Lost! Lost! Now she was lost! She still lived—vanquished, humiliated, as if some one had trampled pitilessly upon her; she still lived, and dawn was breaking, the days were beginning again, the fresh tide was flowing once more into the City Beautiful, and Donatella was still sleeping upon her pure pillow. Into an infinite distance had faded the hour, in reality so short a time before, when she had waited at the gate for her beloved, recognized his step in the funereal silence of the deserted path, and felt her knees weaken as if from a blow, while a strange reverberation rang in her ears. How far-away now seemed that hour! yet the little incidents of her vigil returned to her mind with intensity: the cold iron rail against which she had leaned her head, the sharp, acrid odor that rose from the grass as from a retting-vat, the moist tongue of Lady Myrta's greyhounds that came noiselessly and licked her hands. "Good-by! Good-by!"
She was lost! He had left her as he would have left some light love, almost with the manner of a stranger, almost impatient even, drawn by the freshness of the dawn, by the freedom of the morning.
"Good-by!"
From her window she perceived Stelio on the bank of the canal; he was inhaling deep breaths of the fresh morning air; then in the perfect calm that reigned over all things, she heard his clear, confident voice calling the gondolier:
"Zorzi!"
The man was asleep in the bottom of his gondola, and his human slumber resembled that of the curved boat that obeyed his movements. Stelio touched him lightly with his foot, and instantly he sprang up, jumped to his place and seized the oar. Man and boat awoke at the same time, as if they had but one body, ready to glide over the water.
"Your servant, Signor!" said Zorzi with a smile, glancing up at the brightening sky. "Sit down, Signor, and I will row."
Opposite the palace, the door of a large workshop was thrown open. It was a stonecutter's shop, where steps were fashioned from the stone of Val-di-Sole.
"To ascend!" thought Stelio, and his superstitious soul rejoiced at the good omen. On the sign, the name of the quarry seemed radiant with promise—the Valley of the Sun. He had already seen, a short time before, the image of a stairway, on a coat-of-arms in the Gradenigo garden—a symbol of his own ascension. "Higher, always higher!" Joy came bubbling up from the depths of his being. The morning awakened all manly energies.
"And Perdita? And Ariadne?" He saw them again, as they descended the marble stairway, in the light of the smoking torches. "And La Tanagra?" The Syracusan appeared to his vision, with her long, goat-like eyes, reposing gracefully upon her mother earth, motionless as a bas-relief on the marble in which it is carved. "The Dionysian Trinity!" He fancied them as exempt from all passion, immune from all evil, like creations of art. The surface of his soul seemed covered with swift and splendid images, like sails scattered over a swelling sea. His heart beat calmly, and with the approaching sunrise he felt a renewal of his life-forces, as if he were born anew with the morning.
"We do not need this light any longer," murmured the gondolier slyly, extinguishing the lantern of the gondola.
"To the Grand Canal, by San Giovanni Decollato!" cried Stelio, seating himself.
As the dentellated prow swung into the Canal of San Giacomo dall'Orio, he turned to look once more at the palace, of a leaden hue in the early dawn. One lighted window grew dark at that moment, like an eye suddenly blinded. "Good-by! Good-by!" The woman no longer young was up there alone, sad with the sadness of death; the Song-Maiden was preparing to return to the place of her long sacrifice. He knew not how to pity, he could only promise. From the abundance of his strength, he drew an illusion that he might change those two destinies for his own joy.
"Stop before the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi!" he ordered the gondolier.
The canal, ancient stream of silence and of poetry, was deserted. The pale green sky was reflected in it with its last fading stars. At first glance, the palace had an aerial appearance, like an artificial cloud hung over the water. The shadows in which it was still wrapped suggested the quality of velvet, the beauty of something soft and magnificent. And, just as in studying a deep-piled velvet, the pattern gradually becomes discernible, the architectural lines revealed themselves in the three Corinthian columns that rose with rhythmic grace and strength to the point where the emblems of nobility, the eagles, the horses, and the amphora, were mingled with the roses of Loredan. NON NOBIS, DOMINE, NON NOBIS.
Within that palace throbbed the great ailing heart. Stelio saw again the image of the barbaric creator: the blue eyes gleaming under the broad brow, the lips compressed above the powerful chin, armed with sensuousness, pride, and disdain. Was he sleeping? Could he sleep, or was he lying sleepless with his glory? The young man recalled strange things that were told of Wagner. Was it true that he could not sleep unless his head rested on his wife's bosom, and that, despite advancing years, he clung to her as a lover to his mistress? He remembered a story told him by Lady Myrta, who, while she was in Palermo, had visited the Villa d'Angri, where the very closets in the room occupied by the master had remained impregnated with an essence of rose so strong that it made her ill. He fancied that slight, tired body, wrapped in sumptuous draperies, ornamented with jewels, perfumed like a corpse ready for the pyre. Was it not Venice that had given him, as long ago it had given Albert Dürer, a taste for luxury and magnificence? Yes, and it was in the silence of her canals that he had heard the passing of the most ardent breath of all his music—the deadly passion of Tristan and Isolde.
And now, within that palace throbbed the great ailing heart, and there its formidable impetuosity was flagging. The patrician palace, with its eagles, its horses, amphora, and roses, was as tightly closed and silent as a great tomb. Above its marble towers the sunrise turned the pale green sky to rosy pink.
"Hail to the Victorious One!" Stelio stood up and cast his flowers at the threshold of the palace door.
"On! On!" he cried.
Urged by this sudden impatience, the gondolier bent to his oar, and the light craft threaded its way along the stream. A brown sail passed silently. The sea, the rippling waves, the laughing cry of the sea-gulls, the sweeping breeze arose before his desire.
"Row, Zorzi, row! To the Veneta Marina, by the Canal dall'Olio!" the young man cried.
The canal seemed too narrow for the expanse of his soul. Victory............