who live out-of-doors.

The groups do not vary a great deal one from another: inevitably the pale-
faced papa, the fat mamma, the over-dressed handsome young girls. We
learned to look for certain gondolas, and grew to feel a fond interest in
a very mild young man who took the air in company and contrast with a
ferocious bull-dog--boule-dogue he called him, I suppose. He was always
smoking languidly, that mild young man, and I fancied I could read in his
countenance a gentle, gentle antagonism to life--the proportionate Byronic
misanthropy, which might arise from sugar and water taken instead of gin.
But we really knew nothing about him, and our conjecture was conjecture.
Officers went by in their brilliant uniforms, and gave the scene an alien
splendor. Among these we enjoyed best the spectacle of an old major, or
perhaps general, in whom the arrogance of youth had stiffened into a chill
hauteur, and who frowned above his gray overwhelming moustache upon the
passers, like a citadel grim with battle and age. We used to fancy, with a
certain luxurious sense of our own safety, that one broadside from those
fortressed eyes could blow from the water the slight pleasure-boats in
which the young Venetian idlers were innocently disporting. But again this
was merely conjecture. The general's glance may have had no such power.
Indeed, the furniture of our apartment sustained no damage from it, even
when concentrated through an opera-glass, by which means the brave officer
at times perused our humble lodging from the balcony of his own over
against us. He may have been no more dangerous in his way than two aged
sisters (whom we saw every evening) were in theirs. They represented
Beauty in its most implacable and persevering form, and perhaps they had
one day been belles and could not forget it. They were very old indeed,
but their dresses were new and their paint fresh, and as they glided by in
the good-natured twilight, one had no heart to smile at them. We gave our
smiles, and now and then our soldi, to the swarthy beggar, who, being