Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori,"[154] where the
Virgin, enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a
back shelf, presides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too
ambiguous to be defined or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at
the regular wine-shop of the calle, where we are offered "Vino
Nostrani a Soldi 28-32," the Madonna is in great glory, enthroned above
ten or a dozen large red casks of three-year-old vintage, and flanked
by goodly ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and
for the evening, when the gondoliers will come to drink out, under her
auspices, the money they have gained during the day, she will have a
whole chandelier.
A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and,
glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded,
in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting
on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and so
presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moise, whence to the
entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of
the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the
frightful facade of San Moise, which we will pause at another time to
examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the
piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging
groups of English and Austrians.
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