He could not direct me what to do, gaze up at him as I might.
Was it before this or after that I wandered about for an hour
in the small canals, to the continued stupefaction of my gondolier,
who had never seen me so restless and yet so void of a purpose and
could extract from me no order but "Go anywhere--everywhere--all over
the place"? He reminded me that I had not lunched and expressed
therefore respectfully the hope that I would dine earlier.
He had had long periods of leisure during the day, when I had left
the boat and rambled, so that I was not obliged to consider him,
and I told him that that day, for a change, I would touch
no meat. It was an effect of poor Miss Tita's proposal,
not altogether auspicious, that I had quite lost my appetite.
I don't know why it happened that on this occasion I was more than
ever struck with that queer air of sociability, of cousinship
and family life, which makes up half the expression of Venice.
Without streets and vehicles, the uproar of wheels, the brutality
of horses, and with its little winding ways where people
crowd together, where voices sound as in the corridors of a house,
where the human step circulates as if it skirted the angles
of furniture and shoes never wear out, the place has the character
of an immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco
is the most ornamented corner and palaces and churches,
for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose,
tables of entertainment, expanses of decoration.
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