03.17. Venice
Chapter 17 Venice.
Venice -- The Shops -- Palaces -- Worship with the Waldensians -- The Doges -- Nuptials of the Sea -- Venetian Power -- Lions Mouth --Bridge of Sighs -- The Prison. The shops and stores of Venice are quite small, many of them being about twelve by fifteen feet. The storekeepers have struck upon the happy expedient of lining the walls with mirrors which, while brilliantly reflecting the light, also create the delusion that the room is double its actual size. Yet even with this fanciful enlargement the whole affair looks very much like playing at storekeeping to the American eye. That is until you come to settle your bills with them, and then you find there has been no playing in the matter. The ancient palaces of nobility abound. What with the action of the water at the base and the effect of the centuries on the walls, the observer is not much impressed with their magnificence. When we stand within, however, and glance at the painted and sculptured ceiling, the niches for statuary, and the mosaic floors, something of the old-time grandeur is realized.
Before these palaces on the Grand Canal stand a row of colored posts, placed in the water, and only a few feet from the main door. The rank of the inmates is declared by the color and peculiar striping of the post. The recollection came at once to me of the streaked and striped barbell poles that abound in the United States. Who can tell but our first tonsorial artists were expatriated noblemen of Venice!
Many of the palaces have passed into the hands of tradesmen and hotel-keepers. It is, I doubt not, very soothing to the democratic spirit of the commoners of America and England to sit, eat and sleep in these patrician halls, and moralize about the decay and fall of aristocracies, oligarchies and monarchies. On Sabbath evening I worshiped with the only Waldensian Congregation in the city. They met in a large upper room of one of the ancient palaces. The audience numbered about thirty, and there was a remarkable absence of unction. It was hard to realize that these people were the religious descendants of the church that in the dark ages withstood Paganism, Romanism, and all other isms of evil in the world. Both, the congregation and the palace in which they assembled, have lost their ancient glory. Time was when the Waldensians had no roof over their heads and lived in the mountains and fields, and great was their spiritual glory and power; but today I find them ensconced in a palace and their glory and power are gone. Few churches can stand being comfortably housed, and none can flourish in a palace. The cloud of Israel that once rested on the Waldensians has moved on and is settling today on a people working for God in the streets and the fields. It is wonderful to see what the church of God can do for the world’s salvation so long as it is turned out of doors. For instance the Apostolic Church on the high roads and the high seas; the Waldensians and the Albigensians in the mountains; Methodism in the mines of Cornwall and fields of England; and the Salvation Army in the streets of our great cities. Put the church in cathedrals and palaces, and at once and invariably she loses her power.
It was on the same evening when searching for the Waldensians that as I was approaching one of the diminutive openings, called squares or plazzas in Venice, that my attention was attracted by the terrific bawling of a fruit-vender; such vociferations I never in any circumstances heard surpassed. Judging from his cries one would have supposed that he had a ship-load of fruit and vegetables; but when I drew near I discovered to my amusement that on a little table before him he had a single watermelon cut up into a dozen longitudinal slices. This was his stock; and all that tremendous fuss and noise was about and over this. Other venders around had more goods than himself, but he swept beyond them all in stentorian yells! I thought of a certain preacher in a certain preacher’s meeting, who on every Monday morning boasted so much of his large prayer-meeting, that my heart in listening to him fairly sank with discouragement. It was true that I had a large prayermeeting, but this brother bawled so much, and hallooed so loud over his watermelon that I went down one night to see it, and also to learn the brother’s methods by which he attracted such a crowd. To my amazement I discovered that his meeting was not as large as my own.
Some people are given to bawling. Some people are given to bawling over a very little.
I have known certain individuals in my life to halloo louder over a few slices of watermelon, so to speak, than others did over an entire watermelon patch! When a boy I used to pronounce the word Doge of Venice, the dog of Venice. The impression then in the mind was that the august head of the commonwealth flourished under a title thus spelt and pronounced. After coming to years of manhood, and finally visiting the City of the Sea, I discovered that I was not far wrong. More than one Doge could have had the last letter very properly omitted from his official name, and been well described in that portion of the word which remained. As the civil, military, and ecclesiastical head of the State, and given at one time unlimited power, the Doge was not slow to take advantage of the position, and so swept on with a high hand until there came the inevitable uprising of an opposing sentiment, and he was suddenly curbed and restricted and finally made a mere figurehead, as has been done before, and will be done again, to all tyrants and oppressors.
