Chapter IV: Part II (2)

It is the same up above, where statues spark like stars jutted from a mid-day sky. There are golden Emperors at every crossing, and golden Virgins crowding every church-front. And, in the centre of the great Hippodrome, facing the _triremes_ and the leaping dolphins, is a fine chariot of Corinthian brass. Four horses harnessed to a gilded _quadriga_. The horses pace evenly forward, in a moment they will be trampling upon space, facing out to sea on the currents of the morning breeze. But their heads are arched and checked, gracefully they pause, one leg uplifted, seized and baffled by the arrested movement. They are the horses of Constantine, brought from Rome, so people say, buzzing in the Augustaion. "Fine horses, hey?" "A good breed, Persia from the look of them, though they're a bit thick in the barrel for the horses they bring us from there." "They bring us their worst, most likely." "Oh, I don't know, we buy pretty well. Why, only the other day I gave a mint of money for a cargo of Egyptian maize." "Lucky dog, you'll make on that, with all the harvest here ruined by the locusts."

It is a pretty little wind which plays along the sides of the gilded horses, a coquettish little sea wind, blowing and listing and finally dropping away altogether and going to sleep in a plane-tree behind the Hippodrome.

Constantinople is a yellow honey-comb, with fat bees buzzing in all its many-sided cells. Bees come over the flower-blue seas; bees humming from the Steppes of Tartary, from the long line of Nile-fed Egypt. Tush! What would you! Where there is gold there are always men about it; to steal it, to guard it, to sit and rot under its lotus-shining brilliance. The very army is woven of threads drawn from the edges of the world. Byzantines are merchantmen, they roll and flounder in the midst of gold coins, they tumble and wallow in money-baths, they sit and chuckle under a continuous money-spray. And ringed about them is the army, paid to shovel back the scattering gold pieces: Dalmatians with swords and arrows; Macedonians with silver belts and gilt shields; Scholarii, clad in rose-coloured tunics; Varangians, shouldering double battle-axes. When they walk, the rattle of them can be heard pattering back from every wall and doorway. It clacks and cracks even in the Copper Market, above the clang of cooking pots and the wrangling whine of Jewish traders. Constantinople chatters, buzzes, screams, growls, howls, squeals, snorts, brays, croaks, screeches, crows, neighs, gabbles, purrs, hisses, brawls, roars, shouts, mutters, calls, in every sort of crochet and demi-semi-quaver, wavering up in a great contrapuntal murmur--adagio, maestoso, capriccioso, scherzo, staccato, crescendo, vivace, veloce, brio--brio--brio!! A racket of dissonance, a hubbub of harmony. Chords? Discords? Answer: Byzantium!

People pluck the strings of rebecks and psalteries; they shock the cords of lyres; they batter tin drums, and shatter the guts of kettle-drums when the Emperor goes to Saint Sophia to worship at an altar of precious stones fused into a bed of gold and silver, and, as he walks up the nave between the columns of green granite, and the columns of porphyry, under the golden lily on the Octagonal Tower, the bells pour their notes over the roofs, spilling them in single jets down on each side of the wide roofs. Drip--drip--drip--out of their hearts of beaten bronze, slipping and drowning in the noise of the crowds clustered below.

On the top of the Hippodrome, the bronze horses trot toward the lupin-coloured Sea of Marmora, slowly, without moving; and, behind them, the spokes of the _quadriga_ wheels remain separate and single, with the blue sky showing between each one.

What a city is this, builded of gold and alabaster, with myrtle and roses strewn over its floors, and doors of embossed silver opening upon golden trees where jewelled birds sing clock-work notes, and fountains flow from the beaks of silver eagles. All this splendour cooped within the fourteen miles of a single city, forsooth! In Britain, they sit under oaken beams; in France, they eat with hunting-knives; in Germany, men wear coats of their wives' weaving. In Italy--but there is a Pope in Italy! The bronze horses pause on the marble Hippodrome, and days blow over them, brushing their sides like wind.

It is May eleventh in Constantinople, and the Spring-blue sea shivers like a field of lupins run over by a breeze. Every tree and shrub spouted over every garden-wall flouts a chromatic sequence of greens. A long string of camels on the Bridge of Justinian moves, black and ostrich-like, against the sheen of water. A swallow sheers past the bronze horses and drops among the pillars on top of the curve of the Hippodrome; the great cistern on the Spina reflects a speckless sky. It is race-day in Constantinople, and the town is turned out upon the benches of the Hippodrome, waiting for the procession to begin. "Hola! You fellows on the top tier, do you see anything?" "Nothing yet, but I hear music." "Music! Oh, Lord! I should think you did. Clear the flagged course there, the procession is coming." "Down in front. Sit down, you." "Listen. Oh, dear, I'm so fidgety. If the Green doesn't win, I'm out a fortune." "Keep still, will you, we can't hear the music, you talk so loud." "Here they come! Green! Green! Green! Drown those Blues over there. Oh, Green, I say!"

Away beyond, through the gates, flageolets are squealing, and trumpets are splitting their brass throats and choking over the sound. Patter--patter--patter--horses' hoofs on flagstones. They are coming under the paved arch. There is the President of the Games in a tunic embroidered with golden palm-branches; there is the Emperor in his pearl-lappeted cap, and his vermilion buskins; and here are the racers--Green--Blue--driving their chariots, easily standing in their high-wheeled chariots. The sun whitens the knives in their girdles, the reins flash in the sun like ribbons of spun glass. Three-year-olds in the Green chariot, so black they are blue. Four blue-black horses, with the sheen of their flanks glistening like the grain of polished wood. The little ears point forward, their teeth tease the bits. They snort and jerk, and the chariot wheels quirk over an outstanding stone and jolt down, flat and rumbling. The Blue chariot-driver handles a team of greys, white as the storks who nest in the cemetery beyond the Moslem quarter. He gathers up his reins, and the horses fall back against the pole, clattering, then fling forward, meet the bit, rear up, and swing inward, settling gradually into a nervous jigging as they follow round the course. "Blue! Blue! Go for him, Blue!" from the North Corner. "Hurrah for the Blue! Blue to Eternity!" Slowly the procession winds round the Spina, and the crowd stands up on the seats and yells and cheers and waves handkerchiefs, sixty thousand voices making such a noise that only the high screaming of the flageolets can be heard above it. The horses toss and twitch, the harness jingles, and the gilded eggs and dolphins on the Spina coruscate in versicoloured stars.

