Descending to the courtyard hastily, in order to escape importunate curiosity, Stelio took refuge in a shadowy corner, to watch, among the crowd coming down the Giants' Stairway, for the appearance of the two women, the actress and the singer, who were to meet him near the well. Every instant his expectation became more anxious, while around him rose the tumultuous cry that extended to the outer walls of the palace and lost itself among the clouds, now lighted with a glare as of a conflagration. An almost terrible joy seemed to spread over the Anadyomenean City, as if a vehement breath had suddenly dilated all breasts, filling the veins of all men with a superabundance of life. The repetition of the Bacchic Chorus celebrating the crown of stars, placed by Aphrodite on the forgetful head of Ariadne, had drawn a cry from the throng on the Molo beneath the open balconies. When, at the final elevation, the word Viva! rang out from the chorus of M?nads, Satyrs, and Egipans, the chorus of the populace had responded to it like a formidable echo from the harbor of San Marco. And in this moment of Dionysian delirium it seemed as if the people remembered the forests of old that were burned on sacred nights, and had given a signal for the conflagration that must light up the beauty of Venice in final, dazzling splendor.
The dream of Paris Eglano—the spectacle of marvelous flames offered to love on a floating couch—flashed before Stelio's vision. The persistent image of Donatella Arvale lingered in his thought: a supple, youthful figure, strong and shapely, rising erect amid the sonorous forest of bows, which seemed to draw their notes from the hidden music within herself. And, seized with a strange distress, through which passed something like the shadow of horror, he saw the image of the other woman: poisoned by art, worn with experience, with the taste of maturity and worldly corruptness on those eloquent lips, a feverish dryness in those hands, which had pressed the juice from deceitful fruits, and with the marks of a thousand masks on the face that had simulated the fury of all mortal passions. To-night, at last, after a long period of waiting and of hope, he was to receive the gift of that heart, no longer young, which had been claimed by others before him, but which he never yet had called his own. How his heart had throbbed in the early evening as he sat beside that silent woman, floating toward the City Beautiful over the waters that seemed to bear them on with the terrifying smoothness of mysterious machinery. Ah, why did she come now to meet him in company with the other temptress? Why did she place beside her despair and worldly wisdom the pure splendor of innocent youth?
He started suddenly as he perceived in the throng at the top of the marble staircase, by the light of the smoking torches, the form of La Foscarina pressed so closely against that of Donatella Arvale that the robes of both blended into one mass of whiteness. He followed them with his eyes until they reached the lowest stair, anxious as if at each step they had approached the edge of an abyss. The unknown during these hours had already led in the heart of the poet a life so intense that on seeing her approach him he experienced the emotion that would have seized him before a breathing incarnation of one of the ideal creatures born of his art.
She descended slowly on the human wave. Behind her, the Palace of the Doges, filled with streams of lights and confused sounds, made one think of those fairy-tale awakenings which suddenly, in the depths of the forest, transfigure inaccessible castles where for centuries the hair on royal heads had grown longer and longer during a protracted sleep. The two guardian Giants shone red in the blaze of the torches; the cuspid of the Golden Gate sparkled with tiny lights. And still the clamor rose and swelled above the groups of marbles, loud as the moaning of the stormy sea against the walls of Malamocco.
In this tumult, Effrena saw advancing toward him the two temptresses, escaping from the crowd as if from the clasp of a monster. And his fancy pictured extraordinary assimilations, which should be realized with the ease of dreams and the solemnity of liturgic ceremonies. He said to himself that Perdita was leading this magnificent prey to him, that he might discover some rarely beautiful secret, that some great work of love might be accomplished, in which she desired to be his fellow artisan. He told himself that this very night she would say to him most marvelous words. Across his spirit passed once again the indefinable melancholy he had felt when he leaned over the bronze rim to contemplate the reflection of the stars in that dark mirror; he waited in expectation of some event that should stir that secret soul in the furthermost depths of his being, where it lay motionless, strange, intangible. By the whirling of his thoughts, he comprehended that he was again plunged into that delirium which the glamor of the lagoon had given him at twilight. Then, emerging from the shadowy corner, he went forward to meet the two women with an intoxicating presentiment.
"Oh, Effrena!" said La Foscarina, as she reached the well, "I had given up all hope of finding you here. We are very late, are we not? But we were caught in the crowd and could not escape."
Then, turning toward her companion with a smile, she said:
"Donatella, this is the Master of the Flame."
