Messer Marco Polo | Page 8

And from Zeila,
Berbera, and Shehri came balsam and frankincense. . .

And that was Venice, and Marco Polo a young man. And now it's only
a town like any other town but for its churches and canals. There's
many a town has ghosts, but none the ghosts that Venice has; not Rome
itself, or Tara of the kings.
"Once did she hold," Randall quoted, "the gorgeous East in fee; And
was the safeguard of the West; the worth Of Venice did not fall below
her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty. She was a maiden city,
bright and free; No guile seduced, no force could violate; And, when
she took unto herself a mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea!"
Time is the greatest rogue of all. Not all the arrows of Attila can do the
damage of a trickle of sand in an hour-glass! Tyre and Sidon, Carthage,
ancient Babylon, and Venice, queen of them all.
I am describing Venice to you for this reason. You might now stand
where Troy's walls once were and say to yourself: "Was this where
Helen walked with her little son? Was this where the loveliest face of
ages wept?" And a chill of doubt would come on you, and you would
think, "I've been wasting my sorrow and wasting my love, for it was all
nothing but an old tale made up in a minstrel's head."
And sometime in Venice, after your dinner in a hotel, you'd go out for a
while in a BARCA, that would have no more romance to it nor the bark
a gillie would row, and you salmon-fishing on a cold, blustery day, and
you would feel disappointed, you having come so far, and you'd say: "It
was a grand story surely, and bravely did it pass the winter evening; but
wasn't old Malachi of the Long Glen the liar of the world!"
I wouldn't have you saying that, and I dead. In all I'm telling you, I'd
have you to know there's not a ha'porth of lie.
CHAPTER III
And so Marco Polo went into the wine-shop to see and hear the strange
foreign people.
It was a dark, long room, very high, full of shadows between the

flaming torches on the wall. At one side of it was a great fire burning,
for all it was the first night of spring. At one end of it were the great
barrels of liquor for the thirsty customers; black beer for the English
and the Irish, grand, hairy stuff with great foam to it, and brown beer
for the Germans; and there was white wine there for the French people,
and red wine for the Italians, asquebaugh for the Scots, and rum from
the sugar cane for such as had cold in their bones. There was all kind of
drink there in the brass-bound barrels -- drink would make you mad
and drink would make you merry, drink would put heart in a timid man
and drink would make fighting men peaceful as pigeons; and drink that
would make you forget trouble -- all in the brass-bound barrels at the
end of the room. And pleasant, fat little men were roaming around
serving the varied liquor in little silver cups, and fine Venetian glasses
for the wine, and in broad-bellied drinking-pots that would hold more
than a quart.
And there was such a babel of language as was never heard but in one
place before.
Some of the drinkers were dicing and shouting as they won, and
grumbling and cursing when they lost. And some were singing. And
some were dancing to the Irish pipes. And there was a knot around the
Indian conjurer.
But there was one man by himself at a table. And him being so silent,
you'd think he was shouting for attention. He was so restful against the
great commotion, you'd know he was a great man. You might turn your
back on him, and you'd know he was there, though he never even
whispered nor put out a finger. A fat, pleasant, close-coupled man he
was, in loose, green clothes, with gold brocade on them. And there
were two big gold ear-rings in his lobes. He smoked a wee pipe with
the bowl half-ways up it. The pipe was silver and all stem, and the bowl
no bigger than a ten-cent piece. His shoulders were very powerful, so
you'd know he was a man you should be polite to, and out of that chest
of his a great shout could come. He might have been a working-man,
only, when he fingered his pipe, you'd see his hands were as well kept
as a lord's lady's, fine as silk and polished to a degree. And you'd think

maybe a pleasant poet, which is a