-floored court; our bedroom
without lock or latch and with a mirror cracked from side to side like
the Lady of Shalott's, though for other reasons; the dining-room with
earthen floor, walls decorated by a modern-primitive fresco of the
_padrone_ holding a plate of _maccheroni_ in one hand and a flask of
_Lachrima Christi_ in the other, a central column spreading out branches
like a tree and bearing for fruit row upon row of still unopened
bottles, a door free to all the stray monks and beggars of Pompeii--to
all the fowls too, including the gorgeous peacock that strolled in after
its evening walk with the young Swiss artist on the flat roof of the inn
where, together, they went before dinner to watch the sunset.

Throughout dinner, at the head of the long table where we sat with the
Swiss artist and an old German professor of art and an older Italian
archaeologist, the talk, as at the _Nazionale_, was of art, so that it
also, like _Pulcinello_, crying his jests through the window or at our
elbow, made me feel at home. While we helped ourselves from that amazing
dish into which you stuck a fork and pulled out a bit of chicken or
duck or beef or mutton or sausage; while the old professor and
archaeologist absent-mindedly stretched a hand to the column behind them,
and plucked from it bottle after bottle of wine; while the beggars
whined at the open door, and the monks begged at our side, and
_Pulcinello_ capered and jested and sang; while the American tourists at
the other end of the table deplored the disorder and noise until we sent
them the longest and most expensive way up Vesuvius to get rid of them;
while the fowls fought for the crumbs;--the talk was still of art and
again of art, in the end as in the beginning. I might not understand
half of it, coming as it did in a confused torrent of German, Italian,
French, and English, but the nights at the _Sole_, like the nights at
the _Nazionale_, made this one truth clear: that nothing matters in the
world, that nothing exists in the world, save art.

III

NIGHTS

IN VENICE

IN VENICE

I

We reached Venice at an unearthly hour of a March morning and the first
thing I knew of it somebody was shouting, "_Venezia!_" and I was
startled from a sound sleep, and porters were scrambling for our bags,
and we were stumbling after them, up a long platform, between a crowd of
men in hotel caps yelling: "_Danieli!_" "_Britannia!_" and I hardly
heard what, out i