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 far-
off 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, and the stranger, whom I now recognized, stood alone upon
the flags. He shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye
glanced around in search of a gondola. I could not do less than
offer him the service of my own; and he accepted the civility.
Having obtained an oar at the water-gate, we proceeded together
to his residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-possession,
and spoke of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great
apparent cordiality.
There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being
minute. The person of the stranger--let me call him by this
title, who to all the world was still a stranger--the person of
the stranger is one of these subjects. In height he might have
been below rather than above the medium size: although there were
moments of intense passion when his frame actually expanded and
belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of his
figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at
the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has
been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more
dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity--
singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure
hazel to intense and brilliant jet--and a profusion of curling,
black hair, from which a forehead of unusual breadth gleamed
forth at intervals all light and ivory--his were features than
which I have seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps,
the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his countenance
was, nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen at some
period of their lives, and have never afterwards seen again. It
had no peculiar--it had no settled predominant expression to be
fastened upon the memory; a countenance seen and instantly
forgotten--but forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of
recalling it to mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion
failed, at any time, to throw its own distinct image upon the
mirror of that face--but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained
no vestige of the passion, when the passion had departed.
Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited
me, in what I thought an urgent manner, to call upon him very
early the next morning. Shortly after sunrise, I found myself
accordingly at his Palazzo, one of those huge structures of
gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the waters of the
Grand Canal in the vicinity of the Rialto. I was shown up a
broad winding staircase of mosaics, into an apartment whose
unparalleled splendour burst through the opening door with an
actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness.
I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of
his possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms
of ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not
bring myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe
could have supplied the princely magnificence which burned and
blazed around.
Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was
still brilliantly lighted up. I judge from this circumstance, as
well as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my
friend, that he had not retired to bed during the whole of the
preceding night. In the architecture and embellishments of the
chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound.
Little attention had been paid to the decora of what is
technically called keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality.
The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon none--
neither the grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures
of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored
Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled to the
vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be
discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting
perfumes, reeking up from strange convolute censers, together
with multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and
violet fire. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in upon the
whole, through windows formed each of a single pane of crimson-
tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections,
from curtains which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of
molten silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at length
fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued
masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold.
'Ha! ha! ha!--ha! ha! ha!'--laughed the proprietor,
motioning
me to a seat as I entered the room, and throwing himself back at
full-length upon an ottoman. 'I see,' said he, perceiving that I
could not immediately reconcile myself to the bienseance of so
singular a welcome--'I see you are astonished at my apartment--at
my statues--my pictures--my originality of conception in
architecture and upholstery--absolutely drunk, eh? with my
magnificence? But pardon me, my dear sir,' (here his tone of
voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality) 'pardon me for my
uncharitable laughter. You appeared so utterly astonished.
Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must
laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all
glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More--a very fine man was Sir Thomas
More--Sire Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in the
Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of
characters who came to the same magnificent end. Do you know,
however,' continued he musingly, 'that at Sparta (which is now
Palaeochori)--at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among
a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which
are still legible the letters . They are undoubtedly part of
. Now at Sparta were a thousand temples and shrines to a
thousand different divinities. How exceedingly strange that the
altar of Laughter should have survived all the others! But in
the present instance,' he resumed, with a singular alteration of
voice and manner, 'I have no right to be merry at your expense.
You might well have been amazed. Europe cannot produce anything
so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My other apartments
are by no means of the same order; mere ultras of fashionable
insipidity. This is better than fashion--is it not? Yet this
has but to be seen to become the rage--that is, with those who
could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have
guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one
exception you are the only human being besides myself and my
valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these
imperial precincts, since they have been bedizened as you see!'
I bowed in acknowledgment; for the overpowering sense of
splendour and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected
eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from
expressing, in words, my appreciation of what I might have
construed into a compliment.
'Here,' he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he
sauntered around the apartment--'here are paintings from the
Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many
are chosen, as you see, with little deference to the opinions of
Virtu. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber
such as this. Here too, are some chefs d'oeuvre of the unknown
great--and here unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their
day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left
to silence and to me. What think you,' said he, turning abruptly
as he spoke--'what think you of this Madonna della Pieta?'
'It is Guido's own!' I said with all the enthusiasm of my
nature, for I had been poring intently over its surpassing
loveliness. 'It is Guido's own!--how could you have obtained
it?--she is undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in
sculpture.'