Without speaking, but with a slight smile, Donatella Arvale responded to the low bow of the young man.
"We must find our gondola," said La Foscarina. "It is waiting for us at the Ponte della Paglia. Will you come with us, Effrena? We must profit by the opportunity. The crowd is rushing toward the Piazzetta. The Queen will leave by the Porta della Carta."
A long, unanimous cry saluted the appearance of the fair Queen in her pearls, as she stood at the head of the stairs, where long ago, in the presence of the populace, the Doge received the ducal ensign. Again the name of the white starry flower and the pearl arose from the crowd and was echoed among the marbles. Flashes of joy sparkled against the dark sky, a thousand fiery doves flew from the pinnacles of San Marco, like messengers of Fire.
"The Epiphany of the Flame!" cried La Foscarina, as she reached the Molo and gazed upon the marvelous spectacle.
Donatella Arvale and Stelio Effrena stood side by side, astonished; then they looked into each other's eyes, bewildered. And their faces, illumined by the reflections, shone as if they were leaning over a furnace or a glowing crater.
All the innumerable appearances of the volatile and multi-colored Fire spread over the firmament, crept over the waters, curled around the masts of the ships, enwreathed the cupolas and the towers, adorned the friezes, draped the statuary, bejeweled the capitals, enriched every line and transfigured every aspect of the sacred and profane architectures around that profound and mysterious watery mirror, which multiplied these marvels. The astonished eye could no longer distinguish between the contour and the quality of the elements, but it was charmed by a moving vision wherein all forms lived a lucid, fluid life, suspended in vibrating ether, so that the slender prows curving over the waves and the myriad of golden doves against the dark sky seemed to rival one another in the glory of swift motion, and together to reach the summit of immaterial beauty. That which in the twilight had seemed a silvery palace of Neptune, built in imitation of a rare shell, at this hour had become a new temple, erected by the nimble genii of the Fire. It seemed like one of those labyrinthian constructions of our dreams, prodigiously enlarged, that rise on andirons, at the hundred gates of which stand the two-faced augurs who make ambiguous gestures to the watching maiden; or like one of those fairy-like red palaces, at the thousand windows of which appear the faces of salamander princesses, who smile amorously upon the dreaming poet.
Rosy as a setting moon, the sphere of the Fortuna, borne on the shoulders of the Atlantides, radiated on the triple loggia, its rays engendering a cycle of satellites. From the Riva, from San Giorgio, from the Giudecca, with a continual crackling, clusters of fiery stems rose toward the clouds, and there blossomed into sparkling roses, lilies, and palms, a flowery paradise, forming an aerial garden that continually faded and bloomed again with yet stranger and richer blossoms. It was like a rapid succession of springs and autumns in the empyrean. An immense sparkling shower of leaves and petals fell from the celestial dissolutions, enveloping all things in its golden shimmer.
From a distance, through gaps in the glittering rain, a flotilla gay with flags could be seen approaching over the waters of the lagoon: a fairy-like fleet such as might float through the dream of a sybarite sleeping his last sleep on a bed steeped in deadly perfumes. Like those, perhaps, their ropes were made from the twisted hair of slaves captured in conquered cities, and still redolent of fragrant oils; like those, perhaps, their hulls were laden with myrrh, spikenard, benzoin, cinnamon, aromatic herbs; with sandal-wood, cedar, terebinth, and all oderiferous woods in rich profusion. The indescribable colors of the flags suggested perfumes and spices. Of blue-green peacock shades, saffron, violet, and indistinct hues, those flaming flags seemed to spring from some burning interior and to have been colored by some unknown process.
"The Epiphany of the Flame!" repeated La Foscarina. "What an unforeseen commentary on your poem, Effrena! The City of Life responds by a miracle to your act of adoration. She burns, through her watery veil. Are you not satisfied? Look! Millions of golden pomegranates are hanging everywhere!"
The actress was smiling, her face illumined by the magic fire. She was suddenly possessed by that singular gayety of hers which Stelio knew well, and which, because of its effect of incongruity with her usual pose, suggested to him the image of a dark, closed house where violent hands had suddenly opened on rusty hinges all the doors and windows.
"We must praise Ariadne," he replied, "for having uttered, in all this harmony, the most sublime note."
