PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE.
1. CHAPTER I.
Giannino Pasquali was a smart tailor some five
years ago, occupying a cool shop on one of the smaller
canals of Venice. Four pairs of suspenders, a print
of the fashions, and a motley row of the gay-colored
trousers worn by the gondoliers, ornamented the window
looking on the dark alley in the rear, and, attached
to the post of the water-gate on the canal side,
floated a small black gondola, the possession of which
afforded the same proof of prosperity of the Venetian
tailor which is expressed by a horse and buggy at the
door of a snip in London. The place-seeking traveller,
who, nez en l'air, threaded the tangled labyrinth
of alleys and bridges between the Rialto and St.
Mark's, would scarce have observed the humble shop-window
of Pasquali, yet he had a consequence on the
Piazza, and the lagoon had seen his triumphs as an
amateur gondolier. Giannino was some thirty years
of age, and his wife Fiametta, whom he had married
for her zecchini, was on the shady side of fifty.
If the truth must be told, Pasquali had discovered
that, even with a bag of sequins for eye-water, Fiametta
was not always the most lovely woman in
Venice. Just across the canal lived old Donna
Bentoccata, the nurse, whose daughter Turturilla
was like the blonde in Titian's picture of the Marys;
and to the charms of Turturilla, even seen through
the leaden light of poverty, the unhappy Pasquali was
far from insensible.
The festa of San Antonio arrived after a damp week
of November, and though you would suppose the atmosphere
of Venice not liable to any very sensible increase
of moisture, Fiametta, like people who live on
land, and who have the rheumatism as a punishment
for their age and ugliness, was usually confined to her
brazero of hot coals till it was dry enough on the Lido
for the peacocks to walk abroad. On this festa, however,
San Antonio being, as every one knows, the
patron saint of Padua, the Padovese were to come
down the Brenta, as was their custom, and cross over
the sea to Venice to assist in the celebration; and
Fiametta once more thought Pasquali loved her for
herself alone when he swore by his rosary that unless
she accompanied him to the festa in her wedding dress,
he would not turn an oar in the race, nor unfasten his
gondola from the door-post. Alas! Fiametta was
married in the summer solstice, and her dress was
permeable to the wind as a cobweb or gossamer. Is
it possible you could have remembered that, oh, wicked
Pasquali?
It was a day to puzzle a barometer; now bright,
now rainy; now gusty as a corridor in a novel, and
now calm as a lady after a fit of tears. Pasquali was
up early and waked Fiametta with a kiss, and, by way
of unusual tenderness, or by way of ensuring the wedding
dress, he chose to play dressing maid, and arranged
with his own hands her jupon and fezzoletta.
She emerged from her chamber looking like a slice
of orange-peel in a flower-bed, but smiling and nodding,
and vowing the day warm as April, and the sky
without a cloud. The widening circles of an occasional
drop of rain in the canal were nothing but the
bubbles bursting after a passing oar, or perhaps the last
flies of summer. Pasquali swore it was weather to win
down a peri.
As Fiametta stepped into the gondola, she glanced
her eyes over the way and saw Turturilla, with a face
as sorrowful as the first day in Lent, seated at her
window. Her lap was full of work, and it was quite
evident that she had not thought of being at the festa.
Fiametta's heart was already warm, and it melted quite
at the view of the poor girl's loneliness.
“Pasquali mio!” she said, in a deprecating tone,
as if she were uncertain how the proposition would
be received, “I think we could make room for poor
Turturilla!”
A gleam of pleasure, unobserved by the confiding
sposa, tinted faintly the smooth olive cheek of Pasquali.
“Eh! diavolo!” he replied, so loud that the sorrowful
seamstress heard, and hung down her head
still lower; “must you take pity on every cheese-paring
of a regezza who happens to have no lover!
Have reason! have reason! The gondola is narrower
than your brave heart my fine Fiametta!” And away
he pushed from the water-steps.
Turturilla rose from her work and stepped out upon
the rusty gratings of the balcony to see them depart.
