past. He wore a straw hat slightly tilted and was smoking a cigar. His
arm was passed through that of a tall slender girl of about his own
height, and, say, twenty-five, in red. She was leaning towards him and
he slightly inclined towards her. They walked faster than Venice, and
talked animatedly in English as they passed me, and the world had no one
in it but themselves; and so they disappeared, with long strides and a
curious ease of combined movement almost like skillful partners in a
dance. Two nights later I saw them again. This time she was in black,
and again they sailed through the crowd, a little leaning towards each
other, he again holding her arm, and again both discussing in English
something with such interest that they were conscious of nothing around
them. Sitting outside a café on the Piazza every evening for a month,
one naturally sees many travellers come and go; but none other in that
phantasmagoria left any mark on my mind. Why did these?

So much for S. Mark's Square by night. With thousands of persons, to
think of S. Mark's Square by day is chiefly to think of pigeons. Many a
visitor to Venice who cannot remember the details of a single painting
there can show you a photograph of herself with pigeons on her shoulders
and arms. Photographers and dealers in maize are here all day to effect
these pretty conjunctions; but the Kodak has seriously impaired their
profits. The birds are smaller than our London monsters and not quite so
brilliantly burnished. How many there are I have no idea; but since they
are sacred, their numbers must be ever increasing. Why they are sacred
is something of a mystery. One story states that the great Enrico
Dandolo had carrier-pigeons with him in the East which conveyed the
grand tidings of victories to Venice; another says that the same heroic
old man was put in possession of valuable strategic information by means
of a carrier-pigeon, and on returning to Venice proclaimed it a bird to
be reverenced. There was once a custom of loosing a number of pigeons