ELEMENTS
Earth, Air, Water, and Fire! Earth beneath, Air encompassing, Water within its boundaries. But Fire is nothing, comes from nothing, goes nowhither. Fire leaps forth and dies, yet is everything sprung out of Fire.
The flame grows and drops away, and where it stood is vapour, and where was the vapour is swift revolution, and where was the revolution is spinning resistance, and where the resistance endured is crystallization. Fire melts, and the absence of Fire cools and freezes. So are metals fused in twisted flames and take on a form other than that they have known, and this new form shall be to them rebirth and making. For in it they will stand upon the Earth, and in it they will defy the Air, and in it they will suffer the Water.
But Fire, coming again, the substance changes and is transformed. Therefore are things known only between burning and burning. The quickly consumed more swiftly vanish, yet all must feel the heat of the flame which waits in obscurity, knowing its own time and what work it has to do.
ROME
The blue sky of Italy; the blue sky of Rome. Sunlight pouring white and clear from the wide-stretched sky. Sunlight sliding softly over white marble, lying in jasmine circles before cool porticoes, striking sharply upon roofs and domes, recoiling before straight façades of grey granite, foiled and beaten by the deep halls of temples.
Sunlight on tiles and tufa, sunlight on basalt and porphyry. The sky stripes Rome with sun and shadow; strips of yellow, strips of blue, pepper-dots of purple and orange. It whip-lashes the four great horses of gilded bronze, harnessed to the bronze quadriga on the Arch of Nero, and they trot slowly forward without moving. The horses tread the marbles of Rome beneath their feet. Their golden flanks quiver in the sunlight. One foot paws the air. A step, and they will lance into the air, Pegasus-like, stepping the wind. But they do not take the step. They wait—poised, treading Rome as they trod Alexandria, as they trod the narrow Island of Cos. The spokes of the quadriga wheels flash, but they do not turn. They burn like day-stars above the Arch of Nero. The horses poise over Rome, a constellation of morning, triumphant above Emperors, proud, indifferent, enduring, relentlessly spurning the hot dust of Rome. Hot dust clouds up about them, but not one particle sticks to their gilded manes. Dust is nothing, a mere smoke of disappearing hours. Slowly they trot forward without moving, and time passes and passes them, brushing along their sides like wind.
People go and come in the streets of Rome, shuffling over the basalt paving-stones in their high latcheted sandals. White and purple, like the white sun and the purple shadows, the senators pass, followed by a crowd of slaves. Waves of brown-coated populace efface themselves before a litter, carried by eight Cappadocians in light-red tunics; as it moves along, there is the flicker of a violet stola and the blowing edge of a palla of sky-white blue. A lady, going to the bath to lie for an hour in the crimson and wine-red reflections of a marble chamber, to glide over a floor of green and white stones into a Carraran basin, where the green and blue water will cover her rose and blue-veined flesh with a slipping veil. Aqua Claudia, Aqua Virgo, Aqua Marcia, drawn from the hills to lie against a woman's body. Her breasts round hollows for themselves in the sky-green water, her fingers sift the pale water and drop it from her as a lark drops notes backwards into the sky. The lady lies against the lipping water, supine and indolent, a pomegranate, a passion-flower, a silver-flamed lily, lapped, slapped, lulled, by the ripples which stir under her faintly moving hands.
Later, beneath a painting of twelve dancing girls upon a gold ground, the slaves will anoint her with cassia, or nakte, or spikenard, or balsam, and she will go home in the swaying litter to eat the tongues of red flamingoes, and drink honey-wine flavoured with far-smelling mint.
Legionaries ravish Egypt for her entertainment; they bring her roses from Alexandria at a cost of thirty thousand pounds. Yet she would rather be at Baiae, one is so restricted in one's pleasures in Rome! The games are not until next week, and her favourite gladiator, Naxos, is in training just now, therefore time drags. The lady lags over her quail and peacocks' eggs. How dull it is. White, and blue, and stupid. Rome!
Smoke flutters and veers from the top of the Temple of Vesta. Altar smoke winding up to the gilded horses as they tread above Rome. Below—laughing, jangling, pushing and rushing. Two carts are jammed at a street corner, and the oaths of the drivers mingle, and snap, and corrode, like hot fused metal, one against another. They hiss and sputter, making a confused chord through which the squeal of a derrick winding up a granite slab pierces, shrill and nervous, a sharp boring sound, shoring through the wide, white light of the Roman sky. People are selling things: matches, broken glass, peas, sausages, cakes. A string of donkeys, with panniers loaded with red asparagus and pale-green rue, minces past the derrick, the donkeys squeeze, one by one, with little patting feet, between the derrick and the choked crossing. "Hey! Gallus, have you heard that Cæsar has paid a million sestertii for a Murrhine vase. It is green and white, flaked like a Spring onion, and has the head of Minerva cut in it, sharp as a signet." "And who has a better right indeed, now that Titus has conquered Judea. He will be here next week, they say, and then we shall have a triumph worth looking at." "Famous indeed! We need something. It's been abominably monotonous lately. Why, there was not enough blood spilled in the games last week to give one the least appetite. I'm damned stale, for one."
Still, over Rome, the white sun sails the blue, stretching sky, casting orange and purple striæ down upon the marble city, cool and majestic, between cool hills, white and omnipotent, dying of languor, amusing herself for a moment with the little boats floating up the Tiber bringing the good grain of Carthage, then relaxed and falling as water falls, dropping into the bath. Weak as water; without contour as water; colourless as water; Rome bathes, and relaxes, and melts. Fluid and fluctuating, a liquid city pouring itself back into the streams of the earth. And above, on the Arch of Nero, hard, metallic, firm, cold, and permanent, the bronze horses trot slowly, not moving, and the moon casts the fine-edged shadow of them down upon the paving-stones.
Hills of the city: Pincian, Esquiline, Cælian, Aventine, the crimson tip of the sun burns against you, and you start into sudden clearness and glow red, red-gold, saffron, gradually diminishing to an outline of blue. The sun mounts over Rome, and the Arch of Augustus glitters like a cleft pomegranate; the Temples of Julius Cæsar, Castor, and Saturn, turn carbuncle, and rose, and diamond. Columns divide into double edges of flash and shadow; domes glare, inverted beryls hanging over arrested scintillations. The fountains flake and fringe with the scatter of the sun. The mosaic floors of atriums are no longer stone, but variegated fire; higher, on the walls, the pictures painted in the white earth of Melos, the red earth of Sinope, the yellow ochre of Attica, erupt into flame. The legs of satyrs jerk with desire, the dancers whirl in torch-bright involutions. Grapes split and burst, spurting spots and sparks of sun.
It is morning in Rome, and the bronze horses on the Arch of Nero trot quietly forward without moving, but no one can see them, they are only a dazzle, a shock of stronger light against the white-blue sky.
Morning in Rome; and the whole city foams out to meet it, seething, simmering, surging, seeping. All between the Janiculum and the Palatine is undulating with people. Scarlet, violet, and purple togas pattern the mass of black and brown. Murex-dyed silk dresses flow beside raw woollen fabrics. The altars smoke incense, the bridges shake under the caking mass of sight-seers. "Titus! Titus! Io triumphe!" Even now the troops are collected near the Temple of Apollo, outside the gates, waiting for the signal to march. In the parching Roman morning, the hot dust rises and clouds over the city—an aureole of triumph. The horses on the Arch of Nero paw the golden dust, but it passes, passes, brushing along their burnished sides like wind.
What is that sound? The marble city shivers to the treading of feet. Cæsar's legions marching, foot—foot—hundreds, thousands of feet. They beat the ground, rounding each step double. Coming—coming—cohort after cohort, with brazen trumpets marking the time. One—two—one—two—laurel-crowned each one of you, cactus-fibred, harsh as sand grinding the rocks of a treeless land, rough and salt as a Dead Sea wind, only the fallen are left behind. Blood-red plumes, jarring to the footfalls; they have passed through the gate, they are in the walls of the mother city, of marble Rome. Their tunics are purple embroidered with gold, their armour clanks as they walk, the cold steel of their swords is chill in the sun, each is a hero, one by one, endless companies, the soldiers come. Back to Rome with a victor's spoils, with a victor's wreath on every head, and Judah broken is dead, dead! "Io triumphe!" The shout knocks and breaks upon the spears of the legionaries.
The God of the Jews is overborne, he has failed his people. See the stuffs from the Syrian looms, and the vestments of many-colours, they were taken from the great Temple at Jerusalem. And the watching crowds split their voices acclaiming the divine triumph. Mars, and Juno, and Minerva, and the rest, those gods are the best who bring victory! And the beasts they have over there! Is that a crocodile? And that bird with a tail as long as a banner, what do you call that? Look at the elephants, and the dromedaries! They are harnessed in jewels. Oh! Oh! The beautiful sight! Here come the prisoners, dirty creatures. "That's a good-looking girl there. I have rather a fancy for a Jewess. I'll get her, by Bacchus, if I have to mortgage my farm. A man too, of course, to keep the breed going; it will be a good investment, although, to be sure, I want the girl myself. Castor and Pollux, did you see that picture! Ten men disembowelled on the steps of the altar. That is better than a gladiator show any day. I wish I had been there. Simon, oh, Simon! Spit at him, Lucullus. Thumbs down for Simon! Fancy getting him alive, I wonder he didn't kill himself first like Cleopatra. This is a glorious day, I haven't had such fun in years."
The bronze horses tread quietly above the triumphing multitudes. They too have been spoils of war, yet they stand here on the Arch of Nero dominating Rome. Time passes—passes—but the horses, calm and contained, move forward, dividing one minute from another and leaving each behind.
You should be still now, Roman populace. These are the decorations of the Penetralia, the holy Sanctuary which your soldiers have profaned. But the people jeer and scoff, and comment on the queer articles carried on the heads of the soldiers. Tragedy indeed! They see no tragedy, only an immense spectacle, unique and satisfying. The crowd clears its throat and spits and shouts "Io triumphe! Io triumphe!" against the cracking blare of brazen trumpets.
Slowly they come, the symbols of a beaten religion: the Golden Table for the Shew-Bread, the Silver Trumpets that sounded the Jubilee, the Seven-Branched Candlestick, the very Tables of the Law which Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Can Jupiter conquer these? Slowly they pass, glinting in the sunlight, staring in the light of day, mocked and exhibited. Lord God of Hosts, fall upon these people, send your thunders upon them, hurl the lightnings of your wrath against this multitude, raze their marble city so that not one stone remain standing. But the sun shines unclouded, and the holy vessels pass onward through the Campus Martius, through the Circus Flaminius, up the Via Sacra to the Capitol, and then... The bronze horses look into the brilliant sky, they trot slowly without moving, they advance slowly, one foot raised. There is always another step—one, and another. How many does not matter, so that each is taken.
