Francesco helped us to slip out unobserved. With
many silent good wishes we left the innocent playful people who had
been so kind to us. The stars were shining from a watery sky as we
passed into the piazza beneath the Campanile and the pinnacles of
S. Mark. The Riva was almost empty, and the little waves fretted the
boats moored to the piazzetta, as a warm moist breeze went fluttering
by. We smoked a last cigar, crossed our _traghetto_, and were
soon sound asleep at the end of a long pleasant day. The ball, we
heard next morning, finished about four.
Since that evening I have had plenty of opportunities for seeing my
friends the gondoliers, both in their own homes and in my apartment.
Several have entertained me at their mid-day meal of fried fish
and amber-coloured polenta. These repasts were always cooked with
scrupulous cleanliness, and served upon a table covered with coarse
linen. The polenta is turned out upon a wooden platter, and cut with
a string called _lassa_. You take a large slice of it on the
palm of the left hand, and break it with the fingers of the right.
Wholesome red wine of the Paduan district and good white bread were
never wanting. The rooms in which we met to eat looked out on narrow
lanes or over pergolas of yellowing vines. Their whitewashed walls
were hung with photographs of friends and foreigners, many of them
souvenirs from English or American employers. The men, in broad
black hats and lilac shirts, sat round the table, girt with the red
waist-wrapper, or _fascia_, which marks the ancient faction of
the Castellani.
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