Chapter I: KNOW best the fishing quarter of Ponte Lungo and the district near (1)

by, from the wooden bridge to the lagoon, with the side canal running along the _Fondamenta della Pallada_. This to me is not only the most picturesque quarter of Venice, but quite the most picturesque spot I know in Europe, except, perhaps, Scutari on the Golden Horn.

This quality of the picturesque saturates Venice. You find it in her stately structures; in her spacious Piazza, with its noble Campanile, clock tower, and façade of San Marco; in her tapering towers, deep-wrought bronze, and creamy marble; in her cluster of butterfly sails on far-off, wide horizons; in her opalescent dawns, flaming sunsets, and star-lit summer nights. You find it in the gatherings about her countless bridges spanning dark water-ways; in the ever-changing color of crowded markets; in lazy gardens lolling over broken walls; in twisted canals, quaint doorways, and soggy, ooze-covered landing-steps. You find it, too, in many a dingy palace--many a lop-sided old palace--with door-jambs and windows askew, with lintels craning their heads over the edge, ready to plunge headlong into the canal below.

The little devils of rot and decay, deep down in the water, are at the bottom of all this settling and toppling of jamb and lintel. They are really the guardians of the picturesque.

Search any façade in Venice, from flowline to cornice, and you cannot find two lines plumb or parallel. This is because these imps of destruction have helped the teredo to munch and gnaw and bore, undermining foundation pile, grillage, and bed-stone. If you listen some day over the side of your gondola, you will hear one of these old piles creak and groan as he sags and settles, and then up comes a bubble, as if all the fiends below had broken into a laugh at their triumph.

This change goes on everywhere. No sooner does some inhabitant of the earth build a monstrosity of right-angle triangles, than the little imps set to work. They know that Mother Nature detests a straight line, and so they summon all the fairy forces of sun, wind, and frost, to break and bend and twist, while they scuttle and bore and dig, until some fine morning after a siege of many years, you stumble upon their victim. The doge who built it would shake his head in despair, but you forgive the tireless little devils--they have made it so delightfully picturesque.

To be exact, there are really fewer straight lines in Venice than in any place in Europe. This is because all the islands are spiked full of rotting piles, holding up every structure within their limits. The constant settling of these wooden supports has dropped the Campanile nearly a foot out of plumb on the eastern façade, threatened the destruction of the southwest corner of the Doges’ Palace, rolled the exquisite mosaic pavement of San Marco into waves of stone, and almost toppled into the canal many a church tower and garden wall.

Then again there are localities about Venice where it seems that every other quality except that of the picturesque has long since been annihilated. You feel it especially in the narrow side canal of the Public Garden, in the region back of the Rialto, through the Fruit Market, and in the narrow streets beyond--so narrow that you can touch both sides in passing, the very houses leaning over like gossiping old crones, their foreheads almost touching. You feel it too in the gardens along the Giudecca, with their long arbors and tangled masses of climbing roses; in the interiors of many courtyards along the Grand Canal, with _pozzo_ and surrounding pillars supporting the rooms above; in the ship and gondola repair-yards of the lagoons and San Trovaso, and more than all in the fishing quarters, the one beyond Ponte Lungo and those near the Arsenal, out towards _San Pietro di Castello_.

This district of Ponte Lungo--the one I love most--lies across the Giudecca, on the “Island of the Giudecca,” as it is called, and is really an outskirt, or rather a suburb of the Great City. There are no grand palaces here. Sometimes, tucked away in a garden, you will find an old château, such as the Contessa occupied, and between the bridge and the _fondamenta_ there is a row of great buildings, bristling with giant chimneys, that might once have been warehouses loaded with the wealth of the East, but which are now stuffed full of old sails, snarled seines, great fish-baskets, oars, fishermen, fisher-wives, fisher-children, rags, old clothes, bits of carpet, and gay, blossoming plants in nondescript pots. I may be wrong about these old houses being _stuffed full_ of these several different kinds of material, from their damp basement floors to the fourth story garrets under baking red tiles; but they certainly look so, for all these things, including the fisher-folk themselves, are either hanging out or thrust out of window, balcony, or doorway, thus proving conclusively the absurdity of there being even standing room inside.

Fronting the doors of these buildings are little rickety platforms of soggy planks, and running out from them foot-walks of a single board, propped up out of the wet on poles, leading to fishing-smacks with sails of orange and red, the decks lumbered with a miscellaneous lot of fishing-gear and unassorted sea-truck--buckets, seines, booms, dip-nets, and the like.

Aboard these boats the fishermen are busily engaged in scrubbing the sides and rails, and emptying the catch of the morning into their great wicker baskets, which either float in the water or are held up on poles by long strings of stout twine.

All about are more boats, big and little; row-boats; storage-boats piled high with empty crab baskets, or surrounded with a circle of other baskets moored to cords and supported by a frame of hop-poles, filled with fish or crabs; _barcos_ from across the lagoon, laden with green melons; or lighters on their way to the Dogana from the steamers anchored behind the Giudecca.

Beyond and under the little bridge that leads up the Pallada, the houses are smaller and only flank one side of the narrow canal. On the other side, once an old garden, there is now a long, rambling wall, with here and there an opening through which, to your surprise, you catch the drooping figure of a poor, forlorn mule, condemned for some crime of his ancestors to go round and round in a treadmill, grinding refuse brick. Along the quay or _fondamenta_ of this narrow canal, always shady after ten o’clock, lie sprawled the younger members of these tenements--the children, bareheaded, barefooted, and most of them barebacked; while their mothers and sisters choke up the doorways, stringing beads, making lace, sitting in bunches listening to a story by some old crone, or breaking out into song, the whole neighborhood joining in the chorus.

