The window itself looks on the Doge's Palace and the Campanile, St.
Theodore and the Lion of St. Mark's being visible through a maze of fishing-boats and sails, some of these artistically patched in white and yellow blocks, or orange and white stripes, while others of grey have smoke-coloured figures in the tops and corners.
Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the canal is busy with people: gondoliers, boys with nets for crab-catching, 'longshoremen, and facchini. This is when ships are loading or unloading, but at other times we look upon a tranquil scene.
Peppina brings in dell' acqua bollente, and I make the coffee in the little copper coffee-pot we bought in Paris, while Salemina heats the milk over the alcohol-lamp, which is the most precious treasure in her possession.
The butter and eggs are brought every morning before breakfast, and nothing is more delicious than our freshly churned pat of solidified cream, without salt, which is sweeter than honey in the comb. The cows are milked at dawn on the campagna, and the milk is brought into Venice in large cans. In the early morning, when the light is beginning to steal through the shutters, one hears the tinkling of a mule's bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and, if one runs to the window, may see the contadini, looking, in their sheepskin trousers, like brethren of John the Baptist, driving through the streets and delivering the milk at the vaccari. It is then heated, the cream raised and churned, and the pats of butter, daintily set on green leaves, delivered for a seven-o'clock breakfast.