ordi, beccafichi, geese, wild ducks, chickens, woodcock, &c .,
according to the season. We select our dinner, and retire to eat it
either in the court among the birds beneath the vines, or in the low
dark room which occupies one side of it. Artists of many nationalities
and divers ages frequent this house; and the talk arising from the
several little tables, turns upon points of interest and beauty in the
life and landscape of Venice. There can be no difference of opinion
about the excellence of the _cuisine_, or about the reasonable charges
of this _trattoria_. A soup of lentils, followed by boiled turbot or
fried soles, beef-steak or mutton cutlets, tordi or beccafichi, with a
salad, the whole enlivened with good red wine or Florio's Sicilian
Marsala from the cask, costs about four francs. Gas is unknown in the
establishment. There is no noise, no bustle, no brutality of waiters, no
_ahurissement_ of tourists. And when dinner is done, we can sit awhile
over our cigarette and coffee, talking until the night invites us to a
stroll along the Zattere or a _giro_ in the gondola.

IX.--NIGHT IN VENICE.

Night in Venice! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, unless it be winter
among the high Alps. But the nights of Venice and the nights of the
mountains are too different in kind to be compared.

There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising, before day
is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of gold on the lagoon
which black boats traverse with the glow-worm lamp upon their prow;
ascending the cloudless sky and silvering the domes of the Salute;
pouring vitreous sheen upon the red lights of the Piazzetta; flooding
the Grand Canal, and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal whiteness;
piercing but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of _rio_ linked with
_rio_, through which we wind in light and shadow, to reach once more the
level glories and the luminous expanse of heaven beyond the
Misericordia.

This is the melodrama of Venetian moonlight; and if a single impression
of the night has to be retained from one visit to Venice, those are
fortunate who chance upon a full moon of fair weather. Yet I know not
whether some quieter and soberer effects are not more thrilling.
To-night, for example, the waning moon will rise late through veils of
_scirocco_. Over the bridges of San Cristoforo and San Gregorio, through
the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and I walk in darkness, pass the
marble basements of th