"I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand;
I saw from out the wave her structures rise,
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand;
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged lions' marble piles,
Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles."
BYRON.
The sun had disappeared behind the summits of the Tyrolean Alps, and the
moon was already risen above the low barrier of the Lido. Hundreds of
pedestrians were pouring out of the narrow streets of Venice into the
square of St. Mark, like water gushing through some strait aqueduct,
into a broad and bubbling basin. Gallant cavalieri and grave cittadini;
soldiers of Dalmatia, and seamen of the galleys; dames of the city, and
females of lighter manners; jewellers of the Rialto, and traders from
the Levant; Jew, Turk, and Christian; traveller, adventurer, podestà,
valet, avvocato, and gondolier, held their way alike to the common
centre of amusement. The hurried air and careless eye; the measured step
and jealous glance; the jest and laugh; the song of the cantatrice, and
the melody of the flute; the grimace of the buffoon, and the tragic
frown of the improvisatore; the pyramid of the grotesque, the compelled
and melancholy smile of the harpist, cries of water-sellers, cowls of
monks, plumage of warriors, hum of voices, and the universal movement
and bustle, added to the more permanent objects of the place, rendered
the scene the most remarkable of Christendom.
On the very confines of that line which separates western from eastern
Europe, and in constant communication with the latter, Venice possessed
a greater admixture of character and costume, than any other of the
numerous ports of that region. A portion of this peculiarity is still to
be observed, under the fallen fortunes of the place; but at the period
of our tale, the city of the isles, though no longer mistress of the
Mediterranean, nor even of the Adriatic, was still rich and powerful.
Her influence was felt in the councils of the civilized world, and her
commerce, though waning, was yet sufficient to uphold the vast
possessions of those families, whose ancestors had become rich in the
day of her prosperity. Men lived among her islands in that state of
incipient lethargy, which marks the progress of a downward course,
whether the decline be of a moral or of a physical decay.
At the hour we have named, the vast parallelogram of the piazza was
filling fast, the cafés and casinos within the porticoes, which surround
three of its sides, being already thronged with company. While all
beneath the arches was gay and brilliant with the flare of torch and
lamp, the noble range of edifices called the Procuratories, the massive
pile of the Ducal Palace, the most ancient Christian church, the granite
columns of the piazzetta, the triumphal masts of the great square, and
the giddy tower of the campanile, were slumbering in the more mellow
glow of the moon.
Facing the wide area of the great square stood the quaint and venerable
cathedral of San Marco. A temple of trophies, and one equally
proclaiming the prowess and the piety of its founders, this remarkable
structure presided over the other fixtures of the place, like a monument
of the republic's antiquity and greatness. Its Saracenic architecture,
the rows of precious but useless little columns that load its front, the
low Asiatic domes which rest upon its walls in the repose of a thousand
years, the rude and gaudy mosaics, and above all the captured horses of
Corinth which start from out the sombre mass in the glory of Grecian
art, received from the solemn and appropriate light, a character of
melancholy and mystery, that well comported with the thick recollections
which crowd the mind as the eye gazes at this rare relic of the past.
As fit companions to this edifice, the other peculiar ornaments of the
place stood at hand. The base of the campanile lay in shadow, but a
hundred feet of its grey summit received the full rays of the moon along
its eastern face. The masts destined to bear the conquered ensigns of
Candia, Constantinople, and the Morea, cut the air by its side, in dark
and fairy lines; while at the extremity of the smaller square, and near
the margin of the sea, the forms of the winged lion and the patron saint
of the city, each on his column of African granite, were distinctly
traced against the back-ground of the azure sky.
It was near the base of the former of these massive blocks of stone,
that one stood who seemed to gaze at the animated and striking scene,
with the listlessness and indifference of satiety. A multitude, some in
masques and others careless of being known, had poured along the quay
into the piazzetta, on their way to the principal square, while this
individual had scarce turned a glance aside, or changed a limb in
weariness. His attitude was that of patient, practised, and obedient
waiting on another's pleasure. With folded arms, a body poised on one
leg, and a vacant though good-humored eye, he appeared to attend some
beck of authority ere he quitted the spot. A silken jacket, in whose
tissue flowers of the gayest colors were interwoven, the falling collar
of scarlet, the bright velvet cap with armorial bearings embroidered on
its front, proclaimed him to be a gondolier in private service.