Pasquali stopped to grease the notch of his oar, and
between that and some other embarrassments, the
gondola was suffered to float directly under her
window. The compliment to the generous nature
of Fiametta, was, meantime, working, and as she was
compelled to exchange a word or two with Turturilla
while her husband was getting his oar into the socket,
it resulted (as he thought it very probable it would),
in the good wife's renewing her proposition, and making
a point of sending the deserted girl for her holyday
bonnet. Pasquali swore through all the saints
and angels by the time she had made herself ready,
though she was but five minutes gone from the window,
and telling Fiametta in her ear that she must consider
it as the purest obligation, he backed up to the steps of
old Donna Bentoccata, helped in her daughter with a
better grace than could have been expected, and with
one or two short and deep strokes, put forth into the
grand canal with the velocity of a lance-fly.
A gleam of sunshine lay along the bosom of the
broad silver sheet, and it was beautiful to see the
gondolas with their gay colored freights all hastening
in one direction, and with swift track to the festa.
Far up and down they rippled the smooth water, here
gliding out from below a palace-arch, there from a narrow
and unseen canal, the steel beaks curved and flashing,
the water glancing on the oar-blades, the curtains
moving, and the fair women of Venice leaning out and
touching hands as they neared neighbor or acquaintance
in the close-pressing gondolas. It was a beautiful
sight, indeed, and three of the happiest hearts in
that swift gliding company were in Pasquali's gondola,
though the bliss of Fiametta, I am compelled to say,
was entirely owing to the bandage with which love is
so significantly painted. Ah! poor Fiametta!
From the Lido, from Fusina, from under the Bridge
of Sighs, from all quarters of the lagoon, and from all
points of the floating city of Venice, streamed the flying
gondolas to the Giudecca. The narrow walk
along the edge of the long and close-built island was
thronged with booths and promenaders, and the black
barks by hundreds bumped their steel noses against
the pier as the agitated water rose and fell beneath
them. The gondolas intended for the race pulled
slowly up and down, close to the shore, exhibiting
their fairy-like forms and their sinewy and gayly dressed
gondoliers to the crowds on land and water; the
bands of music, attached to different parties, played
here and there a strain; the criers of holy pictures
and gingerbread made the air vocal with their lisping
and soft Venetian; and all over the scene, as if it was
the light of the sky or some other light as blessed but
less common, shone glowing black eyes, black as
night, and sparkling as the stars on night's darkest
bosom. He who thinks lightly of Italian beauty
should have seen the women of Venice on St. Antonio's
day '32, or on any or at any hour when their
pulses are beating high and their eyes alight—for they
are neither one nor the other always. The women
of that fair clime, to borrow the simile of Moore, are
like lava-streams, only bright when the volcano kindles.
Their long lashes cover lustreless eyes, and their blood
shows dully through the cheek in common and listless
hours. The calm, the passive tranquillity in which
the delicate graces of colder climes find their element
are to them a torpor of the heart when the blood scarce
seems to flow. They are wakeful only to the energetic,
the passionate, the joyous movements of the
soul.
Pasquali stood erect in the prow of his gondola, and
stole furtive glances at Turturilla while he pointed
away with his finger to call off the sharp eyes of Fiametta;
but Fiametta was happy and unsuspicious.
Only when now and then the wind came up chilly
from the Adriatic, the poor wife shivered and sat
closer to Turturilla, who in her plainer but thicker
dress, to say nothing of younger blood, sat more comfortably
on the black cushion and thought less about
the weather. An occasional drop of rain fell on the
nose of poor Fiametta, but if she did not believe it was
the spray from Pasquali's oar, she at least did her best
to believe so; and the perfidious tailor swore by St.
Anthony that the clouds were as dry as her eyelashes.
I never was very certain that Turturilla was not in the
secret of this day's treacheries.