Up at the farther end of the Pallada and under another wooden bridge, where two slips of canals meet, there is a corner that has added more sketches to my portfolio than any single spot in Venice. An old fisherman lives here, perhaps a dozen old fishermen; they come and go all the time. There is a gate with a broken door, and a neglected garden trampled down by many feet, a half-ruined wall with fig-trees and oleanders peeping over from the garden next door, a row of ragged, straggling trees lining the water’s edge, and more big fish and crab baskets scattered all about,--baskets big as feather-beds,--and festoons of nets hung to the branches of the trees or thrown over the patched-up fences,--every conceivable and inconceivable kind of fishing plunder that could litter up the premises of a _pescatore_ of the lagoon. In and out of all this débris swarm the children, playing baby-house in the big baskets, asleep under the overturned boat with the new patch on her bottom, or leaning over the wall catching little crabs that go nibbling along a few inches below the water-line.

In this picturesque spot, within biscuit-throw of this very corner, I have some very intimate and charming friends--little Amelia, the child model, and young Antonio, who is determined to be a gondolier when he grows up, and who, perhaps, could earn a better living by posing for some sculptor as a Greek god. Then, too, there is his mother, the Signora Marcelli, who sometimes reminds me of my other old friend, the “Grand Duchess of the Riva,” who keeps the caffè near the _Ponte Veneta Marina_.

The Signora Marcelli, however, lacks most of the endearing qualities of the Duchess; one in particular--a soft, musical voice. If the Signora is in temporary want of the services of one of her brood of children, it never occurs to her, no matter where she may be, to send another member of the household in search of the missing child; she simply throws back her head, fills her lungs, and begins a _crescendo_ which terminates in a _fortissimo_, so shrill and far-reaching that it could call her offspring back from the dead. Should her husband, the Signor Marcelli, come in some wet morning late from the lagoon,--say at nine o’clock, instead of an hour after daylight,--the Signora begins on her _crescendo_ when she first catches sight of his boat slowly poled along the canal. Thereupon the Signora fills the surrounding air with certain details of her family life, including her present attitude of mind toward the Signore, and with such volume and vim that you think she fully intends breaking every bone under his tarpaulins when he lands,--and she is quite able physically to do it,--until you further notice that it makes about as much impression upon the Signore as the rain upon his oilskins. It makes still less on his neighbors, who have listened to similar outbursts for years, and have come to regard them quite as they would the announcement by one of the Signora’s hens that she had just laid an egg--an event of too much importance to be passed over in silence.

When the Signor Marcelli arrives off the little wooden landing-ladder facing his house, and, putting things shipshape about the boat, enters his doorway, thrashing the water from his tarpaulin hat as he walks, the Signora, from sheer loss of breath, subsides long enough to overhaul a unique collection of dry clothing hanging to the rafters, from which she selects a coat patched like Joseph’s of old, with trousers to match. These she carries to the Signore, who puts them on in dead silence, reappearing in a few moments barefooted but dry, a red worsted cap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth. Then he drags up a chair, and, still silent as a graven image,--he has not yet spoken a word,--continues smoking, looking furtively up at the sky, or leaning over listlessly and watching the chickens that gather about his feet. Now and again he picks up a rooster or strokes a hen as he would a kitten. Nothing more.

Only then does the Signora subside, bringing out a fragment of _polenta_ and a pot of coffee, which the fisherman divides with his chickens, the greedy ones jumping on his knees. I feel assured that it is neither discretion nor domestic tact, nor even uncommon sense, that forbids a word of protest to drop from the Signore’s lips. It is rather a certain philosophy, born of many dull days spent on the lagoon, and many lively hours passed with the Signora Marcelli, resulting in some such apothegm as, “Gulls scream and women scold, but fishing and life go on just the same.”

There is, too, the other old fisherman, whose name I forget, who lives in the little shed of a house next to the long wall, and who is forever scrubbing his crab baskets, or lifting them up and down, and otherwise disporting himself in an idiotic and most aggravating way. He happens to own an old water-logged boat that has the most delicious assortment of barnacles and seaweed clinging to its sides. It is generally piled high with great baskets, patched and mended, with red splotches all over them, and bits of broken string dangling to their sides or banging from their open throats. There are also a lot of rheumatic, palsied old poles that reach over this ruin of a craft, to which are tied still more baskets of still more delicious qualities of burnt umber and Hooker’s-green moss. Behind this boat is a sun-scorched wall of broken brick, caressed all day by a tender old mother of a vine, who winds her arms about it and splashes its hot cheeks with sprays of cool shadows.

When, some years ago, I discovered this combination of boat, basket, and shadow-flecked wall, and in an unguarded moment begged the fisherman to cease work for the morning at my expense, and smoke a pipe of peace in his doorway, until I could transfer its harmonies to my canvas, I spoke hurriedly and without due consideration; for since that time, whenever this contemporary of the original _Bucentoro_ gets into one of my compositions,--these old fish-boats last forever and are too picturesque for even the little devils to worry over,--this same fisherman immediately dries his sponge, secures his baskets, and goes ashore, and as regularly demands backsheesh of _soldi_ and fine-cut. Next summer I shall buy the boat and hire him to watch; it will be much cheaper.

