Venetian Life | Page 5

to give offence. The government is also
very strict in its control of the military. I have never seen the slightest
affront offered by a soldier to a citizen; and there is evidently no
personal ill-will engendered. The Austrians are simply hated as the
means by which an alien and despotic government is imposed upon a

people believing themselves born for freedom and independence. This
hatred, then, is a feeling purely political, and there is political
machinery by which it is kept in a state of perpetual tension.
The Comitato Veneto is a body of Venetians residing within the
province and abroad, who have charge of the Italian interests, and who
work in every way to promote union with the dominions of Victor
Emanuel. They live for the most part in Venice, where they have a
secret press for the publication of their addresses and proclamations,
and where they remain unknown to the police, upon whose spies they
maintain an espionage. On every occasion of interest, the Committee is
sure to make its presence felt; and from time to time persons find
themselves in the possession of its printed circulars, stamped with the
Committee's seal; but no one knows how or whence they came.
Constant arrests of suspected persons are made, but no member of the
Committee has yet been identified; and it is said that the mysterious
body has its agents in every department of the government, who keep it
informed of inimical action. The functions of the Committee are
multiplied and various. It takes care that on all patriotic anniversaries
(such as that of the establishment of the Republic in 1848, and that of
the union of the Italian States under Victor Emanuel in 1860) salutes
shall be fired in Venice, and a proper number of red, white, and green
lights displayed. It inscribes revolutionary sentiments on the walls; and
all attempts on the part of the Austrians to revive popular festivities are
frustrated by the Committee, which causes petards to be exploded in
the Place of St. Mark, and on the different promenades. Even the
churches are not exempt from these demonstrations: I was present at
the Te Deum performed on the Emperor's birthday, in St. Mark's, when
the moment of elevating the host was signalized by the bursting of a
petard in the centre of the cathedral. All this, which seems of
questionable utility, and worse than questionable taste, is approved by
the fiercer of the Italianissimi, and though possibly the strictness of the
patriotic discipline in which the members of the Committee keep their
fellow- citizens may gall some of them, yet any public demonstration
of content, such as going to the opera, or to the Piazza while the
Austrian band plays, is promptly discontinued at a warning from the
Committee. It is, of course, the Committee's business to keep the world

informed of public feeling in Venice, and of each new act of Austrian
severity. Its members are inflexible men, whose ability has been as
frequently manifested as their patriotism.
The Venetians are now, therefore, a nation in mourning, and have, as I
said, disused all their former pleasures and merry-makings. Every class,
except a small part of the resident titled nobility (a great part of the
nobility is in either forced or voluntary exile), seems to be
comprehended by this feeling of despondency and suspense. The poor
of the city formerly found their respite and diversion in the numerous
holidays which fell in different parts of the year, and which, though
religious in their general character, were still inseparably bound up in
their origin with ideas of patriotism and national glory. Such of these
holidays as related to the victories and pride of the Republic naturally
ended with her fall. Many others, however, survived this event in all
their splendor, but there is not one celebrated now as in other days. It is
true that the churches still parade their pomps in the Piazza on the day
of Corpus Christi; it is true that the bridges of boats are still built across
the Canalazzo to the church of Our Lady of Salvation, and across the
Canal of the Giudecca to the temple of the Redeemer, on the respective
festivals of these churches; but the concourse is always meagre, and the
mirth is forced and ghastly. The Italianissimi have so far imbued the
people with their own ideas and feelings, that the recurrence of the
famous holidays now merely awakens them to lamentations over the
past and vague longings for the future.
As for the carnival, which once lasted six months of the year, charming
hither all the idlers of the world by its peculiar splendor and variety of
pleasure, it does not, as I said, any longer exist. It is dead, and its
shabby, wretched