The murmur swelled louder, diminished, then ceased, as Stelio, with firm, light movement, ascended the marble steps of the platform. As he turned toward the audience, his dazzled eyes rested upon the formidable monster with a thousand human faces, amid the gold and somber purple of the immense hall. A sudden thrill of pride gave him complete self-control. He bowed to the Queen and to Donna Andriano Duodo, who smiled upon him with the same twin smiles he had seen from the gliding gondola on the Grand Canal. He threw a keen glance toward the scintillating first rows, seeking La Foscarina, then looked toward the farther end of the hall, where only a dark zone, dotted with white spots, could be distinguished. The silent, attentive multitude seemed to him like an enormous, many-eyed chimera, its breast covered with glittering scales, extending its black bulk under the arches of the rich, heavy ceiling that hung over it like a suspended treasure.
Dazzling was that chimeric breast, where sparkled necklaces that must once have flashed their fires under the same ceiling on the night of a coronation banquet. The tiara and the necklaces of the Queen—the rows of pearls, like grains of light, somehow suggesting the miraculous image of a smile just about to appear—the dark emeralds of Andriano Duodo, taken long ago from the handle of a scimitar; the rubies of Giustiniana Memo, set in the semblance of carnations by the inimitable craftsmanship of Vettor Camelio; the sapphires of Lucrezia Priuli, taken from the shoes in which the Most Serene Zilia had walked to her throne on the day of her triumph; the beryls of Orsetta Contarini, delicately set in dull gold by the art of Silvestro Grifo; the turquoises of Zenobia Corner, bathed in a strange pallor by the mysterious malady that, in a single night, changed them as they lay on the warm breast of the Princess de Lusignan, among the delights of Asolo—all the rich jewels that had illumined the nights of the Anadyomenean city glowed with renewed fire on the breast of the chimera, from which rose a moist odor of feminine breaths and many perfumes. The rest of that strangely marked and shapeless body extended to the rear of the hall, in a sort of long tail, passing between the two gigantic spheres, which recalled to the memory of the "Image-maker" the two bronze spheres that the monster with the bandaged eyes presses with his paws in Giambellino's allegory. And this vast animal life, devoid of all thought for the time before him who alone at that moment must think, endowed with the inert fascination of enigmatic idols, covered with its own silence as with a shield capable of receiving and resisting any shock, awaited the first thrill of his dominating word.
Stelio Effrena measured this silence, upon which his first syllable must fall. While his voice was rising to his lips, an effort of will summoning it and fortifying it against instinctive hesitation, he perceived La Foscarina standing near the railing that encircled the celestial sphere. The pale face of the tragic actress rose from her bare neck, and the purity of her white shoulders was just above the orbit of the zodiacal figures. Stelio admired the art of this apparition. With his own eyes fixed upon those distant, adoring ones, he began to speak slowly, as if the rhythm of the oars still lingered in his ears.
"One afternoon, not long ago, while I was returning from the gardens along the warm bank of the Schiavoni, where the souls of poets sometimes believe they see I know not what magic golden bridge spanning a sea of light and silence toward a dream of infinite beauty, I thought—or rather, I witnessed with my thoughts, as at some intimate spectacle—of the nuptial alliance, under those skies, of Autumn and Venice.
"Everywhere was disseminated a spirit of life, arising from passionate expectation and restrained ardor, which made me marvel at its vehemence, but which seemed not altogether new to me; I had already seen it in some shadowy zones, under the almost death-like immobility of Summer; and sometimes I had felt it vibrating, like a mysterious pulse, in the strange feverish odor of the water. Thus, I thought, it is true, then, that this pure city of Art aspires to a supreme state of beauty which for her returns annually, as the flowers return to the forest. She tends to reveal herself in full harmony, as if always she bore within her bosom, powerful and conscious, the same desire of perfection from which she sprang and was formed throughout the ages, like some divine creature. Under the motionless fire of Summer, she seemed to palpitate no more, to breathe no more, but to lie dead in her green waters. My feeling did not deceive me, however, when I fancied I saw her secretly inspired by a spirit of life sufficient to renew the most sublime of the ancient miracles.