Wearied at length with the antics of a distant group of tumblers, whose
pile of human bodies had for a time arrested his look, this individual
turned away, and faced the light air from the water. Recognition and
pleasure shot into his countenance, and in a moment his arms were
interlocked with those of a swarthy mariner, who wore the loose attire
and Phrygian cap of men of his calling. The gondolier was the first to
speak, the words flowing from him in the soft accents of his native
islands.
"Is it thou, Stefano? They said thou hadst fallen into the gripe of the
devils of Barbary, and that thou wast planting flowers for an infidel
with thy hands, and watering them with thy tears!"
The answer was in the harsher dialect of Calabria, and it was given with
the rough familiarity of a seaman.
"La Bella Sorrentina is no housekeeper of a curato! She is not a damsel
to take a siesta with a Tunisian rover prowling about in her
neighborhood. Hadst ever been beyond the Lido, thou wouldst have known
the difference between chasing the felucca and catching her."
"Kneel down and thank San Teodoro for his care. There was much praying
on thy decks that hour, caro Stefano, though none is bolder among the
mountains of Calabria when thy felucca is once safely drawn up on the
beach!"
The mariner cast a half-comic, half-serious glance upward at the image
of the patron saint, ere he replied.
"There was more need of the wings of thy lion than of the favor of thy
saint. I never come further north for aid than San Gennaro, even when it
blows a hurricane."
"So much the worse for thee, caro, since the good bishop is better at
stopping the lava than at quieting the winds. But there was danger,
then, of losing the felucca and her brave people among the Turks?"
"There was, in truth, a Tunis-man prowling about, between Stromboli and
Sicily; but, Ali di San Michele! he might better have chased the cloud
above the volcano than run after the felucca in a sirocco!"
"Thou wast chicken-hearted, Stefano!"
"I!--I was more like thy lion here, with some small additions of chains
and muzzles."
"As was seen by thy felucca's speed?"
"Cospetto! I wished myself a knight of San Giovanni a thousand times
during the chase, and La Bella Sorrentina a brave Maltese galley, if it
were only for the cause of Christian honor! The miscreant hung upon my
quarter for the better part of three glasses; so near, that I could tell
which of the knaves wore dirty cloth in his turban, and which clean. It
was a sore sight to a Christian, Stefano, to see the right thus borne
upon by an infidel."
"And thy feet warmed with the thought of the bastinado, caro mio?"
"I have run too often barefoot over our Calabrian mountains, to tingle
at the sole with every fancy of that sort."
"Every man has his weak spot, and I know thine to be dread of a Turk's
arm. Thy native hills have their soft as well as their hard ground, but
it is said the Tunisian chooses a board knotty as his own heart, when he
amuses himself with the wailings of a Christian."
"Well, the happiest of us all must take such as fortune brings. If my
soles are to be shod with blows, the honest priest of Sant' Agata will
be cheated by a penitent. I have bargained with the good curato, that
all such accidental calamities shall go in the general account of
penance. But how fares the world of Venice?--and what dost thou among
the canals at this season, to keep the flowers of thy jacket from
wilting?"
"To-day, as yesterday, and to-morrow will be as to-day I row the
gondola from the Rialto to the Giudecca; from San Giorgio to San Marco;
from San Marco to the Lido, and from the Lido home. There are no
Tunis-men by the way, to chill the heart or warm the feet."
"Enough of friendship. And is there nothing stirring in the
republic?--no young noble drowned, nor any Jew hanged?"
"Nothing of that much interest--except the calamity which befell Pietro.
Thou rememberest Pietrello? he who crossed into Dalmatia with thee once,
as a supernumerary, the time he was suspected of having aided the young
Frenchman in running away with a senator's daughter?"
"Do I remember the last famine? The rogue did nothing but eat maccaroni,
and swallow the lachryma christi, which the Dalmatian count had on
freight."
"Poverino! His gondola has been run down by an Ancona-man, who passed
over the boat as if it were a senator stepping on a fly."
"So much for little fish coming into deep water."
"The honest fellow was crossing the Giudecca, with a stranger, who had
occasion to say his prayers at the Redentore, when the brig hit him in
the canopy, and broke up the gondola, as if it had been a bubble left by
the Bucentaur."