Above the Emperor's balcony, the bronze horses move quietly forward, and the sun outlines the great muscles of their lifted legs.

They have reached the Grand Stand again, and the chariots are shut and barred in their stalls. The multitude, rustling as though they were paper being folded, settles down into their seats. The President drops a napkin, the bars are unlocked, and the chariots in a double rush take the straight at top speed, Blue leading, Green saving up for the turn at the curve. Round the three cones at the end, Blue on one wheel, Green undercutting him. Blue turns wide to right himself, takes the outside course and flashes up the long edge so that you cannot count two till he curves again. Down to the Green Corner, Blue's off horses slipping just before the cones, one hits the pole, loses balance and falls, drags a moment, catches his feet as the chariot slows for the circle, gathers, plunges, and lunges up and on, while the Greens on the benches groan and curse. But the black team is worse off, the inside near colt has got his leg over a trace. Green checks his animals, the horse kicks free, but Blue licks past him on the up way, and is ahead at the North turn by a wheel length. Green goes round, flogging to make up time. Two eggs and dolphins gone, three more to go. The pace has been slow so far, now they must brace up. Bets run high, screamed out above the rumble of the chariots. "Ten on the Green." "Odds fifty for the Blue." "Double mine; those greys have him." "The blacks, the blacks, lay you a hundred to one the blacks beat." Down, round, up, round, down, so fast they are only dust puffs, one can scarcely see which is which. The horses are badly blown now, and the drivers yell to them, and thrash their churning flanks. The course is wet with sweat and blood, the wheels slide over the wet course. Green negotiates the South curve with his chariot sideways; Blue skids over to the flagged way and lames a horse on the stones. The Emperor is on his feet, staring through his emerald spy-glass. Once more round for the last egg and dolphin. Down for the last time, Blue's lame horse delays him, but he flays him with the whip and the Green Corner finds them abreast. The Greens on the seats burst upstanding. "Too far out! Well turned!" "The Green's got it!" "Well done, Hirpinus!" The Green driver disappears up the long side to the goal, waving his right hand, but Blue's lame horse staggers, stumbles, and goes down, settling into the dust with a moan. Vortex of dust, struggling horses, golden glitter of the broken chariot. "Overthrown, by the Holy Moses! And hurt too! Well, well, he did his best, that beast always looked skittish to me." "Is he dead, do you think? They've got the litter." "Most likely. Green! Green! See, they're crowning him. Green and the people! Oh-hé! Green!"

Cool and imperturbable, the four great gilt horses slowly pace above the marble columns of the Grand Stand. They gaze out upon the lupin-blue water beyond the Southern curve. Can they see the Island of Corfu from up there, do you think? There are vessels at the Island of Corfu waiting to continue a journey. The great horses trot forward without moving, and the dust of the race-track sifts over them and blows away.

Constantinople from the Abbey of San Stefano: bubbles of opal and amber thrust up in a distant sky, pigeon-coloured nebulæ closing the end of a long horizon. Tilting to the little waves of a harbour, the good ships _Aquila_, _Paradiso_, _Pellegrina_, leaders of a fleet of galleys: _dromi_, _hippogogi_, vessels carrying timber for turrets, strong vessels holding mangonels. Proud vessels under an ancient Doge, keeping Saint John's Day at the Abbey of San Stefano, within sight of Constantinople.

Knights in blue and crimson inlaid armour clank up and down the gang-planks of the vessels. Flags and banners flap loosely at the mast-heads. There is the banner of Baldwin of Flanders, the standard of Louis of Blois, the oriflamme of Boniface of Montferrat, the pennon of Hugh, Count of Saint Paul, and last, greatest, the gonfalon of Saint Mark, dripped so low it almost touches the deck, with the lion of Venice crumpled in its windless folds.

Saint John's Day, and High Mass in the Abbey of San Stefano. They need God's help who would pass over the double walls and the four hundred towers of Constantinople. _Te Deum Laudamus!_ The armoured knights make the sign of the cross, lightly touching the crimson and azure devices on their breasts with mailed forefingers.

South wind to the rescue; that was a good mass. "Boatswain, what's the direction of that cat's-paw, veering round a bit? Good."

Fifty vessels making silver paths in the Summer-blue Sea of Marmora. Fifty vessels passing the Sweet Waters, blowing up the Bosphorus.

Strike your raucous gongs, City of Byzantium. Run about like ants between your golden palaces. These vessels are the chalices of God's wrath. The spirit of Christ walking upon the waters. Or is it anti-Christ? This is the true Church. Have we not the stone on which Jacob slept, the rod which Moses turned into a serpent, a portion of the bread of the Last Supper? We are the Virgin's chosen abiding place; why, the picture which Saint Luke painted of her is in our keeping. We have pulled the sun's rays from the statue of Constantine and put up the Cross instead. Will that bring us nothing? Cluster round the pink and white striped churches, throng the alabaster churches, fill the naves with a sound of chanting. Strike the terror-gongs and call out the soldiers, for even now the plumed knights are disembarking, and the snarling of their trumpets mingles with the beating of the gongs.

