A Golden Book of Venice | Page 2

the Frati Minori of the convent to which
it belonged--just across the narrow lane at the side of the church--were
both rich and generous, and many of its gifts and furnishings 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