We chose our bread and butter and jam, and even the chocolate that the Italians spread on their bread at breakfast.  We ordered our coffee from a stiff backed  proper Italian waiter, in his starched white morning uniform. 

Across from our table, behind your back, I saw an old man who I knew must be the patriarch of the family who had owned this little pensione for 200 years.

The old man finally reached his chair, at his table, and the waiter carefully helped him sit.  Then, with unsmiling that tender care he snapped open the white linen napkin and tucked it under the old man's chin, being careful to cover every bit of the old man's dapper silk suit and Italian silk tie.

The two men nodded barely perceptibly to each other, in unspoken agreement that this morning would be like all other mornings, before and after, and forever to come. 

With that, this stiff backed waiter brought the old man his piece of bread, and his coffee, just so.  Presently, the old man proceeded to pour spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his cup, so much that I thought surely his cup would overflow.  But, of course, having done exactly this on hundreds of mornings before, he knew precisely when to stop.  He then picked up his spoon, took a sip of coffee from it, a nodded contentedly to himself, and then he broke off a crest of his bread.

"Come sit on my side of the table where you can watch". 

"What?" you asked.  "Just watch", I said the "You'll see. . . "

The old man then took just enough more sugar from the bowl to make up for the set he had just taken, and dipped the crust of bread into the coffee, and ate it, chewing thoughtfully.  "What?" you asked again, impatient to get on with the days sightseeing. "Just watch ... " I said again "This is fantastic, you really have to see this!". 

Again, the old man added yet another spoonful of sugar from the bowl, and drank one more sip from his spoon, and took another piece of his bread, a bit larger it this time, and it tore it into several tiny pieces and dropped them into his cup.

It was then that I noticed that the waiter had stationed himself in a place near the kitchen door where, in between attending to the few other guests, he was keeping an intense watch out of the corner of his eye at the old man slowly eating his breakfast.  Just as the old man ate the last of the bread crumbs from his cup, the
waiter rushed over with another bowl of sugar.

The old man then added several more spoonfuls of sugar to his cup, so that I thought "Surely by now his spoon should be able to stand up by itself in the cup!".  He finally lifted the cup to his lips and took several tiny loud sips, and again and leaned back in his chair to savor the taste.

As by then we saw that he still had at least half of his bread left, and we knew that

We turned right, and of the front door facing the waterfront.  A few hundred feet down the promenade we crossed over the "Bridge of Sighs", past the "Doge's Palace" and turned into the Piazza San Marco. There, glinting in the morning light was the Church of San Marco, a thousand years old, but we did not yet go in.  We kept walking, randomly turning down the narrow passages which make up the streets of Venice.

Sometimes, we would venture down a street, and it would become narrower and narrower until finally it dead ended at someone's front door.