Nights: Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties

h the dawn, everything it ought to have been the morning before, and I had no desire to move from a room that looked down upon the Riva, and

d to my day of work could not seem possible. The only question was upon which of the many little trattorie and cafés in Venice our choice should fall, and this was decided for us by Duveneck, whom we ran across that same morning in the Piazza, and who told us that he slept in the Casa Kirsch, dined at the Antica Panada, and drank coffee at the Orientale, which was as much as to say that

by Joseph

K DU

the Piazza and, happy to do whatever Duveneck did, we went with him to the Quadri or Florian's; or when it stormed, as it can in March, and all day from my window I had looked down upon the dripping Riva and the wind-waved Lagoon and lines of fishing boats moored to the banks, and no living creatures except the gulls, and the little white woolly dogs on the fishing boats covered with sails, and the

and the old cook ate at a bare table in the middle, and the maid-servant sat on a stool by the fire with her plate in her lap, and the man-servant stood in the corner with his plate on the dresser. Having thus expressed their respect for class distinctions, they felt no further obligation, but they all helped equally in co

corner from the Piazza, but I never rounded that corner alone without becoming involved in a labyrinth of little calli. Nor would I attempt to say why the artists chose it and why, because they did, we should, for it was then the dirtiest, noisiest, and most crowded trattoria in Ven

her occasion, got as far as the silver before he was held up by the severe eye of his hostess. Probably it was because nobody could hear what anybody said that everybody talked together. I cannot recall a moment when stray musicians were not strumming on guitars and mandolins, and the oyster man was not shrieking: "Ostreche! Fresche! Ostreche!" though nobody paid t

From Minestra to fruit and cheese, the Venetian in a few minutes' walk may pick up a substantial dinner and carry it to the rooms or the street corner where it is his habit to dine. Vance, the painter, who sometimes favoured us at our table with his company, went further and, after he had taken off his coat and put on his hat and emptied his pockets, seldom troubled the establishment to provide him with more than a glass, a plate, a knife, and a fork, for the price of a quinto of Verona. His first, and as it turned out his last, m

ishing from the door and was made to pay for it. After that his leisure was spent in trying to make us pay him back and he would appear at our bedroom door, or waylay us on the Riva, or follow us into the Orientale, or run us down in the Piazza, demanding the