But I have not yet begun to tell the wonders of St. Mark's Square. This was
in June, 1910; the Campanile was being built to replace the old one that
had fallen in 1902, and to little Maria and Andrea, there was a fascination
in watching the workmen lift the great stones into place from the confused
debris at its base.
If the Piazza was wonderful, so, too, was the piazzetta with the Ducal
Palace with the golden staircase and the two columns, the one surmounted
by the winged lion of St. Mark, the other by St. Theodore, standing on a
crocodile.
Sometimes, after having wandered to the edge of the Grand Canal and looked
away to the blue dome of the church of Maria della Salute, they would run
back to the Square and, hand in hand, go window-wishing among the shops
that line its sides. No one who has never seen these shops of Venice can
form any conception of how fascinating they are with their strands of
glittering beads or yards upon yards of marvelous laces.
Often Andrea would exclaim, as they flattened their noses against the
glass, "When I am a man, I will work in the glass factory as my father
does, and, perhaps, who knows, I shall discover some new glaze which shall
make all the world amazed?" He had never forgotten the day when his father
had taken him to the factory and shown him the molten glaze and the workmen
blowing the glass into marvelous shapes. That day he had decided upon his
future career.
But little Maria cared more for the laces, and would shyly point to some
especially beautiful piece and say softly:
"Perhaps, it was the madre who made that.
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