Nobody laughed. It did not shock the crowd; nobody thought Giorgio unmanly or foolish, or Pietro silly or effeminate. The infernal Anglo-Saxon custom of always wearing a mask of reserve, if your heart breaks, has never reached these people.
As for the Professor, who looked on quietly, I think—yes, I am quite sure—that a little jewel of a tear squeezed itself up through his punctilious, precise, ever exact and courteous body, and glistened long enough on his eyelids to wet their lashes. Then the bright sun and the joyous wind caught it away. Dear old relic of a by-gone time! How gentle a heart beats under your well-brushed, threadbare coat!
SOME VENETIAN CAFFÈS
EVERY one in Venice has his own particular caffè, according to his own particular needs, sympathies, or tastes. All the artists, architects, and musicians meet at Florian’s; all the Venetians go to the Quadri; the Germans and late Austrians, to the Bauer-Grünwald; the stay-over-nights, to the Oriental on the Riva; the stevedores, to the Veneta Marina below the Arsenal; and my dear friend Luigi and his fellow-tramps, to a little hole in the wall on the Via Garibaldi.
A LITTLE HOLE IN THE WALL ON THE VIA GARIBALDI
These caffès are scattered everywhere, from the Public Garden to the Mestre bridge; all kinds of caffès for all kinds of people—rich, not so rich, poor, poorer, and the very poorest. Many of them serve only a cup of coffee, two little flat lumps of sugar, a hard, brown roll, and a glass of water—always a glass of water. Some add a few syrups and cordials, with a siphon of seltzer. Others indulge in the cheaper wines of the country, Brindisi, Chianti, and the like, and are then known as wine-shops. Very few serve any spirits, except a spoonful of cognac with the coffee. Water is the universal beverage, and in summer this is cooled by ice and enriched by simple syrups of peach, orange, and raspberry. Spirits are rarely taken and intemperance is practically unknown. In an experience of many years, I have not seen ten drunken men,—never one drunken woman,—and then only in September, when the strong wine from Brindisi is brought in bulk and sold over the boat’s rail, literally by the bucket, to whoever will buy.
In the ristoranti—caffès, in our sense—is served an array of eatables that would puzzle the most expert of gourmands. There will be macaroni, of course, in all forms, and risotto in a dozen different ways, and soups with weird, uncanny little devil-fish floating about in them, and salads of every conceivable green thing that can be chopped up in a bowl and drowned in olive oil; besides an assortment of cheeses with individualities of perfume that beggar any similar collection outside of Holland.
Some of these caffès are so much a part of Venice and Venetian life, that you are led to believe that they were founded by the early Doges and are coëval with the Campanile or the Library. Somebody, of course, must know when they first began setting out tables on the piazza in front of Florian’s, or at the Quadri opposite, or yet again at the Caffè al Cavallo, near San Giovanni e Paulo, and at scores of others; but I confess I do not. If you ask the head waiter, who really ought to know (for he must have been born in one of the upper rooms—he certainly never leaves the lower ones), he shrugs his shoulders in a hopeless way and sheds the inquiry with a despairing gesture, quite as if you had asked who laid out San Marco, or who drove the piles under Saint Theodore.