The broad centre of the Giudecca was cleared, and
the boats took their places for the race. Pasquali
ranged his gondola with those of the other spectators,
and telling Fiametta in her ear that he should sit on
the other side of Turturilla as a punishment for their
malapropos invitation, he placed himself on the small
remainder of the deep cushion on the farthest side
from his now penitent spouse, and while he complained
almost rudely of the narrowness of his seat, he
made free to hold on by Turturilla's waist which no
doubt made the poor girl's mind more easy on the
subject of her intrusion.
Who won and who lost the race, what was the
device of each flag, and what bets and bright eyes
changed owners by the result, no personage of this
tale knew or cared, save Fiametta. She looked on
eagerly. Pasquali and Turturilla, as the French say,
trouvaient autress chats á frotter.
After the decision of the grand race, St. Antonio
being the protector, more particularly of the humble
(“patron of pigs” in the saints' calendar), the seignoria
and the grand people generally, pulled away for St.
Mark's, leaving the crowded Giudecca to the people.
Pasquali, as was said before, had some renown as a
gondolier. Something what would be called in other
countries a scrub race, followed the departure of the
winning boat, and several gondolas, holding each one
person only, took their places for the start. The
tailor laid his hand on his bosom, and, with the smile
that had first stirred the heart and the sequins of
Fiametta, begged her to gratify his love by acting as
his make-weight while he turned an oar for the pig of
St. Antonio. The prize roasted to an appetizing
crisp, stood high on a platter in front of one of the
booths on shore, and Fiametta smacked her lips,
overcame her tears with an effort, and told him, in
accents as little as possible like the creak of a dry oar
in the socket, that he might set Turturilla on shore.
A word in her ear, as he handed her over the gunwale,
reconciled Bonna Bentoccata's fair daughter to
this conjugal partiality, and stripping his manly figure
of its upper disguises, Pasquali straightened out his
fine limbs, and drove his bark to the line in a style that
drew applause from even his competitors. As a mark
of their approbation, they offered him an outside place
where his fair dame would be less likely to be spattered
with the contending oars; but he was too generous
to take advantage of this considerate offer, and crying
out as he took the middle, “ben pronto, signori!” gave
Fiametta a confident look and stood like a hound in
the leash.
Off they went at the tap of the drum, poor Fiametta
holding her breath and clinging to the sides of the
gondola, and Pasquali developing skill and muscle—
not for Fiametta's eyes only. It was a short, sharp
race, without jockeying or management, all fair play
and main strength, and the tailor shot past the end of
the Giudecca a boat's length ahead. Much more applauded
than a king at a coronation or a lord-mayor
taking water at London stairs, he slowly made his way
back to Turturilla, and it was only when that demure
damsel rather shrunk from sitting down in two inches
of water, that he discovered how the disturbed element
had quite filled up the hollow of the leather cushion
and made a peninsula of the uncomplaining Fiametta.
She was as well watered, as a favorite plant in a flower-garden.
“Pasquali mio!” she said in an imploring tone,
holding up the skirt of her dress with the tips of her
thumb and finger, “could you just take me home
while I change my dress.”
“One moment, Fiametta cara! they are bringing
the pig!”
The crisp and succulent trophy was solemnly placed
in the prow of the victor's gondola, and preparation
was made to convoy him home with a triumphant
procession. A half hour before it was in order to
move—an hour in first making the circuit of the grand
canal, and an hour more in drinking a glass and exchanging
good wishes at the stairs of the Rialto, and
Donna Fiametta had sat too long by two hours and a
half with scarce a dry thread on her body. What
afterward befell will be seen in the more melancholy
sequel.
2. CHAPTER II.
The hospital of St. Girolamo is attached to the
convent of that name, standing on one of the canals
which put forth on the seaward side of Venice. It is
a long building, with its low windows and latticed
doors opening almost on the level of the sea, and the
wards for the sick are large and well aired; but, except
when the breeze is stirring, impregnated with a
saline dampness from the canal, which, as Pasquali
remarked, was good for the rheumatism. It was not
so good for the patient.
