At first the carnival left me in peace, but it kept growing, and with its elemental force it was bound to draw everyone in.
Nothing is too nonsensical to happen when St Vitus's Dance takes hold of a whole population in fancy dress. Hundreds, perhaps m9re, of mauve dominoes were sitting in the big hall of a restaurant; they had sailed across the Square in a gilded ship drawn by oxen (everything that walks on dry land and with four legs is a luxury and rarity in Venice) , and now they were eating and drinking. One of the guests suggested a curiosity to entertain them, and undertook to furnish it; that curiosity was myself.
The gentleman, who scarcely knew me, ran to me at the Albergo Danieli, and begged and besought me to go with him for a minute to the masqueraders. It was stupid to go, and stupid to make a fuss. I went, and I was greeted with 'Evviva!' and full glasses. I bowed in all directions ahd talked nonsense, the
'Evvivas' were more hearty than ever; some shouted: 'Evviva 1 7 H. is thinking of the needle rifle with a firing-pin. invented by J. N.
\"On Dreyes ( 1 787- 1 867 ) , which was breech-loading. Although the needle rifle was adopted as a weapon by the Prussian army in 1 8+ 1 , it was only in Bismarck's time. in the middle of the 1 860s. that it began to be widely used. In the Austro-Prussian war of 1 866 the needle rifle gave the Prussian troops a decisive superiority over the Austrian army. ( A .S.) I S A year ago I saw the carnival at !\:ice. "'hat a fearful differenceto say nothing of the soldiers fully armed and the gendarmes and the commissaires of police with their scarves . . . the conduct of the people themseh·es, not of the tourists, amazed me. Drunken masqueraders were swearing and fightinf; with people standing at their gates. while pierrots were ,·iolently knocked down into the mud.
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
6 1 2
l'amico d i Garibaldi,' others drank t o the poela russo! Afraid that the mauve masks would drink to me as the pittore slavo, scultore e maestro, I withdrew to the Piazza San Marco.
In the Square there was a thick wall of people. I leaned against a pilaster, proud of the title of poet; beside me stood my conductor who had carried out the dominoes' mandat d'amener.
'My God, how lovely she is!' slipped out of my mouth as a very young lady made her way through the crowd. My guide seized me without a single word and at once set me before her. 'This is that Russian,' my Polish count19 began. 'Are you willing to give me your hand after that?' I interrupted. She smiled, held out her hand and said in Russian that she had long wanted to see me, and looked at me so takingly that I pressed her hand once more and follo\",;ed her with my eyes so long as she was in sight.
'A blossom, torn away by the hurricane, washed by the tide of blood from its Lithuanian fields!' I thought, looking after her.
'Your beauty shines for strangers now.'
I left the Square and went to meet Garibaldi. On the water everything was still . . . the noise of the carnival came in discordant snatches. The stern, frov.,'lling masses of the houses pressed closer and closer upon the boat and looked at it with their lanterns; at an entry the rudder splashes, the steel boathook gleams, the gondolier shouts: 'Apri-sia state' . . . and again the water draws m quietly into a by-lane, and suddenly the houses move apart again, and we are in the Grand Canal
. . . 'Feyovia, Signoye,' says the gondolier, mispronouncing his r's, as all the town docs. Garibaldi had stayed at Bologna and had not arrived. The cngine that was going to Florence groaned, awaiting the whistle. 'I had better go too,' I thought; 'to-morrow I shall be bored with the masks. To-morrow I shall not see my Slav beauty . . . .'
The city gave Garibaldi a brilliant rt>ception. The Grand Canal was almost transformed into a continuous bridge; to get into our boat when WE' set out we had to cross dozens of others.
The government and its hangcrs-on did everything possible to show that they were cross "vith Garibaldi . If Prince Amadeo had been ordert>d by his father to show all those petty indelicacies, all that vulgar pique, how was it that the Italian boy's heart did not speak out, that he did not for the moment reconcilt> the city with thc king and the king's son with his conscience? Why, Ga1·ibaldi had madl· them a prescnt of the crowns of the Two Sicilies!
l !l Chotomski . ( ii .S . ) Tlw lady was a Pole, too. ( R . )
The Later Years
613
I found Garibaldi neither ill nor any older since our meeting in London in 1 864. But he was depressed, worried and not talkative with the Venetians who were presented to him next day. His real retinue was the masses of the people ; he grew more lively at Chioggia, where the boatmen and fishermen were expecting him.
Mingling with the crowd he said to those poor, simple people:
'How happy and at home I am with you, how deeply I feel that I was born of working folk and have been a working man ; the misfortunes o f our country tore m e away from my peaceful occupations. I too grew up on the sea-coast and know the work. of each one of you. . . .'
A murmur of delight drowned the words of the former boatman and the people rushed upon him.
'Give a name to my new-born child,' cried a \voman.
'Bless mine.'
'And mine,' shouted the others.
B Y Z A N T I U \1
HAVE DOUBTS about the future of the Latin peoples. I doubt their fertility in the future; they like the process of revolutions, but are bored by progress when they have attained it. They like to move headlong towards it without reaching it.
Of course, if the terrestrial globe does not crack, and if a comet does not pass too close and turn our atmosphere red-hot, Italy in the future too will be Italy, the land of blue sky and blue sea, of elegant contours, of a beautiful, attractive race of people, musical and artistic by nature. And of course, all the military and civilian remue-menage, and glory and disgrace, fallen frontiers, and rising Assemblies will all be reflected in her life; she will change (and is changing) from clerical despotism to bourgeois parliamentarianism, from a cheap mode of living to an expensive one, from discomfort to comfort, and so on and so on. But that is not much, and it Joes not take one far. There is another fine country whose shores are washed hy the same blue sea, the home of a fine breed of men, valiant and stern, living beyond the Pyrenees; it has no internal enemy, it has an Assembly, it has an outward unity . . . but for all that, what is Spain'
Nations are of strong vitality; they can lie fallow for ages, and again under favourable circumstances prove once more to be full of sap and vigour. But do they rise up the same as they were?