progress through the square, in the vague hope that I would relent and
have my boots blacked. One peerless waiter stood alone amid the desert
elegance of Caffe Florian, which is never shut, day or night, from year to
year. At the Caffe of the Greeks, two individuals of the Greek nation were
drinking coffee.

I went upon the Molo, passing between the pillars of the Lion and the
Saint, and walked freely back and forth, taking in the glory of that
prospect of water and of vague islands breaking the silver of the lagoons,
like those scenes cunningly wrought in apparent relief on old Venetian
mirrors. I walked there freely, for though there were already many
gondoliers at the station, not one took me for a foreigner or offered me a
boat. At that hour, I was in myself so improbable, that if they saw me at
all, I must have appeared to them as a dream. My sense of security was
sweet, but it was false, for on going into the church of St. Mark, the
keener eye of the sacristan detected me. He instantly offered to show me
the Zeno Chapel; but I declined, preferring the church, where I found the
space before the high altar filled with market-people come to hear the
early mass. As I passed out of the church, I witnessed the partial awaking
of a Venetian gentleman who had spent the night in a sitting posture,
between the columns of the main entrance. He looked puffy, scornful, and
uncomfortable, and at the moment of falling back to slumber, tried to
smoke an unlighted cigarette, which he held between his lips. I found none
of the shops open as I passed through the Merceria, and but for myself,
and here and there a laborer going to work, the busy thoroughfare seemed
deserted. In the mere wantonness of power, and the security of solitude, I
indulged myself in snapping several door-latches, which gave me a pleasure
as keen as that enjoyed in boyhood from passing a stick along the pickets
of a fence. I was in nowise abashed to be discovered in this amusement by
an old peasant-woman, bearing at either end of a yoke the usual basket