The bronze horses on the Hippodrome, harnessed to the gilded _quadriga_, step forward slowly. They proceed in a measured cadence. They advance without moving. There are lights and agitation in the city, but the air about the horses has the violet touch of night.

Now, now, you crossbowmen and archers, you go first. Stand along the gunwales and be ready to jump. Keep those horses still there, don't let them get out of order. Lucky we thought of the hides. Their damnable Greek fire can't hurt us now. Up to the bridge, knights. Three of you abreast, on a level with the towers. What's a shower of arrows against armour! An honourable dint blotting out the head of a heron, half a plume sheared off a helmet so that it leers cock-eyed through the press. Tut! Tut! Little things, the way of war. Jar, jolt, mud--the knights clash together like jumbled chess-men, then leap over the bridges. Confusion--contusion--raps--bangs--lurches--blows--battle-axes thumping on tin shields; bolts bumping against leathern bucklers. "A Boniface to the Rescue!" "Baldwin forever!" "Viva San Marco!" Such a pounding, pummelling, pitching, pointing, piercing, pushing, pelting, poking, panting, punching, parrying, pulling, prodding, puking, piling, passing, you never did see. Stones pour out of the mangonels; arrows fly thick as mist. Swords twist against swords, bill-hooks batter bill-hooks, staves rattle upon staves. One, two, five men up a scaling ladder. Chop down on the first, and he rolls off the ladder with his skull in two halves; rip up the bowels of the second, he drips off the ladder like an overturned pail. But the third catches his adversary between the legs with a pike and pitches him over as one would toss a truss of hay. Way for the three ladder men! Their feet are on the tower, their plumes flower, argent and gold, above the muck of slaughter. From the main truck of the ships there is a constant seeping of Venetians over the walls of Constantinople. They flow into the city, they throw themselves upon the beleaguered city. They smash her defenders, and crash her soldiers to mere bits of broken metal.

Byzantines, Copts, Russians, Persians, Armenians, Moslems, the great army of the Franks is knocking at the gates of your towers. Open the gates. Open, open, or we will tear down your doors, and breach the triple thickness of your walls. Seventeen burning boats indeed, and have the Venetians no boat-hooks? They make pretty fireworks to pleasure our knights of an evening when they come to sup with Doge Dandolo. At night we will sleep, but in the morning we will kill again. Under your tents, helmeted knights; into your cabin, old Doge. The stars glitter in the Sea of Marmora, and above the city, black in the brilliance of the stars, the great horses of Constantine advance, pausing, blotting their shadows against the sprinkled sky.

From June until September, the fracas goes on. The chanting of masses, the shouting of battle songs, sweep antiphonally over Constantinople. They blend and blur, but what is that light tinkling? Tambourines? What is that snapping? Castanets? What is that yellow light in the direction of the Saracen mosque? My God! Fire! Gold of metals, you have met your king. Ringed and crowned, he takes his place in the jewelled city. Gold of fire mounted upon all the lesser golds. The twin tongues of flame flaunt above the housetops. Banners of scarlet, spears of saffron, spikes of rose and melted orange. What are the little flags of the Crusaders to these! They clamoured for pay and won the elements. Over the Peninsula of Marmora it comes. The whips of its fire-thongs lash the golden city. A conflagration half a league wide. Magnificent churches, splendid palaces, great commercial streets, are burning. Golden domes melt and liquefy, and people flee from the dripping of them. Lakes of gold lie upon the pavements; pillars crack and tumble, making dams and bridges over the hot gold. Two days, two nights, the fire rages, and through the roar of it the little cries of frightened birds come thin and pitiful. Earth pleading with fire. Earth begging quarter of the awful majesty of fire. The birds wheel over Constantinople; they perch upon the cool bronze horses standing above the Hippodrome. The quiet horses who wait and advance. This is not their fire, they trample on the luminousness of flames, their strong hind legs plant them firmly on the marble coping. They watch the falling of the fire, they gaze upon the ruins spread about them, and the pungence of charred wood brushes along their tarnished sides like wind.

The Franks have made an Emperor and now the Greeks have murdered him. The Doge asks for fifty _centenaria_ in gold to pay his sailors. Who will pay, now that the Emperor is dead? Declare a siege and pay yourselves, Count, and Marquis, and Doge. Set your ships bow to stern, a half a league of them. Sail up the Golden Horn, and attack the walls in a hundred places. You fail to-day, but you will win to-morrow. Bring up your battering-rams and ballistæ; hurl stones from your mangonels; run up your scaling ladders and across your skin bridges. Winter is over and Spring is in your veins. Your blood mounts like sap, mount up the ladder after it. Two ships to a tower, and four towers taken. Three gates battered in. The city falls. Cruel saints, you have betrayed your votaries. Even the relic of the Virgin's dress in the Panhagia of Blachernæ has been useless. The knights enter Byzantium, and their flickering pennants are the flamelets of a new conflagration. Fire of flesh burning in the blood of the populace. They would make the sign of the cross, would they, so that the Franks may spare them? But the sap is up in the Frankish veins, the fire calls for fuel. Blood burns to who will ignite it. The swords itch for the taste of entrails, the lances twitch at sight of a Byzantine. Feed, Fire! Here are men, and women, and children, full of blood for the relish of your weapons. Spring sap, how many women! Good Frankish seed for the women of Byzantium. Blood and lust, you shall empty yourselves upon the city. Your swords shall exhaust themselves upon these Greeks. Your hands shall satisfy themselves with gold. Spit at the priests. This is the Greek church, not ours. Grab the sacred furniture of the churches, fornicate upon the high altar of Saint Sophia, and load the jewels upon the donkeys you have driven into the church to receive them. Old pagan Crusaders, this is the Orgy of Spring! Lust and blood, the birthright of the world.