Then there are the two girls who live with their grandmother, in one end of an old tumble-down, next to the little wooden bridge that the boats lie under. She keeps a small cook-shop, where she boils and then toasts, in thin strips, slices of green-skinned pumpkin, which the girls sell to the fishermen on the boats, or hawk about the _fondamenta_. As the whole pumpkin can be bought for a _lira_, you can imagine what a wee bit of a copper coin it must be that pays for a fragment of its golden interior, even when the skilled labor of the old woman is added to the cost of the raw material.

Last of all are the boys; of no particular size, age, nationality, or condition,--just boys; little rascally, hatless, shoeless, shirtless, trouser--everything-less, except noise and activity. They yell like Comanches; they crawl between the legs of your easel and look up between your knees into your face; they steal your brushes and paints; they cry “_Soldi, soldi, Signore_,” until life becomes a burden; they spend their days in one prolonged whoop of hilarity, their nights in concocting fresh deviltry, which they put into practice the moment you appear in the morning. When you throw one of them into the canal, in the vain hope that his head will stick in the mud and so he be drowned dead, half a dozen jump in after him in a delirium of enjoyment. When you turn one upside down and shake your own color-tubes out of his rags, he calls upon all the saints to witness that the other fellow, the boy Beppo or Carlo, or some other “o” or “i,” put them there, and that up to this very moment he was unconscious of their existence; when you belabor the largest portion of his surface with your folding stool or T-square, he is either in a state of collapse from excessive laughter or screaming with assumed agony, which lasts until he squirms himself into freedom; then he goes wild, turning hand-springs and describing no end of geometrical figures in the air, using his stubby little nose for a centre and his grimy thumbs and outspread fingers for compasses.

All these side scenes, however, constitute only part of the family life of the Venetian fishermen. If you are up early in the morning you will see their boats moving through the narrow canals to the fish market on the Grand Canal above the Rialto, loaded to the water’s edge with hundreds of bushels of crawling green crabs stowed away in the great baskets; or piles of opalescent fish heaped upon the deck, covered with bits of sailcloth, or glistening in the morning sun. Earlier, out on the lagoon, in the gray dawn, you will see clusters of boats with the seines widespread, the smaller dories scattered here and there, hauling or lowering the spider-skein nets.

But there is still another and a larger fishing trade, a trade not exactly Venetian, although Venice is its best market. To this belong the fishermen of Chioggia and the islands farther down the coast. These men own and man the heavier seagoing craft with the red and orange sails that make the water life of Venice unique.

Every Saturday a flock of these boats will light off the wall of the Public Garden, their beaks touching the marble rail. These are Ziem’s boats--his for half a century; nobody has painted them in the afternoon light so charmingly or so truthfully. Sunday morning, after mass, they are off again, spreading their gay wings toward Chioggia. On other days one or two of these gay-plumed birds will hook a line over the cluster of spiles near the wall of the Riva, below the arsenal bridge, their sails swaying in the soft air, while their captains are buying supplies to take to the fleet twenty miles or more out at sea.

Again, sometimes in the early dawn or in the late twilight, you will see, away out in still another fishing quarter, a single figure walking slowly in the water, one arm towing his boat, the other carrying a bag. Every now and then the figure bends over, feels about with his toes, and then drops something into the bag. This is the mussel-gatherer of the lagoon. In the hot summer nights these humble toilers of the sea, with only straw mats for covering, often sleep in their boats, tethered to poles driven into the yielding mud. They can wade waist-deep over many square miles of water-space about Venice, although to one in a gondola, skimming over the same glassy surfaces, there seems water enough to float a ship.

These several grades of fishermen have changed but little, either in habits, costume, or the handling of their craft, since the early days of the republic. The boats, too, are almost the same in construction and equipment, as can be seen in any of the pictures of Canaletto and the painters of his time. The bows of the larger sea-craft are still broad and heavily built, the rudders big and cumbersome, with the long sweep reaching over the after-deck; the sails are loosely hung with easily adjusted booms, to make room for the great seines which are swung to the cross-trees of the foremast. The only boat of really modern design, and this is rarely used as a fishing-boat, is the _sandolo_, a shallow skiff drawing but a few inches of water, and with both bow and stern sharp and very low, modeled originally for greater speed in racing.

Whatever changes have taken place in the political and social economy of Venice, they have affected but little these lovers of the lagoons. What mattered it to whom they paid taxes,--whether to doge, Corsican, Austrian, or king,--there were as good fish in the sea as had ever been caught, and as long as their religion lasted, so long would people eat fish and Friday come round every week in the year.

A GONDOLA RACE

TO-DAY I am interested in watching a gondolier make his toilet in a gondola lying at my feet, for the little table holding my coffee stands on a half-round balcony that juts quite over the water-wall, almost touching the white _tenda_ of the boat. From this point of vantage I look down upon his craft, tethered to a huge spile bearing the crown and monogram of the owner of the hotel. One is nobody if not noble, in Venice.

