Venetian Life | Page 6

ghost is a party of beggars, hideously dressed out
with masks and horns and women's habits, who go from shop to shop
droning forth a stupid song, and levying tribute upon the shopkeepers.
The crowd through which these melancholy jesters pass, regards them
with a pensive scorn, and goes about its business untempted by the
delights of carnival.
All other social amusements have shared in greater or less degree the

fate of the carnival. At some houses conversazioni are still held, and it
is impossible that balls and parties should not now and then be given.
But the greater number of the nobles and the richer of the professional
classes lead for the most part a life of listless seclusion, and attempts to
lighten the general gloom and heaviness in any way are not looked
upon with favor. By no sort of chance are Austrians, or Austriacanti
ever invited to participate in the pleasures of Venetian society.
As the social life of Italy, and especially of Venice, was in great part to
be once enjoyed at the theatres, at the caffè, and at the other places of
public resort, so is its absence now to be chiefly noted in those places.
No lady of perfect standing among her people goes to the opera, and
the men never go in the boxes, but if they frequent the theatre at all,
they take places in the pit, in order that the house may wear as empty
and dispirited a look as possible. Occasionally a bomb is exploded in
the theatre, as a note of reminder, and as means of keeping away such
of the nobles as are not enemies of the government. As it is less easy
for the Austrians to participate in the diversion of comedy, it is a less
offence to attend the comedy, though even this is not good
Italianissimism. In regard to the caffè there is a perfectly understood
system by which the Austrians go to one, and the Italians to another;
and Florian's, in the Piazza, seems to be the only common ground in the
city on which the hostile forces consent to meet. This is because it is
thronged with foreigners of all nations, and to go there is not thought a
demonstration of any kind. But the other caffè in the Piazza do not
enjoy Florian's cosmopolitan immunity, and nothing would create more
wonder in Venice than to see an Austrian officer at the Specchi, unless,
indeed, it were the presence of a good Italian at the Quadri.
It is in the Piazza that the tacit demonstration of hatred and discontent
chiefly takes place. Here, thrice a week, in winter and summer, the
military band plays that exquisite music for which the Austrians are
famous. The selections are usually from Italian operas, and the
attraction is the hardest of all others for the music-loving Italian to
resist. But he does resist it. There are some noble ladies who have not
entered the Piazza while the band was playing there, since the fall of
the Republic of 1849; and none of good standing for patriotism has

attended the concerts since the treaty of Villafranca in '59. Until very
lately, the promenaders in the Piazza were exclusively foreigners, or
else the families of such government officials as were obliged to show
themselves there. Last summer, however, before the Franco-Italian
convention for the evacuation of Rome revived the drooping hopes of
the Venetians, they had begun visibly to falter in their long endurance.
But this was, after all, only a slight and transient weakness. As a
general thing, now, they pass from the Piazza when the music begins,
and walk upon the long quay at the sea-side of the Ducal Palace; or if
they remain in the Piazza they pace up and down under the arcades on
either side; for Venetian patriotism makes a delicate distinction
between listening to the Austrian band in the Piazza and hearing it
under the Procuratie, forbidding the first and permitting the last. As
soon as the music ceases the Austrians disappear, and the Italians return
to the Piazza.
But since the catalogue of demonstrations cannot be made full, it need
not be made any longer. The political feeling in Venice affects her
prosperity in a far greater degree than may appear to those who do not
understand how large an income the city formerly derived from making
merry. The poor have to lament not merely the loss of their holidays,
but also of the fat employments and bountiful largess which these
occasions threw into their hands. With the exile or the seclusion of the
richer families, and the reluctance of foreigners to make a residence of
the gloomy and dejected city, the trade of the shopkeepers has fallen off;
the larger commerce of the