Stelio said those flattering words only to induce the fair singer to speak, only through a desire to know the timbre of that voice when it descended from the heights of song. But his praise was lost in the reiterated clamor of the crowd, which overflowed on the Molo, making a longer stay impossible. From the bank, Stelio assisted the two friends into their gondola; then he sat down on a stool at their knees, and the long, dentellated prow sparkled, like all else, in the magic fire.
"To the Rio Marin, by the Grand Canal," La Foscarina ordered the gondolier. "Do you know, Effrena, we are to have at supper some of your best friends: Francesco de Lizo, Daniele Glauro, Prince Hoditz, Antimo della Bella, Fabio Molza, Baldassare Stampa"—
"Then it will be a banquet?"
"But not, alas! like that of Cana."
"And will not Lady Myrta, with her Veronese greyhounds, be there?"
"Rest assured that we shall have Lady Myrta. Did you not see her in the hall? She sat in the first row, lost in admiration of you."
Because they had looked into each other's eyes as they spoke, a sudden emotion seized them. The remembrance of that full twilight hour on the water that rippled beneath their oar filled their hearts with a wave of troubled blood; and each was surprised by a swift return of the same agitation felt when leaving the silent estuary already in the power of shadow and death. Their lips refused to utter vain, light words; their souls refused to make the effort to incline themselves through prudence toward the passing trivialities of the superficial life, which now seemed worthless to both; and their spirits became absorbed in the contemplation of the strange fancies that rose from their inmost thoughts in a garb of indescribable richness, like the heaped-up treasures the streams of light seemed to reveal in the depths of the nocturnal waters.
And, because of that very silence, they felt the presence of the singer weigh heavily upon them, as in the moment when her name had first been spoken between them; and little by little the oppression became intolerable. Although Stelio was seated close to her, she appeared no less distant than when she rose above the forest of instruments; she was as absent and unconscious as she had been when her voice soared high in song. She had not yet spoken.
Simply to hear her speak, and almost timidly, Stelio said:
"Shall you remain some time longer in Venice?"
He had pondered on the first words he should say to her, but was dissatisfied with whatever rose to his lips, for all phrases seemed too vivid, insidious, full of ambiguous significance, capable of infinite changes and transformations, like the unknown seed from which may spring a thousand roots. And it seemed to him that Perdita could not hear one of those phrases without feeling that a shadow darkened her love.
After he had spoken those simple, conventional words, he reflected that even that question might suggest an infinity of hope and eagerness.
"I must leave Venice to-morrow," Donatella replied. "I ought not to be here even now."
Her voice, so clear and powerful in the heights of song, was low and sober, as if suffused with a slight opacity, suggesting the image of the most precious metal wrapped in the most delicate velvet. Her brief reply indicated that there was a place of suffering to which she must return, where she must undergo some familiar torture. Like iron tempered with tears, a strong though sorrowful will shone through the veil of her youthful beauty.
"To-morrow!" Stelio exclaimed, not seeking to hide his sincere regret. "Have you heard, Signora?"
"I know," the actress replied, gently taking Donatella's hand. "I am filled with regret to see her go. But she cannot remain away longer from her father. Perhaps you do not yet know"—
"What?" asked Stelio quickly. "Is he ill? Is it true, then, that Lorenzo Arvale is ill?"
"No, he is only fatigued," said La Foscarina, touching her forehead with a gesture perhaps involuntary but which revealed to Stelio the horrible menace hanging over the genius of the artist who had seemed as fertile and indefatigable as one of the old masters—a Della Robbia or a Verrocchio.
"He is only fatigued," repeated La Foscarina. "He needs repose and quiet. And his daughter's singing is very soothing to him. Do you not believe, also, Effrena, in the healing power of music?"
"Certainly," Stelio replied, "Ariadne possesses a divine gift whereby her power transcends all limits."
The name of Ariadne came spontaneously to his lips to indicate the singer as she appeared to his fancy, for it seemed to him impossible to pronounce the young girl's real name preceded by the ordinary appellation imposed by social usage. In his eyes she was perfect and singular, free from the little ties of custom, living her own sequestered life, like a work of art on which style had set its inviolable seal. He thought of her as isolated like those figures that stand out with clear contour, far from common life, lost in mystic reverie; and already, before that impenetrable character, he felt a sort of passionate impatience, somewhat similar to that of a curious man before something hermetically sealed that tempts him.
"Ariadne had for the soothing of her griefs the gift of forgetfulness," said Donatella, "and that I do not possess."
