At night, when the moon is up, is the time to visit this spot.
Standing here, with the looming pile of the Doge's Palace bulked
behind you, and the gorgeous but somewhat garish decorations of
the great cathedral softened and soothed into perfection of outline
and coloring by the half light, you can for the moment forget the
fallen state of Venice, and your imagination peoples the splendid
plaza for you with the ghosts of its dead and vanished greatnesses.
You conceive of the place as it must have looked in those old,
brave, wicked days, filled all with knights, with red-robed cardinals
and clanking men at arms, with fair ladies and grave senators,
slinking bravos and hired assassins--and all so gay with silk and
satin and glittering steel and spangling gems.
By the eye of your mind you see His Illuminated Excellency, the
frosted Christmas card, as he bows low before His Eminence, the
pink Easter egg; you see, half hidden behind the shadowed columns
of the long portico, an illustrated Sunday supplement in six colors
bargaining with a stick of striped peppermint candy to have his
best friend stabbed in the back before morning; you see giddy
poster designs carrying on flirtations with hand-painted valentines;
you catch the love-making, overhear the intriguing, and scent the
plotting; you are an eyewitness to a slice out of the life of the
most sinister, the most artistic, and the most murderous period
of Italian history.
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