Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the canal is
busy with people: gondoliers, boys with nets for crab-catching,
'longshoremen, and facchini. This is when ships are loading or
unloading, but at other times we look upon a tranquil scene.

Peppina brings in dell' acqua bollente, and I make the coffee in
the little copper coffee-pot we bought in Paris, while Salemina
heats the milk over the alcohol-lamp, which is the most precious
treasure in her possession.

The butter and eggs are brought every morning before breakfast, and
nothing is more delicious than our freshly churned pat of
solidified cream, without salt, which is sweeter than honey in the
comb. The cows are milked at dawn on the campagna, and the milk is
brought into Venice in large cans. In the early morning, when the
light is beginning to steal through the shutters, one hears the
tinkling of a mule's bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and,
if one runs to the window, may see the contadini, looking, in their
sheepskin trousers, like brethren of John the Baptist, driving
through the streets and delivering the milk at the vaccari. It is
then heated, the cream raised and churned, and the pats of butter,
daintily set on green leaves, delivered for a seven-o'clock
breakfast.

Finally la colazione is spread on our table by the window. A neat
white cloth covers it, and we have gold-rimmed plates and cups of
delicate china. There is a pot of honey, an egg a la coque for
each, a plate of brown and white bread, on some days a dish of
scarlet cherries on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious