第14章 共23章

THE ASSIGNATION

Stay for me there! I will not fail.

To meet thee in that hollow vale.

(_Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of

Chichester_.)

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 overflowings 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 mid-summer 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 vapor

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 enthral 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 splendor 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—Sir 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

Palæochori,) 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 ΛΑΞΜ. They are undoubtedly

part of ΓΕΛΑΞΜΑ. 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 splendor

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 circunscriva.’”

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 demeanor 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 “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 recognising 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,

“Onward!”—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 hours are trances;

And all my nightly dreams

Are where the dark 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 a 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 downward 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 sphynxes 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 endeavored 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.