ten 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 turn