Crowds come and go under
the arcades, loiter at the tables closely set before the brilliant
cafes, or stroll with laughter and snatches of song and free Venetian
banter where there is less restraint, up and down the broad space of the
Piazza, between the colonnade and the burnished Eastern magnificence of
San Marco, beyond the reach of the yellow lamp flames--their laughing
faces grotesque and weird in the white glare of the moon. But under the
shadow of the Broglio and those great columns of the Ducal Palace there
are only slow-moving figures here and there, wrapped in cloaks, and dark
under the low, unlighted arches, talking in undertones which even the
watchful Lion--so near, so cunning--does not always overhear.
But in the calles, half in moonlight and half in shadow, night wears a
more poetic air of mystery and quiet; and if a fear but come in passing
some dread spot of tragic memory, a gentle Virgin at every turning, with
a dingy, flickering flame beneath her image, is waiting to grant her
grace--for is not Venice the Virgin City? And on the splendid palaces in
the broad canals the watching Madonna stands glorified in exquisite
sculpture and cunningest blendings of color,--ofttimes a crown of light
above her, or rays of stars, symbolic, beneath her feet,--casting her
benediction far out on the water, which, ever in motion, repeats it in
shimmering, widening circles--all-embracing--in which the stars of
heaven shine, tangled and confused with these stars of a paradise in
which earth has so large a part.
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