A bitterness perhaps involuntary infused these words, in which Stelio fancied he detected the indication of an aspiration toward a life less oppressed by useless suffering. He guessed at her revolt against a certain form of domestic slavery, the horror of her self-imposed sacrifice, her vehement desire to rise toward joy, and her inborn aptitude for being drawn like a beautiful bow by a strong hand that would know how to use it for some high conquest. He divined that she had no longer any hope of her father's recovery, and that she was saddened at the thought that henceforth she could only be the guardian of a darkened hearth, of ashes without a spark. The image of the great artist rose in his mind, not as he was, since Stelio never had known him personally, but such as he had fancied the sculptor after studying his ideas of beauty expressed in imperishable bronze and marble. His mind fixed itself on that image with a sensation of terror more icy than that which the most appalling aspects of death could have inspired. And all his strength, all his pride and his ardor seemed to resound within him like weapons shaken by a menacing hand, sending a quiver through every fiber of his heart.
Presently La Foscarina lifted the funereal black curtain, which suddenly, amid the splendors of the festival, had seemed to change the gondola into a coffin.
"Look!" she said, pointing out to Stelio the balcony of Desdemona's palace: "See the beautiful Nineta receiving the homage of the Serenade, as she sits between her pet monkey and her little dog."
"Ah, the beautiful Nineta!" said Stelio, rousing himself from his wild thoughts, and saluting the smiling occupant of the balcony, a little woman who was listening to the music, her face illumined from two silver candelabra, from the branches of which hung wreaths of the last roses of the year. "I have not yet seen her this time. She is the gentlest and most graceful animal I know. How fortunate was our dear Howitz to discover her behind the lid of an old harpsichord when he was rummaging in that curiosity shop at San Samuele! Two pieces of good fortune in one day: the lovely Nineta and a harpsichord lid painted by Pordenone. Since that day, the harmony of his life has been complete. How I should like to have you penetrate to his nest! You would find there a perfect example of that which I spoke of this evening, at twilight. There is a man who, by obeying his native taste for simplicity, has arranged for himself with minute art his own little love-story, in which he lives as happily as did his Moravian ancestor in the Arcady of Rosswald. Ah! I know a thousand exquisite things about him!"
A large gondola, decorated with many-colored lanterns, and laden with singers and musicians, had stopped beneath the balcony of Desdemona's house. The old song of brief youth and fleeting beauty rose sweetly toward the little woman who listened with her child-like smile, sitting between the monkey and the lapdog, making a group like one of Pietro Longhi's prints.
Do beni vu gharè
Beleza e zoventù;
Co i va no i torna più,
Nina mia cara....
"Does it not seem to you, Effrena, that these surroundings express the true soul of Venice, and that the other picture, which you presented to the multitude, is only your own fancy?" said La Foscarina, nodding her head slightly in time with the rhythm of the sweet song that spread through the Grand Canal and was reechoed from afar by singers in other gondolas.
"No," Stelio replied, "this does not at all represent the true soul of Venice. In each one of us, fluttering like a butterfly over the surface of our deeper nature, is a lighter soul, an animula, a little playful sprite that often dominates us for the moment, and leads us toward simple and mediocre pleasures, toward puerile pastimes and frivolous music. This animula vagula exists even in the gravest and most violent natures, like the clown attached to the person of Othello; and sometimes it misleads our better judgment. That which you hear now, in the songs and the melodies of the guitars, is the animula, or lighter spirit, of Venice; but her real soul is discovered only in silence, and most terribly, be assured, in full summer, at noonday, like the soul of the great god Pan. Out in the harbor of San Marco, I thought that you felt its mystic vibration during those moments of the great conflagration. You are forgetting Giorgione for Rosalba!"
Around the large gondola beneath the balcony had gathered other gondolas bearing languid women who leaned out to listen to the music in attitudes of graceful abandon, as if in fancy they felt themselves sinking into invisible arms. And around this romantic group the reflections of the lanterns in the water quivered like a flowering of rare and luminous water-lilies.
Se lassarè passar
La bela e fresca età,
Un zorno i ve dirà
Vechia maura,
E bramarè, ma invan,
Quel che ghavevi in man
Co avè lassà scampar
La congiontura.
