My gondolier on the Grand Canal
Amid the uproar I had no time to inquire prices. I proffered six cents to a wrinkled hag presiding over a caldron of what purported to be a tripe and liver ragoût. She cried out in amazement, handed back four cents, and filled my plate to the rim. I reached the back-room with half the mess—the rest being scooped up in the coat sleeves of the famished throng—and took my place at an already crowded table. Neither bread nor wine was to be had in the house. On a board propped up across a corner of the room were several cylinders of corn mush, three feet in diameter and half as thick. A hairless creature, stripped to the waist, cut off slabs of the cake for those who would have something to take the place of bread. The yellow dough sold at two cents a pound, yet each order was carefully weighed, and purchaser and server watched the scales jealously during the operation. As a substitute for wine there was a jar of water, that abominable, germ-infested water of Venice, from which each drank in turn.
Every type of wretch which the city shelters was represented in the emaciated gathering. Rag-pickers snarled at cathedral beggars. Street urchins jostled bearded bootblacks. Female outcasts rubbed elbows with those gruesome beings who pick up a few cents a day at the landing stages. My boisterous appetite dwindled away at sight of the messes around me and in the exploration of the mysteries of my own portion. All at once there burst upon me the recollection that I had seen neither a dog nor a cat during all that day in Venice, and I turned and fought my way to the door. Behind me rose a quarrel over my unfinished portion. Outside, on the square beside the fallen campanile, kind-hearted tourists were feeding wholesome grain to a flock of pigeons, above which magnificent statues looked down upon a crowd of homeless waifs huddled under the portico of the Palace of the Doges.
I turned down to the landing stage one morning resolved on the extravagance of a gondola excursion. The water cabmen of Venice are not wont to solicit men in corduroys and flannel shirt. A score of them, just recovering from a stampede on a tow-head in regulation tourist garb, greeted my arrival with the fishy eye of indifference. When I boldly announced my plan, they crowded around me to laugh in derision at the laborer seeking to play the lord. For some time they refused to take my words seriously, and even then the first skeptic to be convinced insisted on proof of my financial solvency before he proffered his services.
Along the Grand Canal passing gondoliers, without passengers to keep them decorous, flung cutting jests at my propeller.
“Eh! Amico! What’s that you’ve got?”
“Ch’è un rico, colui quà, eh?”
“Sangue della Vergine, caro mio, dove hai accozzato quello?”
But once assured of his fare, the fellow lost his smirk and became all servility, pointing out the objects of interest with a mien of owl-like solemnity, and rebuking his fellow-craftsmen with an admonishing shake of the head.