The spolia opima have passed. The crowd holds its breath and quivers. Everyone is tiptoed up to see above his neighbour; they sway and brace themselves in their serried ranks. Away, over the heads, silver eagles glitter, each one marking the passage of a legion. The "Victorious Legion" goes by, the "Indomitable Legion," the "Spanish Legion," and those with a crested lark on their helmets, and that other whose centurions are almost smothered under the shining reflections of the medallions fastened to their armour. Cohort after cohort, legion on the heels of legion, the glistening greaves rise and flash and drop and pale, scaling from sparkle to dullness in a series of rhythmic angles, constantly repeated. They swing to the tones of straight brass trumpets, they jut out and fall at the call of spiral bugles. Above them, the pointed shields move evenly, right to left—right to left. The horses curvet and prance, and shiver back, checked, on their haunches; the javelins of the horsemen are so many broad-ended sticks of flame.
Those are the eagles of the Imperial Guard, and behind are two golden chariots. "Io triumphe!" The roar drowns the trumpets and bugles, the clatter of the horses' hoofs is a mere rattle of sand ricocheting against the voice of welcoming Rome. The Emperor Vespasian rides in one chariot, in the other stands Titus. Titus, who has subdued Judea, who has humbled Jehovah, and brought the sacred vessels of the Lord God of Hosts back with him as a worthy offering to the people of Rome. Cheer, therefore, good people, you have the Throne of Heaven to recline upon; you are possessed of the awful majesty of the God of the Jews; beneath your feet are spread the emblems of the Most High; and your hands are made free of the sacred instruments of Salvation.
What god is that who falls before pikes and spears! Here is another god, his face and hands stained with vermilion, after the manner of the Capitoline Jupiter. His car is of ivory and gold, green plumes nod over the heads of his horses, the military bracelets on his arms seem like circling serpents of bitter flame. The milk-white horses draw him slowly to the Capitol, step by step, along the Via Triumphalis, and step by step the old golden horses on the Arch of Nero tread down the hours of the lapsing day.
That night, forty elephants bearing candelabra light up the ranges of pillars supporting the triple portico of the Capitol. Forty illuminated elephants—and the light of their candles is reflected in the polished sides of the great horses, above, on the Arch of Nero, slowly trotting forward, stationary yet moving, in the soft night which hangs over Rome.
PAVANNE TO A BRASS ORCHESTRA
Water falls from the sky, and green-fanged lightning mouths the heavens. The Earth rolls upon itself, incessantly creating morning and evening. The moon calls to the waters, swinging them forward and back, and the sun draws closer and as rhythmically recedes, advancing in the pattern of an ancient dance, making a figure of leaves and aridness. Harmony of chords and pauses, fugue of returning balances, canon and canon repeating the theme of Earth, Air, and Water.
A single cymbal-crash of Fire, and for an instant the concerted music ceases. But it resumes—Earth, Air, and Water, and out of it rise the metals, unconsumed. Brazen cymbals, trumpets of silver, bells of bronze. They mock at fire. They burn upon themselves and retain their entities. Not yet the flame which shall destroy them. They shall know all flames but one. They shall be polished and corroded, yet shall they persist and play the music which accompanies the strange ceremonious dance of the sun.
CONSTANTINOPLE
Empire of the East! Byzantium! Constantinople! The Golden City of the World. A crystal fixed in aquamarines; a jewel-box set down in a seaside garden. All the seas are as blue as Spring lupins, and there are so many seas. Look where you please, forward, back, or down, there is water. The deep blue water of crisp ripples, the long light shimmer of flat undulations, the white glare, smoothing into purple, of a sun-struck ebb. The Bosphorus winds North to the Black Sea. The Golden Horn curves into the Sweet Waters. The edge of the city swerves away from the Sea of Marmora. Aquamarines, did I say? Sapphires, beryls, lapis-lazuli, amethysts, and felspar. Whatever stones there are, bluer than gentians, bluer than cornflowers, bluer than asters, bluer than periwinkles. So blue that the city must be golden to complement the water. A geld city, shimmering and simmering, starting up like mica from the green of lemon trees, and olives, and cypresses.
Gold! Gold! Walls and columns covered with gold. Domes of churches resplendent with gold. Innumerable statues of "bronze fairer than pure gold," and courts paved with golden tiles. Beyond the white and rose-coloured walls of Saint Sophia, the city rounds for fourteen great miles; fourteen miles of onychite, and porphyry, and marble; fourteen miles of colonnades, and baths, and porticoes; fourteen miles of gay, garish, gaudy, glaring gold. Why, even the Imperial triremes in the harbour have gold embroidered gonfalons, and the dolphins, ruffling out of the water between them, catch the colour and dive, each a sharp cutting disk-edge of yellow flame.
It is the same up above, where statues spark like stars jutted from a mid-day sky. There are golden Emperors at every crossing, and golden Virgins crowding every church-front. And, in the centre of the great Hippodrome, facing the triremes and the leaping dolphins, is a fine chariot of Corinthian brass. Four horses harnessed to a gilded quadriga. The horses pace evenly forward, in a moment they will be trampling upon space, facing out to sea on the currents of the morning breeze. But their heads are arched and checked, gracefully they pause, one leg uplifted, seized and baffled by the arrested movement. They are the horses of Constantine, brought from Rome, so people say, buzzing in the Augustaion. "Fine horses, hey?" "A good breed, Persia from the look of them, though they're a bit thick in the barrel for the horses they bring us from there." "They bring us their worst, most likely." "Oh, I don't know, we buy pretty well. Why, only the other day I gave a mint of money for a cargo of Egyptian maize." "Lucky dog, you'll make on that, with all the harvest here ruined by the locusts."
It is a pretty little wind which plays along the sides of the gilded horses, a coquettish little sea wind, blowing and listing and finally dropping away altogether and going to sleep in a plane-tree behind the Hippodrome.
Constantinople is a yellow honey-comb, with fat bees buzzing in all its many-sided cells. Bees come over the flower-blue seas; bees humming from the Steppes of Tartary, from the long line of Nile-fed Egypt. Tush! What would you! Where there is gold there are always men about it; to steal it, to guard it, to sit and rot under its lotus-shining brilliance. The very army is woven of threads drawn from the edges of the world. Byzantines are merchantmen, they roll and flounder in the midst of gold coins, they tumble and wallow in money-baths, they sit and chuckle under a continuous money-spray. And ringed about them is the army, paid to shovel back the scattering gold pieces: Dalmatians with swords and arrows; Macedonians with silver belts and gilt shields; Scholarii, clad in rose-coloured tunics; Varangians, shouldering double battle-axes. When they walk, the rattle of them can be heard pattering back from every wall and doorway. It clacks and cracks even in the Copper Market, above the clang of cooking pots and the wrangling whine of Jewish traders. Constantinople chatters, buzzes, screams, growls, howls, squeals, snorts, brays, croaks, screeches, crows, neighs, gabbles, purrs, hisses, brawls, roars, shouts, mutters, calls, in every sort of crochet and demi-semi-quaver, wavering up in a great contrapuntal murmur—adagio, maestoso, capriccioso, scherzo, staccato, crescendo, vivace, veloce, brio—brio—brio!! A racket of dissonance, a hubbub of harmony. Chords? Discords? Answer: Byzantium!
People pluck the strings of rebecks and psalteries; they shock the cords of lyres; they batter tin drums, and shatter the guts of kettle-drums when the Emperor goes to Saint Sophia to worship at an altar of precious stones fused into a bed of gold and silver, and, as he walks up the nave between the columns of green granite, and the columns of porphyry, under the golden lily on the Octagonal Tower, the bells pour their notes over the roofs, spilling them in single jets down on each side of the wide roofs. Drip—drip—drip—out of their hearts of beaten bronze, slipping and drowning in the noise of the crowds clustered below.
On the top of the Hippodrome, the bronze horses trot toward the lupin-coloured Sea of Marmora, slowly, without moving; and, behind them, the spokes of the quadriga wheels remain separate and single, with the blue sky showing between each one.
What a city is this, builded of gold and alabaster, with myrtle and roses strewn over its floors, and doors of embossed silver opening upon golden trees where jewelled birds sing clock-work notes, and fountains flow from the beaks of silver eagles. All this splendour cooped within the fourteen miles of a single city, forsooth! In Britain, they sit under oaken beams; in France, they eat with hunting-knives; in Germany, men wear coats of their wives' weaving. In Italy—but there is a Pope in Italy! The bronze horses pause on the marble Hippodrome, and days blow over them, brushing their sides like wind.
It is May eleventh in Constantinople, and the Spring-blue sea shivers like a field of lupins run over by a breeze. Every tree and shrub spouted over every garden-wall flouts a chromatic sequence of greens. A long string of camels on the Bridge of Justinian moves, black and ostrich-like, against the sheen of water. A swallow sheers past the bronze horses and drops among the pillars on top of the curve of the Hippodrome; the great cistern on the Spina reflects a speckless sky. It is race-day in Constantinople, and the town is turned out upon the benches of the Hippodrome, waiting for the procession to begin. "Hola! You fellows on the top tier, do you see anything?" "Nothing yet, but I hear music." "Music! Oh, Lord! I should think you did. Clear the flagged course there, the procession is coming." "Down in front. Sit down, you." "Listen. Oh, dear, I'm so fidgety. If the Green doesn't win, I'm out a fortune." "Keep still, will you, we can't hear the music, you talk so loud." "Here they come! Green! Green! Green! Drown those Blues over there. Oh, Green, I say!"
Away beyond, through the gates, flageolets are squealing, and trumpets are splitting their brass throats and choking over the sound. Patter—patter—patter—horses' hoofs on flagstones. They are coming under the paved arch. There is the President of the Games in a tunic embroidered with golden palm-branches; there is the Emperor in his pearl-lappeted cap, and his vermilion buskins; and here are the racers—Green—Blue—driving their chariots, easily standing in their high-wheeled chariots. The sun whitens the knives in their girdles, the reins flash in the sun like ribbons of spun glass. Three-year-olds in the Green chariot, so black they are blue. Four blue-black horses, with the sheen of their flanks glistening like the grain of polished wood. The little ears point forward, their teeth tease the bits. They snort and jerk, and the chariot wheels quirk over an outstanding stone and jolt down, flat and rumbling. The Blue chariot-driver handles a team of greys, white as the storks who nest in the cemetery beyond the Moslem quarter. He gathers up his reins, and the horses fall back against the pole, clattering, then fling forward, meet the bit, rear up, and swing inward, settling gradually into a nervous jigging as they follow round the course. "Blue! Blue! Go for him, Blue!" from the North Corner. "Hurrah for the Blue! Blue to Eternity!" Slowly the procession winds round the Spina, and the crowd stands up on the seats and yells and cheers and waves handkerchiefs, sixty thousand voices making such a noise that only the high screaming of the flageolets can be heard above it. The horses toss and twitch, the harness jingles, and the gilded eggs and dolphins on the Spina coruscate in versicoloured stars.
Above the Emperor's balcony, the bronze horses move quietly forward, and the sun outlines the great muscles of their lifted legs.
They have reached the Grand Stand again, and the chariots are shut and barred in their stalls. The multitude, rustling as though they were paper being folded, settles down into their seats. The President drops a napkin, the bars are unlocked, and the chariots in a double rush take the straight at top speed, Blue leading, Green saving up for the turn at the curve. Round the three cones at the end, Blue on one wheel, Green undercutting him. Blue turns wide to right himself, takes the outside course and flashes up the long edge so that you cannot count two till he curves again. Down to the Green Corner, Blue's off horses slipping just before the cones, one hits the pole, loses balance and falls, drags a moment, catches his feet as the chariot slows for the circle, gathers, plunges, and lunges up and on, while the Greens on the benches groan and curse. But the black team is worse off, the inside near colt has got his leg over a trace. Green checks his animals, the horse kicks free, but Blue licks past him on the up way, and is ahead at the North turn by a wheel length. Green goes round, flogging to make up time. Two eggs and dolphins gone, three more to go. The pace has been slow so far, now they must brace up. Bets run high, screamed out above the rumble of the chariots. "Ten on the Green." "Odds fifty for the Blue." "Double mine; those greys have him." "The blacks, the blacks, lay you a hundred to one the blacks beat." Down, round, up, round, down, so fast they are only dust puffs, one can scarcely see which is which. The horses are badly blown now, and the drivers yell to them, and thrash their churning flanks. The course is wet with sweat and blood, the wheels slide over the wet course. Green negotiates the South curve with his chariot sideways; Blue skids over to the flagged way and lames a horse on the stones. The Emperor is on his feet, staring through his emerald spy-glass. Once more round for the last egg and dolphin. Down for the last time, Blue's lame horse delays him, but he flays him with the whip and the Green Corner finds them abreast. The Greens on the seats burst upstanding. "Too far out! Well turned!" "The Green's got it!" "Well done, Hirpinus!" The Green driver disappears up the long side to the goal, waving his right hand, but Blue's lame horse staggers, stumbles, and goes down, settling into the dust with a moan. Vortex of dust, struggling horses, golden glitter of the broken chariot. "Overthrown, by the Holy Moses! And hurt too! Well, well, he did his best, that beast always looked skittish to me." "Is he dead, do you think? They've got the litter." "Most likely. Green! Green! See, they're crowning him. Green and the people! Oh-hé! Green!"
Cool and imperturbable, the four great gilt horses slowly pace above the marble columns of the Grand Stand. They gaze out upon the lupin-blue water beyond the Southern curve. Can they see the Island of Corfu from up there, do you think? There are vessels at the Island of Corfu waiting to continue a journey. The great horses trot forward without moving, and the dust of the race-track sifts over them and blows away.
Constantinople from the Abbey of San Stefano: bubbles of opal and amber thrust up in a distant sky, pigeon-coloured nebulæ closing the end of a long horizon. Tilting to the little waves of a harbour, the good ships Aquila, Paradiso, Pellegrina, leaders of a fleet of galleys: dromi, hippogogi, vessels carrying timber for turrets, strong vessels holding mangonels. Proud vessels under an ancient Doge, keeping Saint John's Day at the Abbey of San Stefano, within sight of Constantinople.
Knights in blue and crimson inlaid armour clank up and down the gang-planks of the vessels. Flags and banners flap loosely at the mast-heads. There is the banner of Baldwin of Flanders, the standard of Louis of Blois, the oriflamme of Boniface of Montferrat, the pennon of Hugh, Count of Saint Paul, and last, greatest, the gonfalon of Saint Mark, dripped so low it almost touches the deck, with the lion of Venice crumpled in its windless folds.
Saint John's Day, and High Mass in the Abbey of San Stefano. They need God's help who would pass over the double walls and the four hundred towers of Constantinople. Te Deum Laudamus! The armoured knights make the sign of the cross, lightly touching the crimson and azure devices on their breasts with mailed forefingers.
South wind to the rescue; that was a good mass. "Boatswain, what's the direction of that cat's-paw, veering round a bit? Good."
Fifty vessels making silver paths in the Summer-blue Sea of Marmora. Fifty vessels passing the Sweet Waters, blowing up the Bosphorus.
Strike your raucous gongs, City of Byzantium. Run about like ants between your golden palaces. These vessels are the chalices of God's wrath. The spirit of Christ walking upon the waters. Or is it anti-Christ? This is the true Church. Have we not the stone on which Jacob slept, the rod which Moses turned into a serpent, a portion of the bread of the Last Supper? We are the Virgin's chosen abiding place; why, the picture which Saint Luke painted of her is in our keeping. We have pulled the sun's rays from the statue of Constantine and put up the Cross instead. Will that bring us nothing? Cluster round the pink and white striped churches, throng the alabaster churches, fill the naves with a sound of chanting. Strike the terror-gongs and call out the soldiers, for even now the plumed knights are disembarking, and the snarling of their trumpets mingles with the beating of the gongs.
The bronze horses on the Hippodrome, harnessed to the gilded quadriga, step forward slowly. They proceed in a measured cadence. They advance without moving. There are lights and agitation in the city, but the air about the horses has the violet touch of night.
Now, now, you crossbowmen and archers, you go first. Stand along the gunwales and be ready to jump. Keep those horses still there, don't let them get out of order. Lucky we thought of the hides. Their damnable Greek fire can't hurt us now. Up to the bridge, knights. Three of you abreast, on a level with the towers. What's a shower of arrows against armour! An honourable dint blotting out the head of a heron, half a plume sheared off a helmet so that it leers cock-eyed through the press. Tut! Tut! Little things, the way of war. Jar, jolt, mud—the knights clash together like jumbled chess-men, then leap over the bridges. Confusion—contusion—raps—bangs—lurches—blows—battle-axes thumping on tin shields; bolts bumping against leathern bucklers. "A Boniface to the Rescue!" "Baldwin forever!" "Viva San Marco!" Such a pounding, pummelling, pitching, pointing, piercing, pushing, pelting, poking, panting, punching, parrying, pulling, prodding, puking, piling, passing, you never did see. Stones pour out of the mangonels; arrows fly thick as mist. Swords twist against swords, bill-hooks batter bill-hooks, staves rattle upon staves. One, two, five men up a scaling ladder. Chop down on the first, and he rolls off the ladder with his skull in two halves; rip up the bowels of the second, he drips off the ladder like an overturned pail. But the third catches his adversary between the legs with a pike and pitches him over as one would toss a truss of hay. Way for the three ladder men! Their feet are on the tower, their plumes flower, argent and gold, above the muck of slaughter. From the main truck of the ships there is a constant seeping of Venetians over the walls of Constantinople. They flow into the city, they throw themselves upon the beleaguered city. They smash her defenders, and crash her soldiers to mere bits of broken metal.
Byzantines, Copts, Russians, Persians, Armenians, Moslems, the great army of the Franks is knocking at the gates of your towers. Open the gates. Open, open, or we will tear down your doors, and breach the triple thickness of your walls. Seventeen burning boats indeed, and have the Venetians no boat-hooks? They make pretty fireworks to pleasure our knights of an evening when they come to sup with Doge Dandolo. At night we will sleep, but in the morning we will kill again. Under your tents, helmeted knights; into your cabin, old Doge. The stars glitter in the Sea of Marmora, and above the city, black in the brilliance of the stars, the great horses of Constantine advance, pausing, blotting their shadows against the sprinkled sky.
From June until September, the fracas goes on. The chanting of masses, the shouting of battle songs, sweep antiphonally over Constantinople. They blend and blur, but what is that light tinkling? Tambourines? What is that snapping? Castanets? What is that yellow light in the direction of the Saracen mosque? My God! Fire! Gold of metals, you have met your king. Ringed and crowned, he takes his place in the jewelled city. Gold of fire mounted upon all the lesser golds. The twin tongues of flame flaunt above the housetops. Banners of scarlet, spears of saffron, spikes of rose and melted orange. What are the little flags of the Crusaders to these! They clamoured for pay and won the elements. Over the Peninsula of Marmora it comes. The whips of its fire-thongs lash the golden city. A conflagration half a league wide. Magnificent churches, splendid palaces, great commercial streets, are burning. Golden domes melt and liquefy, and people flee from the dripping of them. Lakes of gold lie upon the pavements; pillars crack and tumble, making dams and bridges over the hot gold. Two days, two nights, the fire rages, and through the roar of it the little cries of frightened birds come thin and pitiful. Earth pleading with fire. Earth begging quarter of the awful majesty of fire. The birds wheel over Constantinople; they perch upon the cool bronze horses standing above the Hippodrome. The quiet horses who wait and advance. This is not their fire, they trample on the luminousness of flames, their strong hind legs plant them firmly on the marble coping. They watch the falling of the fire, they gaze upon the ruins spread about them, and the pungence of charred wood brushes along their tarnished sides like wind.
The Franks have made an Emperor and now the Greeks have murdered him. The Doge asks for fifty centenaria in gold to pay his sailors. Who will pay, now that the Emperor is dead? Declare a siege and pay yourselves, Count, and Marquis, and Doge. Set your ships bow to stern, a half a league of them. Sail up the Golden Horn, and attack the walls in a hundred places. You fail to-day, but you will win to-morrow. Bring up your battering-rams and ballistæ; hurl stones from your mangonels; run up your scaling ladders and across your skin bridges. Winter is over and Spring is in your veins. Your blood mounts like sap, mount up the ladder after it. Two ships to a tower, and four towers taken. Three gates battered in. The city falls. Cruel saints, you have betrayed your votaries. Even the relic of the Virgin's dress in the Panhagia of Blachernæ has been useless. The knights enter Byzantium, and their flickering pennants are the flamelets of a new conflagration. Fire of flesh burning in the blood of the populace. They would make the sign of the cross, would they, so that the Franks may spare them? But the sap is up in the Frankish veins, the fire calls for fuel. Blood burns to who will ignite it. The swords itch for the taste of entrails, the lances twitch at sight of a Byzantine. Feed, Fire! Here are men, and women, and children, full of blood for the relish of your weapons. Spring sap, how many women! Good Frankish seed for the women of Byzantium. Blood and lust, you shall empty yourselves upon the city. Your swords shall exhaust themselves upon these Greeks. Your hands shall satisfy themselves with gold. Spit at the priests. This is the Greek church, not ours. Grab the sacred furniture of the churches, fornicate upon the high altar of Saint Sophia, and load the jewels upon the donkeys you have driven into the church to receive them. Old pagan Crusaders, this is the Orgy of Spring! Lust and blood, the birthright of the world.
The bright, shining horses tread upon the clean coping of the Hippodrome, and the Sea of Marmora lies before them like a lupin field run over by a breeze.
What are you now, Constantinople? A sacked city; and the tale of your plundering shall outdo the tale of your splendours for wonder. Three days they pillage you. Burmese rubies rattle in the pockets of common soldiers. The golden tree is hacked to bits and carried off by crossbowmen. An infantry sergeant hiccoughs over the wine he drinks from an altar cup. The knights live in palaces and dip their plumes under the arch of the Emperor's bed-chamber.
In the Sea of Marmora, the good ships Aquila, Paradiso, Pellegrina swing at anchor. The dromi and hippogogi ride free and empty. They bob to the horses high above them on the Hippodrome. They dance to the rhythmic beat of hammers floating out to them from the city of Constantinople.
Throb—throb—a dying pulse counts its vibrations. Throb—throb—and each stroke means a gobbet of gold. They tear it down from the walls and doors, they rip it from ceilings and pry it up from floors. They chip it off altars, they rip it out of panels, they hew it from obelisks, they gouge it from enamels. This is a death dance, a whirligig, a skeleton city footing a jig, a tarantella quirked to hammer-stroke time; a corpse in motley ogling a crime. Tap—tap—tap—goes the pantomime.
Grinning devils watch church cutting the throat of church. Chuckling gargoyles in France, in Britain, rub their stomachs and squeeze themselves together in an ecstasy of delight. Ho! Ho! Marquis Boniface, Count Hugh, Sieur Louis. What plunder do you carry home? What relics do you bring to your Gothic cathedrals? The head of Saint Clement? The arm of John the Baptist? A bit of the wood of the True Cross? Statues are only so much metal, but these are treasures worth fighting for. Fighting, quotha! Murdering, stealing. The Pope will absolve you, only bring him home a tear of Christ, and you will see. A tear of Christ! Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani! Oh, pitiful world! Pitiful knights in your inlaid armour! Pitiful Doge, preening himself in the Palace of Blachernæ!
Above the despoiled city, the Corinthian horses trot calmly forward, without moving, and the quadriga behind them glitters in the sun.
People have blood, but statues have gold, and silver, and bronze. Melt them! Melt them! "Gee! Haw!" Guide the oxen carefully. Four oxen to drag the head of Juno to the furnace. White oxen to transport Minerva; fawn-coloured oxen for the colossal Hercules of Lysippus. Pour them into the furnaces so that they run out mere soft metal ripe for coining. Two foot-sergeants get as much as a horse-sergeant, and two horse-sergeants as much as a knight. Flatten out Constantinople. Raze her many standing statues, shave the Augustaion to a stark stretch of paving-stones. Melt the bones of beauty, indomitable Crusaders, and pay the Venetians fifty thousand silver marks as befits an honest company of dedicated gentlemen.
"The Doge wants those horses, does he? Just as they are, unmelted? Holy Saint Christopher, what for? Pity he didn't speak sooner, I sent Walter the Smith to cut the gold off them this morning, but it sticks like the very devil and he hasn't done much. Well, well, the Doge can have them. A man with a whim must be given way to, particularly when he owns all the ships. How about that gilded chariot?" "Oh, he can't manage that. Just the horses. You were in a mighty hurry with that cutting, it seems to me. You've made them look like zebras, and he'll not like that. He's a bit of a connoisseur in horse-flesh, even if he does live in the water. Wants to mate them to the dolphins probably, and go a-campaigning astride of fishes. Ha! Ha! Ha!"
"Steady there, lower the horses carefully, they are for the Doge." One—one—one—one—down from the top of the Hippodrome. One—one—one—one—on ox-carts rumbling toward the water's edge, in boats rowing over the lupin-coloured sea. Great horses, trot calmly on your sides, roll quietly to the heaving of the bright sea. Above you, sails go up, anchors are weighed. The gonfalon of Saint Mark flings its extended lion to the freshening wind. To Venice, Aquila, Paradiso, Pellegrina, with your attendant dromi! To Venice! Over the running waves of the Spring-blue sea.
BENEATH A CROOKED RAINBOW
As the seasons of Earth are Fire, so are the seasons of men. The departure of Fire is a change, and the coming of Fire is a greater change. Demand not that which is over, but acclaim what is still to come. So the Earth builds up her cities, and falls upon them with weeds and nettles; and Water flows over the orchards of past centuries. On the sand-hills shall apple trees flourish, and in the water-courses shall be gathered a harvest of plums. Earth, Air, and Water abide in fluctuation. But man, in the days between his birth and dying, fashions metals to himself, and they are without heat or cold. In the Winter solstice, they are not altered like the Air, nor hardened like the Water, nor shrivelled like the Earth, and the heats of Summer bring them no burgeoning. Therefore are metals outside the elements. Between melting and melting they are beyond the Water, and apart from the Earth, and severed from the Air. Fire alone is of them, and master. Withdrawn from Fire, they dwell in isolation.
VENICE
Venice anadyomene! City of reflections! A cloud of rose and violet poised upon a changing sea. City of soft waters washing marble stairways, of feet moving over stones with the continuous sound of slipping water. Floating, wavering city, shot through with the silver threads of water, woven with the green-gold of flowing water, your marble Rivas block the tides as they sweep in over the Lagoons, your towers fling golden figures of Fortune into the carnation sky at sunset, the polished marble of the walls of old palaces burns red to the flaring torches set in cressets before your doors. Strange city, belonging neither to earth nor water, where the slender spandrels of vines melt into the carvings of arched windows, and crabs ferry themselves through the moon-green water rippling over the steps of a decaying church.
Beautiful, faded city. The sea wind has dimmed your Oriental extravagance to an iris of rose, and amber, and lilac. You are dim and reminiscent like the frayed hangings of your State Chambers, and the stucco of your house-fronts crumbles into the canals with a gentle dripping which no one notices.
A tabernacle set in glass, an ivory ornament resting upon a table of polished steel. It is the surface of the sea, spangled, crinkled, engine-turned to whorls of blue and silver, ridged in waves of flower-green and gold. Sequins of gold skip upon the water, crocus-yellow flames dart against white smoothness and disappear, wafers of many colours float and intermingle. The Lagoons are a white fire burning to the blue band of the Lido, restlessly shifting under the cool, still, faint peaks of the Euganean Hills.
Where is there such another city? She has taken all the Orient to herself. She has treated with Barbarossa, with Palæologus, with the Pope, the Tzar, the Caliph, the Sultan, and the Grand Khan. Her returning vessels have discharged upon the mole metals and jewels, pearls from the Gulf of Oman, silks from Damascus, camel's-hair fabrics from Erzeroum. The columns of Saint John of Acre have been landed on her jetties, and the great lions from the Piræus. Now she rests and glitters, holding her treasures lightly, taking them for granted, chatting among the fringes, and tinkling sherbet spoons of an evening in the dark shadow of the Campanile.
Up from the flickering water, beyond the laced colonnades of the Ducal Palace—golden bubbles, lung out upon a sky of ripe blue. Arches of white and scarlet flowers, pillars of porphyry, columns of jasper, open loggias of deep-green serpentine flaked with snow. In the architraves, stones chipped and patterned, the blues studded with greens, the greens circling round yellows, reds of every depth, clear purples, heliotropes clouded into a vague white. Above them, all about them, the restless movement of carven stone; it is involuted and grotesque, it is acanthus leaves and roses, it is palm branches and vine tendrils, it is feathers and the tails of birds, all blowing on a day of scirocco. Angels rise among the swirling acanthus leaves, angels and leaves weaving an upstarting line, ending in the great star of Christ struck upon the edge of a golden dome. Saint Mark's Church, gazing down the length of the chequered Piazza, thrusting itself upon the black and white pavement, rising out of the flat tiles in a rattle of colours, soaring toward the full sky like a broken prism whirling at last into the gold bubbles of its five wide domes. The Campanile mounts above it, but the Campanile is only brick, even if it has a pointed top which you cannot see without lying on your back. The pigeons can fly up to it, but the pigeons prefer the angles and hollows of the sculptured church.
Saint Mark's Church—and over the chief arch, among the capitals of foaming leaves and bent grasses, trample four great horses. They are of gold, of gilding so fine that it has not faded. They are tarnished here and there, but their fair colour overcomes the green corroding and is a blinding to the eyes in sunshine. Four magnificent, muscular horses, lightly stepping upon traceried columns, one forefoot raised to launch them forward. They stand over the high door, caught back a moment before springing, held an instant to the perfection of a movement about to begin, and the pigeons circle round them brushing against their sides like wind.
But, dear me, Saint Mark's is the only thing in the Piazza that is not talking, and walking to and fro, and cheapening shoe buckles at a stall, and playing panfil and bassetta at little round tables by the wall, and singing to guitars, and whistling to poodles, and shouting to acquaintances, and giving orders to servants, and whispering a scandal behind fans, and carrying tomatoes in copper pans, and flying on messages, and lying to creditors, and spying on suspects, and colliding with masked loungers, and crying out the merits of fried fish, caught when the tide comes leaping through the Tre Porti. A dish of tea at a coffee-house, and then cross one leg over the other and wait. She will be here by seven o'clock, and a faithful cicisbeo has her charms to muse upon until then. Ah, Venice, chattering, flattering, occupied Venice, what are the sculptured angels and golden horses to you. You are far too busy to glance at them. They are chiefly remarkable as curiosities, for whoever saw a real angel, and as to a real horse—"I saw a stuffed one for a soldo, the other day, in the Campo San Polo. Un elephanto, Gastone, taller than my shoulder and the eyes were made of glass, they would pass for perfect any day."
Ah, the beautiful palaces, with their gateways of gilded iron frilled into arms and coronets, quilled into shooting leaves and tendrils, filled with rosettes, fretted by heraldic emblems! Ah, the beautiful taste, which wastes no time on heavy stone, but cuts flowers, and foliage, and flourishes, and ribbons out of—stucco! Bows of stucco glued about a ceiling by Tiepolo, and ranged underneath, frail white-and-gold, rose-and-gold, green-and-gold chairs, fair consoles of polished lacquer supporting great mirrors of Murano. Hangings of blue silk with silver fringes, behind your folds, la Signora Benzona accords a favour to the Cavalier Giuseppe Trevis. Upon a salmon-coloured sofa striped with pistachio-green, the Cavaliera Contarini flirts with both her cicisbei at once, in a charming impartiality. Kisses? Ah, indeed, certainly kisses. Hands tickling against hands? But assuredly, one for each of you. The heel of a left slipper caught against a buckled shoe, the toe of a right foot pressed beneath a broader sole; but the toll is finished. "Tut! Tut! Gentlemen! With the other present! Have you no delicacy? To-night perhaps, after the Ridotto, we will take a giro in my gondola as far as Malamocco, Signor Bianchi. And to-morrow, Carlo Pin, will you go to church with me? There is something in the tones of an organ, I know not what exactly, but it has its effect."
