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 demon of romance, who 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
flambeaus flashing from the windows, and down the stair-cases of the
Ducal Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom to a livid and
supernatural 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
the young hyacinth. A snowy white and gauze-like drapery seemed to be
nearly the sole covering to her delicate form--but the midsummer and
midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion--no shadow of
motion in that 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 _ennuied_ to
the very death, as at intervals he gave directions for the recovery of
his child. Stupified 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--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 own 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 Venitian 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--a nose like those delicate creations of the mind to be found
only in the medallions of the Hebrew--singular, wild, full, liquid
eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant
jet, and a profusion of glossy, black hair, from which a forehead
rather low than otherwise, 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--I wish to be perfectly understood--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 piles of gloomy, yet fantastic grandeur,
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 sick 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 far more than imperial magnificence which burned and
blazed around.
Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still
brilliantly lighted up. I judged 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 vibrations of low, melancholy music, whose unseen
origin, undoubtedly lay in the recesses of the crimson trelliss work
which tapestried the ceiling. The senses were oppressed by mingled and
conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange Arabesque censers, which
seemed actually endued with a monstrous vitality, as their
particolored fires writhed up and down, and around about their
extravagant proportions. 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. Here then had the
hand of genius been at work. A chaos--a wilderness of beauty lay
before me. A sense of dreamy and incoherent grandeur took possession
of my soul, and I remained within the door-way speechless.
Ha! ha! ha!--ha! ha! ha!--laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a
seat, 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, my dear
sir, 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 there is a
long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end, in the
_Absurdities_ of Ravisius Textor. 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 [Greek:
LASM]. They are undoubtedly part of [Greek: GELASMA]. 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--"in the
present instance 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, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial
precincts."
I bowed in acknowledgement: 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 Virtû. They are all, however,
fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here too, are some _chéf
d'oeuvres_ 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
Pietà?"
"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 Medicis?--she of the gilded hair?--the work of Cleomenes,
the son of the Athenian? 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. 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 Michæl Angelo
was by no means original in his couplet--
'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto
Chè un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.'"
* * * * *
It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true
gentlemen, 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 _intensity_ 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
visiter, 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
lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar
characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in
recognizing 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 around about with flowers;
And the flowers--they all were mine.
But the dream--it could not last;
And the star of Hope did rise
But to be overcast.
A voice from out the Future cries
"Onward!"--while o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies,
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For alas!--alas!--with me
Ambition--all--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!
And all my hours are trances;
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy 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--but
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 my 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 coarse 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 downwards 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 Vin de Barâc. "Come!" he said
abruptly, "let us drink! It is early--but let us drink! It is _indeed_
early," he continued thoughtfully 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 the 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 stretching 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." Thus
saying, he confessed the power of the wine, and 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 chokeing 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.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.