The bright, shining horses tread upon the clean coping of the Hippodrome, and the Sea of Marmora lies before them like a lupin field run over by a breeze.

What are you now, Constantinople? A sacked city; and the tale of your plundering shall outdo the tale of your splendours for wonder. Three days they pillage you. Burmese rubies rattle in the pockets of common soldiers. The golden tree is hacked to bits and carried off by crossbowmen. An infantry sergeant hiccoughs over the wine he drinks from an altar cup. The knights live in palaces and dip their plumes under the arch of the Emperor's bed-chamber.

In the Sea of Marmora, the good ships _Aquila_, _Paradiso_, _Pellegrina_ swing at anchor. The _dromi_ and _hippogogi_ ride free and empty. They bob to the horses high above them on the Hippodrome. They dance to the rhythmic beat of hammers floating out to them from the city of Constantinople.

Throb--throb--a dying pulse counts its vibrations. Throb--throb--and each stroke means a gobbet of gold. They tear it down from the walls and doors, they rip it from ceilings and pry it up from floors. They chip it off altars, they rip it out of panels, they hew it from obelisks, they gouge it from enamels. This is a death dance, a whirligig, a skeleton city footing a jig, a tarantella quirked to hammer-stroke time; a corpse in motley ogling a crime. Tap--tap--tap--goes the pantomime.

Grinning devils watch church cutting the throat of church. Chuckling gargoyles in France, in Britain, rub their stomachs and squeeze themselves together in an ecstasy of delight. Ho! Ho! Marquis Boniface, Count Hugh, Sieur Louis. What plunder do you carry home? What relics do you bring to your Gothic cathedrals? The head of Saint Clement? The arm of John the Baptist? A bit of the wood of the True Cross? Statues are only so much metal, but these are treasures worth fighting for. Fighting, quotha! Murdering, stealing. The Pope will absolve you, only bring him home a tear of Christ, and you will see. A tear of Christ! _Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!_ Oh, pitiful world! Pitiful knights in your inlaid armour! Pitiful Doge, preening himself in the Palace of Blachernæ!

Above the despoiled city, the Corinthian horses trot calmly forward, without moving, and the _quadriga_ behind them glitters in the sun.

People have blood, but statues have gold, and silver, and bronze. Melt them! Melt them! "Gee! Haw!" Guide the oxen carefully. Four oxen to drag the head of Juno to the furnace. White oxen to transport Minerva; fawn-coloured oxen for the colossal Hercules of Lysippus. Pour them into the furnaces so that they run out mere soft metal ripe for coining. Two foot-sergeants get as much as a horse-sergeant, and two horse-sergeants as much as a knight. Flatten out Constantinople. Raze her many standing statues, shave the Augustaion to a stark stretch of paving-stones. Melt the bones of beauty, indomitable Crusaders, and pay the Venetians fifty thousand silver marks as befits an honest company of dedicated gentlemen.

"The Doge wants those horses, does he? Just as they are, unmelted? Holy Saint Christopher, what for? Pity he didn't speak sooner, I sent Walter the Smith to cut the gold off them this morning, but it sticks like the very devil and he hasn't done much. Well, well, the Doge can have them. A man with a whim must be given way to, particularly when he owns all the ships. How about that gilded chariot?" "Oh, he can't manage that. Just the horses. You were in a mighty hurry with that cutting, it seems to me. You've made them look like zebras, and he'll not like that. He's a bit of a connoisseur in horse-flesh, even if he does live in the water. Wants to mate them to the dolphins probably, and go a-campaigning astride of fishes. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"Steady there, lower the horses carefully, they are for the Doge." One--one--one--one--down from the top of the Hippodrome. One--one--one--one--on ox-carts rumbling toward the water's edge, in boats rowing over the lupin-coloured sea. Great horses, trot calmly on your sides, roll quietly to the heaving of the bright sea. Above you, sails go up, anchors are weighed. The gonfalon of Saint Mark flings its extended lion to the freshening wind. To Venice, _Aquila_, _Paradiso_, _Pellegrina_, with your attendant _dromi_! To Venice! Over the running waves of the Spring-blue sea.

_BENEATH A CROOKED RAINBOW_

_As the seasons of Earth are Fire, so are the seasons of men. The departure of Fire is a change, and the coming of Fire is a greater change. Demand not that which is over, but acclaim what is still to come. So the Earth builds up her cities, and falls upon them with weeds and nettles; and Water flows over the orchards of past centuries. On the sand-hills shall apple trees flourish, and in the water-courses shall be gathered a harvest of plums. Earth, Air, and Water abide in fluctuation. But man, in the days between his birth and dying, fashions metals to himself, and they are without heat or cold. In the Winter solstice, they are not altered like the Air, nor hardened like the Water, nor shrivelled like the Earth, and the heats of Summer bring them no burgeoning. Therefore are metals outside the elements. Between melting and melting they are beyond the Water, and apart from the Earth, and severed from the Air. Fire alone is of them, and master. Withdrawn from Fire, they dwell in isolation._

VENICE

Venice anadyomene! City of reflections! A cloud of rose and violet poised upon a changing sea. City of soft waters washing marble stairways, of feet moving over stones with the continuous sound of slipping water. Floating, wavering city, shot through with the silver threads of water, woven with the green-gold of flowing water, your marble Rivas block the tides as they sweep in over the Lagoons, your towers fling golden figures of Fortune into the carnation sky at sunset, the polished marble of the walls of old palaces burns red to the flaring torches set in cressets before your doors. Strange city, belonging neither to earth nor water, where the slender spandrels of vines melt into the carvings of arched windows, and crabs ferry themselves through the moon-green water rippling over the steps of a decaying church.