"The padrone should have been too generous to complain of Pietro's
clumsiness, since it met with its own punishment."
"Madre di Dio! He went to sea that hour, or he might be feeding the
fishes of the Lagunes! There is not a gondolier in Venice who did not
feel the wrong at his heart; and we know how to obtain justice for an
insult, as well as our masters."
"Well, a gondola is mortal, as well as a felucca, and both have their
time; better die by the prow of a brig than fall into the gripe of a
Turk. How is thy young master, Gino; and is he likely to obtain his
claims of the senate?"
"He cools himself in the Giudecca in the morning; and if thou would'st
know what he does at evening, thou hast only to look among the nobles in
the Broglio."
As the gondolier spoke he glanced an eye aside at a group of patrician
rank, who paced the gloomy arcades which supported the superior walls of
the doge's palace, a spot sacred, at times, to the uses of the
privileged.
"I am no stranger to the habit thy Venetian nobles have of coming to
that low colonnade at this hour, but I never before heard of their
preferring the waters of the Giudecca for their baths."
"Were even the doge to throw himself out of a gondola, he must sink or
swim, like a meaner Christian."
"Acqua dell' Adriatico! Was the young duca going to the Redentore, too,
to say his prayers?"
"He was coming back after having; but what matters it in what canal a
young noble sighs away the night! We happened to be near when the
Ancona-man performed his feat; while Giorgio and I were boiling with
rage at the awkwardness of the stranger, my master, who never had much
taste or knowledge in gondolas, went into the water to save the young
lady from sharing the fate of her uncle."
"Diavolo! This is the first syllable thou hast uttered concerning any
young lady, or of the death of her uncle!"
"Thou wert thinking of thy Tunis-man, and hast forgotten. I must have
told thee how near the beautiful signora was to sharing the fate of the
gondola, and how the loss of the Roman marchese weighs, in addition, on
the soul of the padrone."
"Santo Padre! That a Christian should die the death of a hunted dog by
the carelessness of a gondolier!"
"It may have been lucky for the Ancona-man that it so fell out; for they
say the Roman was one of influence enough to make a senator cross the
Bridge of Sighs, at need."
"The devil take all careless watermen, say I! And what became of the
awkward rogue?"
"I tell thee he went outside the Lido that very hour, or----"
"Pietrello?"
"He was brought up by the oar of Giorgio, for both of us were active in
saving the cushions and other valuables."
"Could'st thou do nothing for the poor Roman? Ill-luck may follow that
brig on account of his death!"
"Ill-luck follow her, say I, till she lays her bones on some rock that
is harder than the heart of her padrone. As for the stranger, we could
do no more than offer up a prayer to San Teodoro, since he never rose
after the blow. But what has brought thee to Venice, caro mio? for thy
ill-fortune with the oranges, in the last voyage, caused thee to
denounce the place."
The Calabrian laid a finger on one cheek, and drew the skin down in a
manner to give a droll expression to his dark, comic eye, while the
whole of his really fine Grecian face was charged with an expression of
coarse humor.
"Look you, Gino--thy master sometimes calls for his gondola between
sunset and morning?"
"An owl is not more wakeful than he has been of late. This head of mine
has not been on a pillow before the sun has come above the Lido, since
the snows melted from Monselice."
"And when the sun of thy master's countenance sets in his own palazzo,
thou hastenest off to the bridge of the Rialto, among the jewellers and
butchers, to proclaim the manner in which he passed the night?"
"Diamine! 'Twould be the last night I served the Duca di Sant' Agata,
were my tongue so limber! The gondolier and the confessor are the two
privy-councillors of a noble, Master Stefano, with this small
difference--that the last only knows what the sinner wishes to reveal,
while the first sometimes knows more. I can find a safer, if not a more
honest employment, than to be running about with my master's secrets in
the air."
"And I am wiser than to let every Jew broker in San Marco, here, have a
peep into my charter-party."
"Nay, old acquaintance, there is some difference between our
occupations, after all. A padrone of a felucca cannot, in justice, be
compared to the most confidential gondolier of a Neapolitan duke, who
has an unsettled right to be admitted to the Council of Three Hundred."
