and only poorly illuminated by
tremulous and uncertain lights. Within them, however, joyous throngs
passed to and fro, clad in varicolored garments, men and women chatting
in groups here and there, and always above the buzz there were to be
heard such choice bits of scandal as made worthwhile a visit to the
coffee house. Smaller rooms were devoted to gaming.

In the "little square" described by Goldoni[42] in his comedy _The
Coffee House_, where the combined barber-shop and gambling house was
located, Don Marzio, that marvelous type of slanderous old romancer, is
shown as one typical of the period, for Goldoni was a satirist. The
other characters of the play were also drawn from the types then to be
seen every day in the coffee houses on the Piazza.

In the square of St. Mark's, in the eighteenth century, under the
_Procuratie Vecchie_, were the _caffe_ Re di Francia, Abbondanza, Pitt,
l'eroe, Regina d'Ungheria, Orfeo, Redentore, Coraggio-Speranza, Arco
Celeste, and Quadri. The last-named was opened in 1775 by Giorgio Quadri
of Corfu, who served genuine Turkish coffee for the first time in
Venice.

Under the _Procuratie Nuove_ were to be found the _caffe_ Angelo
Custode, Duca di Toscana, Buon genio-Doge, Imperatore Imperatrice della
Russia, Tamerlano, Fontane di Diana, Dame Venete, Aurora Piante d'oro,
Arabo-Piastrelle, Pace, Venezia trionfante, and Florian.

Probably no coffee house in Europe has acquired so world-wide a
celebrity as that kept by Florian, the friend of Canova the sculptor,
and the trusted agent and acquaintance of hundreds of persons in and out
of the city, who found him a mine of social information and a convenient
city directory. Persons leaving Venice left their cards and itineraries
with him; and new-comers inquired at Florian's for tidings of those whom
they wished to see. "He long concentrated in himself a knowledge more
varied and multifarious than that possessed by any individual before or
since," says Hazlitt[43], who has given us this delightful pen picture
of _caffe_ life in Venice in the eighteenth century:

Venetian coffee was said to surpass all others, and the article
placed before his visitors by Florian was the best in Venice. Of
some of the establishments as they then existed, Molmenti has
supplied us with illustrations, in one of which Goldoni the
dramatist is represented as a visitor, and a female mendicant is
soliciting alms.

So cordial w