XXVIII
Venice was flooded with moonlight. The long line of palaces down the Canal Grande shone back from the breast of the water, starred with lights, repeated again and again in the rippling surface.
A ceaseless melody filled the air, braided of sounds familiar only to this magic city—echoes of laughter from balconies high in air, silvery tintinnabulations falling like drippings of water from speeding oars, franker bursts of merriment from the open windows of the palaces, low murmured tones of lovers in content from gliding gondolas, hoarse shouts of quick imperious orders from gondoliers to offending gondoliers, as they passed—apostrophes to liquid names of guardian saints, too melodious for denunciations, hurled back with triple expletives and forgotten the next moment in friendly parsiflage; here and there a strain of ordered music, in serenade, from a group of friendly gondolas swaying only with the tranquil movement of the water; or the mysterious tone of a violin, uttering a soul prayer meant for some single listener, which yet steals tremblingly forth upon the night air—more passionate, more beautiful and true than that other human voice which breaks the quiet of a neighboring calle with some monotonous love song of the people.
And far away, perhaps, in the quainter squares of the more primitive island villages—in Burano or Chioggia—before the Duomo, some reader lies at full length in the brilliant moonlight under the banner of San Marco, his \"Boccaccio\" open before him, repeating in a half-chant, monotonous and droning, some favorite tale from the well-worn pages to listeners who pause in groups in their evening stroll and linger until another story is begun; this time it is some strophe from the \"Gerusalemme,\" to which a passing gondolier may chant the answering strain—for this is the very poem of the people, echoing familiarly from lip to lip, and tales from the Tasso are not seldom wrought into the ebony carvings of their barks. Meanwhile the younger men and maidens, on a neighboring fondamenta, keep step to the music of some strolling player who lives, content, on the trifling harvest of these moonlight festivities.
In the great Piazza of San Marco, with its hundreds of lights and its hurrying throng, life is gayer than in the day. Crowds come and go under the arcades, loiter at the tables closely set before the brilliant cafes, or stroll with laughter and snatches of song and free Venetian banter where there is less restraint, up and down the broad space of the Piazza, between the colonnade and the burnished Eastern magnificence of San Marco, beyond the reach of the yellow lamp flames—their laughing faces grotesque and weird in the white glare of the moon. But under the shadow of the Broglio and those great columns of the Ducal Palace there are only slow-moving figures here and there, wrapped in cloaks, and dark under the low, unlighted arches, talking in undertones which even the watchful Lion—so near, so cunning—does not always overhear.
But in the calles, half in moonlight and half in shadow, night wears a more poetic air of mystery and quiet; and if a fear but come in passing some dread spot of tragic memory, a gentle Virgin at every turning, with a dingy, flickering flame beneath her image, is waiting to grant her grace—for is not Venice the Virgin City? And on the splendid palaces in the broad canals the watching Madonna stands glorified in exquisite sculpture and cunningest blendings of color,—ofttimes a crown of light above her, or rays of stars, symbolic, beneath her feet,—casting her benediction far out on the water, which, ever in motion, repeats it in shimmering, widening circles—all-embracing—in which the stars of heaven shine, tangled and confused with these stars of a paradise in which earth has so large a part.
Yet in the glory and charm of this Venetian night how should there be space for sorrow or thought of care, or cause for the tears which brimmed the eyes of the Lady Marina, as she sat in her sculptured balcony at the bend of the Canal Grande, watching for the coming of Marcantonio, who lingered late at the Senate when every moment was precious to her!