It was, in truth, the song of the last roses that entwined the candelabra. It called up in Perdita's mind the funeral cortège of the dead Summer, the opalescent veil in which Stelio had wrapped the sweet body in its golden robe. Through the glass, sealed by the Master of Fire, she could see her own image at the bottom of the lagoon, lying on a field of seaweed. A sudden chill stole over her; once more she felt horror and disgust of her own body, no longer young. And, remembering her recent promise, thinking that perhaps this very night the beloved one would claim its fulfilment, she shuddered with a sort of sorrowful modesty, a mingling of fear and pride. Her experience and despairing eyes ran over the young girl beside her, studying her, penetrating her, realizing her occult but certain power, her intact freshness, pure health, and that indefinable virtue of love that emanates like an aroma from chaste maidens when they have arrived at the perfection of their bloom. She felt that some secret current of affinity existed between this fair creature and the poet; she could almost divine the words he addressed to her in the silence of his heart. A bitter pang seized her, so intolerable that, with an involuntary movement, her fingers clutched convulsively the black rope of the arm-rest beside her, so that the little metal griffin that held it creaked audibly.
This movement did not escape Stelio's anxious vigilance. He understood her agitation, and for a moment he experienced the same pang, but it was mingled with impatience and almost with anger, for her anguish, like a cry of destruction, interrupted the fiction of transcendent life that he had been constructing within himself in order to conciliate the contrast, to conquer this new force that offered itself to him like a bow to be drawn, yet at the same time not to lose the savor of that ripe maturity which life had impregnated with all its essences, and the benefit of that devotion and that passionate faith which sharpened his intelligence and fed his pride.
"Ah, Perdita!" he said to himself, "From the ferment of your human loves, why has not a love more than human sprung. Ah, why have I finally vanquished you by my pleading, although I know it is too late? and why do you allow me to read in your eyes the certainty of your yielding, amid a flood of doubts which, nevertheless, never again will have power to re?stablish the abolished interdiction. Each of us knows full well that that interdiction conferred the highest dignity upon our long communion, yet we have not known how to preserve its rule, and at the last hour we yield blindly to an imperious internal call. Yet, a short time ago, when your noble head dominated the belt of constellations, I no longer saw in you an earthly love, but the illuminating, revelatory Muse of my poetry; and all my heart went out to you in gratitude, not for the promise of a fleeting happiness, but for the promise of glory. Do you not understand—you, who understand everything? By a marvelous inspiration, such as always comes to you, have you not turned my inclination, by the ray of your smile, toward a resplendent youthfulness which you have chosen and reserved for me? When you descended the stairway together, and approached me, had you not the appearance of one that bears a gift or an unexpected message? Not wholly unexpected, perhaps, Perdita! For I have anticipated from your infinite wisdom some extraordinary action toward me."
"How happy the beautiful Nineta is, with her monkey and her little dog!" sighed the actress, looking back at the light songsters and the smiling woman on the balcony.
La zoventù xe un fior
Che apena nato el mor,
E un zorno gnanca mi
No sarò quela.
Donatella Arvale and Stelio also looked back, while the light barque, without sinking, bore over the water and past the music the three faces of a heavy destiny.
E vegna quel che vol,
Lassè che voga!
Suddenly, in front of the red palace of the Foscari, at the curve of the canal, they saw the state vessel of the Doge of Venice so brightly illumined that it looked like a burning tower. New streaks of fire flashed against the sky. Other flaming doves flew up from the deck, rose above the terraces, sank among the statues, hissed as they fell into the water, multiplied themselves in thousands of sparks, and floated along in smoke. Along the parapets, from the decks, the poop, the prow, in a simultaneous explosion, a thousand fountains of fire opened, dilated, blended, illuminating with an intense, fiery radiance each side of the canal as far as San Vitale and the Rialto. Then the vessel of the Doge glided out of sight, transformed into a purple thunder-cloud.
"Go through San Polo!" called La Foscarina to the gondolier, bending her head as under a storm, and shutting out the roar with her palms over her ears.
Again Donatella Arvale and Stelio Effreno looked at each other with dazzled eyes. Again their faces, lighted by the glare, glowed as if they were leaning over a furnace or a burning crater.
The gondola turned into the canal of San Polo, gliding along through the darkness. A cold shadow seemed suddenly to fall over the spirits of the three silent occupants. Under the arch of the bridge, the hollow echo of the dipping oar struck upon their souls, and the hilarity of the festival sounded infinitely far-away. All the houses were dark; the campanile rose silent and solitary toward the stars; the Campiello del Remer and the Campiello del Pistor were deserted, and the grass breathed there in untrodden peace; the trees, bending over the low walls of the little gardens, seemed to feel their leaves dying on the branches pointing to the serene sky.