"You rang, Illustrissima?" "Of course I rang, Stupid, did you think it was the cat?" "Your nobility desires?" "The time, Blockhead, what is the time?" "Past seven, Illustrissima." "Ye Gods, how time passes when one sleeps! Bring my chocolate at once, and call Giannina." With a yawn, the lady rises, just as the sun fades away from the flying figure of Fortune on the top of the Dogana. "Candles, Moracchio." And the misty mirrors prick and pulsate with reflections of blurred flame. Flame-points, and behind them the puce-coloured curtains of a bed; an escritoire with feathered pens and Spanish wax; a table with rouge-pots and powder-boxes; a lady, naked as a Venus, slipping into a silk shift. In the misty mirrors, she is all curves and colour, all slenderness and tapering, all languor and vivacity. Even Giannina murmurs, "Che bella Madonna mia!" as she pulls the shift into place. But the door is ajar, a mere harmless crack to make a fuss about. "Only one eye, Cara Mia, I assure you the other saw nothing but the panel. I ask for so much, and I have only taken the pleasure of one little eye. I must kiss them, Signora Bellissima, two little red berries, like the fruit of the potentillas in the grass at Sant' Elena. Musica! Musica! The barque of music is coming down the canal. Sit on my knee a moment, the Casino can wait; and after you have won a thousand zecchini, will you be a second Danae and go with me to the early morning market? Then you shall come home and sleep all day in the great bed among the roses I shall buy for you. With your gold? Perhaps, my dearest tease, the luck has deserted me lately. But there are ways of paying, are there not, and I am an honourable man."
The great horses of Saint Mark's trot softly forward on their sculptured pedestals, without moving. Behind them, the glass of the arched window is dark, but the Piazza is a bowl of lights, a tambourine of little bell-stroke laughter. The golden horses step forward, dimly shimmering in the light of the lamps below, and the pigeons sleep quietly on the stands at their feet.
Green Lion of Saint Mark upon your high pedestal! Winged Lion of Saint Mark, your head turned over the blinding Lagoons to the blue Lido, your tail pointing down the sweeping flow of the Grand Canal! What do you see, Green Lion of the Patron Saint? Boats? Masts? Quaint paintings on the broad bows of bragozzi, orange sails contra-crossing one another over tossing ripples. Gondolas tipping to the oars of the barcajuoli, slipping under the Ponte della Paglia, dipping between sardine topi, skipping past the Piazzetta, curving away to the Giudecca, where it lies beyond the crystal pinnacles of Santa Maria della Salute and San Giorgio Maggiore which has the lustre of roses.
What do you smell, Lion? Boiling hot chestnuts, fried cuttles, fried puffs of pastry; the pungent odour of salt water and of dead fish; the nostalgic aroma of sandal-wood and myrrh, of musk, of leopard skins and the twin tusks of elephants.
And you, great Lion of the Ducal Palace, what goes on at your feet? People knotted together or scattering, pattering over the old stones in impertinent satin slippers, flippantly tapping the pavement with red heels. Whirls of people circle like the pigeons, knots of people spot the greyness of the stones, ribbons of people file along the colonnades, rayed lines of people between the Procuratie stripe the pavement sideways, criss-cross, at oblique angles. Spangles snap and fade; gems glitter. A gentleman in a buttercup-coloured coat goes by with a bouquet. A sea-green gown brocaded with cherry and violet stays an instant before a stall to buy a packet of ambergris. Pilgrims with staffs and cockles knock the stones as they shuffle along, a water-carrier shouts out a song. A scarlet sacristan jingles his keys; purple robes of justices saunter at ease. Messer Goldoni hustles by to a rehearsal, and three famous castrati, i Signori Pacchierotti, Aprili, Rubenelli, rustle their mantles and adjust their masks, ogling the ladies with gold lorgnons. Blind men sniffle into flageolets, marionette men hurry on to a distant Campo in a flurry of cotton streamers. If Venice is a flowing of water, it is also a flowing of people. All Europe runs into this wide square. There is Monsieur Montesquieu, just from France, taking notes on the sly; there is Mrs. Piozzi, from England, with an eye to everything, even chicken-coops; Herr Goethe, from the Court at Weimar, trying to overcome a fit of mental indigestion; Madame Vigée le Brun, questioning the merit of her work and that of Rosalba Carriera. You have much to watch, Lion, the whole earth cannot match the pageant of this great square, in the limpid sun-shot air, between the towering Campanile and the blaze of Saint Mark's angels. Star-fish patterns, jelly-fish rounds of colour, if the sea quivers with variety so does the Piazza. But above, on the façade of the jewelled church, the horses do not change. They stand vigorous and immovable, stepping lightly as though poised upon glass. Metal horses set upon shifting shards of glass, and the soft diphthongs of the Venetian dialect float over them like wind.
There are two Venices, the one we walk upon, and the one which wavers up to us inverted from the water of the canals. The silver prow of a gondola winds round a wall, and in the moss-brown water another gondola joins it, bottom to bottom, with the teeth of the prow infinitely repeated. A cypress closes the end of a rio, and driven into the thick water another cypress spindles beneath us, and the wake of our boat leaves its foliage cut to tatters as it passes on. We plough through the veined pinks and subdued scarlets of the façades of palaces; we sheer a path through a spotted sky and blunt the tip of a soaring campanile. Are we swimming in the heavens, turned legend and constellation? Truly it seems so. "How you go on, Cavalier, certainly you are a foreigner to notice such things. The Lido, Giuseppe. I have a nostalgia for flowers to-day, and besides, abroad so early in the afternoon—what shocking style! The custom of the country, my dear Sir, here we go to bed by sunlight as you will see."
Sweep out of the broad canal, turn to the hanging snow summits. Oh, the beautiful silver light, the blue light shimmering with silver. The clear sunlight on rose brick and amber marble. The sky so pale it is white, so bright it is yellow, so cloudless it is blue. Oh, the shafts of sapphire striping the wide water, the specks of gold dancing along it, the diamond roses opening and shutting upon its surface! Some one is singing in a distant boat:
"Amanti, ci vuole costanza in amor'
Amando,
Penando,
Si speri, si, si."
The lady shrugs her shoulders. "These fishermen are very droll. What do the canaglia know about love. Breeding, yes, that is certainly their affair, but love! Più presto, Giuseppe. How the sun burns!" Rock over the streaked Lagoon, gondola, pock the blue strips with white, shock purple shadows through the silver strata, set blocks of iris cannoning against gold. This is the rainbow over which we are floating, and the heart-shaped city behind us is a reliquary of old ivory laid upon azure silk. Your hand, Signor the Foreigner, be careful lest she wet those fine French stockings, they cost I do not know how much a pair. Now run away across the Lido, gathering violets and periwinkles. The lady has a whim for a villeggiatura, and why not? Those scarlet pomegranate blossoms will look well in her hair to-night at the opera. But one cannot linger long, already the Dolomites are turning pink, and there is a whole night ahead of us to be cajoled somehow. A mile away from Venice and it is too far. "Felicissima notte!" Wax candles shine in the windows. The little stars of the gondola lanterns glide between dark walls. Broken moonlight shivers in the canals. And the masks come out, thronging the streets and squares with a chequer-work of black cloaks and white faces. Little white faces floating like pond-lilies above the water. Floating faces adrift over unfathomable depths. Have you ever heard the words, Libertà, Independenza, e Eguaglianza? "What stuff and nonsense! Of course I have read your great writer, Rousseau; I cried my heart out over 'La Nouvelle Héloise,' but in practice! Wake my servants, the lazy fellows are always asleep, you will find them curled up on the stairs most likely. It is time we went to the Mendicanti to hear the oratorio. Ah, but those poor orphans sing with a charm! It makes one weep to hear them, only the old Maestro di Capella will beat time with his music on the grill. It is quite ridiculous, they could go through it perfectly without him. Misericordia! The red light! That is the gondola of the Supreme Tribunal taking some poor soul to the Piombi; God protect him! But it does not concern us, my friend. Ridiamo a duetto!" Little tinkling drops from the oars of the boatmen, little tinkling laughter wafted across the moonlight.
Four horses parading in front of a splendid church. Four ancient horses with ears pointed forward, listening. One foot is raised, they advance without moving. To what do they listen? To the serenades they have heard so often? Cavatine, canzonette, dance songs, hymns, for six hundred years the songs of Venice have drifted past them, lightly, as the wings of pigeons. And month by month the old moon has sailed over them, as she did in Constantinople, as she did in Rome.
Saint Stephen's Day, and the Carnival! For weeks now Venice will be amused. Folly to think of anything but fun. Toot the fifes! Bang the drums! Did you ever see anything so jolly in all your life before? Keep your elbows to your sides, there isn't room to square them. "My! What a flare! Rockets in broad daylight! I declare they make the old horses of Saint Mark's blush pink when they burst. Thirsty? So am I, what will you have? Wine or oranges? Don't jostle so, old fellow, we can look in the window as well as you. See that apothecary's stall, isn't that a gay festoon? Curse me, if it isn't made of leeches; what will these shopkeepers do next! That mask has a well-turned ankle. Good evening, my charmer. You are as beautiful as a parrot, as white as linen, as light as a rabbit. Ay! O-o-h! The she-camel! She aimed her confetti right at my eye. Come on, Tito, let's go and see them behead the bull. Hold on a minute though, somebody's pulling my cloak. Just one little squeeze, Beauty, you shouldn't tweak a man's cloak if you don't want to be squeezed. You plump little pudding, you little pecking pigeon, I'll get more next time. Wow! Here comes Arlecchino. Push back, push back, the comedians are coming. Stow in your fat belly, 'lustrissimo, you take up room enough for two."
Somebody beats a gong, and three drummers cleave a path through the crowd. Bang! Bang! BANG! So loud it splits the hearing. Mattachino leaps down the path. He is in white, with red lacings and red shoes. On his arm is a basket of eggs. Right, left, into the crowd, skim the eggs. Duck—jump—it is no use. Plump, on some one's front; pat, against some one's hat. The eggs crack, and scented waters run out of them, filling the air with the sweet smells of musk and bergamot. But here is a wheel of colours rolling down the path. Clown! Clown! It is Arlecchino, in his patched coat. It was green and he has botched it with red, or is it yellow, or possibly blue. It is hard to tell, he turns so fast. Three somersaults, and he comes up standing, and makes a long nose, and sweeps off his hat with the hare's fud, and glares solemnly into the eyes of a gentleman in spectacles. "Sir," says Arlecchino, "have you by chance a toothache? I can tell you how to cure it. Take an apple, cut it into four equal parts, put one of these into your mouth, and thrust your head into an oven until the apple is baked. I swear on my honour you will never have the toothache again." Zip! Sizz! No use in the cane. A pirouette and he is away again. A hand-spring, a double cut-under, and the parti-coloured rags are only a tag bouncing up out of surging black mantles. But there is something more wonderful yet. Set your faces to the Piazzetta, people; push, slam, jam, to keep your places. "A balloon is going up from the Dogana del Mare, a balloon like a moon or something else starry. A meteor, a comet, I don't really know what; it looks, so they say, like a huge apricot, or a pear—yes, that's surely the thing—blushing red, mellow yellow, a fruit on the wing, garlanded with streamers and tails, all a-whirl and a-flutter. Cut the string and she sails, till she lands in the gutter." "How do you know she lands in the gutter, Booby?" "Where else should she land, unless in the sea?" "You're a fool, I suppose you sat up all night writing that doggerel." "Not at all, it is an improvisation." "Here, keep back, you can't push past me with your talk. Oh! Look! Look!"
