A GARDEN IN VENICE 



as two and three centimes each when scarce, 

 they are sold at twenty to thirty centimes the 

 hundred when full in season, and as each plant 

 will yield some score of heads its owner wins his 

 profit with small labour. Pietro and his family 

 were the " Ortolani " of the garden. His Paron 

 was a Greek who lived at Venice, and came 

 every morning to get the bessi that Pietro's arti- 

 chokes were sold for. 



I fell at once in love. What a garden could be 

 made of the abandoned orchard, what scope for 

 planting, what an escape from constant idleness, 

 what a relief from my lately loved mistress the 

 lagoon, from whom my soul now turned in the 

 ungrateful satiety of too long possession. 



The next morning we went to meet the Greek, 

 a Venetian so called, because his house was near 

 the Church of the Greci. 



To the natives of the Giudecca all are foreigners 

 who are not Giudecchites. I once had a garden 

 man, a native of neighbouring Murano, who left 

 me because he was hunted when he went outside 

 the garden by the Giudecca boys as a Forresti, 



c 2 19 



