Chapter 22 - Page 2

untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier began to sing, true to
the traditions of his race. I stood it a little while. Then I said:

"Now, here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a
stranger, but I am not going to have my feelings lacerated by any such
caterwauling as that. If that goes on, one of us has got to take water.
It is enough that my cherished dreams of Venice have been blighted
forever as to the romantic gondola and the gorgeous gondolier; this
system of destruction shall go no farther; I will accept the hearse,
under protest, and you may fly your flag of truce in peace, but here I
register a dark and bloody oath that you shan't sing. Another yelp, and
overboard you go."

I began to feel that the old Venice of song and story had departed
forever. But I was too hasty. In a few minutes we swept gracefully out
into the Grand Canal, and under the mellow moonlight the Venice of poetry
and romance stood revealed. Right from the water's edge rose long lines
of stately palaces of marble; gondolas were gliding swiftly hither and
thither and disappearing suddenly through unsuspected gates and alleys;
ponderous stone bridges threw their shadows athwart the glittering waves.
There was life and motion everywhere, and yet everywhere there was a
hush, a stealthy sort of stillness, that was suggestive of secret
enterprises of bravoes and of lovers; and clad half in moonbeams and half
in mysterious shadows, the grim old mansions of the Republic seemed to
have an expression about them of having an eye out for just such
enterprises as these at that same moment. Music came floating over the
waters--Venice was complete.

It was a beautiful picture--very soft and dreamy and beautiful. But what
was this Venice to compare with the Venice of midnight? Nothing. There
was a fete--a grand fete in honor of some saint who had been instrumental
in checking the cholera three hundred years ago, and all Venice was
abroad on the water. It was no common affair, for the Venetians did not
know how soon they might need the saint's services again, now that the
cholera was spreading every where. So in one vast space--say a third of
a mile wide and two miles long--were collected two thousand gondolas, and
every one of them had from two to ten, twenty and even thirty colored
lanterns suspended about it, and from four to a dozen occupants. Just as
far as the eye could reach, these painted lights were massed together
--like a vast garden of many-colored flowers, except that these blossoms
were never still; they were ceaselessly gliding in and out, and mingling
together, and seducing you into bewildering attempts to follow their mazy
evolutions. Here and there a strong red, green, or blue glare from a