three-cornered hats among skirts flounced with yellow or pearly gray
silks.

At another it is a regatta of gondolas and we see on the sea between
San-Marco and San-Giorgio, around the huge Bucentaur[54] like a
leviathan cuirassed with scales of gold, flotillas of boats parting the
water with their steel becks. A crowd of pretty dominos, male and
female, flutter over the pavements; the sea seems to be of polished
slate under a tender azure sky spotted with cloud-flocks while all
around, as in a precious frame, like a fantastic border carved and
embroidered, the Procuraties, the domes, the palaces and the quays
thronged with a joyous multitude, encircle the great maritime Venetian
sheet....

In truth they never concern themselves with religion except to repress
the Pope; in theory and in practise, in ideas and in instincts, they
inherit the manners, customs and spirit of antiquity, and their
Christianity is only a name. Like the ancients, they were at first
heroes and artists, and then voluptuaries and dilettanti; in one as in
the other case they, like the ancients, confined life to the present. In
the eighteenth century they might be compared to the Thebans of the
decadence who, leagued together to consume their property in common,
bequeathed what remained of their fortunes on dying to the survivors at
their banquets. The carnival lasts six months; everybody, even the
priests, the guardian of the capucins, the nuncio, little children, all
who frequent the markets, wear masks. People pass by in processions
disguised in the costumes of Frenchmen, lawyers, gondoliers, Calabrians
and Spanish soldiery, dancing and with musical instruments; the crowd
follows jeering or applauding them. There is entire liberty; prince or
artizan, all are equal; each may apostrophize a mask. Pyramids of men
form "pictures of strength" on the public squares; harlequins in the
open air perform parades. Seven theaters are open. Improvizators declaim
and comedians improvize amusing scenes. "There is no city where license
has such sovereign rule." ...

The Chiogga campaign is the last act of the old heroic drama; there, as
in the best days of the ancient republics, a besieged people is seen to
save itself against all hope, artizans equipping vessels, a Pisani
conqueror undergoing imprisonment and only released to renew the
victory, a Carlo Zeno, surviving forty wounds, and a doge of seventy
years of age; a Contarini, who makes a vow not to leave h