The Assignation
VENICE
Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
HENRY KING, Bishop of Chichester, Exequy on the death of his
wife
Ill-fated and mysterious man!--bewildered in the brilliancy
of thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own
youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath
risen before me!--not--oh not as thou art--in the cold valley and
shadow--but as thou shouldst be--squandering away a life of
magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own
Venice--which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide
windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and
bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I
repeat it--as thou shouldst be. There are surely other worlds
than this--other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude-other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who
then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy
visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away
of life, which were but the overflowing of thine everlasting
energies?
It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called
the Ponte di Sospiri, that I met for the third or fourth time the
person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that
I bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I
remember--ah! how should I forget?--the deep midnight, the Bridge
of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance that
stalked up and down the narrow canal.
It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the
Piazza had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The
square of the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights
in the old Ducal Palace were dying fast away. I was returning
home from the Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But as my
gondola arrived opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a
female voice from its recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in
one wild, hysterical, and long-continued shriek. Startled at the
sound, I sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip
his single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of
recovery, and we were consequently left to the guidance of the
current which here sets from the greater into the smaller
channel. Like some huge and sable-feathered condor, we were
slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand
flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of
the Ducal Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid
and preternatural day.
A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had
fallen from an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep
and dim canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly over their
victim; and, although my own gondola was the only one in sight,
many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain
upon the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only
within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the
entrance of the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a
figure which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten. It
was the Marchesa Aphrodite--the adoration of all Venice--the
gayest of the gay--the most lovely where all were beautiful--but
still the young wife of the old and intriguing Mentoni, and the
mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now deep
beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon
her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles
to call upon her name.
She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed
in the black mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet
more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array,
clustered, amid a shower of diamonds, round and round her
classical head, in curls like those of the young hyacinth. A
snowy-white and gauze-like drapery seemed to be nearly the sole
covering to her delicate form; but the midsummer and midnight air
was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion in the statue-like form
itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapour
which hung around it as the heavy marble hangs around the Niobe.
Yet--strange to say!--her large lustrous eyes were not turned
downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay buried-but riveted in a widely different direction! The prison of the
Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in all Venice-but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath her
lay stifling her only child? Yon dark, gloomy niche, too, yawns
right opposite her chamber window--what, then, could there be in
its shadows--in its architecture--in its ivy-wreathed and solemn
cornices--that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at a
thousand times before? Nonsense!-- Who does not remember that,
at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror,
multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable faroff places the woe which is close at hand?
Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the
water-gate, stood, in full dress, the Satyr-like figure of
Mentoni himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming a
guitar, and seemed ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he
gave directions for the recovery of his child. Stupefied and
aghast, I had myself no power to move from the upright position I
had assumed upon first hearing the shriek, and must have
presented to the eyes of the agitated group a spectral and
ominous appearance, as with pale countenance and rigid limbs, I
floated down among them in that funereal gondola.
All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in
the search were relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a
gloomy sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child (how
much less than for the mother!); but now, from the interior of
that dark niche which has been already mentioned as forming a
part of the Old Republican prison, and as fronting the lattice of
the Marchesa, a figure muffled in a cloak stepped out within
reach of the light, and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the
giddy descent, plunged headlong into the canal. As, in an
instant afterwards, he stood with the still living and breathing
child within his grasp, upon the marble flagstones by the side of
the Marchesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching water, became
unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to
the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful person of a very
young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of
Europe was then ringing.
No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will
now receive her child--she will press it to her heart--she will
cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses.
Alas! another's arms have taken it from the stranger--another's
arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into
the palace! And the Marchesa! Her lip--her beautiful lip
trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes--those eyes which, like
Pliny's acanthus, are 'soft and almost liquid'. Yes! tears are
gathering in those eyes--and see! the entire woman thrills
throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life! The
pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the marble
bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly
flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight
shudder quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at
Napoli about the rich silver lilies in the grass.
Why should that lady blush! To this demand there is no
answer--except that, having left, in the eager haste and terror
of a mother's heart, the privacy of her own boudoir, she has
neglected to enthrall her tiny feet in their slippers, and
utterly forgotten to throw over her Venetian shoulders that
drapery which is their due. What other possible reason could
there have been for her so blushing?--for the glance of those
wild appealing eyes? for the unusual tumult of that throbbing
bosom?--for the convulsive pressure of that trembling hand?--that
hand which fell, as Mentoni turned into the palace, accidentally,
upon the hand of the stranger. What reason could there have been
for the low--the singularly low tone of those unmeaning words
which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu? 'Thou
hast conquered--she said, or the murmurs of the water deceived
me--'thou hast conquered--one hour after sunrise--we shall meet-so let it be!The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the
palace, ...
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