before drinking it. As I lingered a moment over my cup, I was reinforced
by the appearance of a company of soldiers, marching to parade in the
Campo di Marte. Their officers went at their head, laughing and chatting,
and one of the lieutenants smoking a long pipe, gave me a feeling of
satisfaction only comparable to that which I experienced shortly afterward
in beholding a stoutly built small dog on the Ponte di San Moise. The
creature was only a few inches high, and it must have been through some
mist of dreams yet hanging about me that he impressed me as having
something elephantine in his manner. When I stooped down and patted him on
the head, I felt colossal.

On my way to the Piazza, I stopped in the church of Saint Mary of the
Lily, where, in company with one other sinner, I found a relish in the
early sacristan's deliberate manner of lighting the candles on the altar.
Saint Mary of the Lily has a facade in the taste of the declining
Renaissance. The interior is in perfect keeping, and all is hideous,
abominable, and abandoned. My fellow-sinner was kneeling, and repeating
his prayers. He now and then tapped himself absent-mindedly on the breast
and forehead, and gave a good deal of his attention to me as I stood at
the door, hat in hand. The hour and the place invested him with so much
interest, that I parted from him with emotion. My feelings were next
involved by an abrupt separation from a young English East-Indian, whom I
overheard asking the keeper of a caffe his way to the Campo di Marte. He
was a claret-colored young fellow, tall, and wearing folds of white muslin
around his hat. In another world I trust to know how he liked the parade
that morning.

I discovered that Piazza San Marco is every morning swept by troops of
ragged facchini, who gossip noisily and quarrelsomely together over their
work. Boot-blacks, also, were in attendance, and several followed my