"Just the difference between smooth water and rough--you ruffle the
surface of a canal with a lazy oar, while I run the channel of Piombino
in a mistral, shoot the Faro of Messina in a white squall, double Santa
Maria di Leuca in a breathing Levanter, and come skimming up the
Adriatic before a sirocco that is hot enough to cook my maccaroni, and
which sets the whole sea boiling worse than the caldrons of Scylla."
"Hist!" eagerly interrupted the gondolier, who had indulged, with
Italian humor, in the controversy for preeminence, though without any
real feeling, "here comes one who may think, else, we shall have need of
his hand to settle the dispute--Eccolo!"
The Calabrian recoiled apace, in silence, and stood regarding the
individual who had caused this hurried remark, with a gloomy but steady
air. The stranger moved slowly past. His years were under thirty, though
the calm gravity of his countenance imparted to it a character of more
mature age. The cheeks were bloodless, but they betrayed rather the
pallid hue of mental than of bodily disease. The perfect condition of
the physical man was sufficiently exhibited in the muscular fulness of a
body which, though light and active, gave every indication of strength.
His step was firm, assured, and even; his carriage erect and easy, and
his whole mien was strongly characterized by a self-possession that
could scarcely escape observation; and yet his attire was that of an
inferior class. A doublet of common velvet, a dark Montero cap, such as
was then much used in the southern countries of Europe, with other
vestments of a similar fashion, composed his dress. The face was
melancholy rather than sombre, and its perfect repose accorded well with
the striking calmness of the body. The lineaments of the former,
however, were bold and even noble, exhibiting that strong and manly
outline which is so characteristic of the finer class of the Italian
countenance. Out of this striking array of features gleamed an eye that
was full of brilliancy, meaning, and passion.
As the stranger passed, his glittering organs rolled over the persons of
the gondolier and his companion, but the look, though searching, was
entirely without interest. 'Twas the wandering but wary glance, which
men who have much reason to distrust, habitually cast on a multitude. It
turned with the same jealous keenness on the face of the next it
encountered, and by the time the steady and well balanced form was lost
in the crowd, that quick and glowing eye had gleamed, in the same rapid
and uneasy manner, on twenty others.
Neither the gondolier nor the mariner of Calabria spoke until their
riveted gaze after the retiring figure became useless. Then the former
simply ejaculated, with a strong respiration--
"Jacopo!"
His companion raised three of his fingers, with an occult meaning,
towards the palace of the doges.
"Do they let him take the air, even in San Marco?" he asked, in
unfeigned surprise.
"It is not easy, caro amico, to make water run up stream, or to stop the
downward current. It is said that most of the senators would sooner lose
their hopes of the horned bonnet, than lose him. Jacopo! He knows more
family secrets than the good Priore of San Marco himself, and he, poor
man, is half his time in the confessional."
"Aye, they are afraid to put him in an iron jacket, lest awkward secrets
should be squeezed out."
"Corpo di Bacco! there would be little peace in Venice, if the Council
of Three should take it into their heads to loosen the tongue of yonder
man in that rude manner."
"But they say, Gino, that thy Council of Three has a fashion of feeding
the fishes of the Lagunes, which might throw the suspicion of his death
on some unhappy Ancona-man, were the body ever to come up again."
"Well, no need of bawling it aloud, as if thou wert hailing a Sicilian
through thy trumpet, though the fact should be so. To say the truth,
there are few men in business who are thought to have more custom than
he who has just gone up the piazzetta."
"Two sequins!" rejoined the Calabrian, enforcing his meaning by a
significant grimace.
"Santa Madonna! Thou forgettest, Stefano, that not even the confessor
has any trouble with a job in which he has been employed. Not a caratano
less than a hundred will buy a stroke of his art. Your blows, for two
sequins, leave a man leisure to tell tales, or even to say his prayers
half the time."
"Jacopo!" ejaculated the other, with an emphasis which seemed to be a
sort of summing up of all his aversion and horror.
The gondolier shrugged his shoulders with quite as much meaning as a man
born on the shores of the Baltic could have conveyed by words; but he
too appeared to think the matter exhausted.
"Stefano Milano," he added, after a moment of pause, 'there are things
in Venice which he who would eat his maccaroni in peace, would do well
to forget. Let thy errand in port be what it may, thou art in good
season to witness the regatta which will be given by the state itself
to-morrow."
"Hast thou an oar for that race?"