Beautiful, faded city. The sea wind has dimmed your Oriental extravagance to an iris of rose, and amber, and lilac. You are dim and reminiscent like the frayed hangings of your State Chambers, and the stucco of your house-fronts crumbles into the canals with a gentle dripping which no one notices.

A tabernacle set in glass, an ivory ornament resting upon a table of polished steel. It is the surface of the sea, spangled, crinkled, engine-turned to whorls of blue and silver, ridged in waves of flower-green and gold. Sequins of gold skip upon the water, crocus-yellow flames dart against white smoothness and disappear, wafers of many colours float and intermingle. The Lagoons are a white fire burning to the blue band of the Lido, restlessly shifting under the cool, still, faint peaks of the Euganean Hills.

Where is there such another city? She has taken all the Orient to herself. She has treated with Barbarossa, with Palæologus, with the Pope, the Tzar, the Caliph, the Sultan, and the Grand Khan. Her returning vessels have discharged upon the mole metals and jewels, pearls from the Gulf of Oman, silks from Damascus, camel's-hair fabrics from Erzeroum. The columns of Saint John of Acre have been landed on her jetties, and the great lions from the Piræus. Now she rests and glitters, holding her treasures lightly, taking them for granted, chatting among the fringes, and tinkling sherbet spoons of an evening in the dark shadow of the Campanile.

Up from the flickering water, beyond the laced colonnades of the Ducal Palace--golden bubbles, lung out upon a sky of ripe blue. Arches of white and scarlet flowers, pillars of porphyry, columns of jasper, open loggias of deep-green serpentine flaked with snow. In the architraves, stones chipped and patterned, the blues studded with greens, the greens circling round yellows, reds of every depth, clear purples, heliotropes clouded into a vague white. Above them, all about them, the restless movement of carven stone; it is involuted and grotesque, it is acanthus leaves and roses, it is palm branches and vine tendrils, it is feathers and the tails of birds, all blowing on a day of _scirocco_. Angels rise among the swirling acanthus leaves, angels and leaves weaving an upstarting line, ending in the great star of Christ struck upon the edge of a golden dome. Saint Mark's Church, gazing down the length of the chequered Piazza, thrusting itself upon the black and white pavement, rising out of the flat tiles in a rattle of colours, soaring toward the full sky like a broken prism whirling at last into the gold bubbles of its five wide domes. The Campanile mounts above it, but the Campanile is only brick, even if it has a pointed top which you cannot see without lying on your back. The pigeons can fly up to it, but the pigeons prefer the angles and hollows of the sculptured church.

Saint Mark's Church--and over the chief arch, among the capitals of foaming leaves and bent grasses, trample four great horses. They are of gold, of gilding so fine that it has not faded. They are tarnished here and there, but their fair colour overcomes the green corroding and is a blinding to the eyes in sunshine. Four magnificent, muscular horses, lightly stepping upon traceried columns, one forefoot raised to launch them forward. They stand over the high door, caught back a moment before springing, held an instant to the perfection of a movement about to begin, and the pigeons circle round them brushing against their sides like wind.

But, dear me, Saint Mark's is the only thing in the Piazza that is not talking, and walking to and fro, and cheapening shoe buckles at a stall, and playing panfil and bassetta at little round tables by the wall, and singing to guitars, and whistling to poodles, and shouting to acquaintances, and giving orders to servants, and whispering a scandal behind fans, and carrying tomatoes in copper pans, and flying on messages, and lying to creditors, and spying on suspects, and colliding with masked loungers, and crying out the merits of fried fish, caught when the tide comes leaping through the Tre Porti. A dish of tea at a coffee-house, and then cross one leg over the other and wait. She will be here by seven o'clock, and a faithful _cicisbeo_ has her charms to muse upon until then. Ah, Venice, chattering, flattering, occupied Venice, what are the sculptured angels and golden horses to you. You are far too busy to glance at them. They are chiefly remarkable as curiosities, for whoever saw a real angel, and as to a real horse--"I saw a stuffed one for a _soldo_, the other day, in the Campo San Polo. _Un elephanto_, Gastone, taller than my shoulder and the eyes were made of glass, they would pass for perfect any day."

Ah, the beautiful palaces, with their gateways of gilded iron frilled into arms and coronets, quilled into shooting leaves and tendrils, filled with rosettes, fretted by heraldic emblems! Ah, the beautiful taste, which wastes no time on heavy stone, but cuts flowers, and foliage, and flourishes, and ribbons out of--stucco! Bows of stucco glued about a ceiling by Tiepolo, and ranged underneath, frail white-and-gold, rose-and-gold, green-and-gold chairs, fair consoles of polished lacquer supporting great mirrors of Murano. Hangings of blue silk with silver fringes, behind your folds, la Signora Benzona accords a favour to the Cavalier Giuseppe Trevis. Upon a salmon-coloured sofa striped with pistachio-green, the Cavaliera Contarini flirts with both her _cicisbei_ at once, in a charming impartiality. Kisses? Ah, indeed, certainly kisses. Hands tickling against hands? But assuredly, one for each of you. The heel of a left slipper caught against a buckled shoe, the toe of a right foot pressed beneath a broader sole; but the toll is finished. "Tut! Tut! Gentlemen! With the other present! Have you no delicacy? To-night perhaps, after the Ridotto, we will take a giro in my gondola as far as Malamocco, Signor Bianchi. And to-morrow, Carlo Pin, will you go to church with me? There is something in the tones of an organ, I know not what exactly, but it has its effect."

