Presently a middle-aged woman and a girl of some fourteen years station themselves in front of the audience seated outside the caffè. The elder woman has a guitar, and the girl a violin and some sheets of music in her hand. The woman has her wonderful wealth of black hair grandly dressed, and as shining as oil can make it. She has large gilt earrings in her ears, a heavy coral necklace, and a gaudy-coloured shawl in good condition. Whatever might be beneath and below this, is in dark shadow—et sic melius situm. She is not starved, however, for, as she prepares to finger her guitar, she shows a well-nourished and not ill-formed arm. The young girl has one of those pale delicate, oval faces so common in Venice; she also has a good shawl—an amber-coloured one—which so sets off the olive-coloured complexion of her face as to make her a perfect picture. This couple do not in any degree assume an attitude of appealing ad misericordiam. They pose themselves en artistes. The girl sets about arranging her music in a businesslike way, and then they play the well-known air of ‘La Stella Confidente’ the little violinist really playing remarkably well. Then the elder woman comes round with a little tin saucer for our contributions. No slightest word or look of disappointment or displeasure follows the refusal of those who give nothing. The saucer is presented to each in turn. I supposed that the application to Si’or Pantaleone was an empty form. But no. That retired gentleman could still find wherewithal to patronize the fine arts, and dropped a centime—the fifth part of a cent—into the dish with the air of a prince bestowing the grand cross of the Golden Fleece.
Then comes a dealer in ready-made trousers, which Pantaloon examines curiously and cheapens. Then a body of men singing part-songs, not badly, but to some disadvantage, as they utterly ignore the braying of half a dozen trumpets which are coming along the Riva in advance of a body of soldiers returning to some neighbouring barracks. Then there are fruit sellers and fish sellers and hot-chestnut dealers, and, most vociferous of all, the cryers of ‘Acqua! acqua! acqua fresca!’ There, making its way among the numerous small vessels from Dalmatia, Greece, etc., moored to the quay of the Schiavoni, comes a boat from the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, which arrived this morning from Alexandria, with four or five Orientals on board. They come on shore, and proceed to saunter along the Riva towards the Grand Piazza, while their dark faces and brightly coloured garments add an element to the motley scene which is perfectly in keeping with old Venetian reminiscences.
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE
Amid these fragments of heroic days,
When thought met deed with mutual passions’ leap,
There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap
What short-lived rumour of ourselves we raise;
They had far other estimate of praise
Who stamped the signet of their soul so deep