"Giorgio's, or mine, under the patronage of San Teodoro. The prize will
be a silver gondola to him who is lucky or skilful enough to win; and
then we shall have the nuptials with the Adriatic."
"Thy nobles had best woo the bride well; for there are heretics who lay
claim to her good will. I met a rover of strange rig and miraculous
fleetness, in rounding the headlands of Otranto, who seemed to have half
a mind to follow the felucca in her path towards the Lagunes."
"Did the sight warm thee at the soles of thy feet, Gino dear?"
"There was not a turbaned head on his deck, but every sea-cap sat upon a
well covered poll and a shorn chin. Thy Bucentaur is no longer the
bravest craft that floats between Dalmatia and the islands, though her
gilding may glitter brightest. There are men beyond the pillars of
Hercules who are not satisfied with doing all that can be done on their
own coasts, but who are pretending to do much of that which can be done
on ours."
"The republic is a little aged, caro, and years need rest. The joints of
the Bucentaur are racked by time and many voyages to the Lido. I have
heard my master say that the leap of the winged lion is not as far as it
was, even in his young days."
"Don Camillo has the reputation of talking boldly of the foundation of
this city of piles, when he has the roof of old Sant' Agata safely over
his head. Were he to speak more reverently of the horned bonnet, and of
the Council of Three, his pretensions to succeed to the rights of his
forefathers might seem juster in the eyes of his judges. But distance is
a great mellower of colors and softener of fears. My own opinion of the
speed of the felucca, and of the merits of a Turk, undergo changes of
this sort between port and the open sea; and I have known thee, good
Gino, forget San Teodoro, and bawl as lustily to San Gennaro, when at
Naples, as if thou really fancied thyself in danger from the mountain."
"One must speak to those at hand, in order to be quickest heard,"
rejoined the gondolier, casting a glance that was partly humorous, and
not without superstition, upwards at the image which crowned the granite
column against whose pedestal he still leaned. "A truth which warns us
to be prudent, for yonder Jew cast a look this way, as if he felt a
conscientious scruple in letting any irreverent remark of ours go
without reporting. The bearded old rogue is said to have other dealings
with the Three Hundred besides asking for the moneys he has lent to
their sons. And so, Stefano, thou thinkest the republic will never plant
another mast of triumph in San Marco, or bring more trophies to the
venerable church?"
"Napoli herself, with her constant change of masters, is as likely to do
a great act on the sea as thy winged beast just now! Thou art well
enough to row a gondola in the canals, Gino, or to follow thy master to
his Calabrian castle; but if thou would'st know what passes in the wide
world, thou must be content to listen to mariners of the long course.
The day of San Marco has gone by, and that of the heretics more north
has come."
"Thou hast been much of late among the lying Genoese, Stefano, that thou
comest hither with these idle tales of what a heretic can do. Genova la
Superba! What has a city of walls to compare with one of canals and
islands like this?--and what has that Apennine republic performed, to be
put in comparison with the great deeds of the Queen of the Adriatic?
Thou forgettest that Venezia has been--"
"Zitto, zitto! that _has_ been, caro mio, is a great word with all
Italy. Thou art as proud of the past as a Roman of the Trastevere."
"And the Roman of the Trastevere is right. Is it nothing, Stefano
Milano, to be descended from a great and victorious people?"
"It is better, Gino Monaldi, to be one of a people which is great and
victorious just now. The enjoyment of the past is like the pleasure of
the fool who dreams of the wine he drank yesterday."
"This is well for a Neapolitan, whose country never was a nation,"
returned the gondolier, angrily. "I have heard Don Camillo, who is one
educated as well as born in the land, often say that half of the people
of Europe have ridden the horse of Sicily, and used the legs of thy
Napoli, except those who had the best right to the services of both."
"Even so; and yet the figs are as sweet as ever, and the beccafichi as
tender! The ashes of the volcano cover all!"
"Gino," said a voice of authority, near the gondolier.
"Signore."
He who interrupted the dialogue pointed to the boat without saying more.
"A rivederli," hastily muttered the gondolier. His friend squeezed his
hand in perfect amity--for, in truth, they were countrymen by birth,
though chance had trained the former on the canals--and, at the next
instant, Gino was arranging the cushions for his master, having first
aroused his subordinate brother of the oar from a profound sleep.