"You rang, _Illustrissima_?" "Of course I rang, Stupid, did you think it was the cat?" "Your nobility desires?" "The time, Blockhead, what is the time?" "Past seven, _Illustrissima_." "Ye Gods, how time passes when one sleeps! Bring my chocolate at once, and call Giannina." With a yawn, the lady rises, just as the sun fades away from the flying figure of Fortune on the top of the Dogana. "Candles, Moracchio." And the misty mirrors prick and pulsate with reflections of blurred flame. Flame-points, and behind them the puce-coloured curtains of a bed; an escritoire with feathered pens and Spanish wax; a table with rouge-pots and powder-boxes; a lady, naked as a Venus, slipping into a silk shift. In the misty mirrors, she is all curves and colour, all slenderness and tapering, all languor and vivacity. Even Giannina murmurs, "_Che bella Madonna mia!_" as she pulls the shift into place. But the door is ajar, a mere harmless crack to make a fuss about. "Only one eye, _Cara Mia_, I assure you the other saw nothing but the panel. I ask for so much, and I have only taken the pleasure of one little eye. I must kiss them, _Signora Bellissima_, two little red berries, like the fruit of the _potentillas_ in the grass at Sant' Elena. _Musica! Musica!_ The barque of music is coming down the canal. Sit on my knee a moment, the Casino can wait; and after you have won a thousand zecchini, will you be a second Danae and go with me to the early morning market? Then you shall come home and sleep all day in the great bed among the roses I shall buy for you. With your gold? Perhaps, my dearest tease, the luck has deserted me lately. But there are ways of paying, are there not, and I am an honourable man."

The great horses of Saint Mark's trot softly forward on their sculptured pedestals, without moving. Behind them, the glass of the arched window is dark, but the Piazza is a bowl of lights, a tambourine of little bell-stroke laughter. The golden horses step forward, dimly shimmering in the light of the lamps below, and the pigeons sleep quietly on the stands at their feet.

Green Lion of Saint Mark upon your high pedestal! Winged Lion of Saint Mark, your head turned over the blinding Lagoons to the blue Lido, your tail pointing down the sweeping flow of the Grand Canal! What do you see, Green Lion of the Patron Saint? Boats? Masts? Quaint paintings on the broad bows of bragozzi, orange sails contra-crossing one another over tossing ripples. Gondolas tipping to the oars of the _barcajuoli_, slipping under the Ponte della Paglia, dipping between sardine _topi_, skipping past the Piazzetta, curving away to the Giudecca, where it lies beyond the crystal pinnacles of Santa Maria della Salute and San Giorgio Maggiore which has the lustre of roses.

What do you smell, Lion? Boiling hot chestnuts, fried cuttles, fried puffs of pastry; the pungent odour of salt water and of dead fish; the nostalgic aroma of sandal-wood and myrrh, of musk, of leopard skins and the twin tusks of elephants.

And you, great Lion of the Ducal Palace, what goes on at your feet? People knotted together or scattering, pattering over the old stones in impertinent satin slippers, flippantly tapping the pavement with red heels. Whirls of people circle like the pigeons, knots of people spot the greyness of the stones, ribbons of people file along the colonnades, rayed lines of people between the Procuratie stripe the pavement sideways, criss-cross, at oblique angles. Spangles snap and fade; gems glitter. A gentleman in a buttercup-coloured coat goes by with a bouquet. A sea-green gown brocaded with cherry and violet stays an instant before a stall to buy a packet of ambergris. Pilgrims with staffs and cockles knock the stones as they shuffle along, a water-carrier shouts out a song. A scarlet sacristan jingles his keys; purple robes of justices saunter at ease. Messer Goldoni hustles by to a rehearsal, and three famous _castrati_, i Signori Pacchierotti, Aprili, Rubenelli, rustle their mantles and adjust their masks, ogling the ladies with gold lorgnons. Blind men sniffle into flageolets, marionette men hurry on to a distant Campo in a flurry of cotton streamers. If Venice is a flowing of water, it is also a flowing of people. All Europe runs into this wide square. There is Monsieur Montesquieu, just from France, taking notes on the sly; there is Mrs. Piozzi, from England, with an eye to everything, even chicken-coops; Herr Goethe, from the Court at Weimar, trying to overcome a fit of mental indigestion; Madame Vigée le Brun, questioning the merit of her work and that of Rosalba Carriera. You have much to watch, Lion, the whole earth cannot match the pageant of this great square, in the limpid sun-shot air, between the towering Campanile and the blaze of Saint Mark's angels. Star-fish patterns, jelly-fish rounds of colour, if the sea quivers with variety so does the Piazza. But above, on the façade of the jewelled church, the horses do not change. They stand vigorous and immovable, stepping lightly as though poised upon glass. Metal horses set upon shifting shards of glass, and the soft diphthongs of the Venetian dialect float over them like wind.

There are two Venices, the one we walk upon, and the one which wavers up to us inverted from the water of the canals. The silver prow of a gondola winds round a wall, and in the moss-brown water another gondola joins it, bottom to bottom, with the teeth of the prow infinitely repeated. A cypress closes the end of a _rio_, and driven into the thick water another cypress spindles beneath us, and the wake of our boat leaves its foliage cut to tatters as it passes on. We plough through the veined pinks and subdued scarlets of the façades of palaces; we sheer a path through a spotted sky and blunt the tip of a soaring campanile. Are we swimming in the heavens, turned legend and constellation? Truly it seems so. "How you go on, Cavalier, certainly you are a foreigner to notice such things. The Lido, Giuseppe. I have a nostalgia for flowers to-day, and besides, abroad so early in the afternoon--what shocking style! The custom of the country, my dear Sir, here we go to bed by sunlight as you will see."

