A Parisian shopkeeper would sell you the bones of his revered grandmother if you wanted them and he had them in stock; and he would have them in stock too, because, as I have stated once before, a true Parisian never throws away anything he can save. I heard of just one single instance where a customer desirous of having an article and willing to pay the price failed to get it; and that, I would say, stands without a parallel in the annals of commerce and barter.
An American lady visiting her daughter, an art student in the Latin Quartier, was walking alone when she saw in a shop window a lace blouse she fancied. She went inside and by signs, since she knew no French, indicated that she wished to look at that blouse. The woman in charge shook her head, declining even to take the garment out of the window. Convinced now, womanlike, that this particular blouse was the blouse she desired above all other blouses the American woman opened her purse and indicated that she was prepared to buy at the shopwoman's own valuation, without the privilege of examination. The shopwoman showed deep pain at having to refuse the proposition, but refuse it she did; and the would-be buyer went home angry and perplexed and told her daughter what had happened.
"It certainly is strange," the daughter said. "I thought everything in Paris, except possibly Napoleon's tomb, was for sale. This thing will repay investigation. Wait until I pin my hat on. Does my nose need powdering?"
Her mother led her back to the shop of the blouse and then the puzzle was revealed. For it was the shop of a dry cleanser and the blouse belonged to some patron and was being displayed as a sample of the work done inside; but undoubtedly such a thing never before happened in Paris and probably never will happen again.
In Venice not only the guides and the hotel clerks and porters but even the simple gondolier has a secret understanding with all branches of the retail trade. You get into a long, snaky, black gondola and fee the beggar who pushes you off, and all the other beggars who have assisted in the pushing off or have merely contributed to the success of the operation by being present, and you tell your gondolier in your best Italian or your worst pidgin English where you wish to go. It may be you are bound for the Rialto; or for the Bridge of Sighs, which is chiefly distinguished from all the other bridges by being the only covered one in the lot; or for the house of the lady Desdemona. The lady Desdemona never lived there or anywhere else, but the house where she would have lived, had she lived, is on exhibition daily from nine to five, admission one lira. Or perchance you want to visit one of the ducal palaces that are so numerous in Venice. These palaces are still tenanted by the descendants of the original proprietors; one family has perhaps been living in one palace three or four hundred years. But now the family inhabits the top floor, doing light housekeeping up there, and the lower floor, where the art treasures, the tapestries and the family relics are, is in charge of a caretaker, who collects at the door and then leads you through.
Having given the boatman explicit directions you settle back in your cushion seat to enjoy the trip. You marvel how he, standing at the stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of his steering post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so surely by those short, twisting strokes of his. Really, you reflect, it is rowing by shorthand. You are feasting your eyes on the wonderful color effects and the groupings that so enthuse the artist, and which he generally manages to botch and boggle when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and betweenwhiles you are wondering why all the despondent cats in Venice should have picked out the Grand Canal as the most suitable place in which to commit suicide, when—bump!—your gondola swings up against the landing piles in front of a glass factory and the entire force of helpers rush out and seize you by your arms—or by your legs, if handier—and try to drag you inside, while the affable and accommodating gondolier boosts you from behind. You fight them off, declaring passionately that you are not in the market for colored glass at this time. The hired hands protest; and the gondolier, cheated out of his commission, sorrows greatly, but obeys your command to move on. At least he pretends to obey it; but a minute later he brings you up broadside at the water-level doors of a shop dealing in antiques, known appropriately as antichitas, or at a mosaic shop or a curio shop. If ever you do succeed in reaching your destination it is by the exercise of much profanity and great firmness of will.
The most insistent and pesky shopkeepers of all are those who hive in the ground floors of the professedly converted palaces that face on three sides of the Square of Saint Mark's. You dare not hesitate for the smallest fractional part of a second in front of a shop here. Lurking inside the open door is a husky puller-in; and he dashes out and grabs hold of you and will not let go, begging you in spaghettified English to come in and examine his unapproachable assortment of bargains. You are not compelled to buy, he tells you; he only wants you to gaze on his beautiful things. Believe him not! Venture inside and decline to purchase and he will think up new and subtle Italian forms of insult and insolence to visit on you. They will have brass bands out for you if you invest and brass knuckles if you do not.
There is but one way to escape from their everlasting persecutions, and that is to flee to the center of the square and enjoy the company of the pigeons and the photographers. They—the pigeons, I mean—belong to the oldest family in Venice; their lineage is of the purest and most undefiled. For upward of seven hundred years the authorities of the city have been feeding and protecting the pigeons, of which these countless blue-and-bronze flocks are the direct descendants. They are true aristocrats; and, like true aristocrats, they are content to live on the public funds and grow fat and sassy thereon, paying nothing in return.
No; I take that part back—they do pay something in return; a full measure. They pay by the beauty of their presence, and they are surely very beautiful, with their dainty mincing pink feet and the sheen on the proudly arched breast coverts of the cock birds; and they pay by giving you their trust and their friendship. To gobble the gifts of dried peas, which you buy in little cornucopias from convenient venders for distribution among them, they come wheeling in winged battalions, creaking and cooing, and alight on your head and shoulders in that perfect confidence which so delights humans when wild or half-wild creatures bestow it on us, though, at every opportunity, we do our level best to destroy it by hunting and harrying them to death.
At night, when the moon is up, is the time to visit this spot. Standing here, with the looming pile of the Doge's Palace bulked behind you, and the gorgeous but somewhat garish decorations of the great cathedral softened and soothed into perfection of outline and coloring by the half light, you can for the moment forget the fallen state of Venice, and your imagination peoples the splendid plaza for you with the ghosts of its dead and vanished greatnesses. You conceive of the place as it must have looked in those old, brave, wicked days, filled all with knights, with red-robed cardinals and clanking men at arms, with fair ladies and grave senators, slinking bravos and hired assassins—and all so gay with silk and satin and glittering steel and spangling gems.