United States or Saint Pierre and Miquelon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Presently, as he turned a corner and shot his hearse into a dismal ditch between two long rows of towering, untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier began to sing, true to the traditions of his race. I stood it a little while.
It has the boldness of a plunging bird and the regularity of a pendulum. Sometimes, as you see this movement in profile, in a gondola that passes you see, as you recline on your own low cushions, the arching body of the gondolier lifted up against the sky it has a kind of nobleness which suggests an image on a Greek frieze.
They were familiar with his simple creed, to hope all things and leave the rest to the Madonna. And of Nanni's experiences and beliefs they knew nothing. During the week when he had served them as gondolier he had never volunteered a remark and he had given only the shortest possible answers when addressed. Yet upon the mind of May, at least, his personality had made a strong impression.
Here and there some gondolier from the islands, sheepishly conscious of the brilliant fazzoletto, or the string of beads he had just bought in the tempting booths of the old, wooden Rialto, hung on the outskirts of the crowd before Sér Gobbo, to catch from the gossip of the more lettered ones about him the details of the morrow's festa which he might not read for himself; for the knowledge would make him the oracle of his little circle in Burano or at least with Giovanna, when he should bestow his silken trifle for the morrow's splendor.
The familiar voice of the gondolier, striking across his meditations, had a singular effect upon the Colonel. It made him aware that this was a different Venice from the one which Vittorio had been wont to show him. What had become of the pensive quality of the atmosphere, the brooding melancholy of its impression upon him?
The continual practice of assisting richer people than oneself to do things that oneself never does except for a livelihood would seem to engender a sardonic cast of mind. Where the gondolier chiefly differs from, say, the London cabman, is in his gift of speech. Cabmen can be caustic, sceptical, critical, censorious, but they do occasionally stop for breath.
It is true that the gondolier loves best of everything a clamorous quarrel, carried on with the canal between him and his antagonist; but next to this, he loves to spend his leisure at the ferry in talking of eating and of money, and he does not differ from many of his fellow- citizens in choice of topics.
The Calabrian was not slow to answer; and in a few moments the padrone and his two visitors were in close and secret conference. "I have brought one here who will be likely to put good Venetian sequins into thy pocket, caro," observed the gondolier, when the preliminaries of discourse had been properly observed.
With some of these loungers Müller exchanged a nod or a few words as we passed along the platform; but shook hands cordially with a bronzed, stalwart man, dressed like a Venetian gondolier in the frontispiece to a popular ballad, with white trousers, blue jacket, anchor buttons, red sash, gold ear-rings, and great silver buckles in his shoes.
"Where?" asked the old servant. "Where you will." The gondolier divined his master's wishes, and by many windings brought him at last into the Canareggio, to the door of a wonderful palazzo, which you will admire when you see Venice, for no traveler ever fails to stop in front of those windows, each of a different design, vying with each other in fantastic ornament, with balconies like lace-work; to study the corners finishing in tall and slender twisted columns, the string-courses wrought by so inventive a chisel that no two shapes are alike in the arabesques on the stones.
Word Of The Day