The Venetians: A Novel

Little golden cloudlets, like winged living creatures, were hanging high up in the rosy glow above Santa Maria della Salute, and all along the Grand Canal the crowded gondolas were floating in a golden haze, and all the westward-facing palace windows flashed and shone with an illumination which the lamps and lanterns that were to be lighted after sundown could never equal, burnt they never so merrily. It was Shrove Tuesday in Venice, Carnival time. The sun had been shining on the city and on the lagunes all day long. It was one of those Shrove Tuesdays which recall the familiar proverb—

“Sunshine at Carnival,

Fireside at Easter.”

But who cares about the chance of cold and gloom six weeks hence when to-day is fair and balmy? A hum of joyous, foolish voices echoed from those palace façades, and floated out seaward, and rang along the narrow Calle, and drifted on the winding water-ways, and resounded under the innumerable bridges; for everywhere in the City by the Sea men, women, and children were making merry, and had given themselves up to a wild and childish rapture of unreasoning mirth, ready to explode into loud laughter at the sorriest jokes. An old man tapped upon the shoulder by a swinging paper lantern—a boy whose hat had been knocked off—a woman calling to her husband or her lover across the gay flotilla—anything was food for mirth on this holiday evening, while the great gold orb sank in the silvery lagoon, and all the sky yonder towards Chioggia was dyed with the crimson afterglow, and the Chioggian fishing-boats were moving westward in all the splendour of their painted sails.

At Danieli’s the hall and staircase, reading-room, smoking-room, and saloons were crowded with people; English and American for the most part, but with a sprinkling of French and German. Shrewd Yankees were bargaining on the sea-washed steps below the hall-door with gondoliers almost as shrewd. Quanto per la notte—tutte la notte, sul canale? To-night the gondoliers would have it all their own way, for every one wanted a gondola to row up and down the Grand Canal, with gaudy Chinese lanterns, and singing men, twanging guitar or tinkling mandoline to that tune which is almost the national melody of Venice fin de siècle—“Funicoli, funicola.”

The dining-rooms at Danieli’s are capacious enough for all ordinary occasions, but to-night there was not space for half the number who wanted to dine. The waiters were flying about wildly, trying to appease the hungry crowd with promises of tables subito, subito. But travellers in Italy know what subito means in an Italian restaurant, and were not comforted by these assurances. Amiable Signor Campi moved about among his men, and his very presence gave comfort somehow, and finally everybody had food and wine, and a din of jovial voices rose up from the table d’hôte to the grand old rooms above, on that upper story which is called the noble floor, a place of strange histories, perhaps, in those stern days when these hotels were palaces.