The loving wife Fiametta grew worse and worse
after the fatal festa, and the fit of rheumatism brought
on by the slightness of her dress and the spattering he
had given her in the race, had increased by the end of
the week, to a rheumatic fever. Fiametta was old
and tough, however, and struggled manfully (woman
as she was) with the disease, but being one night a
little out of her head, her loving husband took occasion
to shudder at the responsibility of taking care of
her, and jumping into his gondola, he pulled across to
St. Girolamo and bespoke a dry bed and a sister of
charity, and brought back the pious father Gasparo
and a comfortable litter. Fiametta was dozing when
they arrived, and the kind-hearted tailor willing to
spare her the pain of knowing that she was on her way
to the hospital for the poor, set out some meat and
wine for the monk, and sending over for Turturilla
and the nurse to mix the salad, they sat and ate away
the hours till the poor dame's brain should be wandering
again.
Toward night the monk and Dame Bentoccata were
comfortably dozing with each other's support (having
fallen asleep at table), and Pasquali with a kiss from
Turturilla, stole softly up stairs. Fiametta was mutturing
unquietly, and working her fingers in the palms
of her hands, and on feeling her pulse he found the
fever was at its height. She took him, besides, for the
prize pig of the festa, for he knew her wits were fairly
abroad. He crept down stairs, gave the monk a strong
cup of coffee to get him well awake, and, between the
four of them, they got poor Fiametta into the litter,
drew the curtains tenderly around and deposited her
safely in the bottom of the gondola.
Lightly and smoothly the winner of the pig pulled
away with his loving burden, and gliding around the
slimy corners of the palaces, and hushing his voice
as he cried out “right!” or “left!” to guard the
coming gondoliers of his vicinity, he arrived, like a
thought of love to a maid's mind in sleep, at the door
of St. Girolamo. The abbess looked out and said,
“Benedicite!” and the monk stood firm on his brown
sandals to receive the precious burden from the arms
of Pasquali. Believing firmly that it was equivalent
to committing her to the hand of St. Peter, and of
course abandoning all hope of seeing her again in
this world, the soft-hearted tailor wiped his eye as
she was lifted in, and receiving a promise from Father
Gasparo that he would communicate faithfully the
state of her soul in the last agony, he pulled, with
lightened gondola and heart, back to his widower's
home and Turturilla.
For many good reasons, and apparent as good, it is
a rule in the hospital of St. Girolamo, that the sick
under its holy charge shall receive the visit of neither
friend nor relative. If they recover, they return to
their abodes to earn candles for the altar of the restoring
saint. If they die, their clothes are sent to their
surviving friends, and this affecting memorial, besides
communicating the melancholy news, affords all the
particulars and all the consolation they are supposed
to require upon the subject of their loss.
Waiting patiently for Father Gasparo and his bundle,
Pasquali and Turturilla gave themselves up to hopes,
which on the tailor's part (we fear it must be admitted),
augured a quicker recovery from grief than might be
credited to an elastic constitution. The fortune of
poor Fiametta was sufficient to warrant Pasquali in
neglecting his shop to celebrate every festa that the
church acknowledged, and for ten days subsequent to
the committal of his wife to the tender mercies of St.
Girolamo, five days out of seven was the proportion of
merry holydays with his new betrothed.
They were sitting one evening in the open piazza
of St. Mark, in front of the most thronged café of
that matchless square. The moon was resting her
silver disk on the point of the Campanile, and the
shadows of thousands of gay Venetians fell on the
immense pavement below, clear and sharply drawn
as a black cartoon. The four extending sides of the
square lay half in shades half in light, with their
innumerable columns and balconies and sculptured
work, and, frowning down on all, in broken light and
shadow, stood the arabesque structure of St. Mark's
itself dizzying the eyes with its mosaics and confused
devices, and thrusting forth the heads of her four
golden-collared steeds into the moonbeams, till they
looked on that black relief, like the horses of Pluto
issuing from the gates of Hades. In the centre of
the square stood a tall woman, singing, in rich contralto,
and old song of the better days of Venice; and
against one of the pillars, Polichinello had backed
his wooden stage, and beat about his puppets with
an energy worthy of old Dandolo and his helmeted
galley-men. To those who wore not the spectacles
of grief or discontent, the square of St. Mark's that
night was like some cozening
tableau.
