Street vendors of all kinds swarmed in the piazza at night--flower-girls of the most obliging natures, who, if you would not buy their wares, would thrust a bouquet into your hand gratis (you were, of course, supposed to repay them at some other time). There were musicians of every sort and kind--some with guitars; others with mandolines; some playing selections from the operas; others singing "Funiculi" and "Santa Lucia" in high tenor voices; deep-chested, bronze-faced men who explained that they were once operatic stars, but were now reduced, by the injustice of managers and the villainous tempers of the prima donnas, to street singing. There were men who went about selling frosted fruits on long sticks, crying "Caramel, caramel!" and giving descriptions of their wares in almost every European language. People of all races were there--red-faced Englishmen and fair women, with their rosy daughters in sailor hats, on the way from Switzerland, the respectable English father explaining St. Mark's with a comprehensive wave of the hand. There were Frenchmen, Americans, Austrians, Italians, either talking volubly or deadly quiet; Greeks, with long bluish-black hair floating out behind them, and caps with silk top-knots (these were captains of small vessels coming from Cyprus and Syria, and they went to the Café della Costanza, where they could procure mocha and the pipe they loved best); and young Venetian gentlemen who spent their lives for the most part in drifting from one café to another, generally handsome, well-dressed men with immaculate linen and pointed beards carefully cut, carrying long canes, and the lightest of kid gloves (their main object seemed to be to stare at all the pretty women); and Austrians, smart, good-natured people, who frequented their own cafés, with much talk and laughter and rattling of swords. Now and then one saw Venetian women of the upper classes on the piazza, but very rarely. They were extremely indolent and lazy, and seldom went out. The weather, they would tell you, was never sufficiently fine: there was too much sun, or a sirocco was coming, or a cloud threatened rain: the slightest thing deterred them. Often the utmost exertion a Venetian woman would allow herself in the day was to pass from her sofa to her balcony to breathe the freshness of the flowers. Consequently, she had a complexion which was extremely delicate, a sort of pearly whiteness. Sometimes she would take a turn or two in the piazza with her husband or brother as cavalier, and languidly sip anise and water at the Café Florian.