The gondolier does not see me. If he did it would not disturb him; his boat is his home through these soft summer days and nights, and the overhanging sky gives privacy enough. A slender, graceful Venetian girl, her hair parted on one side, a shawl about her shoulders, has just brought him a bundle containing a change of clothing. She sits beside him as he dresses, and I move my chair so that I can catch the expressions of pride and delight that flit across her face while she watches the handsome, broadly-built young fellow. As he stands erect in the gondola, the sunlight flashing from his wet arms, I note the fine lines of his chest, the bronzed neck and throat, and the knotted muscles along the wrist and forearm. When the white shirt with broad yellow collar and sash are adjusted and the toilet is complete, even to the straw hat worn rakishly over one ear, the girl gathers up the discarded suit, glances furtively at me, slips her hand into his for a moment, and then springs ashore, waving her handkerchief as he swings out past the Dogana, the yellow ribbons of his hat flying in the wind.

Joseph, prince among porters, catches my eye and smiles meaningly. Later, when he brings my mail, he explains that the pretty Venetian, Teresa, is the sweetheart of Pietro the yellow-and-white gondolier who serves the English lady at the _Palazzo da Mula_. Pietro, he tells me, rows in the regatta to-day, and these preparations are in honor of that most important event. He assures me that it will be quite the most interesting of all the regattas of the year, and that I must go early and secure a place near the stake-boat if I want to see anything of the finish. It is part of Joseph’s duty and pleasure to keep you posted on everything that happens in Venice. It would distress him greatly if he thought you could obtain this information from any other source.

While we talk the Professor enters the garden from the side door of the corridor, and takes the vacant seat beside me. He, too, has come to tell me of the regatta. He is bubbling over with excitement, and insists that I shall meet him at the water-steps of the little Piazzetta near the _Caffè Veneta Marina_, at three o’clock, not a moment later. To-day, he says, I shall see, not the annual regatta,--that great spectacle with the Grand Canal crowded with tourists and sight-seers solidly banked from the water’s edge to the very balconies,--but an old-time contest between the two factions of the gondoliers, the Nicoletti and Castellani; a contest really of and for the Venetians themselves.

The course is to begin at the Lido, running thence to the great flour-mill up the Giudecca, and down again to the stake-boat off the Public Garden. Giuseppe is to row, and Pasquale, both famous oarsmen, and Carlo, the brother of Gaspari, who won the great regatta; better than all, young Pietro, of the Traghetto of Santa Salute.

“Not Pietro of this _traghetto_, right here below us?” I asked.

“Yes; he rows with his brother Marco. Look out for him when he comes swinging down the canal. If you have any money to wager, put it on him. Gustavo, my waiter at Florian’s, says he is bound to win. His colors are yellow and white.”

This last one I knew, for had he not made his toilet, half an hour before, within sight of my table? No wonder Teresa looked proud and happy!

While the Professor is bowing himself backward out of the garden, hat in hand, his white hair and curled mustache glistening in the sun, an oleander blossom in his button-hole, Espero enters, also bareheaded, and begs that the Signore will use Giorgio’s gondola until he can have his own boat, now at the repair-yard next to San Trovaso, scraped and pitched; the grass on her bottom was the width of his hand. By one o’clock she would be launched again. San Trovaso, as the Signore knew, was quite near the _Caffè Calcina_; would he be permitted to call for him at the caffè after luncheon? As the regatta began at three o’clock there would not be time to return again to the Signore’s lodging and still secure a good place at the stake-boat off the Garden.

No; the illustrious Signore would do nothing of the kind. He would take Giorgio and his gondola for the morning, and then, when the boat was finished, Espero could pick up the Professor at the _Caffè Veneta Marina_ in the afternoon and bring him aboard Giorgio’s boat on his way down the canal.

Giorgio is my stand-by when Espero is away. I often send him to my friends, those whom I love, that they may enjoy the luxury of spending a day with a man who has a score and more of sunshiny summers packed away in his heart, and not a cloud in any one of them. Tagliapietra Giorgio, of the Traghetto of Santa Salute, is his full name and address. Have Joseph call him for you some day, and your Venice will be all the more delightful because of his buoyant strength, his cheeriness, and his courtesy.

So Giorgio and I idle about the lagoon and the Giudecca, watching the flags being hoisted, the big _barcos_ being laden, and various other preparations for the great event of the afternoon.

After luncheon Giorgio stops at his house to change his _tenda_ for the new one with the blue lining, and slips into the white suit just laundered for him. He lives a few canals away from the Calcina, with his mother, his widowed sister and her children, in a small house with a garden all figs and oleanders. His bedroom is next to his mother’s, on the second floor, overlooking the blossoms. There is a shrine above the bureau, decorated with paper flowers, and on the walls a scattering of photographs of brother gondoliers, and some trophies of oars and flags. Hanging behind the door are his oilskins for wet weather, and the Tam O’Shanter cap that some former padrone has left him, as a souvenir of the good times they once had together, and which Giorgio wears as a weather signal for a rainy afternoon, although the morning sky may be cloudless. All gondoliers are good weather prophets.

The entire family help Giorgio with the _tenda_--the old mother carrying the side-curtains, warm from her flat-iron, and chubby Beppo, bareheaded and barefooted, bringing up the rear with the little blue streamer that on gala days floats from the gondola’s lamp-socket forward, which on other days is always filled with flowers.

Then we are off, picking our way down the narrow canal, waiting here and there for the big _barcos_ to pass, laden with wine or fruit, until we shoot out into the broad waters of the Giudecca.

