Such
were but a few of the contradictions in a city where the theatres were
named after the neighbouring churches, where there were innumerable
religious foundations but scarce an ecclesiastic to be met in company,
and where the ladies of the laity dressed like nuns, while the nuns in
the aristocratic convents went in gala habits and with uncovered heads.
No wonder that to the bewildered stranger the Venetians seemed to keep
perpetual carnival and Venice herself to be as it were the mere stage of
some huge comic interlude.
To Odo the setting was even more astonishing than the performance. Never
had he seen pleasure and grace so happily allied, all the arts of life
so combined in the single effort after enjoyment. Here was not a mere
tendency to linger on the surface, but the essence of superficiality
itself; not an ignoring of what lies beneath, but an elimination of it;
as though all human experience should be beaten thin and spread out
before the eye like some brilliant tenuous plaque of Etruscan gold. And
in this science of pleasure--mere jeweller's work though it were--the
greatest artists had collaborated, each contributing his page to the
philosophy of enjoyment in the form of some radiant allegory flowering
from palace wall or ceiling like the enlarged reflection of the life
beneath it. Nowhere was the mind arrested by a question or an idea.
Thought slunk away like an unmasked guest at the ridotto. Sensation
ruled supreme, and each moment was an iridescent bubble fresh-blown from
the lips of fancy.
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