Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo--the
bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty
it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the
dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen, where
the black-capped little _padrone_ and the gigantic white-capped
chef are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of
inspecting the larder--fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables,
several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild
ducks, chickens, woodcock, &c., according to the season. We select
our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds
beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of
it. Artists of many nationalities and divers ages frequent this house;
and the talk arising from the several little tables, turns upon points
of interest and beauty in the life and landscape of Venice. There
can be no difference of opinion about the excellence of
the _cuisine_, or about the reasonable charges of this
_trattoria_. A soup of lentils, followed by boiled turbot or
fried soles, beefsteak or mutton cutlets, tordi or beccafichi, with
a salad, the whole enlivened with good red wine or Florio's Sicilian
Marsala from the cask, costs about four francs. Gas is unknown in the
establishment. There is no noise, no bustle, no brutality of waiters,
no _ahurissement_ of tourists. And when dinner is done, we can
sit awhile over our cigarette and coffee, talking until the night
invites us to a stroll along the Zattere or a _giro_ in the
gondola.

IX.--NIGHT IN VENICE

Night in Venice! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, unless it be in
winter among the high Alps. But the nights of Venice and the nights of
the mountains are too different in kind to be compared.

There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising, before
day is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of gold on the
lagoon which black boats traverse with the glow-worm lamp upon their
prow; ascending the cloudless sky and silvering the domes of the
Salute; pouring vitreous sheen upon the red lights of the Piazzetta;
flooding the Grand Canal, and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal
whiteness; piercing but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of
_rio_ linked with _rio_, through which we wind in light and
shadow, to reach once more the level glories and the luminous expanse
of heaven beyond the Misericordia.

This is the melodrama of Venetian m