A Golden Book of Venice | Page 2

reflected the highest art to which modern Venice had attained. Between the wonderful, mystic, Eastern glory of San Marco, all shadows and symbolisms and harmonies, and the positive, realistic assertions, aesthetic and spiritual, of the Frari, lay the entire reach of the art and religion of the Most Serene Republic.
The church was ancient enough to be a treasure-house for the historian, and it had been restored, with much magnificence, less than a century before,--which was modern for Venice,--while innumerable gifts had brought its treasures down to the days of Titian and Tintoret.
To-day the people were coming in throngs, as to a _festa_, on foot from under the Portico di Zen, across the little marble bridge which spanned the narrow canal; on foot also from the network of narrow paved lanes, or _calle_, which led off into a densely populated quarter; for to-day the people had free right of entrance, equally with those others who came in gondolas, liveried and otherwise, from more distant and aristocratic neighborhoods. This pleasant possibility of entrance sufficed for the crowd at large, who were not learned, and who preferred the attractions of the outside show to the philosophical debate which was the cause of all this agreeable excitement, and which was presently to take place in the great church before a vast assembly of nobles and clergy and representatives from the Universities of Padua, Mantua, and Bologna; and outside, in the glowing sunshine, with the strangers and the confusion, the shifting sounds and lights, the ceaseless unlading of gondolas and massing and changing of colors, every minute was a realization of the people's ideal of happiness.
Brown, bare-legged boys flocked from San Pantaleone and the people's quarters on the smaller canals, remitting, for the nonce, their absorbing pastimes of crabbing and petty gambling, and ragged and radiant, stretched themselves luxuriously along the edge of the little quay, faces downward, emphasizing their humorous running commentaries with excited movements of the bare, upturned feet; while the gondoliers landed their passengers to a lively refrain of "_Stali_!" their curses and appeals to the Madonna blending not discordantly with the general babel of sound which gives such a sense of companionship in Venice--human voices calling in ceaseless interchange from shore to shore, resonant in the brilliant atmosphere, quarrels softened to melodies across the water, cries of the gondoliers telling of ceaseless motion, the constant lap and plash of the wavelets and the drip of the oars making a soothing undertone of content.
From time to time staccato notes of delight added a distinct jubilant quality to this symphony, heralding the arrival of some group of Church dignitaries from one or other of the seven principal parishes of Venice, gorgeous in robes of high festival and displaying the choicest of treasures from sacristies munificently endowed, as was meet for an ecclesiastical body to whom belonged one half of the area of Venice, with wealth proportionate.
Frequent delegations from the lively crowd of the populace--flashing with repartee, seemly or unseemly, as they gathered close to the door just under the marble slab with its solemn appeal to reverence, "Rispettati la Casa di Dio"--penetrated into the Frari to see where the more pleasure could be gotten, as also to claim their right to be there; for this pageant was for the people also, which they did not forget, and their good-humored ripple of comment was tolerant, even when most critical. But outside one could have all of the festa that was worth seeing, with the sunshine added,--the glorious sunshine of this November day, cold enough to fill the air with sparkle,--and the boys, at least, were sure to return to the free enjoyment impossible within.
A group of young nobles, in silken hose and velvet mantles, were met with ecstatic approval and sallies deftly personal. Since the beginning of the Council of Trent, which was still sitting, philosophy had become the mode in Venice, and had grown to be a topic of absorbing interest by no means confined to Churchmen; and young men of fashion took courses of training in the latest and most intellectual accomplishment.
Confraternities of every order were arriving in stately processions, their banners borne before them by gondoliers gaudy and awkward in sleazy white tunics, with brilliant cotton sashes--habiliments which possessed a singular power of relieving these sun-browned sons of the lagoon of every vestige of their native grace. On such days of Church festival--and these alone--they might have been mistaken for peasants of some prosaic land, instead of the graceful, free-born Venetians that they were, as, with no hint of their natural rhythm of motion, they filed in cramped and orderly procession through the avenue that opened to them in the crowd to the door of the church, where they disappeared behind the great leather curtain.
It was a great day for the