"That is what I thought, and what I saw. But how can I convey to you that listen to me any idea of that vision of joy and beauty? No sunrise, no sunset, could equal the glory of that hour of light on the water and the marble. The unexpected apparition of the beloved woman in a forest in springtime could not be as intoxicating as this sudden revelation by daylight of the heroic and voluptuous city, which carries in its marble embrace the richest dream of a Latin soul."
The voice of the orator, clear, penetrating, almost icy at the beginning, was suddenly warmed by the invisible sparks kindled within him by the effort of improvisation, yet governed by the extreme nicety of his ear. While his words flowed without hesitation, and the rhythmic line of his periods set forth their beauty with the clearness of a figure drawn at one stroke by a bold hand, his auditors were conscious of the excessive tension of his mind, and it captivated them as one of those terrifying feats at the circus, where all the herculean energies of the athlete show the test by his quivering tendons and swelling arteries. They felt the reality, the living warmth of the thought thus expressed, and their pleasure was the greater because unexpected, for most of his auditors had anticipated from this indefatigable searcher after perfection the studied reading of a laboriously composed discourse. His devotees observed with emotion this audacious test, as if they saw before them, unveiled, the secret labor that had brought forth the forms that had given them so much joy. And this first wave of emotion, spreading by contagion, indefinitely multiplied and becoming unanimous, returned to him who caused it, and seemed almost to overcome him.
This was the expected danger. Under the pressure of a wave so strong, the speaker faltered. For a few seconds a thick cloud darkened his brain; the light of his mind was extinguished, as a torch before an irresistible wind; his eyes grew dim, as if he were about to faint. But he felt how mortifying would be the shame of defeat if he yielded to this seizure; and in that darkness, by a sort of effort of brute force, or like the striking of steel on flint, his will rose in triumph over the instinctive weakness. With glance and gesture, he directed the eyes of the assemblage to the great masterpiece in the ceiling of that hall, spreading there in a kind of sun-like radiance.
"I am certain," he exclaimed, "that Venice appeared thus to Paolo Veronese, when he sought within himself for an image of the Queen triumphant."
He explained the reason why the great master, after throwing upon his canvas a profusion of gold, jewels, silks, purple, ermine, and all imaginable richness, at last could represent the glorious face only in the nimbus of a shadow.
"We ought to exalt Veronese for that shadowy veil alone! Representing by a human face the Queen of Cities, he yet knew how to express its essential spirit, whose symbol was an inextinguishable flame seen through a watery veil. And one I know well, who, having plunged his soul in this sublime element, has withdrawn it enriched with a new power, and consequently has lived a fuller and more ardent spiritual life."
This one he knew well—was it not himself? In the assertion of his own personality he found again all his courage, and felt that henceforth he was master of his thoughts and words, freed from danger, capable of drawing within the charmed circle of his dream the enormous, many-eyed chimera, with the glittering breast—the ephemeral and versatile monster from whose side emerged its offspring, the Tragic Muse, her head rising above the constellations.
Obedient to his movement, the innumerable faces turned toward the Apotheosis, their awakened eyes contemplating with wonder this marvel, as if they beheld it for the first time, or under a new aspect. The naked back of the woman with the golden helmet shone under the cloud with an effect of muscular life so perfect that it looked as attractive as palpable flesh. And, from this nudity, more realistic than all the rest, victorious over Time, which had darkened around it heroic images of sieges and battles, seemed to emanate a powerful enchantment, the sweetness of which was augmented by the breath of the autumn night coming through the open windows; while, from above, the princesses of a former day, leaning over the balustrades between two columns, inclined their illumined faces and opulent breasts toward their worldly sisters below.
Under the new spell of enchantment, the poet threw off his winged words, harmonious as lyric strophes. He described the Queen City palpitating with ardor within her thousand green girdles, extending her marble arms toward the wild Autumn, whose humid breath reached her, balmy with the delicious death of the fields and islands, making her sigh like a bride awaiting her hour of joy. By the magic of his words, Venice seemed to be possessed of marvelous hands, with which she wove for herself the inimitable tissue of allegory that covered her.
"And since, in all the world, poetry alone is truth, he that knows how to contemplate it, and to draw it into his own soul by the virtue of his thought, will be very near to mastering the secret of victory over life."