That is a balloon. It rises slowly—slowly—above the Dogana. It wavers, dips, and poises; it mounts in the silver air, it floats without direction; suspended in movement, it hangs, a clear pear of red and yellow, opposite the melting, opal-tinted city. And the reflection of it also floats, perfect in colour but cooler, perfect in outline but more vague, in the glassy water of the Grand Canal. The blue sky sustains it; the blue water encloses it. Then balloon and reflection swing gently seaward. One ascends, the other descends. Each dwindles to a speck. Ah, the semblance is gone, the water has nothing; but the sky focusses about a point of fire, a formless iridescence sailing higher, become a mere burning, until that too is absorbed in the brilliance of the clouds.
You cheer, people, but you do not know for what. A beautiful toy? Undoubtedly you think so. Shout yourselves hoarse, you who have conquered the sea, do you underestimate the air? Joke, laugh, purblind populace. You have been vouchsafed an awful vision, and you do nothing but clap your hands.
That is over, and here is Pantalone calling to you. "Going—going—I am selling my furniture. Two dozen chairs of fine holland; fourteen tables of almond paste; six majolica mattresses full of scrapings of haycocks; a semolina bedcover; six truffled cushions; two pavilions of spider-web trimmed with tassels made from the moustaches of Swiss door-keepers. Oh! The Moon! The Moon! The good little yellow moon, no bigger than an omelet of eight eggs. Come, I will throw in the moon. A quarter-ducat for the moon, good people. Take your opportunity."
Great gold horses, quietly stepping above the little mandarin figures, strong horses above the whirling porcelain figures, are the pigeons the only birds in Venice? Have the swallows told you nothing, flying from the West?
The bells of Saint Mark's Church ring midnight. The carnival is over.
In the deserted square, the pavement is littered with feathers, confetti, orange-peel, and pumpkin-seeds. But the golden horses on the balcony over the high door trot forward, without moving, and the shadow of the arch above them is thrown farther and farther forward as the moon drops toward the Lagoon.
Bronze armies marching on a sea-shell city. Slanted muskets filing over the passes of tall Alps. Who is this man who leads you, carven in new bronze, supple as metal still cooling, firm as metal from a fresh-broken mold? A bright bronze general heading armies. The tread of his grenadiers is awful, continuous. How will it be in the streets of the glass city? These men are the flying letters of a new gospel. They are the tablets of another law. Twenty-eight, this general! Ah, but the metal is well compounded. He has been victorious in fourteen pitched battles and seventy fights; he has taken five hundred field pieces, and two thousand of heavy calibre; he has sent thirty millions back to the treasury of France. The Kings of Naples and Sardinia write him friendly letters; the Pope and the Duke of Parma weary themselves with compliments. The English have retired from Genoa, Leghorn, and Corsica.
Little glass masks, have you heard nothing of this man? What of the new French ambassador, Citizen Lallemont? You have seen his gondoliers and the tricolore cockade in their caps? It is a puzzling business, but you can hardly expect us to be alarmed, we have been a republic for centuries. Still, these new ideas are intriguing, they say several gentlemen have adopted them. "Alvise Pisani, my Dear, and Abbate Colalto, also Bragadin, and Soranza, and Labbia. Oh, there was much talk about it last night. Such strange notions! But the cockade is very pretty. I have the ribbon, and I am going to make a few. Signora Fontana gave me the pattern."
Columbus discovered America. Ah, it was then you should have made your cockades. Is it Bonaparte or the Cape of Good Hope which has compassed your destiny? Little porcelain figures, can you stand the shock of bronze?
No, evidently. The quills of the Senate secretaries are worn blunt, writing note after note to the General of the Armies. But still he marches forward, and his soldiers, dressed as peasants, have invaded Breschia and Bergamo. And what a man! Never satisfied. He must have this—that—and other things as well. He must have guns, cannon, horses, mules, food, forage. What is all this talk of a Cisalpine Republic? The Senate wavers like so many sea anemones in an advancing tide. Ascension Day is approaching. Shall the Doge go in the Bucentoro to wed the sea "in token of real and perpetual dominion"? The Senate dictates, the secretaries write, and the Arsenalotti polish the brasses of the Bucentoro and wait. Brightly shine the overpolished brasses of the Bucentoro, but the ships in the Arsenal are in bad repair and the crews wanting.
It is Holy Saturday in Venice, and solemn processions march to the churches. The slow chanting of choirs rises above the floating city, but in the Citizen Lallemont's apartments is a jangling of spurred heels, a clanking of cavalry sabres. General Junot arrived in the small hours of the night. Holy Saturday is nothing to a reformed Frenchman; the General's business will not wait, he must see the Signory at once. Desert your churches, convene the College in haste. A bronze man cannot be opposed by a Senate of glass. Is it for fantasy that so many people are wearing the tricolore, or is it politeness to the visiting general? But what does he say? French soldiers murdered! Nonsense, a mere street row between Bergamese. But Junot thunders and clanks his sabre. A sword is a terrible thing in a cabinet of biscuit figurines. Let that pass. He has gone. But Venice is shaken. The stately palaces totter on their rotting piles, the campi buzz with voices, the Piazza undulates to a gesticulating multitude. Only the pigeons wheel unconcernedly about the Campanile, and the great horses stand, poised and majestic, beneath the mounting angels of Saint Mark's Church.
Ascension Day draws nearer. The brasses of the Bucentoro shine like gold. Surely the Doge will not desert his bride; or has the jilt tired of her long subjection? False water, upon your breast rock many navies, how should you remain true to a ship which fears to wet its keel. The Bucentoro glitters in the Arsenal, she blazes with glass and gilding drawn up safely on a runway of dry planks, while over the sea, beyond the Lido, rises the spark of sails. The vessel is hull down, but the tiers of canvas lift up, one after the other: skysails, royals, topgallantsails, topsails, mainsails, and at last, the woodwork. Then gleaming ports, then streaming water flashed from a curved bow. A good ship, but she flys the tricolore. This is no wedding barge, there is no winged lion on that flag. There is no music, no choir singing hymns. Men run to and fro in San Nicolo Fort, peering through spy-glasses. Ah, she will observe the rules, the skysails come down, then the royals—but why in thunder do not the topgallantsails follow? The fellow is coming right under the fort. Guns. He salutes. Answer from the fort. Citizen Lallemont has agreed that no French vessel shall enter the port, even the English do not attempt it. But the son of a dog comes on. Send out boats, Comandatore Pizzamano. Per Dio, he is passing them! Touch off the cannon as a warning. One shot. Two. Some one is on the poop with a speaking-trumpet. "What ship is that?" "Le Libérateur d'Italie. Le Capitaine Laugier. Marine de la République Française." "It is forbidden to enter the port, Signor Capitano Laugier." "We intend to anchor outside." Do you! Then why not clew up those damned topgallantsails. My God! She is past the fort. She has slipped through the entrance; she is in the Lagoon. Her forefoot cuts the diamond water, she sheers her way through the calm colour reflections, her bow points straight at the rose and violet city swimming under the light clouds of early afternoon. Shock! Shiver! Foul of a Venetian galley, by all that's holy. What beastly seamanship! The Venetians will not stand it, I tell you. Pop! Pop! Those are muskets, drop on them with cutlasses, mes enfants. Chop into the cursed foreigners. "Non vogliamo forestieri qui." Boom! The cannon of Fort Sant' Andrea. Good guns, well pointed, the smoke from them draws a shade over the water. Down come the topgallantsails. You have paid a price for your entrance, Captain Laugier, but it is not enough. "Viva San Marco!" Detestable voices, these Venetians. That cry is confusing. Puff! The smoke goes by. Three marines have fallen. The cannon fire at intervals of two minutes. Hot work under a burning sky. Hot work on a burning deck. The smoothness of the water is flecked with bits of wood. A dead body rolls overboard, and bobs up and down beside the ships. A sailor slips from a yard, and is spiked on an upturned bayonet. Over the water comes the pealing of many bells. Captain Laugier is dead, and the city tolls his requiem. Strike your colours, beaten Frenchmen. Bronze cannot walk upon the sea. You have failed and succeeded, for upon your Captain's fallen body the bronze feet have found their bridge. Do you rejoice, old Arsenal? A captive ship towed up to you again! Ah, the cannon firing has brought the rain. Yes, and thunder too, and in the thunder a voice of bronze. The Bucentoro will not take the water this year. Cover up the brasses, Arsenalotti. Ascension Day is nothing to Venice now.
Yesterday this was matter for rejoicing, but to-day... Get the best rowers, order relays of horses on the mainland, post hot foot to the Commissioners at Gratz. One ship is nothing, but if they send twenty! What has the bronze General already said to the Commissioners. The Senate wonders, and wears itself out in speculation. They will give money, they will plunder the pockets of the populace to save Venice. Can a child save his toys when manhood is upon him? The century is old, already another lies in its arms. Month by month a new moon rises over Venice, but century by century! They cannot see, these Senators. They cannot hear the General cutting the Commissioners short in a sort of fury. "I wish no more Inquisition, no more Senate. I will be an Attila for Venice. This government is old; it must fall!" Pretty words from bronze to porcelain. A stain on a brave, new gospel. "Save Venice," the letter urges, and the Commissioners depart for Trieste. But the doors are locked. The General blocks his entrances. "I cannot receive you, Gentlemen, you and your Senate are disgusting to the French blood." A pantomime before a temple, with a priest acting the part of chief comedian. Strange burlesque, arabesquing the characters of a creed. You think this man is a greedy conqueror. Go home, thinking. Your moment flutters off the calendar, your world dissolves and another takes its place. This is the cock-crow of ghosts. Slowly pass up the canal, slowly enter the Ducal Palace. Debate, everlastingly debate. And while you quibble the communication with the continent is cut.
He has declared war, the bronze General. What can be done? The little glass figures crack under the strain. Condulmer will not fight. Pesaro flees to Austria. So the measure awaits a vote. A grave Senate consulting a ballot-box as to whether it shall cut its throat. This is not suicide, but murder; this is not murder, but the turned leaf of an almanac. "Divide! Divide!" What is the writing on the other side? "Viva la Libertà," shouts General Salimbeni from a window. Stupid crowd, it will not give a cheer. It is queer what an unconscionable objection people have to dying. "Viva San Marco!" shouts General Salimbeni. Ah, now you hear! Such a racket, and the old lion flag hoisted everywhere. But that was a rash thing to do. It brings the crash. They fight, fight for old Saint Mark, they smash, burn, demolish. Who wore the tricolore? Plunder their houses. No you don't, no selling us to foreigners. They cannot read, the people, they do not see that the print has changed. By dint of cannon you can stop them. Stop them suddenly like a clock dropped from a wall.
