These opened with the decapitation of three
bulls: a rite said to commemorate some long-forgotten dispute between
the inveterate enemies, Venice and Aquileia. The bulls, preceded by
halberdiers and trumpeters, and surrounded by armed attendants, were led
in state before the ducal palace, and the executioner, practised in his
bloody work, struck off each head with a single stroke of his huge
sword. This slaughter was succeeded by pleasanter sights, such as the
famous Vola, or flight of a boy from the bell-tower of Saint Mark's to a
window of the palace, where he presented a nosegay to his Serenity and
was caught up again to his airy vaulting-ground. After this ingenious
feat came another called the "Force of Hercules," given by a band of
youths who, building themselves into a kind of pyramid, shifted their
postures with inexhaustible agility, while bursts of fireworks wove
yellow arches through the midday light. Meanwhile the crowds in the
streets fled this way and that as a throng of uproarious young fellows
drove before them the bulls that were to be baited in the open squares;
and wherever a recessed doorway or the angle of a building afforded
shelter from the rout, some posture-maker or ballad-singer had gathered
a crowd about his carpet.
Ash Wednesday brought about a dramatic transformation. Every travesty
laid aside, every tent and stall swept away, the people again gathered
in the Piazza to receive the ashes of penitence on their heads, the
churches now became the chief centres of interest.
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