In pronouncing these last words, Stelio sought the eyes of Daniele Glauro, and saw that they sparkled with happiness beneath that large, meditative brow, which seemed swollen by the weight of an unborn world. The mystic doctor was there, near the platform, with several of those unknown disciples that he had described to the master as eager and anxious, full of faith and expectation, impatient to break the chain of their daily servitude, and to know the free intoxication of joy and sadness. Stelio noted that they were grouped, like a nucleus of compressed force, against the great red bookcases, wherein lay buried innumerable volumes of useless and forgotten lore. He marked their eager and attentive faces, their long hair, their lips, half parted with child-like absorption, or closed tightly in a kind of violent sensitiveness, their bright eyes, to which the breath of his words carried lights and shadows, as a changeful breeze stirs a parterre of delicate flowers. He felt that in his own hand he held all their souls blended into one spirit, which he could at will agitate, crush, tear, or burn, as if it were a filmy scarf.
While his mind expanded and relaxed, in its continued effort, he still retained a strange power of exterior investigation, a faculty of material observation which became the clearer and more penetrating with the warmth and quickening of his eloquence.
Suddenly he saw with his mental vision the picture he wished to present, and his verbal expression of it was after the manner of the master painters that had reigned in that place, with the luxuriance of Veronese, and the fire of Tintoretto.
"All the vitalities and all the transfigurations of the ancient stones, where Time has accumulated so many mysteries, and where glory has set her emblems; all the alternations of marvelously easy creations and destructions were reflected in the water; the effulgence of a jubilant light glittered between the crosses of cupolas inflated by prayer, and the slender saline crystals hanging under the arch of the bridges. Like a sentinel on a rampart uttering his shrill cry to him that listens for the signal, so the golden angel from the summit of the highest tower at last flashed out the announcement.
"And He appeared! The Bridegroom appeared, seated in his fiery chariot, which he turned toward the Queen of Cities, and in his youthful, superhuman countenance was a strange fascination springing from an animal-like cruelty and delicacy contrasting with the deep eyes, full of all knowledge. His blood rioted through his veins, from the tips of his fingers to his nimble feet; mysterious, occult things veiled his being, concealing joy as the grape in bloom conceals the vine; and all the tawny gold and purple that surrounded him were like the vestment of his senses.
"With what passion, throbbing under her thousand emerald girdles, and the richness of her jewels, the Queen of Cities gave herself to the magnificent god!"
Swept up in this rushing flight of words, the soul of the multitude seemed to reach the sentiment of Beauty, as if it were a summit never before attained. The pulse of the people and the voice of the poet seemed to give back to those ancient walls their former life, and to reawaken in that cold museum its original spirit: a flood of powerful ideas, concrete, and organized in the most durable substance to attest the nobility of a great race.
The splendor of divine youth descended upon the women, as it might have descended in a sumptuous alcove, for each felt within herself the breathlessness of expectation and the joy of yielding, like that of the Queen of Cities. They smiled with vague languor as if wearied by the strain upon their emotions; their cool, polished shoulders rose from their corollas of jewels.
Stelio looked down upon the sparkling breast of the great, many-eyed chimera, on which rose and fell many fluttering feather fans, like tiny wings; and over his spirit passed an intoxicating glow that disquieted him. The vibration of his nerves, acting upon those of his auditors and thus reacting upon himself, unsettled him so much as almost to unbalance him. For an instant he felt that he was oscillating above the crowd, like a concave and sonorous body, the resonances of which were engendered by an indistinct yet infallible will.
He was surprised at the unknown power that dwelt within him, abolishing his own personal limits and conferring the fulness of a chorus on his single voice.
This, then, was the mysterious truce which the revelation of Beauty could grant to the daily existence of wearied man; this was the mysterious will that could possess the poet at the moment when he replied to the souls of his followers who questioned him as to the value of life and tried to raise themselves, if only once, to the height of the eternal Ideal. He was only the messenger through whom Beauty offered to those men, assembled in this place consecrated by centuries of human glory, the divine gift of oblivion. He was only the translator into rhythmic speech of the visible language whereby, in this same place, the noble craftsmen of a former day had expressed the prayers and aspirations of the race. And for one hour, at least, those men would contemplate the world with different eyes; they would think and dream with different souls.
