The arbour and the grass and the street-car track ended sharply and all together at a raised wooden walk that led across the sand to a pavilion hanging over the Adriatic, and here we sat and watched other Venetians disporting themselves in the water below.  They were glorious creatures, and they disported themselves nobly, keeping so well in view of the pavilion and such a steady eye upon the spectators that poppa had an impulsive desire to feed them with macaroons.  He decided not to; you never could tell, he said, what might be considered a liberty by foreigners; but he had a hard struggle with the temptation, the aquatic accomplishments we saw were so deserving of reward.  I had the misfortune to lose a little pink rose overboard, as it were, and Dicky looked seriously annoyed when an amphibious young Venetian caught it between his lips.  I don’t know why; he was one of the most attractive on view, but I have often noticed Turkish tendencies in Dicky where his country-women are concerned.  We came away almost immediately after, so that rose will bloom in my memory, until I forget about it, among romances that might have been.

Strolling back, we bought a Venetian secret for a sou or two, a beautiful little secret, I wonder who first found it out.  A picturesque and fishy smelling person in a soft felt hat sold it to us—­a pair of tiny dainty dried sea-horses, “mere” and “pere” he called them.  And there, all in the curving poise of their little heads and the twist of their little tails, was revealed half the art of Venice, and we saw how the first glass worker came to be told to make a sea green dragon climbing over an amber yellow bowl, and where the gondola borrowed its grace.  They moved us to unanimous enthusiasm, and we utterly refused to let Dicky put one in his button-hole.

It is looking back upon Venice, too, that I see the paternal figure of the Senator nourishing the people with octopuses.  This may seem improbable, but it is strictly true.  They were small octopuses, not nearly large enough to kill anybody while they were alive, though boiled and pickled they looked very deadly.  Pink in colour, they stood in a barrel near the entrance, I remember, of Jesurum’s, and attracted the Senator’s inquiring eye.  When the guide said they were for human consumption poppa looked at him suspiciously and offered him one.  He ate it with a promptness and artistic despatch that fascinated us all, gathering it up by its limp long legs and taking bites out of it, as if it were an apple.  A one-eyed man who hooked pausing gondolas up to the slippery steps offered to show how it should be done, and other performers, all skilled, seemed to rise from the stones of the pavement.  Poppa invited them all, by pantomime, to walk up and have an octopus, and when the crowd began to gather from the side alleys, and the enthusiasm grew too promiscuous, he bought the barrel outright and watched the carnival from the middle of the canal.  He often speaks of his enjoyment of the Venetian octopus, eaten in cold blood, without pepper, salt, or vinegar; and the effect, when I am not there, is awe-stricken.