On my way home that night this waif of the streets told me that since he had been ten years old—he was then only seventeen—he had troubadoured it through Europe, even as far as Spain, his only support being his spatula and a lump of clay. With these he could conjure a breakfast out of the head waiter of a caffè in exchange for his portrait in clay, or a lodging in some cheap hotel for a like payment to the proprietor. He is still tramping the streets of Venice, his little wooden board filled with Madonnas, Spanish matadors, and Don Quixotes. Now he has money in the bank and the striped-pantalooned guardians of the peace let him alone.
And the girls!
Not the better class, with mothers and duennas dogging every footstep, but the girls who wander two and two up and down the Riva, their arms intertwined; not forgetting the bright-eyed signorina that I once waylaid in a by-street. (Don’t start! Espero helped.) I wanted a figure to lean over a crumbling wall in a half-finished sketch, and sent Espero to catch one. Such a vision of beauty! Such a wealth of purple—grape purple—black hair; such luminous black eyes, real gazelle’s, soft and velvety; so exquisitely graceful; so charming and naïve; so unkempt,—so ragged,—so entirely unlaundered, unscrubbed, and slovenly!
But you must look twice at a Venetian beauty. You may miss her good points otherwise. You think at first sight that she is only the last half of my description, until you follow the flowing lines under the cheap, shabby shawl and skirt, and study the face.
This one opened her big eyes wide in astonishment at Espero, listened attentively, consented gracefully, and then sprang after him into the gondola, which carried her off bodily to my sketching ground. Truly one touch of the brush, with a paper lira neatly folded around the handle, is very apt to make all Venice, especially stray amateur models, your kin.
But this is true of all the people in the streets. Every Venetian, for that matter, is a born model. You can call from under your umbrella to any passer-by, anybody who is not on a quick run for the doctor, and he or she will stand stock still and fix himself or herself in any position you may wish, and stay fixed by the hour.
And the gossip that goes on all day! In the morning hours around the wells in the open Campo, where the women fill their copper water-buckets, and the children play by the widening puddles; in the narrow streets beside a shadow-flecked wall; under the vines of the traghetto, lolling over the unused felsi; among the gondoliers at the gondola landings, while their boats lie waiting for patrons; over low walls of narrow slits of canals, to occupants of some window or bridge a hundred feet away. There is always time to talk, in Venice.
Then the dolce far niente air that pervades these streets! Nobody in a hurry. Nobody breaking his neck to catch a boat off for the Lido; there will be another in an hour, and if, by any combination of cool awnings, warm wine, and another idler for company, this later boat should get away without this one passenger, why worry?—to-morrow will do.
All over Venice it is the same. The men sit in rows on the stone benches. The girls idle in the doorways, their hands in their laps. The members of the open-air club lounge over the bridges or lie sprawled on the shadow-side of the steps. Up in the fishing quarter, between naps in his doorway, some weather-beaten old salt may, perhaps, have a sudden spasm of energy over a crab-basket that must be hoisted up, or lowered down, or scrubbed with a broom. But there is sure to be a lull in his energy, and before you fairly miss his toiling figure he is asleep in his boat. When his signora wakes him into life again with a piece of toasted pumpkin,—his luncheon, like the Professor’s, is eaten wherever he happens to be,—he may have another spasm of activity, but the chances are that he will relapse into oblivion again.
