When he entered the court by the south door, Stelio Effrena, seeing the black and white throng that swarmed up the Giants' Stairway, in the ruddy light of the torches fixed in the iron candelabra, felt a sudden sensation of repugnance, and paused at the entrance. He noted the contrast between this paltry crowd and the noble architecture which, magnified by the unusual nocturnal illumination, expressed, by their varied harmoniousness, the strength and the beauty of a day that was past. "Oh, how miserable!" he exclaimed, turning to the friends that accompanied him. "In the Hall of the Greater Council, from the throne of the Doges, how is it possible to find metaphors that will move a thousand starched shirt-bosoms? Let us go back; let us inhale the odor of the real crowd, the true crowd. The Queen has not yet left the royal palace. We have time enough."
"Until the moment that I see you on the platform, I shall not feel sure that you will really speak," said Francesco de Lizo, laughing.
"I believe that Stelio would prefer the balcony to the platform," said Piero Martello, wishing to flatter the master's taste for sedition, and his factious spirit, which he himself affected, in imitation. "He would like to harangue, between the two red columns, the mutinous people who threatened to set fire to the new Procuratie and the old Libreria."
"Yes, certainly," said Stelio, "if the harangue had power to prevent or to precipitate an irreparable act. I hold that we use the written word to create a pure form of beauty, which, even in an uncut book, is enclosed and shut in, as in a tabernacle that may be entered only by election, with the same premeditated will used in the breaking of a seal. But the spoken word, it seems to me, when it is addressed directly to a multitude, should have only action for its aim. On this condition alone can a proud spirit, without lessening itself in dignity, communicate with the masses by means of voice and gesture. Otherwise, his effort becomes merely histrionic. And so I repent bitterly of having accepted this function of an ornamental orator, who must not speak unless he speaks agreeably. Consider, I ask you, how humiliating for me is the honor that they think to do me, and consider also the uselessness of my speech. All these people, strangers here, have left their mediocre occupations, or their favorite amusements, to come and listen to me with the same vain and stupid curiosity that would lead them to listen to some new virtuoso. For the women that will listen to me, the art with which I have tied my cravat will be much more appreciated than the art with which I shall round my periods. And, after all, the only effect of my speech will be a clapping of hands, deadened by gloves, or a brief, discreet murmur, to which I shall reply with a gracious inclination of the head. Does it seem to you that I am about to attain the summit of my ambition?"
"You are wrong," said Francesco de Lizo. "You should congratulate yourself for this happy occasion, which will allow you, for several hours, to impress the rhythm of art on the life of a forgetful city, and to make us dream of the splendors that might embellish our existence by a renewed union of Art with Life. If the man that built the Teatro di Festa were there, he would praise you for that harmony which he predicted. But the most wonderful thing about this affair is the fact that, notwithstanding your absence, and your ignorance of the project, the festival seems to have been prepared under the direct inspiration of your genius. This is the best proof that it is possible to restore and diffuse taste, even in the midst of the barbaric present. Your influence to-day is more powerful than you think. The lady who has desired to honor you—she that you call the Dogeressa—at every new idea that came to her, asked herself: 'Would it please Effrena?' If you only knew how many young and eager spirits put to themselves to-day the same question, when they consider the aspects of their inner life!"
"And for whom should you speak, if not for them?" said Daniele Glauro, the fervent and sterile ascetic of Beauty, with that melodious voice which seemed to reflect the frank and inextinguishable ardor of the soul beloved by the master as one of the most faithful. "If, when you stand upon the platform, you will look about you, you will easily recognize the expression in their eyes. There are many of them, and some have come a long distance; they await your words with an eagerness that you perhaps do not understand. They are those who have imbibed the spirit of your poetry, who have breathed the fiery ether of your dream, and felt the grip of your chimera; those to whom you have announced the transfiguration of the world by the miracle of a new art. The number that you have attracted as an apostle of hope and of joy is very great. They have heard that you are to speak in Venice, in the Ducal Palace—one of the most splendid and glorious places on earth. They will be able to see you and listen to you for the first time, surrounded by the magnificence that seems to them an appropriate frame to your personality. The old Palace of the Doges, which has so long been wrapped in nocturnal darkness, is suddenly illuminated and aroused this night for you, and, to their minds, it is you alone that have had the power to rekindle these long-extinguished torches. Do you understand now the eagerness of their expectation? Does it not seem to you that to them only you ought to speak? The condition you impose on the man that harangues a multitude may be fulfilled. You can awaken an emotion in their breasts that shall turn them forever toward the Ideal. For how many of them, Stelio, you might make this Venetian night an experience never to be forgotten!"
Stelio laid his hand on the prematurely bent shoulders of the mystic doctor, and, smiling, repeated Petrarch's words: "Non ego loquar omnibus, sed tibi, sed mihi, et his."
He saw within himself the radiant eyes of his unknown disciples, and heard within his soul, in clear tones, the sound of his own exordium.
"Nevertheless," he replied gayly, addressing Piero Martello, "it would be amusing to conjure up a tempest on this sea."
They were standing under the arch, near a column, in contact with the noisy, unanimous crowd, which gathered in the Piazzetta, stretched out toward the Zecca, was swallowed up near the Procuratie, barred the Torre dell'Orologio, occupied every space like a wave without form, and communicated its living warmth to the marble columns and the walls, against which it surged in its violent movement. From time to time, a louder cry arose from the distance, at the farther end of the Piazza, swelling higher and stronger until it burst out near them like a clap of thunder, then diminishing until it died away in a murmur.
"I should like to-night to find myself for the first time with a woman I loved, on a floating couch, over there, beyond the gardens, toward the Lido," said the romantic poet, Paris Eglano, a blond, beardless youth, whose handsome mouth, with its full red lips, contrasted with the almost angelic delicacy of his other features. "Within an hour, Venice will present to some Nero-like lover, hidden in a gondola, the spectacle of a city set on fire by its own delirium."