I never saw
anything so gay.
Everybody who has “swam in a gondola,” knows
how the cafés of Venice thrust out their checkered
awnings over a portion of the square, and filled the
shaded space below with chairs and marble tables.
In a corner of the shadow thus afforded, with ice and
coffee on a small round slab between them, and the
flat pavement of the public promenade under their feet,
sat our two lovers. With neither hoof nor wheel to
drown or interrupt their voices (as in cities whose
streets are stones, not water), they murmured their
hopes and wishes in the softest language under the
sun, and with the sotto voce acquired by all the inhabitants
of this noiseless city. Turturilla had taken ice to
cool her and coffee to take off the chill of her ice, and
a biechiere del perfetto amore to reconcile these two
antagonists in her digestion, when the slippers of a
monk glided by, and in a moment the recognised
Father Gasparo made a third in the shadowy corner.
The expected bundle was under his arm, and he was
on his way to Pasquali's dwelling. Having assured
the disconsolate tailor that she had unction and wafer
as became the wife of a citizen of Venice like himself,
he took heart and grew content that she was in heaven.
It was a better place, and Turturilla for so little as a
gold ring, would supply her place in his bosom.
The moon was but a brief week older when Pasquali
and Turturilla stood in the church of our lady
of grief, and Father Gasparo within the palings of the
altar. She was as fair a maid as ever bloomed in the
garden of beauty beloved of Titian, and the tailor was
nearer worth nine men to look at, than the fraction of
a man considered usually the exponent of his profession.
Away mumbled the good father upon the matrimonial
service, thinking of the old wine and rich
pastries that were holding their sweetness under cork
and crust only till he had done his ceremony, and
quicker by some seconds than had ever been achieved
before by priest or bishop, he arrived at the putting on
of the ring. His hand was tremulous, and (oh unlucky
omen!) he dropped it within the gilden fence
of the chancel. The choristers were called, and
Father Gasparo dropped on his knees to look for it—
but if the devil had not spirited it away, there was no
other reason why that search was in vain. Short of
an errand to the goldsmith on the Rialto, it was at
last determined the wedding could not proceed. Father
Gasparo went to hide his impatience within the
restiary, and Turturilla knelt down to pray against the
arts of Sathanas. Before they had settled severally
to their pious occupations, Pasquali was half way to
the Rialto.
Half an hour elapsed, and then instead of the light
grazing of a swift-sped gondola along the church
stairs, the splash of a sullen oar was heard, and Pasquali
stepped on shore. They had hastened to the
door to receive him—monk, choristers and bride—
and to their surprise and bewilderment, he waited to
hand out a woman in a strange dress, who seemed dis
posed, bridegroom as he was, to make him wait her
leisure. Her clothes fitted her ill, and she carried in
her hand a pair of shoes, it was easy to see were never
made for her. She rose at last, and as her face became
visible, down dropped Turturilla and the pious
father, and motionless and aghast stood the simple
Pasquali. Fiametta stepped on shore!
In broken words Pasquali explained. He had
landed at the stairs near the fish market, and with two
leaps reaching the top, sped off past the buttress in
the direction of the goldsmith, when his course was
arrested by encountering at full speed, the person of
an old woman. Hastily raising her up, he recognised
his wife, who, fully recovered, but without a gondola,
was threading the zig-zag alleys on foot, on her way
to her own domicil. After the first astonishment was
over, her dress explained the error of the good father
and the extent of his own misfortune. The clothes
had been hung between the bed of Fiametta and that
of a smaller woman who had been long languishing
of a consumption. She died, and Fiametta's clothes,
brought to the door by mistake, were recognised by
Father Gasparo and taken to Pasquali.
The holy monk, chop-fallen and sad, took his solitary
way to the convent, but with the first step he felt
something slide into the heel of his sandal. He sat
down on the church stairs and absolved the devil from
theft—it was the lost ring, which had fallen upon his
foot and saved Pasquali the tailor from the pains of
bigamy.
