and tall cedars cast their black shadows at noonday.
Really, if you but knew it, almost every palace hides a garden nestling beneath its balconies, and every high wall hems in a wealth of green, studded with broken statues, quaint arbors festooned with purple grapes, and white walks bordered by ancient box; while every roof that falls beneath a window is made a hanging garden of potted plants and swinging vines.
BEYOND SAN ROSARIO
Step from your gondola into some open archway. A door beyond leads you to a court paved with marble flags and centred by a well with carved marble curb, yellow stained with age. Cross this wide court, pass a swinging iron gate, and you stand under rose-covered bowers, where in the olden time gay gallants touched their lutes and fair ladies listened to oft-told tales of love.