United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I ran downstairs, stepped out across the moored line of gondolas, took up a hook, and reaching over gently pulled Enrico's gondola over so I could step aboard. Mona Lisa was crooning a plaintive love-song and her gondolier was coming in occasionally with bars of melodious bass.
There were facchini those doers of nondescript smallest services, quarreling amiably to pass the time, springing forward for custom as the gondolas neared the steps; gransieri the licensed traghetto beggars, ragged and picturesque, pushing past with their long, crooked poles, under pretence of drawing the gondolas to shore; one or two women from the islands, filling the moments with swift, declamatory speech until the gondola of Giambattista or of Jacopo should close the colloquy; an older peasant, tranquilly kneeling to the Madonna of the traghetto, amid the clatter, while steaming greasy odors from her housewifely basket of Venetian dainties mount slowly, like some travesty of incense, and cloud the humble shrine.
To-day the people were coming in throngs, as to a festa, on foot from under the Portico di Zen, across the little marble bridge which spanned the narrow canal; on foot also from the network of narrow paved lanes, or calle, which led off into a densely populated quarter; for to-day the people had free right of entrance, equally with those others who came in gondolas, liveried and otherwise, from more distant and aristocratic neighborhoods.
"Castaldi replied, 'No, no; our own gondolas had both gone off to find and bring a leech, and as your father was urgently wanting you, I hailed the first passing boat. Make haste, dears, your father is longing for you. "So they got on board at once, and the gondola rowed swiftly away.
"What was it?" asked Strozzi, breathless with expectation. "The Canale Grande was so crowded with splendid gondolas that it was hard to say what had attracted the marchioness's attention. But after a moment or two of waiting, Mademoiselle Victorine saw that one of the gondolas was stationary just opposite to the palace." "Whose gondola? Who was in it?" cried Strozzi, imperiously.
And when one translates our own difficulties over cars and cabs at the end of a performance into the terms of gondolas and canals, one can imagine how long it must be before the theatre is emptied. The Fenice is also remarkable among the world's theatres for its size, holding, as it does, three thousand persons. It is peculiar furthermore in being open only for a few weeks in the spring.
"No, I'm sure he would not like the gondolas," admitted Jean smiling faintly, "because Hannah and I tried him on the swan-boats in the Public Garden and he hated them; he just barked and snarled all the time, and wriggled about so in my arms that he nearly went overboard and carried me with him." "That's just it! That is precisely the way he would feel on shipboard. Now my plan is this.
Wherever the eye turned, it beheld a vast multitude at doorways, on the rivas, and even on the roofs. Some of the spectators occupied scaffoldings erected at favorable points along the sides of the canal; and the patrician ladies did not disdain to leave their palaces, and, entering their gondolas, lose themselves among the infinite number of the boats....
On the 25th of June the American General Schuyler, commanding the Northern Department, wrote: "We have happily such a naval superiority on Lake Champlain, that I have a confident hope the enemy will not appear upon it this campaign, especially as our force is increasing by the addition of gondolas, two nearly finished.
From Beppo I quote elsewhere some stanzas relating to Giorgione; and here are two which bear upon the "hansom of Venice," written when that vehicle was as fresh to Byron as it is to some of us: Byron's next visit to Venice was in 1818, and it was then that he set up state and became a Venetian lion. He had now his gondolas, his horses on the Lido, a box at the Opera, many servants.
Word Of The Day