In fancy, he passed beyond the walls that enclosed the palpitating throng in a kind of heroic cycle, a circle of red triremes, fortified towers, and triumphal theories. The place now seemed too narrow for the exaltation of his new feeling; and once more he was drawn toward the real people, the immense, unanimous crowd he had seen outside the palace, who had sent upward in the starry night a clamor that, like blood or wine, intoxicated them as they uttered it.
And not alone to this multitude did his thoughts turn; his fancy beheld an infinity of multitudes, massed together in theaters, dominated by an idea of truth and of beauty, pale and intent before the great arch of the stage, which should open before them some marvelous transfiguration of life, or frenzied by the sudden splendor radiating from an immortal phrase. And the dream of a higher Art, as it surged up again in his thought showed him mankind once more reverencing poets, as those who alone can interrupt at intervals its daily anguish, quench its thirst, and dispense oblivion. He even judged too slight the test he was now undergoing; he felt himself capable of creating gigantic fictions. The still formless work that he nourished in his soul shook him with a thrill of life as he looked again at the tragedienne, standing above the sphere of constellations—the Muse with the transcendent voice, who seemed to carry the frenzy of far-off throngs, now silenced, in the classic folds of her robes.
Almost overcome by the incredible intensity of emotion that had possessed him during the brief pause, he began to speak again in a lower tone. He spoke of the growth of art between the youth of Giorgione and the old age of Tintoretto, and described it as golden, purple, rich and expressive as the pomp of the earth irradiated by the glow of sunset.
"When I consider the impetuous creators of such marvelous beauty, my mind recalls an image from a fragment of Pindar's: 'When the centaurs became acquainted with the virtues of wine, sweet as honey and a conqueror of men, they banished milk from their tables and hastened to quaff their wine from silver horns.' No one in the world better knew than they how to taste the wine of life. They drew from it a kind of lucid intoxication that multiplied their powers and communicated to their eloquence a fertilizing energy. And in their greatest creations, the violent throbbing of their pulses seems to have persisted throughout the ages, like the veritable rhythm of Venetian art.
"Ah, how pure and poetic is the slumber of the Virgin Ursula on her immaculate bed! The most religious silence reigns in that chamber, where the pious lips of the sleeper seem to form themselves into the act of uttering prayer. Through the doors and the windows steals the timid light of dawn, illumining the syllables inscribed on her pillow: INFANTIA is the simple word that spreads around that virginal head, like the fresh aurora of the morning: INFANTIA. She sleeps, the maiden already betrothed to the pagan prince and destined to martyrdom. So chaste, so ingenuous, so fervent, is she not the image of Art such as the precursors saw it, with the sincerity of their child-like eyes? INFANTIA! The word evokes around that couch all those forgotten ones: Lorenzo Veneziano, Simone da Cusighe, Catarino, Jacobello, Maestro Paolo, Giambono, Semitecolo, Antonio, Andrea, Quirizio da Murano, and all the laborious family by whom color—which later was the rival of fire—was prepared in the burning island of furnaces. But would not they themselves have uttered a cry of admiration if they had seen the drops of blood that sprang from the maiden's heart when it was pierced by the arrow of the beautiful pagan archer? A current so red from a virgin nourished on white milk! This victory was a sort of festival: to it the archers brought their finest bows, their richest garments, their most elegant air. The golden-haired barbarian, aiming his arrows at the martyr, with a movement so proud and graceful, does he not resemble an adolescent and wingless Eros? That gracious slayer of innocence (or perhaps his brother), after laying aside his bow, will abandon himself to the enchantment of music to dream a dream of infinite pleasure.
"It was indeed Giorgione that poured into him a new soul, and kindled it with an implacable longing. The music that charms him is not the melody that last night the lutes diffused among the curving arches, over radiant thrones, or diminishing in the silence of distances in the visions of the third Bellini. Under the touch of religious hands, it still rises from the harpsichord; but the world it awakens is full of a joy and a sadness wherein sin hides its head.
"He that has looked at the Concerto with the eyes of wisdom has comprehended an extraordinary and irrevocable moment of the Venetian soul. By means of a harmony of color—whose power of expression is as boundless as the mystery of sounds—the artist reveals the first agitation of an eager spirit to whom life has suddenly appeared under the aspect of a rich inheritance.
