is loafer's privilege I have not
obtained, and it would be interesting to learn by what authority he is
there, for he has no uniform and he accepts any sum you give him. If all
the hangers-on of the Roman Catholic Church, in Italy alone, who perform
these parasitical functions and stand between man and God, could be
gathered together, what a huge and horrible army it would be!

CHAPTER IV

THE PIAZZA AND THE CAMPANILE

The heart of Venice--Old-fashioned music--Teutonic invaders--The
honeymooners--True republicanism--A city of the poor--The black
shawls--A brief triumph--Red hair--A band-night incident--The
pigeons of the Piazza--The two Procuratie--A royal palace--The
shopkeepers--Florian's--Great names--Venetian restaurants--Little
fish--The old campanile--A noble resolve--The new campanile--The angel
vane--The rival campanili--The welcome lift--The bells--Venice from the
Campanile.

S. Mark's Square, or the Piazza, is more than the centre of Venice: to a
large extent it is Venice. Good Venetians when they die flit evermore
among its arcades.

No other city has so representative a heart. On the four musical nights
here--afternoons in the winter--the Piazza draws like a magnet. That
every stranger is here, you may be sure, and most Venetian men. Some sit
outside Florian's and the other cafes; others walk round and round the
bandstand; others pause fascinated beside the musicians. And so it has
been for centuries, and will be. New ideas and fashions come slowly into
this city, where one does quite naturally what one's father and
grandfather did; and a good instance of such contented conservatism is
to be found in the music offered to these contented crowds, for they are
still true to Verdi, Wagner, and Rossini, and with reluctance are
experiments made among the newer men.

In the daytime the population of the Piazza is more foreign than
Venetian. In fact the only Venetians to be seen are waiters,
photographers, and guides, the knots of errand boys watching the
artists, and, I might add, the pigeons. But at night Venice claims it,
although the foreigner is there too. It is amusing to sit at a table on
the outside edge of Florian's great quadrangle of chairs and watch the
nationalities, the Venetians, the Germans, the Austrians, and the
Anglo-Saxons, as they move steadily round and round. Venice is, of
course, the paradise both of Germans and Austrians. Every day in the
spring and summer one or two steamers