Chapters (26)
- Feature
- PREFACE
- VENICE
- THE GRAND CANAL
- VENICE: AN EARLY IMPRESSION
- TWO OLD HOUSES AND THREE YOUNG WOMEN
- CASA ALVISI
- FROM CHAMBÉRY TO MILAN
- THE OLD SAINT-GOTHARD LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK
- ITALY REVISITED
- A ROMAN HOLIDAY
- ROMAN RIDES
- ROMAN NEIGHBOURHOODS
- THE AFTER-SEASON IN ROME
- FROM A ROMAN NOTE-BOOK
- A FEW OTHER ROMAN NEIGHBOURHOODS
- A CHAIN OF CITIES
- SIENA EARLY AND LATE
- THE AUTUMN IN FLORENCE
- FLORENTINE NOTES
- TUSCAN CITIES
- OTHER TUSCAN CITIES
- RAVENNA
- THE SAINT'S AFTERNOON AND OTHERS
- You are reading a Deluxe Edition:
- Copyright
The saint comes out at last, borne aloft in long procession and under a high canopy: a rejoicing, staring, smiling saint, openly delighted with the one happy hour in the year on which he may take his own walk. Frocked and tonsured, but not at all macerated, he holds in his hand a small wax puppet of an infant Jesus and shows him to all their friends, to whom he nods and bows: to whom, in the dazzle of the sun he literally seems to grin and wink, while his litter sways and his banners flap and every one gaily greets him. The ribbons and draperies flutter, and the white veils of the marching maidens, the music blares and the guns go off and the chants resound, and it is all as holy and merry and noisy as possible. The procession - down to the delightful little tinselled and bare-bodied babies, miniature St. Antonys irrespective of sex, led or carried by proud papas or brown grandsires - includes so much of the population that you marvel there is such a muster to look on - like the charades given in a family in which every one wants to act. But it is all indeed in a manner one house, the little high-niched island community, and nobody therefore, even in the presence of the head of it, puts on an air of solemnity. Singular and suggestive before everything else is the absence of any approach to our notion of the posture of respect, and this among people whose manners in general struck one as so good and, in particular, as so cultivated. The office of the saint - of which the festa is but the annual reaffirmation - involves not the faintest attribute of remoteness or mystery.