Three stately cedar masts arise from ornamental pedestals before the church. They were set up in 1505, and the captured banners of Candia, the Morea and Cyprus used to flaunt there upon state festa-days while the doges ruled Venice and the sea. The flag of United Italy is raised upon each on Sabbaths and holidays. On a certain May morning, more than two-and-half centuries agone, other trees adorned the Piazza S. Marco. They had sprung up during the night, and each bore fruit, at the seeing of which men fled affrighted and women swooned. Many of the spectators had been guiltily cognizant of a conspiracy, headed by Spanish agents, to murder Doge, nobles and Council, when they should come to S. Marco on Ascension-Day. The faces of the strangled men swinging, each from his gallows, revealed the awful truth that the Council of Ten had also known of the plot and marked the ringleaders.
We walked across the Rialto; stopped to cheapen Venetian glasses in the tiny shops crowding the streets leading to and from the bridge; bought here ripe, luscious oranges for a reasonable sum from one Jew, and paid three prices to another for a woven grass basket to hold the fruit. It is a Bowery neighborhood, at the best, from the cheap flashiness of which Antonio would withdraw his aristocratic patronage were he now a merchant of Venice. The Rialto is a steep, covered bridge, lighted by green Venetian blinds, that help to make it a common-looking structure. A bright-eyed Italian offered caged birds for sale on the pier where our Antonio and the gondola waited for us. Upon a tray beside him were heaped white cuttle-fish bones for the use of the canaries.
“I do not want a bird,” I said. “But I will buy some of those”—pointing to the cuttle-fish—“as a souvenir of the Rialto.”
He plucked off his tattered cap in a low bow.
“But the signora should not pay for a souvenir of the Rialto! I will give her as many as she wants—gladly.”
He pressed three of the largest upon me, and absolutely refused to accept so much as a centime in return.
“Buono mano!” insisted Caput, holding out a coin.
The Italian put his hands behind his back. “It is nothing! Let it be a souvenir of the Rialto to the signora from a Venetian.”
“Unaccountable!” sighed Caput, as we dropped upon our cushions under the awning.
“Refreshing!” said I, gazing back at the bird-vender until a turn in the canal hid him.