You see at a glance that Venice is astir. All along the Zattere, on every wood-boat, _barco_, and barge, on every bridge, balcony, and house-top, abreast the wide _fondamenta_ fronting the great warehouses, and away down the edge below the Redentore, the people are swarming like flies. Out on the Giudecca, anchored to the channel spiles, is a double line of boats of every conceivable description, from a toy _sandolo_ to a steamer’s barge. These lie stretched out on the water like two great sea-serpents, their heads facing the garden, their tails curving toward the Redentore.

Between these two sea-monsters, with their flashing scales of a thousand umbrellas, is an open roadway of glistening silver.

Giorgio swings across to the salt warehouses above the Dogana and on down and over to the Riva. Then there is a shout ahead, a red and white _tenda_ veers a point, comes close, backs water, and the Professor springs in.

“Here, Professor, here beside me on the cushions,” I call out. “Draw back the curtains, Giorgio. And, Espero, hurry ahead and secure a place near the stake-boat. We will be there in ten minutes.”

The Professor was a sight to cheer the heart of an amateur yachtsman out for a holiday. He had changed his suit of the morning for a small straw hat trimmed with red, an enormous field-glass with a strap over his shoulder, and a short velvet coat that had once done service as a smoking-jacket. His mustachios were waxed into needle points. The occasion had for him all the novelty of the first spring meeting at Longchamps, or a race off Cowes, and he threw himself into its spirit with the gusto of a boy.

“What colors are you flying, _mon Capitaine_? Blue? Never!” noticing Giorgio’s streamer. “Pasquale’s color is blue, and he will be half a mile astern when Pietro is round the stake-boat. _Vive le jaune! Vive Pietro!_” and out came a yellow rag--Pietro’s color--bearing a strong resemblance to the fragment of some old silk curtain. It settled at a glance all doubt as to the Professor’s sympathies in the coming contest.

The day was made for a regatta; a cool, crisp, bracing October day; a day of white clouds and turquoise skies, of flurries of soft winds that came romping down the lagoon, turned for a moment in play, and then went scampering out to sea; a day of dazzling sun, of brilliant distances, of clear-cut outlines, black shadows, and flashing lights.

As we neared the Public Garden the crowd grew denser; the cries of the gondoliers were incessant; even Giorgio’s skillful oar was taxed to the utmost to avoid the polluting touch of an underbred _sandolo_, or the still greater calamity of a collision--really an unpardonable sin with a gondolier. Every now and then a chorus of yells, charging every crime in the decalogue, would be hurled at some landsman whose oar “crabbed,” or at some nondescript craft filled with “barbers and cooks,” to quote Giorgio, who in forcing a passage had become hopelessly entangled.

The only clear water-space was the ribbon of silver beginning away up near the Redentore, between the tails of the two sea-monsters, and ending at the stake-boat. Elsewhere, on both sides, from the Riva to San Giorgio, and as far as the wall of the Garden, was a dense floating mass of human beings, cheering, singing, and laughing, waving colors, and calling out the names of their favorites in rapid _crescendo_.

The spectacle on land was equally unique. The balustrade of the broad walk of the Public Garden was a huge flower-bed of blossoming hats and fans, spotted with myriads of parasols in full bloom. Bunches of over-ripe boys hung in the trees, or dropped one by one into the arms of gendarmes below. The palaces along the Riva were a broad ribbon of color with a binding of black coats and hats. The wall of San Giorgio fronting the barracks was fringed with the yellow legs and edged with the white fatigue caps of two regiments. Even over the roofs and tower of the church itself specks of sight-seers were spattered here and there, as if the joyous wind in some mad frolic had caught them up in very glee, and as suddenly showered them on cornice, sill, and dome.

Beyond all this, away out on the lagoon, toward the islands, the red-sailed fishing-boats hurried in for the finish, their canvas aflame against the deepening blue. Over all the sunlight danced and blazed and shimmered, gilding and bronzing the roof-jewels of San Marco, flashing from oar blade, brass, and _ferro_, silvering the pigeons whirling deliriously in the intoxicating air, making glad and gay and happy every soul who breathed the breath of this joyous Venetian day.

None of all this was lost upon the Professor. He stood in the bow drinking in the scene, sweeping his glass round like a weather-vane, straining his eyes up the Giudecca to catch the first glimpse of the coming boats, picking out faces under flaunting parasols, and waving aloft his yellow rag when some gondola swept by flying Pietro’s colors, or some boat-load of friends saluted in passing.

Suddenly there came down on the shifting wind, from far up the Giudecca, a sound like the distant baying of a pack of hounds, and as suddenly died away. Then the roar of a thousand throats, caught up by a thousand more about us, broke on the air, as a boatman, perched on a masthead, waved his hat.

“Here they come! _Viva_ Pietro! _Viva_ Pasquale!--Castellani!--Nicoletti!--Pietro!”

The dense mass rose and fell in undulations, like a great carpet being shaken, its colors tossing in the sunlight. Between the thicket of _ferros_, away down the silver ribbon, my eye caught two little specks of yellow capping two white figures. Behind these, almost in line, were two similar dots of blue; farther away other dots, hardly distinguishable, on the horizon line.

The gale became a tempest--the roar was deafening; women waved their shawls in the air; men, swinging their hats, shouted themselves hoarse. The yellow specks developed into handkerchiefs bound to the heads of Pietro and his brother Marco; the blues were those of Pasquale and his mate.

