Mark's where his tomb stands. But they can hardly fail to see the
monument to Victor Emmanuel on the Riva--with the lion which they had
wounded so grievously, symbolizing Italy under the enemy, on the one
side, and the same animal all alert and confident, on the other, flushed
with the assurance which 1866 brought, and the sturdy king riding forth
to victory above. This they cannot well help seeing.

The little piazzetta on the north side of S. Mark's has a famous well,
with two porphyry lions beside it on which small Venetians love to
straddle. A bathing-place for pigeons is here too, and I have counted
twenty-seven in it at once. Here one day I found an artist at work on
the head of an old man--a cunning old rascal with short-cropped grey
hair, a wrinkled face packed with craft, and a big pipe. The artist, a
tall, bearded man, was painting with vigour, but without, so far as I
could discern, any model; and yet it was obviously a portrait on which
he was engaged and no work of invention. After joining the crowd before
the easel for a minute or so, I was passing on when a figure emerged
from a cool corner where he had been resting and held out his hand. He
was a cunning old rascal with short-cropped grey hair, a wrinkled face
packed with craft, and a big pipe; and after a moment's perplexity I
recognized him as the model. He pointed to himself and nodded to the
picture and again proffered his open palm. Such money as I have for free
distribution among others is, however, not for this kind; but the idea
that the privilege of seeing the picture in the making should carry with
it an obligation to the sitter was so comic that I could not repulse him
with the grave face that is important on such occasions. Later in the
same day I met the artist himself in the waters of the Lido--a form of
rencontre that is very common in Venice in the summer. The converse is,
however, the more amusing and usually disenchanting: the recognition, in
the Piazza, in the evening, in their clothes, of certain of the