Sweep out of the broad canal, turn to the hanging snow summits. Oh, the beautiful silver light, the blue light shimmering with silver. The clear sunlight on rose brick and amber marble. The sky so pale it is white, so bright it is yellow, so cloudless it is blue. Oh, the shafts of sapphire striping the wide water, the specks of gold dancing along it, the diamond roses opening and shutting upon its surface! Some one is singing in a distant boat:

"_Amanti, ci vuole costanza in amor'
Amando,
Penando,
Si speri, si, si._"

The lady shrugs her shoulders. "These fishermen are very droll. What do the _canaglia_ know about love. Breeding, yes, that is certainly their affair, but love! _Più presto_, Giuseppe. How the sun burns!" Rock over the streaked Lagoon, gondola, pock the blue strips with white, shock purple shadows through the silver strata, set blocks of iris cannoning against gold. This is the rainbow over which we are floating, and the heart-shaped city behind us is a reliquary of old ivory laid upon azure silk. Your hand, Signor the Foreigner, be careful lest she wet those fine French stockings, they cost I do not know how much a pair. Now run away across the Lido, gathering violets and periwinkles. The lady has a whim for a _villeggiatura_, and why not? Those scarlet pomegranate blossoms will look well in her hair to-night at the opera. But one cannot linger long, already the Dolomites are turning pink, and there is a whole night ahead of us to be cajoled somehow. A mile away from Venice and it is too far. "_Felicissima notte!_" Wax candles shine in the windows. The little stars of the gondola lanterns glide between dark walls. Broken moonlight shivers in the canals. And the masks come out, thronging the streets and squares with a chequer-work of black cloaks and white faces. Little white faces floating like pond-lilies above the water. Floating faces adrift over unfathomable depths. Have you ever heard the words, _Libertà, Independenza, e Eguaglianza_? "What stuff and nonsense! Of course I have read your great writer, Rousseau; I cried my heart out over '_La Nouvelle Héloise_,' but in practice! Wake my servants, the lazy fellows are always asleep, you will find them curled up on the stairs most likely. It is time we went to the _Mendicanti_ to hear the oratorio. Ah, but those poor orphans sing with a charm! It makes one weep to hear them, only the old _Maestro di Capella_ will beat time with his music on the grill. It is quite ridiculous, they could go through it perfectly without him. _Misericordia!_ The red light! That is the gondola of the Supreme Tribunal taking some poor soul to the Piombi; God protect him! But it does not concern us, my friend. _Ridiamo a duetto!_" Little tinkling drops from the oars of the boatmen, little tinkling laughter wafted across the moonlight.

Four horses parading in front of a splendid church. Four ancient horses with ears pointed forward, listening. One foot is raised, they advance without moving. To what do they listen? To the serenades they have heard so often? _Cavatine, canzonette_, dance songs, hymns, for six hundred years the songs of Venice have drifted past them, lightly, as the wings of pigeons. And month by month the old moon has sailed over them, as she did in Constantinople, as she did in Rome.

Saint Stephen's Day, and the Carnival! For weeks now Venice will be amused. Folly to think of anything but fun. Toot the fifes! Bang the drums! Did you ever see anything so jolly in all your life before? Keep your elbows to your sides, there isn't room to square them. "My! What a flare! Rockets in broad daylight! I declare they make the old horses of Saint Mark's blush pink when they burst. Thirsty? So am I, what will you have? Wine or oranges? Don't jostle so, old fellow, we can look in the window as well as you. See that apothecary's stall, isn't that a gay festoon? Curse me, if it isn't made of leeches; what will these shopkeepers do next! That mask has a well-turned ankle. Good evening, my charmer. You are as beautiful as a parrot, as white as linen, as light as a rabbit. Ay! O-o-h! The she-camel! She aimed her _confetti_ right at my eye. Come on, Tito, let's go and see them behead the bull. Hold on a minute though, somebody's pulling my cloak. Just one little squeeze, Beauty, you shouldn't tweak a man's cloak if you don't want to be squeezed. You plump little pudding, you little pecking pigeon, I'll get more next time. Wow! Here comes Arlecchino. Push back, push back, the comedians are coming. Stow in your fat belly, _'lustrissimo_, you take up room enough for two."

Somebody beats a gong, and three drummers cleave a path through the crowd. Bang! _Bang!_ BANG! So loud it splits the hearing. Mattachino leaps down the path. He is in white, with red lacings and red shoes. On his arm is a basket of eggs. Right, left, into the crowd, skim the eggs. Duck--jump--it is no use. Plump, on some one's front; pat, against some one's hat. The eggs crack, and scented waters run out of them, filling the air with the sweet smells of musk and bergamot. But here is a wheel of colours rolling down the path. Clown! Clown! It is Arlecchino, in his patched coat. It was green and he has botched it with red, or is it yellow, or possibly blue. It is hard to tell, he turns so fast. Three somersaults, and he comes up standing, and makes a long nose, and sweeps off his hat with the hare's fud, and glares solemnly into the eyes of a gentleman in spectacles. "Sir," says Arlecchino, "have you by chance a toothache? I can tell you how to cure it. Take an apple, cut it into four equal parts, put one of these into your mouth, and thrust your head into an oven until the apple is baked. I swear on my honour you will never have the toothache again." Zip! Sizz! No use in the cane. A pirouette and he is away again. A hand-spring, a double cut-under, and the parti-coloured rags are only a tag bouncing up out of surging black mantles. But there is something more wonderful yet. Set your faces to the Piazzetta, people; push, slam, jam, to keep your places. "A balloon is going up from the Dogana del Mare, a balloon like a moon or something else starry. A meteor, a comet, I don't really know what; it looks, so they say, like a huge apricot, or a pear--yes, that's surely the thing--blushing red, mellow yellow, a fruit on the wing, garlanded with streamers and tails, all a-whirl and a-flutter. Cut the string and she sails, till she lands in the gutter." "How do you know she lands in the gutter, Booby?" "Where else should she land, unless in the sea?" "You're a fool, I suppose you sat up all night writing that doggerel." "Not at all, it is an improvisation." "Here, keep back, you can't push past me with your talk. Oh! Look! Look!"

