will take ten soldi from you for a trifling service, and not consider
himself in the least abased. The detestable custom of largess, instead of
wages, still obtains in so great degree in Venice that a physician, when
asked for his account, replies: "What you please to give." Knowing these
customs, I hope I have never acted discourteously to the street beggars of
Venice even when I gave them nothing, and I know that only one of them
ever so far forgot himself as to curse me for not giving. Him, however, I
think to have been out of his right mind at the time.

There were two mad beggars in the parish of San Stefano, whom I should be
sorry to leave unmentioned here. One, who presided chiefly over the Campo
San Stefano, professed to be also a facchino, but I never saw him
employed, except in addressing select circles of idlers whom a brawling
noise always draws together in Venice. He had been a soldier, and he
sometimes put himself at the head of a file of Croats passing through the
campo, and gave them the word of command, to the great amusement of those
swarthy barbarians. He was a good deal in drink, and when in this state
was proud to go before any ladies who might be passing, and clear away the
boys and idlers, to make room for them. When not occupied in any of these
ways, he commonly slept in the arcades of the old convent.

But the mad beggar of Campo Sant' Angelo seemed to have a finer sense of
what became him as a madman and a beggar, and never made himself obnoxious
by his noise. He was, in fact, very fat and amiable, and in the summer lay
asleep, for the most part, at a certain street corner which belonged to
him. When awake he was a man of extremely complaisant presence, and
suffered no lady to go by without a compliment to her complexion, her
blond hair, or her beautiful eyes, whichever it might be. He got money for
these attentions, and people paid him for any sort of witticism. One day
he said to the richest young dandy of the city,--"Pah! you stomach me with