Then, as we strain our eyes, the two tails of the sea-monster twist and clash together, closing in upon the string of rowers as they disappear in the dip behind San Giorgio, only to reappear in full sight, Pietro half a length ahead, straining every sinew, his superb arms swinging like a flail, his lithe body swaying in splendid, springing curves, the water rushing from his oar blade, his brother bending aft in perfect rhythm.

“Pietro! _Pietro!_” came the cry, shrill and clear, drowning all other sounds, and a great field of yellow burst into flower all over the lagoon, from San Giorgio to the Garden. The people went wild. If before there had been only a tempest, now there was a cyclone. The waves of blue and yellow surged alternately above the heads of the throng as Pasquale or Pietro gained or lost a foot. The Professor grew red and pale by turns, his voice broken to a whisper with continued cheering, the yellow rag streaming above his head, all the blood of his ancestors blazing in his face.

The contesting boats surged closer. You could now see the rise and fall of Pietro’s superb chest, the steel-like grip of his hands, and could outline the curves of his thighs and back. The ends of the yellow handkerchief, bound close about his head, were flying in the wind. His stroke was long and sweeping, his full weight on the oar; Pasquale’s stroke was short and quick, like the thrust of a spur.

Now they are abreast. Pietro’s eyes are blazing--Pasquale’s teeth are set. Both crews are doing their utmost. The yells are demoniac. Even the women are beside themselves with excitement.

Suddenly, when within five hundred yards of the goal, Pasquale turns his head to his mate; there is an answering cry, and then, as if some unseen power had lent its strength, Pasquale’s boat shoots half a length ahead, slackens, falls back, gains again, now an inch, now a foot, now clear of Pietro’s bow, and on, on, lashing the water, surging forward, springing with every gain, cheered by a thousand throats, past the red tower of San Giorgio, past the channel of spiles off the Garden, past the red buoy near the great warship,--one quick, sustained, blistering stroke,--until the judge’s flag drops from his hand, and the great race is won.

“A true knight, a gentleman every inch of him,” called out the Professor, forgetting that he had staked all his _soldi_ on Pietro. “Fairly won, Pasquale.”

In the whirl of the victory, I had forgotten Pietro, my gondolier of the morning. The poor fellow was sitting in the bow of his boat, his head in his hands, wiping his forehead and throat, the tears streaming down his cheeks. His brother sat beside him. In the gladness and disappointment of the hour, no one of the crowd around him seemed to think of the hero of five minutes before. Not so Giorgio, who was beside himself with grief over Pietro’s defeat, and who had not taken his eyes from his face. In an instant more he sprang forward, calling out, “No! no! _Brava Pietro!_” Espero joining in as if with a common impulse, and both forcing their gondolas close to Pietro’s.

A moment more and Giorgio was over the rail of Pietro’s boat, patting his back, stroking his head, comforting him as you would think only a woman could--but then you do not know Giorgio. Pietro lifted up his face and looked into Giorgio’s eyes with an expression so woe-begone, and full of such intense suffering, that Giorgio instinctively flung his arm around the great, splendid fellow’s neck. Then came a few broken words, a tender caressing stroke of Giorgio’s hand, a drawing of Pietro’s head down on his breast as if it had been a girl’s, and then, still comforting him--telling him over and over again how superbly he had rowed, how the next time he would win, how he had made a grand second--

Giorgio bent his head--_and kissed him_.

When Pietro, a moment later, pulled himself together and stood erect in his boat, with eyes still wet, the look on his face was as firm and determined as ever.

Nobody laughed. It did not shock the crowd; nobody thought Giorgio unmanly or foolish, or Pietro silly or effeminate. The infernal Anglo-Saxon custom of always wearing a mask of reserve, if your heart breaks, has never reached these people.

As for the Professor, who looked on quietly, I think--yes, I am quite sure--that a little jewel of a tear squeezed itself up through his punctilious, precise, ever exact and courteous body, and glistened long enough on his eyelids to wet their lashes. Then the bright sun and the joyous wind caught it away. Dear old relic of a by-gone time! How gentle a heart beats under your well-brushed, threadbare coat!

SOME VENETIAN CAFFÈS

EVERY one in Venice has his own particular caffè, according to his own particular needs, sympathies, or tastes. All the artists, architects, and musicians meet at Florian’s; all the Venetians go to the _Quadri_; the Germans and late Austrians, to the _Bauer-Grünwald_; the stay-over-nights, to the Oriental on the Riva; the stevedores, to the _Veneta Marina_ below the Arsenal; and my dear friend Luigi and his fellow-tramps, to a little hole in the wall on the _Via Garibaldi_.

These caffès are scattered everywhere, from the Public Garden to the Mestre bridge; all kinds of caffès for all kinds of people--rich, not so rich, poor, poorer, and the very poorest. Many of them serve only a cup of coffee, two little flat lumps of sugar, a hard, brown roll, and a glass of water--always a glass of water. Some add a few syrups and cordials, with a siphon of seltzer. Others indulge in the cheaper wines of the country, Brindisi, Chianti, and the like, and are then known as wine-shops. Very few serve any spirits, except a spoonful of cognac with the coffee. Water is the universal beverage, and in summer this is cooled by ice and enriched by simple syrups of peach, orange, and raspberry. Spirits are rarely taken and intemperance is practically unknown. In an experience of many years, I have not seen ten drunken men,--never one drunken woman,--and then only in September, when the strong wine from Brindisi is brought in bulk and sold over the boat’s rail, literally by the bucket, to whoever will buy.

