Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/186

172 About fifty nobili, with long dark red trains, were with him. For the most part, they were handsome men; and there was not a single uncouth figure among them. Several of them were tall, with large heads; so that the white curly wigs were very becoming to them. Their features are prominent. The flesh of their faces is soft and white, without looking flabby and disagreeable. On the contrary, there is an appearance of talent without exertion, repose, self-confidence, easiness of existence; and a certain joyousness pervades the whole.

When all had taken their places in the church, and mass began, the fraternities entered by the chief door, and went out at the side door to the right, after they had received holy water in couples, and made their obeisance to the high altar, to the doge, and the nobility.

Night.

For this evening I had bespoke the celebrated song of the mariners, who chant Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must be actually ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing of course, but rather belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, with one singer before, and the other behind me. They sing their song, taking up the verses alternately. The melody, which we know through Rousseau, is of a middle kind, between choral and recitative, maintaining throughout the same cadence, without any fixed time. The modulation is also uniform, only varying with a sort of declamation, both tone and measure, according to the subject of the verse. But the spirit, the life of it, is as follows:

Without inquiring into the construction of the melody, suffice it to say, that it is admirably suited to that easy class of people, who, always humming something or other to themselves, adapt such tunes to any little poem they know by heart.