Lunch over, we went out for a walk along narrow little pathways leading to the Piazza San Marco. After a stroll in the arcades of the Square, we took a gondola for a sail on the Canale Grande. We glided smoothly on the silent waves of the Adriatic, passing before grim old buildings. The palaces in which Byron, Schiller and Lucrezia Borgia have dwelt are now transformed into hotels. Venice, the town of legends and dreams, has very unpleasant odours, and nearly all the windows are hung with a flutter of drying sheets and towels, flapping in the air like old tattered flags.
On the following day we took the boat to Lido, a fashionable sea-bathing-place, and returned to Venice just in time for the table d’hôte. There was a great festival at night on the Canale Grande; all the gondolas of Venice were on the water, lighted with coloured lanterns. On the broadest part of the Canal they were tied one to the other thus forming a large floating bridge, on the middle of which a group of street-singers were giving a serenade. Our gondolier, at our request, shouted out in a stentorian voice: Funiculi, funicula, and the singers performed with great emphasis that popular song, after which they crossed over from one gondola to the other, holding out their hats which were soon amply filled. We gave all the change we had in our pockets.
We only remained two days at Venice, having had quite enough of that aquatic town which does not suit my vivacious temperament.
CHAPTER XXXIII
FLORENCE
Leaving Venice at ten o’clock in the morning, we arrived towards night at Florence, and took an apartment at the Hotel de Russie, with a ceiling ornamented with flying nymphs in a blue sky all over, and an enormous bedstead on the top of which was placed a gigantic wreath of laurel. In my opinion, to sleep under it is an honour which few people deserve on earth.
The next day we went to the Pitti Galleries, to see the Exhibition of old Masters. This museum was formerly maintained by the monks, and the pictures were taken in preference from Scripture subjects, but at present the nude mythological element predominates. In the sculpture section we met a group of curates who were all in a state of sanctimonious adoration before the marble Venus. I could hardly keep from laughing at the sight of these tonsured admirers of art, whose expression of the face, for the moment, could easily serve for a picture representing the temptation of St. Antony. At the entrance of the Medici Chapel, an old curate impeded the passage of the turnstile, searching for his hat, which was hanging by the elastic on his back. Surely the venerable pater had also contemplated rather too much of the marble goddess.
After the Pitti Galleries, we were shown the Palace, maintained by the town, in which King Humbert is received in great ceremony, as a guest, when he comes to Florence. A carriage road leads to each floor separately replacing the elevator. The King was expected in a few days, and a legion of servants were cleaning the hangings and polishing the furniture whilst we went through the Palace.
On our way back we were driven in the “cascine,” landaus, victorias, and open cabs of every variety, all filled with animated people, streamed along the wide road. We met in the park the famous American millionaire perched high upon the seat of his phaeton, who drives every afternoon in the “Cascine” a team of twelve horses, one pair in front of the other.
My old friends the Levdics have taken their abode in Italy having been expatriated by the doctors on account of their health. They spend the winter months in Florence and the summer at Viareggio, a little sea-side resort beyond Florence. We went to see them at Viareggio, and as we knew nothing of their address, we had to go to the post-office for information. Their home is a very pretty one, and the outlook from their terrace on the Mediterranean and the neighbouring mountains is wonderful.