"The monk, seated at his harpsichord, and his older companion, do not resemble those monks that Vettor Carpaccio represented as flying before the wild beast tamed by Jerome, in San Giorgio degli Schiavoni. Their essence is nobler and stronger; they breathe an atmosphere higher and richer, propitious to the birth of a great joy, a great sadness, or a superb dream. What notes do those beautiful, sensitive hands draw from the keys on which they linger? Magic notes, no doubt, since they have power to work in the musician a transfiguration so great. He is half-way through his mortal existence, already far from his youth and near his decline, yet only now life reveals itself to him, rich with all good things, like a forest full of ripe, red fruit, the velvety freshness of which his always busy hands never before have known. As his senses still slumber, he has not yet fallen under the domination of a single seductive image, but he suffers a sort of confused anguish wherein regret overcomes desire, while in the web of harmonies that he seeks, the vision of his past—but only as it might have been and was not—weaves itself like the tissue of a chimera.
"His companion divines this inner agitation, for he is already at the threshold of old age; calm, sweet, and serious, he touches the shoulder of the passionate player with a pacifying movement. But there, emerging from the warm shadows like the embodiment of youthful ardor itself, is the young man with hat beplumed and flowing locks, the glowing flower of adolescence which Giorgione created under the influence of a reflection from that Hellenic myth whence arose the ideal form of Hermaphrodite. He is there, present, yet a stranger, separated from the others, like a being that cares only for his own welfare. The music exalts his inexpressible dream, and seems to multiply indefinitely his capacity to enjoy. He knows himself master of that life which escapes the other two, and the harmonies sought by the musician seem to him only the prelude to his own feast. His glance is sidewise and intent, turned toward a certain point, as if he would attract to himself something that charms him; his closed lips are ready with a kiss as yet ungiven; his brow is so spacious that the thickest garland would not encumber it; but if I think of his hands, I fancy them crushing the laurel leaves to perfume his fingers."
The hands of the Inspirer illustrated the gesture of the covetous youth, as if they were really pressing out the essence of the aromatic leaf; and his voice lent to the image an illusion so strong that the young men felt that here at last was one who could express their cherished and secret thoughts and dreams, and give voice to their unspeakable, continuous, and ceaseless longings. They occupied the free space at the back of the seated audience, making a living border for that compact mass; and, as the edges of a flag that waves in the breeze have a stronger flutter, these youthful hearts beat faster than those of older men at the warm breath of the poet's words.
Stelio recognized them, distinguishing them by their singularity of attitude, the intensity of emotion revealed by their compressed lips and the glow of ardor in their cheeks. On the face of one, turned toward the open balcony, he read the enchantment of the autumn night, and the delicious breeze coming from the lagoon. The glance of another indicated, by a ray of love, some woman, seated near by, looking as if she were lost in tender recollections, her face white, her red lips slightly parted, like the entrance to a hive moist with honey.
His eyes continually returned to the promised woman, who looked as she stood there like the living support of a starry sphere. He was grateful to her for her choice of this manner of appearing to him when, for the first time, he gave himself to the people. He no longer regarded her as merely the passing fancy of a single night, a woman ripened by long experience, but the marvelous instrument of a new art, the interpreter of the greatest poetry, she that should incarnate in her changeful personality his future fictions of beauty, she whose unforgettable voice should carry to mankind the long-expected word. He now felt attached to her, not by a promise of love, but by a promise of glory; and the formless work that he still cherished in his breast again leaped within him.
"You that listen to me," he continued, "do you not see some analogy between these three symbols of Giorgione's and the three generations, all living at the same time, that illumined the dawn of a new century? Venice, the City Triumphant, reveals herself to their eyes like a great, a superabundant banquet, where all the riches accumulated throughout centuries of war and commerce are to be set out without stint. What richer fountain of pleasure could there be to initiate life in insatiable desire? It is a time of agitation, almost of distraction, which, because of its fulness, is worth an hour of heroic violence. Alluring voices and laughter seem to float from the hills of Asolo where, surrounded by all delights, reigns the daughter of San Marco, Domina Aceli, who found in a myrtle grove of Cyprus the cincture of Aphrodite. Now approaches the youth with the white plumes; he comes to the banquet, followed by his uncurbed escort, and all desires kindle and burn like torches quickened by the wind. And this was the beginning of that divine Autumn of Art toward which men will always turn with deep emotion as long as the human soul strives to transcend the narrowness of its common existence in order to live a life more fervent or to die a nobler death.