Venice! Venice! The star-wakes gleam and shatter in your still canals, and the great horses pace forward, vigorous, unconcerned, beautiful, treading your grief as they tread the passing winds.
The riot is over, but another may break out. A dead republic cannot control its citizens. General Baraguey d'Hilliers is at Mestre. His dragoons will keep order. Shame, nobles and abdicated Senate! But can one blame the inactivity of the dead? French dragoons in little boats. The 5th and 63rd of the line proceeding to Venice in forty little boats. Grenadiers embarked for a funeral. Soldiers cracking jokes, and steady oar-strokes, warping them over the water toward Venice. A dark city, scarcely a lamp is lit. A match-spark slits the darkness, a drummer is lighting his pipe. Ah, there are walls ahead. The dull bones of the dead. Water swashes against marble. They are in the canal, their voices echo from doors and porches. Forty boats, and the bobble of them washes the water step and step above its usual height on the stairways. "C'est une église ça!" "Mais, oui, Bêta, tu pensais pourtant pas que tu entrais en France. Nous sommes dans une sale ville aristocratique, et je m'en fiche, moi!" Brave brigadier, spit into the canal, what else can a man of the new order do to show his enlightenment. Two regiments of seasoned soldiers, two regiments of free citizens, forty boat-loads of thinking men to goad a moribund nation into the millennium. The new century arriving with a flower in its button-hole, the carmagnole ousting the furlana. Perhaps—perhaps—but years pile up and then collapse. Will gaps start between one and another? Settle your gun-straps, 63rd of the line, we land here by the dim shine of a lantern held by a bombardier. Tier and tier the soldiers march through Venice. Their steps racket like the mallets of marble-cutters in the narrow calli, and the sound of them over bridges is the drum-beating of hard rain.
There are soldiers everywhere, Venice is stuffed with soldiers. They are at the Arsenal, on the Rialto, at San Stefano, and four hundred stack muskets, and hang their bearskins on the top of them, in the middle of the Piazza.
Golden horses, the sound of violins is hushed, the pigeons who brush past you in the red and rising sunlight have just been perching on crossed bayonets. Set your faces to this army, advance toward them, paw the air over their heads. They do not observe you—yet. You are confounded with jewels, and leaves, and statues. You are a part of the great church, even though you stand poised to leave it, and already a sergeant has seen you. "Tiens," says he, "voilà les quatre chevaux d'or. Ah, mais ils sont magnifiques! Et quelle drôle d'idée de les avoir montés sur la Cathédrale."
The century wanes, the moon-century is gnawed and eaten, but the feet of the great horses stand upon its fragments, full-tilted to an arrested advance, and the green corroding on their sides is hidden in the glare of gold.
"For the honour and independence of the infant Cisalpine Republic, the affectionate and loving Republic of France orders and commands—"
What does she command? Precisely, that the new Government shall walk in solemn procession round the Piazza, and that a mass of thanksgiving shall be celebrated in Saint Mark's Church and the image of the Virgin exposed to the rejoicing congregation. Who would have supposed that Venetians could be so dumb. The acclamations seem mostly in the French tongue. Never mind, it takes more than a day to translate a creed into a new language. Liberty is a great prize, good Venetians, although it must be admitted that she appears in disguise for the moment. She wears a mask, that is all, and you should be accustomed to masks. The soldiers bask in the warm sunshine, and doubtless the inhabitants bask in the sight of the soldiers, but they conceal their satisfaction very adroitly. Still, General Baraguey d'Hilliers has no doubt that it is there. This liberation of a free people is a famous exploit. He is a bit nettled at their apathy, for he has always heard that they were of a gay temperament. "Sacré Bleu! And we are giving them so much!"
Indeed, this giving is done with a magnificent generosity. It is exactly on Ascension Day that Bonaparte writes from Montebello: "Conformably to your desire, Citizens, I have ordered the municipalities of Padua and Treviso to allow the passage of the foodstuffs necessary to the provisionment of the town of Venice."
"Real and perpetual dominion," and now a boat-load of food is a condescension! Pink and purple water, your little ripples jest at these emblazoned palaces, your waves chuckle down the long Rivas, you reflect the new flag of Venice which even the Dey of Algiers refuses to respect, and patter your light heels upon it as on a dancing-floor. There will be no more use for the Bucentoro, of course. So rip off the gilding, pack up the mirrors, chop the timbers into firewood. This is good work for soldiers with nothing to do. There are other ships to be dismantled too, and some few seaworthy enough to send to the army at Corfu. But if they have taken away Ascension Day, the French will give Venice a new fête. Ah! and one so beautiful! Beat the drums, ring the church-bells, set up a Tree of Liberty in the Great Square, this fête is past telling. So writes the Citizen Arnault, from his room in the Queen of England inn. He bites his pen, he looks out on the little canal with its narrow bridge, he fusses with his watch-chain. It is not easy to write to the bronze General. He dips in the ink and starts again. "The people take no active part in what goes on here. They have seen the lions fall without making any sign of joy." That certainly is queer. Perhaps Citizen Arnault did not hear that gondolier, who when they chiselled out "Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus" on the lion's book, and chiselled in "Diritti dell' uomo e del cittadino," exclaimed: "The lion has turned over a new leaf." Does that sound like grief? Certainly not, think the French soldiers, and yet the Doge's robes, the Golden Book, burn in silence, until a corporal strikes up the "Marseillaise." They make a grand blaze too; why, the boatmen far off in the hazy Lagoon can hear the crackle of it snapping over the water. Then the columns! The columns produce a lovely effect, one all wound with tricolore flags and with this inscription: "To the French, regenerators of Italy, Venice grateful," on its front, and on the back, "Bonaparte." The other is not so gay, but most proper and desirable. It is hung with crêpe, and the letters read: "To the shade of the victim of oligarchy, Venice sorrowful," and, "Laugier." To be sure there has been considerable excitement, and the great green lion has been thrown down and shattered in at least eighty fragments, but the soldiers did it. The populace were simply stolid and staring. Citizen Arnault fidgets in his chair. But other affairs march better. He has found the only copy of Anacharsis which is known to be in Venice; he is going to hunt for Homer, for he wants to put it with the Ossian of Cesarotti which he has already taken from the Library. Here his pen runs rapidly, he has an inspiration. "There are four superb horses which the Venetians took when, in company with the French, they sacked Constantinople. These horses are placed over the portal of the Ducal Church. Have not the French some right to claim them, or at least to accept them of Venetian gratitude?" The bronze General has an eye to a man, witness this really excellent plan. Fold your letter, Citizen. Press your fob down upon the seal. You may feel proud as you ring for candles, no one will have hurt Venice more than you.
The blue night softens the broken top of the column in the Piazzetta where it juts against the sky. The violet night sifts shadows over the white, mounting angels of Saint Mark's Church; it throws an aureole of lilac over the star of Christ and melts it into the glimmering dome behind. But upon the horses it clashes with the glitter of steel. Blue striking gold, and together producing a white-heart fire. Cold, as in great fire, hard as in new-kindled fire, outlined as behind a flame which folds back upon itself in lack of fuel, the great horses stand. They strain forward, they recoil even when starting, they raise one foot and hold it lifted, and all about them the stones of the jewelled church writhe, and convolute, and glisten, and dash the foam of their tendrils against the clear curve of the moulded flanks.
The Treaty of Campo Formio! A mask stripped off a Carnival figure, and behold, the sneering face of death! What of the creed the French were bringing the Venetians! Was it greed after all, or has a seed been sown? If so, the flowering will be long delayed. The French are leaving us, and almost we wish they would remain. For Austria! What does it matter that the Bucentoro is broken up; the lions from the Piræus loaded into a vessel; books, parchments, pictures, packed in travelling cases! What does anything matter! A gondolier snaps his fingers: "Francese non tutti ladri, ma Buona-parte!" Hush, my friend, that is a dangerous remark, for Madame Bonaparte has descended upon Venice in a whirlwind of laughter, might have made friends had she not been received in an overturned storehouse. But she stays only three days, and the song of the gondoliers who row her away can scarcely be heard for the hammering they make, putting up an immense scaffolding in front of Saint Mark's Church. They have erected poles too, and tackle. It is an awful nuisance, for soldiers are not skilled in carpenter work, and no Venetian will lend a hand. A grand ship sails for Toulon as soon as the horses are on board.
Golden horses, at last you leave your pedestals, you swing in the blue-and-silver air, you paw the reflections flung by rippled water, and the starved pigeons whirl about you chattering. One—one—one—one! The tackle creaks, the little squeaks of the pigeons are sharp and pitiful. A gash in the front of the great Church. A blank window framing nothing. The leaves of the sculptures curl, the swirling angels mount steadily, the star of Christ is the pointed jet of a flame, but the horses drop—drop— They descend slowly, they jerk, and stop, and start again, and one—one—one—one—they touch the pavement. Women throw shawls over their heads and weep; men pull off their caps and mutter prayers and imprecations. Then silently they form into a procession and march after the hand-carts, down to the quay, down to the waiting vessel. Slow feet following to a grave. Here is a sign, but hardly of joy. This is a march of mourning. Depart, vessel, draw out over the bright Lagoon, grow faint, vague, blur and disappear. The murder is accomplished. To-morrow come the Austrians.
BONFIRES BURN PURPLE
Then the energy which peoples the Earth crystallized into a single man. And this man was Water, and Fire, and Flesh. His core had the strength of metal, and the hardness of metal was in his actions, and upon him the sun struck as upon polished metal. So he went to and fro among the nations, gleaming as with jewels. Of himself were the monuments he erected, and his laws were engraved tablets of fairest bronze. But there grew a great terror among the lesser peoples of the Earth, and they ran hither and yon like the ants, they swarmed like beetles, and they saw themselves impotent, merely making tracks in sand. Now as speed is heat, so did this man soften with the haste of his going. For Fire is supreme even over metal, and the Fire in him overcame the strong metal, so that his limbs failed, and his brain was hot and molten. Then was he consumed, but those of his monuments which harboured not Fire, and were without spirit, and cold, these endured. In the midst of leaping flame, they kept their semblances, and turning many colours in heat, still they cooled as the Fire cooled. For metal is unassailable from without, only a spark in the mid-most circle can force a double action which pours it into Water, and volatilizes it into Air, and sifts it to ashes which are Earth. For man can fashion effigies, but the spark of Life he can neither infuse nor control.
As a sharp sun this man passed across his century, and of the cenotaphs of his burning, some remain as a shadow of splendour in the streets of his city, but others have returned whence he gathered them, for the years of these are many and the touch of kings upon them is as the dropping of particles of dust.