In the _ristoranti_--caffès, in our sense--is served an array of eatables that would puzzle the most expert of gourmands. There will be macaroni, of course, in all forms, and _risotto_ in a dozen different ways, and soups with weird, uncanny little devil-fish floating about in them, and salads of every conceivable green thing that can be chopped up in a bowl and drowned in olive oil; besides an assortment of cheeses with individualities of perfume that beggar any similar collection outside of Holland.

Some of these caffès are so much a part of Venice and Venetian life, that you are led to believe that they were founded by the early Doges and are coëval with the Campanile or the Library. Somebody, of course, must know when they first began setting out tables on the piazza in front of Florian’s, or at the _Quadri_ opposite, or yet again at the _Caffè al Cavallo_, near _San Giovanni e Paulo_, and at scores of others; but I confess I do not. If you ask the head waiter, who really ought to know (for he must have been born in one of the upper rooms--he certainly never leaves the lower ones), he shrugs his shoulders in a hopeless way and sheds the inquiry with a despairing gesture, quite as if you had asked who laid out San Marco, or who drove the piles under Saint Theodore.

There is, I am convinced, no real, permanent, steady proprietor in any of these caffès--none that one ever sees. There must be, of course, somebody who assumes ownership, and who for a time really believes that he has a proprietary interest in the chairs and tables about him. After a while, however, he gets old and dies, and is buried over in Campo Santo, and even his name is forgotten. When this happens, and it is eminently proper that it should, another tenant takes possession, quite as the pigeons do of an empty carving over the door of the king’s palace.

But the caffè keeps on: the same old marble-top tables; the same old glass-covered pictures, with the impossible Turkish houris listening to the improbable gentleman in baggy trousers; the same serving-counter, with the row of cordials in glass bottles with silver stoppers. The same waiters, too, hurry about--they live on for centuries--wearing the same coats and neckties, and carrying the same napkins. I myself have never seen a dead waiter, and, now I happen to think of it, I have never heard of one.

The head waiter is, of course, supreme. He it is who adds up on his fingers the sum of your extravagances, who takes your money and dives down into his own pocket for the change. He and his assistants are constantly running in and out, vanishing down subterranean stairs, or disappearing through swinging doors, with the agility of Harlequin; you never know where or why, until they pop out again, whirling trays held high over their heads, or bearing in both hands huge waiters loaded with dishes.

The _habitués_ of these caffès are as interesting as the caffès themselves. The Professor comes, of course; you always know where to find _him_. And the youthful Contessa! She of the uncertain age, with hair bleached to a light law-calf, and a rose-colored veil! And here comes, too, every distinguished or notorious person of high or low degree at the moment in Venice; you have only to take a chair at Florian’s and be patient--they are sure to appear before the music is over. There is the sister of the Archduke, with the straight-backed, pipe-stem-legged officer acting as gentleman-in-waiting; and he does _wait_, standing bolt upright like a sergeant on dress parade, sometimes an hour, for her to sit down. There is the Spanish Grandee, with a palace for the season (an upper floor with an entrance on a side canal), whose gondoliers wear flaming scarlet, with a crest embossed on brass dinner-plates for arm ornaments; one of these liveried attendants always dogs the Grandee to the caffè, so as to be ready to pull his chair out when his Excellency sits down. Then there are the Royal Academician, in gray tweed knickerbockers, traveling _incognito_ with two friends; the fragments of an American linen-duster brigade, with red guide-books and faces, in charge of a special agent; besides scores of others of every nationality and rank. They are all at Florian’s some time during the day.

You will see there, too, if you are familiar with the inside workings of a favorite caffè, an underground life of intrigue or mystery, in which Gustavo or Florio has a hand--often upon a _billet-doux_ concealed within the folds of a napkin; not to mention the harmless distribution, once in a while, of smuggled cigarettes fresh from Cairo.

Poor Gustavo! The government brought him to book not long ago. For many years he had supplied his patrons, and with delicious Egyptians, too! One night Gustavo disappeared, escorted by two gendarmes from the Department of Justice. Next morning the judge said: “Whereas, according to the accounts kept by the Department of Customs, the duties and expenses due the king on the cigarettes unlawfully sold by the prisoner for years past aggregate two thousand three hundred and ten _lire_; and whereas, the savings of the prisoner for ten years past, and at the moment deposited to his individual credit in the _Banco Napoli_, amount to exactly two thousand three hundred and ten _lire_; therefore, it is ordered, that a sight draft for the exact amount be drawn in favor of the king.” This would entitle Gustavo to the pure air of the piazza; otherwise?--well, otherwise not. Within a week Gustavo was again whirling his tray--a little grayer, perhaps, and a little wiser; certainly poorer. Thus does a tyrannical government oppress its people!

These caffès of the piazza, with their iced carafes, white napkins, and little silver coffee-pots, are the caffès of the rich.