"I see Giorgione imminent on the marvelous sphere, but I do not recognize his mortal person; I seek him in the mystery of the fiery cloud that envelops him. He appears to us more myth-like than human. The destiny of no poet on earth is comparable to his. All concerning his life is unknown; some even go so far as to deny his existence. His name is inscribed on no work, and many refuse to attribute any work to him with absolute certainty. But the whole of Venetian art was illumined by his revelation; it was from him that the great Titian received the secret of infusing glowing blood into the veins of the beings he created. In fact, that which Giorgione represents in Art is the Epiphany of the Flame. He deserves to be called 'the Flame-Bearer,' like Prometheus.
"When I consider the rapidity with which this sacred gift has passed from one artist to another, glowing with increasing splendor from color to color, I think of one of those lampadeforie, or festivals, in which the Greeks tried to perpetuate the memory of the Titan son of Japetus. On the day of the festival, a group of young Athenian horsemen would set off at a gallop, riding from Ceramicus to Colonos, their chief waving a torch that had been lighted at the altar of a temple. If the torch was extinguished by the swiftness of the course, the bearer handed it to a companion, who re-lighted it as he rode; and this one gave it to a third; the third to a fourth, and so on, always galloping, until the last bearer laid it, still alight, on the altar of the Titan. This image, with all it suggests of fiery vehemence, represents to my fancy the feast of the master-colorists of Venice. Each of them, even to the least illustrious, held in his hand the sacred gift, if only for an instant. Some of them, like that first Bonifacio, whom we should glorify, gathered with incombustible fingers the inmost flower of the flame."
His fingers made a movement in the air as if to pluck the ideal flower. His eyes turned again toward the celestial sphere, as if he wished to offer the fiery gift to her who guarded the divine zodiacal beasts. "To you, Perdita!" But the woman was smiling at some one at a distance.
Following the thread of her smile, Stelio's eyes were led to an unknown woman, who suddenly seemed to stand out illumined against a shadowy background.
Was not that the creature of music whose name had resounded against the iron sides of the ship that evening, in the silence and the shadow?
She seemed to Stelio to be almost an interior image, suddenly engendered in that part of his soul where the brief sensation he had felt while passing through the shadow of the vessel had remained like an isolated and indistinct point. For a second she was beautiful—as beautiful as were his yet unexpressed thoughts.
"The city to which such creators have given a soul so powerful," he continued, floating himself on the rising wave, "is considered to-day, by the greater number, only as a vast inert reliquary, or as a refuge of peace and oblivion.
"In truth, I know of no other place in the world—unless it be Rome—where a bold and ambitious spirit can better foster the active virtue of his intellect, and all the energies of his being toward the supreme heights, than on these quiet waters. I know of no marsh capable of provoking in human pulses a fever more violent that that which at times steals up to us from the shadows of a silent canal. Nor do those men who, at noontide in the midsummer heat, lie among the ripe grain, feel in their veins a more fiery wave of blood than that which suffuses our eyes when we lean too intently over these waters, to see whether, perchance, we may descry in their depths some old sword or ancient diadem.
"Do not all gracious spirits come hither, as to a place of sweet refuge—those that hide some secret pain, those that have accomplished some final renunciation, those that have become weak through some morbid affection, and those that seek silence only to hear the soft step of advancing Death? Perhaps in their fading eyes Venice appears like a clement city of death, embraced by the waters of oblivion. But their presence is no more important than the wandering weeds that float at the foot of the steps of the marble palaces. They only increase the odor of sickly things, that strange, feverish odor on which at times, toward evening, after a laborious day, we nourish the fulness of our own feelings.
"But the ambiguous city does not always indulge the illusions of those that look to her as a giver of peace. I know one who, in the midst of sweet repose on her breast, started up as terror-struck as if when lying beside his loved one, with her hand resting on his weary eyelids, he had heard serpents hissing in her hair!
"Ah, if I only knew how to tell you of that prodigious life which palpitates beneath her great necklaces and her thousand green girdles! Not a day passes that she does not absorb more and more of our souls: sometimes she gives them back to us fresh and intact, restored to their original newness, whereon to-morrow's events will be imprinted with indelible clearness; again, she gives them back to us infinitely subtle and voracious, like a flame that destroys all that it touches, so that, at evening, among the cinders and the ashes, we may light upon some wonderful sublimate. Each day she urges us to the act that is the very genesis of our species: the unceasing effort to surpass ourselves. She shows us the possibility of transforming pain into the most efficacious stimulating energy; she teaches us that pleasure is the most certain means of knowledge given to us by Nature, and that the man who has suffered much is less wise than he that has enjoyed much."