VENICE AGAIN
Sunday evening, May 23, 1915. A beautiful Sunday evening with the Lagoon just going purple, and the angel on the tip of the new Campanile dissolved to a spurt of crocus-coloured flame. Up into the plum-green sky mount the angels of the Basilica of Saint Mark, their wings, curved up and feathered to the fragility of a blowing leaf, making incisive stabs of whiteness against the sky.
An organ moans in the great nave, and the high voices of choristers float out through the open door and surge down the long Piazza. The chugging of a motor-boat breaks into the chant, swirls it, churns upon it, and fades to a distant pulsing down the Grand Canal. The Campanile angel goes suddenly crimson, pales to rose, dies out in lilac, and remains dark, almost invisible, until the starting of stars behind it gives it a new solidity in hiding them.
In the warm twilight, the little white tables of the Café Florian are like petals dropped from the rose of the moon. For a moment they are weird and magical, but the abrupt glare of electric lights touches them back into mere tables: mere tables, flecked with coffee-cups and liqueur-glasses; mere tables, crumpling the lower halves of newspapers with their hard edges; mere tables, where gesticulating arms rest their elbows, and ice-cream plates nearly meet disaster in the excitement of a heated discussion. Venice discusses. What will the Government do? Austria has asked that her troops might cross over Italian territory, South of Switzerland, in order to attack the French frontier. Austria! "I tell you, Luigi, that alliance the Government made with the Central Powers was a ghastly blunder. You could never have got Italians to fight on the side of Austrians. Blood is thicker than ink, fortunately. But we are ready, thanks to Commandante Cadorna. It was a foregone conclusion, ever since we refused passage to their troops." "I saw Signor Colsanto, yesterday. He told me that the order had come from the General Board of Antiquities and Fine Arts to remove everything possible to Rome, and protect what can't be moved. He begins the work to-morrow." "He does! Well, that tells us. Here, Boy, Boy, give me a paper. Listen to that roar! There you are, cinque centesimi. Well, we're off, Luigi. It's declared. Italy at war with Austria again. Thank God, we've wiped off the stain of that abominable treaty." With heads bared, the crowd stands, and shouts, and cheers, and the pigeons fleer away in frightened circles to the sculptured porticoes of the Basilica. The crowd bursts into a sweeping song. A great patriotic chorus. It echoes from side to side of the Piazza, it runs down the colonnades of the Procuratie like a splashing tide, it dashes upon the arched portals of Saint Mark's and flicks upward in jets of broken music. Wild, shooting, rolling music; vibrant, solemn, dedicated music; throbbing music flung out of loud-pounding hearts. The Piazza holds the sound of it and lifts it up as one raises an offering before an altar. Higher—higher—the song is lifted, it engulfs the four golden horses over the centre door of the church. The horses are as brazen cymbals crashing back the great song in a cadence of struck metal, the carven capitals are fluted reeds to this mighty anthem, the architraves bandy it to and fro in revolving canons of harmony. Up, up, spires the song, and the mounting angels call it to one another in an ascending scale even to the star of fire on the topmost pinnacle which is the Christ, even into the distant sky where it curves up and over falling down to the four horizons, to the highest point of the aconite-blue sky, the sky of the Kingdom of Italy.
Garibaldi's Hymn! For war is declared and Italy has joined the Allies!
Soft night falling upon Venice. Summer night over the moon-city, the flower-city. Fiore di Mare! Garden of lights in the midst of dark waters, your star-blossoms will be quenched, the strings of your guitars will snap and slacken. Nights, you will gird on strange armour, and grow loud and strident. But now— The gilded horses shimmer above the portico of Saint Mark's! How still they are, and powerful. Pride, motion, activity set in a frozen patience.
Suddenly—Boom! A signal gun. Then immediately the shrill shriek of a steam whistle, and another, and whistles and whistles, from factories and boats, yawling, snarling, mewling, screeching, a cracked cacophony of horror.
Minutes—one—two—three—and the batteries of the Aerial-Guard Station begin to fire. Shells—red and black, white and grey—bellow, snap, and crash into the blue-black sky. A whirr—the Italian planes are rising. Their white centre lights throw a halo about them, and, tip and tip, a red light and a green, spark out to a great spread, closing together as the planes gain in altitude. Up they go, the red, white, and green circles underneath their wings and on either side of the fan-tails bright in the glow of the white centre light. Up, up, slanting in mounting circles. "Holy Mother of God! What is it?" Taubes over the city, flying at a great height, flying in a wedge like a flight of wild geese. Boom! The anti-aircraft guns are flinging up strings of luminous balls. Range 10,000 feet, try 10,500. Loud detonations, echoing far over the Lagoon. The navigation lights of the Italian planes are a faint triangle of bright dots. They climb in deliberate spirals, up and up, up and up. They seem to hang. They hover without direction. Ah, there are the Taubes, specks dotting the beam of a search-light. One of them is banking. Two Italian machines dart up over him. He spins, round—round—top-whirling, sleeping in speed, to us below he seems stationary. Pup-pup-pup-pup-pup—machine-guns, clicking like distant typewriters, firing with indescribable rapidity. The Italian planes drop signal balloons, they hang in the air like suspended sky-rockets, they float down, amber balls, steadily burning. The ground guns answer, and white buds of smoke appear in the sky. They seem to blossom out of darkness, silver roses beyond the silver shaft of the search-light. The air is broken with noise: thunder-drumming of cannon, sharp pocking of machine-guns, snap and crack of rifles. Above, the specks loop, and glide, and zig-zag. The spinning Taube nose-dives, recovers, and zums upward, topping its adversary. Another Taube swoops in over a Nieuport and wags its tail, spraying lead bullets into the Italian in a wide, wing-and-wing arc. The sky is bitten red with stinging shrapnel. Two machines charge head on, the Taube swerves and rams the right wing of the Nieuport. Flame! Flame leaping and dropping. A smear from zenith to—following it, the eye hits the shadow of a roof. Blackness. One poor devil gone, and the attacking plane is still airworthy though damaged. It wobbles out of the search-light and disappears, rocking. Two Taubes shake themselves free of the tangle, they glide down—down—all round them are ribbons of "flaming onions," they avoid them and pass on down, close over the city, unscathed, so close you can see the black crosses on their wings with a glass. Rifles crack at them from roofs. Pooh! You might as well try to stop them with pea-shooters. They curve, turn, and hang up-wind. Small shells beat about them with a report like twanged harp-strings. "Klar sum Werfen?" "Jawohl." "Gut dock, werfen." Words cannot carry down thousands of feet, but the ominous hovering is a sort of speech. People wring their hands and clutch their throats, some cover their ears. Z-z-z-z-z! That whine would pierce any covering. The bomb has passed below the roofs. Nothing. A pause. Then a report, breaking the hearing, leaving only the apprehension of a great light and no sound. They have hit us! Misericordia! They have hit Venice! One—two—four—ten bombs. People sob and pray, the water lashes the Rivas as though there were a storm. Another machine falls, shooting down in silence. It is not on fire, it merely falls. Then slowly the Taubes draw off. The search-light shifts, seeking them. The gun-fire is spaced more widely. Field-glasses fail to show even a speck. There is silence. The silence of a pulse which has stopped. But the people walk in the brightness of fire. Fire from the Rio della Tanna, from the Rio del Carmine, from the quarter of Santa Lucia. Bells peal in a fury, fire-boats hurry with forced engines along the canals. Water streams jet upon the fire; and, in the golden light, the glittering horses of Saint Mark's pace forward, silent, calm, determined in their advance, above the portal of the untouched church.
The night turns grey, and silver, and opens into a blue morning. Diamond roses sparkle on the Lagoon, but the people passing quickly through the Piazza are grim, and workmen sniff the smoky air as they fix ladders and arrange tools. Venice has tasted war. "Evviva Italia!"
City of soft colours, of amber and violet, you are turning grey-green, and grey-green are the uniforms of the troops who defend you. The Bersaglieri still wear their cocks' feathers, but they are green too, and black. Black as the guns mounted on pontoons among the Lagoons before Venice, green as the bundles of reeds camouflaging them from Austrian observation balloons. Drag up metre after metre of grey-green cloth, stretch it over the five golden domes of Saint Mark's Basilica. Hood their splendour in umbrella bags of cloth, so that not one glint shall answer the mocking shimmer of the moon. Barrows and barrows of nails for the wooden bastion of the Basilica, hods and hods of mortar and narrow bricks to cover the old mosaics of the lunettes. Cart-loads of tar and planking, and heaps, heaps, hills and mountains of sand—the Lido protecting Venice, as it has done for hundreds of years. They shovel sand, scoop sand, pour sand, into bags and bags and bags. Thousands of bags piled against the bases of columns, rising in front of carved corners, blotting out altars, throttling the open points of arches. Porphyries, malachites, and jades are squarely boarded, pulpits and fonts disappear in swaddling bands. Why? The battle front is forty miles away in Friuli, and Venice is not a fortified town. Why? Answer, Reims! Bear witness, Ypres! Do they cover Venice without reason? Nietzsche was a German, still I believe they read him in Vienna. Blood and Iron! And is there not also Blood and Stone, Blood and Bronze, Blood and Canvas? "Kultur," Venetians, in the Rio del Carmine; there is no time to lose. Take down the great ceiling pictures in the Ducal Palace and wrap them on cylinders. Build a high trestle, and fashion little go-carts which draw with string.
Hush! They are coming—the four beautiful horses. They rise in a whirl of disturbed pigeons. They float and descend. The people watch in silence as, one after another, they reach the ground. Across the tiles they step at last, each pulled in a go-cart; merry-go-round horses, detached and solitary, one foot raised, tramp over chequered stones, over chequered centuries. The merry-go-round of years has brought them full circle, for are they not returning to Rome?
For how long? Ask the guns embedded in the snow of glaciers; ask the rivers pierced from their beds, overflowing marshes and meadows, forming a new sea. Seek the answer in the faces of the Grenatieri Brigade, dying to a man, but halting the invaders. Demand it of the women and children fleeing the approach of a bitter army. Provoke the reply in the dryness of those eyes which gaze upon the wreck of Tiepolo's ceiling in the Church of the Scalzi. Yet not in Italy alone shall you find it. The ring of searching must be widened, and France, England, Japan, and America, caught within its edge. Moons and moons, and seas seamed with vessels. Needles stitching the cloth of peace to choke the cannon of war.
The boat draws away from the Riva. The great bronze horses mingle their outlines with the distant mountains. Dim gold, subdued green-gold, flashing faintly to the faint, bright peaks above them. Granite and metal, earth over water. Down the canal, old, beautiful horses, pride of Venice, of Constantinople, of Rome. Wars bite you with their little flames and pass away, but roses and oleanders strew their petals before your going, and you move like a constellation in a space of crimson stars.
So the horses float along the canal, between barred and shuttered palaces, splendid against marble walls in the fire of the sun.
END
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