The caffè of the poor is sometimes afloat. No matter how early you are out in the morning, this floating caffè--the cook-boat--has its fire lighted, and the savory smell of its cuisine drifts over the lagoon, long before your gondola rounds the Dogana. When you come alongside you find a charcoal brazier heating a pan of savory fish and a large pot of coffee, and near by a basketful of rolls, fresh and warm, from a still earlier baker. There are peaches, too, and a hamper of figs. The cook-boat is tended by two men; one cooks and serves, and the other rows, standing in the stern, looking anxiously for customers, and calling out in stentorian tones that all the delicacies of the season are now being fried, broiled, and toasted, and that for the infinitesimal sum of ten _soldi_ you can breakfast like a doge.

If you are just out of the lagoon, your blood tingling with the touch of the sea, your face aglow with your early morning bath, answer the cry of one of these floating kitchens, and eat a breakfast with the rising sun lighting your forehead and the cool breath of the lagoon across your cheek. It may be the salt air and the early plunge that make the coffee so savory, the fish and rolls so delicious, and the fruit so refreshing; or it may be because the fish were wriggling in the bottom of the boat half an hour earlier, the coffee only at the first boiling, and the fruit, bought from a passing boat, still damp with the night’s dew!

The caffè of the poorest is wherever there is a crowd. It generally stands on three iron legs under one of the trees down the _Via Garibaldi_, or over by the landing of the Dogana, or beneath the shade of some awning, or up a back court. The old fellow who bends over the hot earthen dish, supported on these legs, slowly stirring a mess of kidneys or an indescribable stew, is cook, head waiter, and proprietor all in one. Every now and then he fishes out some delicate tidbit--a miniature octopus, perhaps (called _fulpe_), a little sea-horror, all legs and claws, which he sprawls out on a bit of brown paper and lays on the palm of your left hand, assuming, clearly, that you have all the knives and forks that you need, on your right.

Once in a while a good Bohemian discovers some out-of-the-way place up a canal or through a twisted _calle_ that delights him with its cuisine, its cellar, or its cosiness, and forever after he preëmpts it as _his_ caffè. I know half a dozen such discoveries--one somewhere near _San Giorgio degli Schiavoni_, where the men play bowls in a long, narrow alley, under wide-spreading trees, cramped up between high buildings; and another, off the Merceria, where the officers smoke and lounge; and still another, quite my own--the _Caffè Calcina_. This last is on the _Rio San Vio_, and looks out on the Giudecca, just below San Rosario. You would never suspect it of being a caffè at all, until you had dodged under the little roof of the porch to escape the heat, and opening the side door found yourself in a small, plainly furnished room with little marble-top tables, each decorated with a Siamese-twin salt-cellar holding a pinch of salt and of pepper. Even then it is a very common sort of caffè, and not at all the place you would care to breakfast in twice; that is, not until you had followed the demure waiter through a narrow passage and out into a square _patio_ splashed with yellow-green light and cooled by overlacing vines. Then you realize that this same square patch of ground is one of the few restful spots of the wide earth.

It is all open to the sky except for a great arbor of grape leaves covering the whole area, beneath which, on the cool, moist ground, stand half a dozen little tables covered with snow-white cloths. At one side is a shelter, from behind which come certain mysterious noises of fries and broils. All about are big, green-painted boxes of japonicas, while at one end the oleanders thrust their top branches through the overhanging leaves of the arbor, waving their blossoms defiantly in the blazing sun. Beneath this grateful shelter you sit and loaf and invite your soul, and your best friend, too, if he happens to be that sort of a man.

After having congratulated yourself on your discovery and having become a daily _habitué_ of the delightful _patio_, you find that you have really discovered the Grand Canal or the Rialto bridge. To your great surprise, the _Caffè Calcina_ has been the favorite resort of good Bohemians for nearly a century. You learn that Turner painted his sunset sketches from its upper windows, and that dozens of more modern English painters have lived in the rooms above; that Whistler and Rico and scores of others have broken bread and had toothsome omelets under its vines; and, more precious than all, that Ruskin and Browning have shared many a bottle of honest Chianti with these same oleanders above their heads, and this, too, in the years when the Sage of Brantwood was teaching the world to love his Venice, and the great poet was singing songs that will last as long as the language.

ON THE HOTEL STEPS

IF you drink your early coffee as I do, in the garden under the oleanders, overlooking the water-landing of the hotel, and linger long enough over your fruit, you will conclude before many days that a large part of the life of Venice can be seen from the hotel steps. You may behold the great row of gondolas at the _traghetto_ near by, ranged side by side, awaiting their turn, and here and there, tied to the spiles outside the line, the more fortunate boats whose owners serve some sight-seer by the week, or some native padrone by the month, and are thus free of the daily routine of the _traghetto_, and free, too, from our old friend Joseph’s summoning voice.

You will be delighted at the good-humor and good-fellowship which animate this group of gondoliers; their ringing songs and hearty laughter; their constant care of the boats, their daily sponging and polishing; and now and then, I regret to say, your ears will be assailed by a quarrel, so fierce, so loud, and so full of vindictive energy, that you will start from your seat in instant expectation of the gleam of a stiletto, until by long experience you learn how harmless are both the bark and bite of a gondolier, and how necessary as a safety-valve, to accused and accuser as well, is the unlimited air-space of the Grand Canal.

You will also come into closer contact with Joseph, prince among porters, and patron saint of this Traghetto of Santa Salute. There is another Saint, of course, shaded by its trellised vines, framed in tawdry gilt, protected from the weather by a wooden hood, and lighted at night by a dim lamp hanging before it--but, for all that, Joseph is supreme as protector, refuge, and friend.