'Ha!' said he thoughtfully, 'the Venus--the beautiful
Venus?--the Venus of the Medici?--she of the diminutive head and
the gilded hair? Part of the left arm' (here his voice dropped
so as to be heard with difficulty), 'and all the right are
restorations, and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I
think, the quintessence of all affectation. Give me the Canova!
The Apollo, too!--is a copy--there can be no doubt of it--blind
fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the
Apollo! I cannot help--pity me!--I cannot help preferring the
Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary found
his statue in the block of marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no
means original in his couplet--
'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto
Che un marmo solo in se non circonscriva.'
It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of
the true gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the
bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to
determine in what such difference consists. Allowing the remark
to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanour of my
acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more
fully applicable to his moral temperament and character. Nor can
I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place
him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by
calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading
even his most trivial actions--intruding upon his moments of
dalliance--and interweaving itself with his very flashes of
merriment--like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the
grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.
I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the
mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly
descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of
trepidation--a degree of nervous unction in action and in speech-
-an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at all
times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with
alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence
whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be
listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary
expectation of a visitor, or to sounds which must have had
existence in his imagination alone.
It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent
abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar
Politian's beautiful tragedy of The Orfeo (the first native
Italian tragedy) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered
a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end
of the third act--a passage of the most heart-stirring
excitement--a passage which, although tainted with impurity, no
man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion--no woman
without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears,
and, upon the opposite interleaf, were the following English
lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar
characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in
recognizing it as his own.
Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine--
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
'On! on!'--but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For alas! alas! with me.
The light of life is o'er.
'No more--no more--no more'
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
Now all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams--
In what ethereal dances,
By what Italian streams.
Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o'er the billow,
From Love to titled age and crime,
And an unholy pillow--
From me, and from our misty clime,
Where weeps the silver willow!
That these lines were written in English--a language with
which I had not believed their author acquainted--afforded me
little matter for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent
of his acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in
concealing them from observation, to be astonished at any similar
discovery; but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me
no little amazement. It had been originally written London, and
afterwards carefully overscored--not, however, so effectually as
to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say this
occasioned me no little amazement; for I well remember that, in a
former conversation with my friend, I particularly inquired if he
had at any time met in London the Marchesa di Mentoni (who for
some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city),
when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that he
had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as
well here mention, that I have more than once heard (without of
course giving credit to a report involving so many
improbabilities), that the person of whom I speak was not only by
birth, but in education, an Englishman.
*
'There is one painting,' said he, without being aware of my
notice of the tragedy--'there is still one painting which you
have not seen.' And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a
full-length portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.
Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her
superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before
me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood
before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance,
which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked
(incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which
will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the
beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom. With her
left she pointed downwards to a curiously fashioned vase. One
small, fairy foot, alone visible, barely touched the earth--and,
scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to
encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most
delicately imagined wings. My glance fell from the painting to
the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman's
Bussy D'Ambois quivered instinctively upon my lips:
He is up
There like a Roman statue! He will stand
Till Death hath made him marble!
'Come!' he said at length, turning towards a table of richly
enamelled and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets
fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases,
fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the
foreground of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be
Johannisberger. 'Come!' he said abruptly, 'let us drink! It is
early--but let us drink. It is indeed early,' he continued,
musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the
apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise--'It is indeed
early, but what matters it? Let us drink! Let us pour out an
offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and censers
are so eager to subdue!' And, having made me pledge him in a
bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the
wine.
'To dream,' he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory
conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of
the magnificent vases--'to dream has been the business of my
life. I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of
dreams. In the heart of Venice, could I have erected a better?
You behold around you, it is true, a medley of architectural
embellishments. The chastity of Ionia is offended by
antediluvian devices, and the sphinxes of Egypt are outstretched
upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid
alone. Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the
bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the
magnificent. Once I was myself a decorist: but that sublimation
of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the fitter for
my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing
in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the
wilder visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now
rapidly departing.' He here paused abruptly, bent his head to
his bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound which I could not
hear. At length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards and
ejaculated the lines of the Bishop of Chichester:--
Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he
threw himself at full length upon an ottoman.
A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud
knock at the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to
anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's
household burst into the room, and faltered out, in a voice
choking with emotion, the incoherent words, 'My mistress!--my
mistress!--poisoned!--poisoned! Oh beautiful--oh beautiful
Aphrodite!'
Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavoured to arouse
the sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his
limbs were rigid--his lips were livid--his lately beaming eyes
were riveted in death. I staggered back towards the table--my
hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet--and a
consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly
over my soul.