Stelio smiled, noting to what extent his intimates had become imbued with his own spiritual essence, and how deep the seal of his own style had stamped itself on their minds. Suddenly the image of La Foscarina flashed across his mental vision: La Foscarina, poisoned by too much art, remembering too many amatory experiences, with the stamp of maturity and of corruption on her eloquent mouth, the aridity of the vein fever that burned in those hands that pressed out the juices of deceitful fruits, and the marks of a hundred masks on that face which had simulated the fury of all mortal passions. Thus she appeared to his ardent thought of her, and his heart throbbed faster as he pictured her emerging soon from the multitude, as from some element that enslaved her, and thought that from her glance he should draw the necessary inspiration.
"Come, let us go," said he resolutely to his friends. "It is the hour."
The cannon announced that the Queen had left the royal palace. A prolonged quiver ran through the living human mass, like that which precedes a storm at sea. From the bank of San Giorgio Maggiore, a rocket rushed up with a long hiss, rising in the air like a fiery stem and bursting into a mass of pink splendor at the top; then it curved, grew fainter, and dissolved in trembling sparks, extinguished finally with a slight crackling in the water. And the joyous clamor that greeted the beautiful Queen, repeating her name—the name of the starry, white flower and of the pearl—evoked in Stelio's imagination the pomp of the ancient Promissione, the triumphal procession of the Arts escorting the new Dogaressa to the palace; the wave of joy on which Morosina Grimani mounted to her throne, shimmering with gold, while all the Arts bowed before her, laden with gifts as if they bore horns of plenty.
"Certainly," said Francesco de Lizo, "if the Queen loves your books, she will wear all her pearls this evening. You will have before you a veritable labyrinth of jewels—all the hereditary gems of the Venetian patricians."
"Look toward the foot of the stairway, Stelio," said Daniele Glauro. "A group of devotees is waiting for you to pass that way."
Stelio stopped at the well indicated by La Foscarina. He leaned over the bronze edge, his knees touching the little carved caryatides, and saw in the dark water the reflection of the stars. For the moment his soul isolated itself, shut out the surrounding sounds, and withdrew into the shadowy disc, from which rose a slight dampness betokening the presence of water. His excited desire felt a need to attain even greater intoxication than this night promised him, and he felt that in the farthest depths of his being lay a secret soul, which, like this dark, watery mirror, remained immovable, strange, and intangible.
"What do you see there?" inquired Piero Martello, also leaning over the rim, worn in places by the ropes of centuries.
"The face of Truth!" the master answered.
In the apartments contiguous to the Hall of the Greater Council, once occupied by the Doge, but now by the pagan statues that were seized as booty in ancient wars, Stelio awaited the summons from the master of the ceremonies to mount to the platform. He was quite calm, and smiled on the friends that spoke to him, but their words reached his ear between pauses, like interrupted sounds borne from afar by the wind. From time to time, with an abrupt, involuntary movement, he drew near to one of the statues, and ran his hand nervously over it, as if seeking some weak spot, that he might break it; or he bent curiously over some rare medal, as if to read on it some indecipherable sign. But his eyes saw nothing of all this; they were turned within, where the multiplied power of his will evoked the silent forms that his voice would presently transform into the perfection of verbal music. His whole being contracted itself in an effort to raise to the highest degree of intensity the representation of the extraordinary feelings that possessed him. Since he could speak only of himself, and of his own universe, at least he would unite in one ideal figure the sovereign qualities of his art, and show to his disciples by his genius for imagery what an invincible force hastened him through this life. Once more he intended to show them that, in order to obtain the victory over men and circumstances, there is no other way than to persevere in exalting oneself and to magnify one's own dream of beauty or of power.
He bent over a medallion by Pisanello, feeling at his temples the ardent, rapid pulsation of his thought.
"See, Stelio," said Daniele Glauro to him, with that pious reverence which veiled his voice whenever he spoke of his religion, "see how the mysterious affinities of Art work upon you, and how an infallible instinct leads you, amid so many forms, and at the very moment when your thought is about to reveal itself, toward the example of the most perfect expression, the highest model of style. At the very instant of coining your own idea, you are led to study one of Pisanello's medallions; you are attracted by the impression of one of the greatest stylists that ever have lived in the world, the most frankly Hellenic soul of the whole Renaissance. And suddenly your forehead is illumined by a ray of light."
The pure bronze bore the effigy of a young man with beautiful, waving hair, an imperial profile and Apollo-like neck, and the head was so perfect a type of elegance and vigor that the imagination could not picture him in life except as free from all decadence and eternally unchangeable, as the artist had presented him in this circle of bronze.—Dux equitum pr?stans Malatesta Novellus Cesen? dominus. Opus Pisani pictoris.—And beside it was another medallion by the same artist, bearing the effigy of a virgin, with narrow chest, a swan-like throat, and hair drawn back in the shape of a heavy bag; the forehead, high and receding, seemed already to promise the aureole of the blessed, and she was like a vase of purity sealed forever, hard, precise, and limpid as a diamond, an adamantine pyx where the spirit, consecrated like the Host, rested as a sacrifice.—Cicilia Virgo, filia Johannis Francesco primi Marchionis Mantuae.
"Here comes La Foscarina, with Donatella Arvale," announced Francesco de Lizo, who had been watching the crowd that climbed the Censors' Stairway and pressed into the vast hall.
Again Stelio Effrena felt a wave of agitation sweep over him. The murmur of the throng seemed to come from afar and mingle in his ears with the throbbing of his arteries, and in this murmur he fancied he heard once more the last words of Perdita.