say that it is a city of the poor. Where the poor
lived in the great days when the palaces were occupied by the rich, one
cannot quite understand, since the palace is the staple building; but
there is no doubt as to where they live now: they live everywhere. The
number of palaces which are wholly occupied by one family must be
infinitesimal; the rest are tenements, anything but model buildings,
rookeries. Venice has no aristocratic quarter as other cities have. The
poor establish themselves either in a palace or as near it as possible.

I have referred to the girls in their black shawls or scialli. They
remain in the memory as one of Venice's most distinguished possessions.
A handsome young private gondolier in white linen with a coloured scarf,
bending to the oar and thrusting his boat forward with muscular strokes,
is a delight to watch; but he is without mystery. These girls have grace
and mystery too. They are so foreign, so slender and straight, so sad.
Their faces are capable of animation, but their prevailing expression is
melancholy. Why is this? Is it because they know how secondary a place
woman holds in this city of well-nourished, self-satisfied men? Is it
that they know that a girl's life is so brief: one day as supple and
active as they are now and the next a crone? For it is one of the
tragedies that the Venetian atmosphere so rapidly ages women.

But in their prime the Venetian girls in the black shawls are
distinguished indeed, and there was not a little sagacity in the remark
to me by an observer who said that, were they wise, all women would
adopt a uniform. One has often thought this, in London, when a nurse in
blue or grey passes refreshingly along a pavement made bizarre by
expensive and foolish fashions; one realizes it even more in Venice.

Most of these girls have dark or black hair. The famous red hair of
Venetian women is rarely seen out of pictures.

Round and round goes the chattering contented crowd, while every table
at each of the four cafes, Florian's and the Aurora, the Quadri and the
Ortes Rosa, swells the noise. Now and then the music, or the ordinary
murmur of the Square in the long intervals, is broken by the noisy
rattle of a descending shop shutter, or the hour is struck by the
Merceria clock's bronze giants; now and then a pigeon crosses the sky
and shows luminous where the light strikes its breast; now and then a
feather flutters from a window ledge, great bats flit up and do