Much has been sung and written about the nuptials of Venice to the Sea. It was a wonderful scene made up of a sunlit sea, sweeping fleets, fluttering pennons, imposing ceremonies, and the Doge in gorgeous robes casting the begemmed and flashing ring into the Adriatic. Much needless pain has been felt by the economic heart at this annual loss of a valuable gem. The fact was, as I am informed, that the same ring was cast every year into the sea. A fine net placed skillfully at the stern of the vessel under the waves, received the glittering treasure when it was flung down so freely, and held it safely for its owners. After the deluded public had disappeared the gem was slipped from the aqueous finger of the Adriatic, stolen in a word from the maritime spouse, and kept for a similar annual occasion. This is not the first or last thing of the kind beheld in the world. As one ponders the pages of history he is convinced that no one can be trusted with unlimited power. We rail at the tyranny of kings, but it has gone to record that when the people have the dangerous possession of absolute supremacy, they do just the same. Power is so intoxicating in its nature so self-exalting, man depreciating, and reason-dethroning that few or none can possess it and be just, and remain unchanged. It has been tried with kings and parliaments; with nations and cities; with triumvirates, decemvirates, and councils of one hundred, three hundred and five hundred; with one person and the whole people; with laymen and preachers; with the State and the Church; with senators of Rome, warriors of Sparta, nobility of France, commoners of England, and merchants of Venice -- but the result is always the same. Unlimited power granted for a lifetime upsets poor, weak man and makes him arbitrary, unjust, oppressive and cruel. Evidently the movement of God in Providence is to take this most dangerous trust, called power, and so divide it between the nations and parties and classes that the people may walk unimpeded by chains and fetters, and that the world may retire at night to sleep soundly and rest undisturbed. The Venetian government was as great a despotism as any that has afflicted the race of man. The fact that the rulers were merchant noblemen did not make their dynasty less dreadful.
Human nature is the same in all ages and countries. As an evidence of the fearful power in Venice and the dread in which it was held, it is related that a man received the following laconic missive: "The climate of Venice is unhealthy for you." At once the man fled from the city for his life without stopping to carry with him a single article of property or to say farewell to a soul. He knew that life-time imprisonment or death was under this sententious line. But besides this there are unmistakable evidences of the old-time power and tyranny. One is the "Lion’s Mouth." This is now simply a slit in the wall, five or six inches in width and one in depth. A written communication dropped into this slit fell into the chamber of the "Council of Three." If the letter contained charges against any one in Venice, the result would be the immediate disappearance of that citizen from the walks of life. The fact that the written suspicion or charge was not signed did not take from it its potency. Surely this room would be like heaven; and the slit in the wall like the doorway to heaven, to that class of writers who love to sign themselves anonymously and whose joy it is to thus invisibly afflict their fellow creatures. Another evidence of the ancient tyranny is seen in the Bridge of Sighs. It is today the most pathetic of structures to the eye. The Bastile of Paris or the Tower of London do not affect you as powerfully. The very name is repeated with a sigh. The step comes to a halt upon the summit of the covered arched way, while reveries of most melancholy nature steal over the mind.
Still another sign of the past is the prison at the farther end of the Bridge of Sighs. The cells of midnight blackness, once seen, can never be forgotten. In a narrow passage I was shown the spot where the prisoners of state were beheaded. The stone block which received the victim’s head, and the groove in the wall for the descending blade are still there. A small door near by opens just over one of the lagunes.
What sorrowful and blood-curdling scenes have taken place in this little passage! I could see again the masked executioner, the silent guard, and the presiding official. I could see the flickering lights, and ghastly moisture on the walls, and the pallid prisoner as he stood helpless before the instrument of death. Let him scream aloud if he will, no one could possibly hear him through the thick walls that shut him in. It is not known in Venice what has become of him -- it may be that he is forgotten. In five minutes more the decapitated body will be stowed into a sack, thrust through the little door in the wall, dropped into a waiting boat on the canal, and rowed out to sea and sunk with weights to the bottom. And so they sleep by thousands in the depths of the blue Adriatic, and the secret of the crime and death sleeps with them. Oftentimes they stir uneasily, as if they would arise and come back to the streets of Venice and proclaim aloud to the world the false accusation, the kidnapping, the long, unjust imprisonment, and the awful, solitary death. The limb moves, the hand is lifted as if the sleeper was arousing himself, but it was only the movement of a wandering wave, and so the skeleton lies down again amid the sand and shells and coral of the ocean floor. There is but one who can awaken them, and when they hear His voice in the morning of the Last Day they will come forth, and with them volumes of unwritten history. Nothing shall be hidden that day; the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, men shall be rewarded according to their deeds, and these sleepers in the sea shall obtain justice at last, and find mercy, perhaps, for the first time.
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