your perfumes and fine airs;" for which he received half a florin. His
remarks to gentlemen had usually this sarcastic flavor. I am sorry to say
that so excellent a madman was often drunk and unable to fulfill his
duties to society.

There are, of course, laws against mendicancy in Venice, and they are, of
course, never enforced. Beggars abound everywhere, and nobody molests
them. There was long a troop of weird sisters in Campo San Stefano, who
picked up a livelihood from the foreigners passing to and from the Academy
of Fine Arts. They addressed people with the title of Count, and no doubt
gained something by this sort of heraldry, though there are counts in
Venice almost as poor as themselves, and titles are not distinctions. The
Venetian seldom gives to beggars; he says deliberately, "_No go_" (I
have nothing), or "_Quando ritornero_" (when I return), and never
comes back that way. I noticed that professional hunger and cold took this
sort of denial very patiently, as they did every other; but I confess I
had never the heart to practice it. In my walks to the Public Gardens
there was a venerable old man, with the beard and bearing of a patriarch,
whom I encountered on the last bridge of the Riva, and who there asked
alms of me. When I gave him a soldo, he returned me a blessing which I
would be ashamed to take in the United States for half a dollar; and when
the soldo was in some inaccessible pocket, and I begged him to await my
coming back, he said sweetly,--"Very well, Signor, I will be here." And I
must say, to his credit, that he never broke his promise, nor suffered me,
for shame's sake, to break mine. He was quite a treasure to me in this
respect, and assisted me to form habits of punctuality.

That exuberance of manner which one notes, the first thing, in his
intercourse with Venetians, characterizes all classes, but is most
excessive and relishing in the poor. There is a vast deal of ceremony with