At these audacious words, a slight murmur of disapproval passed over the auditorium; the Queen shook her head ever so little, in token of denial; several ladies, in a rapid exchange of glances, seemed to signify to one another a sentiment of graceful horror. But these signs were overbalanced by the acclamation of youthful approval that rose from all sides toward him that taught with a boldness so frank the art of rising to the superior forms of life by the virtue of joy.
Stelio smiled as he recognized his own, and so numerous; he smiled to recognize the efficacy of his teaching, which already, in more than one spirit, had dissipated the clouds of inert sadness, shown it the cowardice of weak tears, and infused it with a lasting disdain for feeble complaint and soft compassion. He rejoiced at having been able to proclaim once more the principle of his doctrine, emanating naturally from the soul of the art he glorified. And those that had retired to a hermit's cell, there to adore a sad phantom that lived only in the dim mirror of their own eyes; those that had created themselves kings of palaces without windows, where, from time immemorial, they had awaited a Visitation; those that had sought to unearth among ruins the image of Beauty, but who had found only a worn sphinx, which had tormented them with its endless enigmas; those that stood every evening at their thresholds to greet the mysterious Stranger bearing gifts under his mantle, and who, with pale cheeks, laid their ears against the ground to catch the first sound of the Stranger's approach; those whose souls were sterilized by resigned mourning or devoured by desperate pride; those that were hardened by useless obstinacy, or deprived of sleep by hope continually disappointed—all these spirits he wished now to summon that they might recognize their ailment under the splendor of that ancient yet ever-new soul.
"In truth," said he, in a tone full of exultation, "if the whole population, abandoning their homes, should emigrate, attracted to-day toward other shores as formerly their heroic youth were tempted by the arch of the Bosphorus, in the time of the Doge Pietro Ziani, and the voice of prayer should no more strike against the sonorous gold of the concave mosaics, nor the sound of the oar perpetuate with its rhythmic stroke the meditation of the silent stones, Venice would still remain a City of Life. The ideal creatures protected by its silence live in the whole past and for the whole future. In them we shall always discover new concordances with the edifice of the universe, unforeseen meetings with the idea born only yesterday, clear announcements of that which is with us only a presentiment as yet, open answers to that which as yet we have not dared to ask.
"These ideal creatures are simple, but they are full of innumerable meanings; they are ingenuous, yet are clothed in strange attire. Should we contemplate them for an indefinite time, they never would cease to pour dissimilar truths into our minds. Should we visit them every day, every day they would appear to us under a new aspect, as do the sea, the rivers, the fields, the woods, the rocks. At times the things they say to us do not really reach our intellects, but reveal themselves to us in a sort of confused happiness, which causes our own substance to dilate and quiver to its inmost depths. Some bright day they will point out to us the path to the distant forest, wherein Beauty has awaited us from time immemorial, buried in her mystic hair.
"Whence came to them their immeasurable power?
"From the pure unconsciousness of the artificers that created them.
"Those profound men ignored the immensity of the things they wished to express. Penetrating with a million roots into the soil of life, not like single trees, but like vast forests, they absorbed infinite elements, which they transfused and condensed into ideal species, whose essences nevertheless remained unknown to them, as the flavor of the apple is unknown to the branch that bears it. They were the mysterious means chosen by Nature in her effort to represent in an integral form those types in which she has not yet succeeded. Because of this, continuing the work of the Divine Mother, their minds, as Leonardo says, have become transformed into 'a likeness of the Divine Mind.' And because creative force rushed to their fingers incessantly, like sap to the buds of trees, they created with joy."
All the desire of the determined artist, panting and struggling to obtain this Olympian gift, all his envy of those gigantic creators of Beauty, all his insatiable thirst for happiness and glory, were revealed in the tone in which he pronounced these last words. Once more the soul of the multitude was under the magic of the poet's spell, strained and vibrating like a single cord composed of a thousand strands, the resonance of which could be incalculably prolonged. That resonance awakened within the multitude the sense of a truth that had lain dormant, but which the poet's words now revealed for the first time.
