Venetian Life | Page 8

and jaded by the long, cold, railway journey
from Vienna, while every surface-sense was taken and tangled in the
bewildering brilliancy and novelty of Venice. For I think there can be
nothing else in the world so full of glittering and exquisite surprise, as
that first glimpse of Venice which the traveler catches as he issues from
the railway station by night, and looks upon her peerless strangeness.
There is something in the blessed breath of Italy (how quickly, coming
south, you know it, and how bland it is, after the harsh, transalpine air!)
which prepares you for your nocturnal advent into the place; and O you!
whoever you are, that journey toward this enchanted city for the first
time, let me tell you how happy I count you! There lies before you for

your pleasure, the spectacle of such singular beauty as no picture can
ever show you nor book tell you,--beauty which you shall feel perfectly
but once, and regret forever.
For my own part, as the gondola slipped away from the blaze and
bustle of the station down the gloom and silence of the broad canal, I
forgot that I had been freezing two days and nights; that I was at that
moment very cold and a little homesick. I could at first feel nothing but
that beautiful silence, broken only by the star-silvered dip of the oars.
Then on either hand I saw stately palaces rise gray and lofty from the
dark waters, holding here and there a lamp against their faces, which
brought balconies, and columns, and carven arches into momentary
relief, and threw long streams of crimson into the canal. I could see by
that uncertain glimmer how fair was all, but not how sad and old; and
so, unhaunted by any pang for the decay that afterward saddened me
amid the forlorn beauty of Venice, I glided on. I have no doubt it was a
proper time to think all the fantastic things in the world, and I thought
them; but they passed vaguely through my mind, without at all
interrupting the sensations of sight and sound. Indeed, the past and
present mixed there, and the moral and material were blent in the
sentiment of utter novelty and surprise. The quick boat slid through old
troubles of mine, and unlooked-for events gave it the impulse that
carried it beyond, and safely around sharp corners of life. And all the
while I knew that this was a progress through narrow and crooked
canals, and past marble angles of palaces. But I did not know then that
this fine confusion of sense and spirit was the first faint impression of
the charm of life in Venice.
Dark, funereal barges like my own had flitted by, and the gondoliers
had warned each other at every turning with hoarse, lugubrious cries;
the lines of balconied palaces had never ended;--here and there at their
doors larger craft were moored, with dim figures of men moving
uncertainly about on them. At last we had passed abruptly out of the
Grand Canal into one of the smaller channels, and from comparative
light into a darkness only remotely affected by some far-streaming
corner lamp. But always the pallid, stately palaces; always the dark
heaven with its trembling stars above, and the dark water with its

trembling stars below; but now innumerable bridges, and an utter
lonesomeness, and ceaseless sudden turns and windings. One could not
resist a vague feeling of anxiety, in these strait and solitary passages,
which was part of the strange enjoyment of the time, and which was
referable to the novelty, the hush, the darkness, and the piratical
appearance and unaccountable pauses of the gondoliers. Was not this
Venice, and is not Venice forever associated with bravoes and
unexpected dagger-thrusts? That valise of mine might represent
fabulous wealth to the uncultivated imagination. Who, if I made an
outcry, could understand the Facts of the Situation--(as we say in the
journals)? To move on was relief; to pause was regret for past
transgressions mingled with good resolutions for the future. But I felt
the liveliest mixture of all these emotions, when, slipping from the
cover of a bridge, the gondola suddenly rested at the foot of a stairway
before a closely-barred door. The gondoliers rang and rang again, while
their passenger
"Divided the swift mind,"
in the wonder whether a door so grimly bolted and austerely barred
could possibly open into a hotel, with cheerful overcharges for candles
and service. But as soon as the door opened, and he beheld the honest
swindling countenance of a hotel portier, he felt secure against every
thing but imposture, and all wild absurdities of doubt and conjecture at
once faded from his thought, when the portier suffered the gondoliers
to make him pay a