VI SUNSET FROM THE TOWER OF SAN GIORGIO 28
On the Appian Way _Frontispiece in Color_
Children feeding Pigeons in the Piazza of St. Mark, Venice 11
"The army of boys bearing baskets of earth from the excavations of Pompeii" 106
It was a glorious summer evening. The moon, rising over the city of Venice, shone down on towers and domes and marble palaces, and made a golden path in the rippling waters of the lagoon.
The squares of the city were all ablaze with lights, while from every window and balcony twinkling jets of flame found their reflection in the canals, and lengthened into shimmering arrows of gold.
There were no sounds save the calls of the boatmen, the soft lapping of the waves against the marble walls and steps, and occasional strains of music from the military band in the Piazza of St. Mark.
No place in all the world shines with more brilliancy than Venice in carnival time. The city is like a diamond, as it catches the myriad rays from moonlight and starlight, and flashes countless answering gleams into the shadows of the night.
It is small wonder that people travel from the farthest corners of the earth to watch the glitter and sparkle of this City of the Sea.
It was on this summer evening that Rafael Valla, a Venetian lad of fourteen, decided to become a soldier of the king.
He was sitting in the water-gate of his mother's house, pointing with his toe to the reflection in the canal of a particularly large and brilliant star. "If the starlight moves to the right of my toe," he said to himself, "I will go to the Piazza."
He knew perfectly well that he would go to the Piazza. The music of the band was calling to him, and the star was slowly shifting its light, as it had done on many a night while Rafael sat waiting and dreaming in the gateway.
The tide was gently pulling his little boat away from the orange-and-black mooring-post, at the foot of the steps, toward the larger canal.
"Perhaps my boat knows of all the gay sights that are waiting for it in the Grand Canal," the boy thought idly. "It may well know," he added in his thought; "it has been there times enough."
The Grand Canal is the largest and finest of all the water-ways which thread the city. It is spanned by three beautiful bridges, and, on either side, rise the marble palaces of the ancient Venetian nobility; those rulers of men whose names fill the "Golden Book of Venetian History."
