They will have brass bands out for you if you invest and
brass knuckles if you do not.
There is but one way to escape from their everlasting persecutions,
and that is to flee to the center of the square and enjoy the
company of the pigeons and the photographers. They - the pigeons,
I mean - belong to the oldest family in Venice; their lineage is
of the purest and most undefiled. For upward of seven hundred
years the authorities of the city have been feeding and protecting
the pigeons, of which these countless blue-and-bronze flocks are
the direct descendants. They are true aristocrats; and, like true
aristocrats, they are content to live on the public funds and grow
fat and sassy thereon, paying nothing in return.
No; I take that part back - they do pay something in return; a
full measure. They pay by the beauty of their presence, and they
are surely very beautiful, with their dainty mincing pink feet and
the sheen on the proudly arched breast coverts of the cock birds;
and they pay by giving you their trust and their friendship. To
gobble the gifts of dried peas, which you buy in little cornucopias
from convenient venders for distribution among them, they come
wheeling in winged battalions, creaking and cooing, and alight on
your head and shoulders in that perfect confidence which so delights
humans when wild or half-wild creatures bestow it on us, though,
at every opportunity, we do our level best to destroy it by hunting
and harrying them to death.