In the sonority of the deep silence, the solitary voice reached its climax.
"To create with joy! It is the attribute of Divinity! It is impossible to imagine at the summit of the spirit an act more triumphal. Even the words that signify it possess something of the splendor of sunrise.
"And these artists created by a medium that is in itself a joyous mystery: by color, which is the ornament of the world; by color, which seems the effort of matter to become light.
"And the newly awakened musical sense they had for color was such that their creations transcend the narrow limits of figured symbols, and assume the high revealing power of an infinite harmony.
"Never have the words of Vinci, on whom Truth flashed one day with her thousand secrets, appeared so true as when we stand before the great symphonic canvases of the masters: 'Music cannot be called anything but the sister of Painting.' They are not alone silent poetry, but also silent music. The most subtle seekers of rare symbols, and those most desirous to impress the sign of an internal universe on the purity of a meditative brow, seem to us almost sterile compared with these great unconscious musicians.
"When we behold Bonifacio, in the parable of Dives, intoning with a note of fire the most powerful harmony of color in which the essence of a proud and voluptuous nature ever has revealed itself, we do not ask questions about the blond youth, listening to the music and seated between the two magnificent courtesans, whose faces glow like lamps of purest amber; but, passing beneath the material symbol, we abandon ourselves to the power of evocation of those chords, wherein our spirits seem to-day to find a presentiment of I know not what evening, heavy with beautiful destiny and autumnal gold, in a harbor as quiet as a basin of perfumed oil where a galley palpitating with oriflammes shall enter with a strange silence, like a butterfly of twilight darting into the chalice of some great flower.
"Shall we not, with our mortal eyes, really see it, some glorious evening, approaching the Palace of the Doges? Does it not appear to us from a prophetic horizon in the Allegory of Autumn which Tintoretto offers us, like a superior, concrete image of our dream of yesterday?
"Seated on the shore, like a deity, Venice receives the ring from the young, vine-wreathed god who descends into the water, while Beauty floats in the air with a starry diadem to crown the marvelous alliance!
"Behold yon distant ship! It seems to bring a message from the gods. Behold the symbolic Woman! Her body is capable of bearing the germs of a world!"
A whirlwind of applause broke out, dominated by the clamor of the young men, who hailed him who had kindled before their anxious eyes a hope so glowing, who had professed a faith so strong in the occult genius of the race, in the lofty virtue of the ideals handed down by their fathers, in the sovereign dignity of their spirit, the indestructible power of beauty, in all the great things held as naught by modern barbarity. The disciples extended their arms toward the master with an effusion of gratitude, an impulse of love, for he had illumined their souls as with a torch. In each lived again Giorgione's creation: the youth with the beautiful white plumes, who advanced toward the rich mass of spoils; and each fancied as multiplied to infinity his own power to enjoy all things. Their cry expressed so plainly their perturbation of spirit, that the master felt an inward tremor and the inrush of a wave of sadness as he thought of the ashes of this sudden fire, and of the cruel wakening of the morrow. Against what sharp obstacles must be broken this terrible desire to live, this violent will of each to shape the wings of Victory to his own destiny, and to bend all the energies of his nature toward the sublime end!
But that night favored youthful delirium. All the dreams of domination, of pleasure and of glory, that Venice has first cradled, then stifled, in her marble arms, seemed to rise anew from the foundations of the palace, to enter from the open balconies, palpitating like a people revivified under the arch of that rich and heavy ceiling, which was like a suspended treasure. The strength which, on the ceiling and the walls, seemed to swell the muscles of the gods, the kings, and the heroes, the beauty which, in the nudity of the goddesses, the queens, and the courtesans, ran like visible music—all that human strength and beauty, transfigured by centuries of art, harmonized itself in a single figure, which these intoxicated ones fancied they beheld, real and breathing, erected before them by the new poet.
They vented their intoxicated enthusiasm in that great cry which they sent up to him who had offered to their thirsty lips a cup of his own wine. Henceforth, all would be able to see the inextinguishable flame through its watery veil. Some one among them already imagined himself crumpling laurel leaves to perfume his hands; and another resolved to seek at the bottom of a silent canal for the old sword and the ancient diadem.