was not only there, however,
that I watched him; the relations he had entertained with the new had
even a livelier interest. His own country after all had had most of his
life, and his muse, as they said at that time, was essentially American.
That was originally what I had loved him for: that at a period when
our native land was nude and crude and provincial, when the famous
"atmosphere" it is supposed to lack was not even missed, when literature
was lonely there and art and form almost impossible, he had found means
to live and write like one of the first; to be free and general and not
at all afraid; to feel, understand, and express everything.

V

I was seldom at home in the evening, for when I attempted to occupy
myself in my apartments the lamplight brought in a swarm of noxious
insects, and it was too hot for closed windows. Accordingly I spent the
late hours either on the water (the moonlight of Venice is famous), or
in the splendid square which serves as a vast forecourt to the strange
old basilica of Saint Mark. I sat in front of Florian's cafe, eating
ices, listening to music, talking with acquaintances: the traveler will
remember how the immense cluster of tables and little chairs stretches
like a promontory into the smooth lake of the Piazza. The whole place,
of a summer's evening, under the stars and with all the lamps, all the
voices and light footsteps on marble (the only sounds of the arcades
that enclose it), is like an open-air saloon dedicated to cooling drinks
and to a still finer degustation--that of the exquisite impressions
received during the day. When I did not prefer to keep mine to myself
there was always a stray tourist, disencumbered of his Baedeker, to
discuss them with, or some domesticated painter rejoicing in the return
of the season of strong effects. The wonderful church, with its
low domes and bristling embroideries, the mystery of its mosaic and
sculpture, looking ghostly in the tempered gloom, and the sea breeze
passed between the twin columns of the Piazzetta, the lintels of a door
no longer guarded, as gently as if a rich curtain were swaying there. I
used sometimes on these occasions to think of the Misses Bordereau and
of the pity of their being shut up in apartments which in the Venetian
July even Venetian vastness did not prevent from being stuffy. Their
life seemed miles away from the life of the Piazza, and no doubt it was
really too late to make the austere Julia