That is a balloon. It rises slowly--slowly--above the Dogana. It wavers, dips, and poises; it mounts in the silver air, it floats without direction; suspended in movement, it hangs, a clear pear of red and yellow, opposite the melting, opal-tinted city. And the reflection of it also floats, perfect in colour but cooler, perfect in outline but more vague, in the glassy water of the Grand Canal. The blue sky sustains it; the blue water encloses it. Then balloon and reflection swing gently seaward. One ascends, the other descends. Each dwindles to a speck. Ah, the semblance is gone, the water has nothing; but the sky focusses about a point of fire, a formless iridescence sailing higher, become a mere burning, until that too is absorbed in the brilliance of the clouds.

You cheer, people, but you do not know for what. A beautiful toy? Undoubtedly you think so. Shout yourselves hoarse, you who have conquered the sea, do you underestimate the air? Joke, laugh, purblind populace. You have been vouchsafed an awful vision, and you do nothing but clap your hands.

That is over, and here is Pantalone calling to you. "Going--going--I am selling my furniture. Two dozen chairs of fine holland; fourteen tables of almond paste; six majolica mattresses full of scrapings of haycocks; a semolina bedcover; six truffled cushions; two pavilions of spider-web trimmed with tassels made from the moustaches of Swiss door-keepers. Oh! The Moon! The Moon! The good little yellow moon, no bigger than an omelet of eight eggs. Come, I will throw in the moon. A quarter-ducat for the moon, good people. Take your opportunity."

Great gold horses, quietly stepping above the little mandarin figures, strong horses above the whirling porcelain figures, are the pigeons the only birds in Venice? Have the swallows told you nothing, flying from the West?

The bells of Saint Mark's Church ring midnight. The carnival is over.

In the deserted square, the pavement is littered with feathers, _confetti_, orange-peel, and pumpkin-seeds. But the golden horses on the balcony over the high door trot forward, without moving, and the shadow of the arch above them is thrown farther and farther forward as the moon drops toward the Lagoon.

Bronze armies marching on a sea-shell city. Slanted muskets filing over the passes of tall Alps. Who is this man who leads you, carven in new bronze, supple as metal still cooling, firm as metal from a fresh-broken mold? A bright bronze general heading armies. The tread of his grenadiers is awful, continuous. How will it be in the streets of the glass city? These men are the flying letters of a new gospel. They are the tablets of another law. Twenty-eight, this general! Ah, but the metal is well compounded. He has been victorious in fourteen pitched battles and seventy fights; he has taken five hundred field pieces, and two thousand of heavy calibre; he has sent thirty millions back to the treasury of France. The Kings of Naples and Sardinia write him friendly letters; the Pope and the Duke of Parma weary themselves with compliments. The English have retired from Genoa, Leghorn, and Corsica.

Little glass masks, have you heard nothing of this man? What of the new French ambassador, Citizen Lallemont? You have seen his gondoliers and the _tricolore_ cockade in their caps? It is a puzzling business, but you can hardly expect us to be alarmed, we have been a republic for centuries. Still, these new ideas are intriguing, they say several gentlemen have adopted them. "Alvise Pisani, my Dear, and Abbate Colalto, also Bragadin, and Soranza, and Labbia. Oh, there was much talk about it last night. Such strange notions! But the cockade is very pretty. I have the ribbon, and I am going to make a few. Signora Fontana gave me the pattern."

Columbus discovered America. Ah, it was then you should have made your cockades. Is it Bonaparte or the Cape of Good Hope which has compassed your destiny? Little porcelain figures, can you stand the shock of bronze?

No, evidently. The quills of the Senate secretaries are worn blunt, writing note after note to the General of the Armies. But still he marches forward, and his soldiers, dressed as peasants, have invaded Breschia and Bergamo. And what a man! Never satisfied. He must have this--that--and other things as well. He must have guns, cannon, horses, mules, food, forage. What is all this talk of a Cisalpine Republic? The Senate wavers like so many sea anemones in an advancing tide. Ascension Day is approaching. Shall the Doge go in the _Bucentoro_ to wed the sea "in token of real and perpetual dominion"? The Senate dictates, the secretaries write, and the _Arsenalotti_ polish the brasses of the _Bucentoro_ and wait. Brightly shine the overpolished brasses of the _Bucentoro_, but the ships in the Arsenal are in bad repair and the crews wanting.

It is Holy Saturday in Venice, and solemn processions march to the churches. The slow chanting of choirs rises above the floating city, but in the Citizen Lallemont's apartments is a jangling of spurred heels, a clanking of cavalry sabres. General Junot arrived in the small hours of the night. Holy Saturday is nothing to a reformed Frenchman; the General's business will not wait, he must see the Signory at once. Desert your churches, convene the College in haste. A bronze man cannot be opposed by a Senate of glass. Is it for fantasy that so many people are wearing the _tricolore_, or is it politeness to the visiting general? But what does he say? French soldiers murdered! Nonsense, a mere street row between Bergamese. But Junot thunders and clanks his sabre. A sword is a terrible thing in a cabinet of biscuit figurines. Let that pass. He has gone. But Venice is shaken. The stately palaces totter on their rotting piles, the _campi_ buzz with voices, the Piazza undulates to a gesticulating multitude. Only the pigeons wheel unconcernedly about the Campanile, and the great horses stand, poised and majestic, beneath the mounting angels of Saint Mark's Church.