thing is doubtless more to the point--it has money and little red
books. The everlasting shuffle of these irresponsible visitors in
the Piazza is contemporary Venetian life. Everything else is only
a reverberation of that. The vast mausoleum has a turnstile at
the door, and a functionary in a shabby uniform lets you in, as
per tariff, to see how dead it is. From this constatation,
this cold curiosity, proceed all the industry, the prosperity,
the vitality of the place. The shopkeepers and gondoliers, the
beggars and the models, depend upon it for a living; they are the
custodians and the ushers of the great museum--they are even
themselves to a certain extent the objects of exhibition. It is
in the wide vestibule of the square that the polygot pilgrims
gather most densely; Piazza San Marco is the lobby of the opera
in the intervals of the performance. The present fortune of
Venice, the lamentable difference, is most easily measured there,
and that is why, in the effort to resist our pessimism, we must
turn away both from the purchasers and from the vendors of
ricordi. The ricordi that we prefer are gathered
best where the gondola glides--best of all on the noble waterway
that begins in its glory at the Salute and ends in its abasement
at the railway station. It is, however, the cockneyfied Piazzetta
(forgive me, shade of St. Theodore--has not a brand new cafe
begun to glare there, electrically, this very year?) that
introduces us most directly to the great picture by which the
Grand Canal works its first spell, and to which a thousand
artists, not always with a talent apiece, have paid their
tribute. We pass into the Piazzetta to look down the great
throat, as it were, of Venice, and the vision must console us for
turning our back on St. Mark's.