REMINISCENCE
They left the factory, and walked along a road that was enclosed
between the walls of silent gardens. The bronze-like laurels were
touched with gold at the tops by the setting sun. The air was filled
with sparkling gold-dust.
"How sweet and terrible was the fate of Gaspara Stampa," said Stelio.
"Do you know her _Sonnets_? Yes, I saw them one day on your table. She
was a strange mingling of ice and fire. Sometimes her mortal passion,
above the Petrarchism of Aretino, lifted a glorious cry. I remember a
magnificent verse of hers:
_Vivere ardendo e non sentire il male!_"
"Do you remember, Stelio," said La Foscarina, with that peculiar slight
smile of hers which gave her face the look of one walking in her sleep,
"do you remember the sonnet that begins:
_Signore, io so che in me non son più viva,
E veggo omai ch'ancor in voi son morta?_"
"I don't remember, Fosca."
"Do you remember your beautiful fancy about the dead Summer? Summer
was lying on a funeral barge, dressed in gold like a dogaressa, and
the procession was bearing her toward the Island of Murano, where a
master of the flame was to enclose her in a shroud of opalescent glass,
so that when she should be submerged in the depths of the lagoon, she
could at least watch the waving seaweed. Do you remember?"
"It was an evening in September."
"The last night of September, the night of the Allegory. There was a
great light on the water. You were in an exalted mood, and talked and
talked. What things you said! You had come from solitude, and your
overcharged soul broke forth. You poured a sparkling wave of poetry
over your companion. A bark passed, laden with pomegranates. I called
myself Perdita. Do you remember?"
As she walked she felt the extreme lightness of her step and felt that
something in her was vanishing, as if her body were on the point of
being changed to an empty chrysalis.
"My name was still Perdita. Stelio, do you recall another sonnet of
Gaspara's beginning:
_Io vorrei pur che Amor dicesse come
Debbo seguirlo...._
And the madrigal beginning:
_Se tu credi piacere al mio signore?_"
"I did not know you were so familiar with the unhappy Anasilla, my
dear."
"Ah, I will tell you. I was hardly fourteen years old when I played in
an old romantic tragedy called _Gaspara Stampa_. I played the leading
part. It was at Dolo, where we passed the other day on our way to
Strà. We played in a small rustic theater--a kind of tent. It was the
year before my mother died. I remember it very well. I can remember
the sound of my own voice, which was weak then, when I forced it in
the tirades because some one in the wings kept whispering to me to
speak louder, louder!... Well, Gaspara was despairing; she wept and
raved for her cruel Count. There were many things about it all that my
small, profaned soul did not know or understand, and I know not what
instinct and comprehension of sorrow led me to find the accent and
the cries that could stir the miserable crowd from which we expected
to gain our daily bread. Ten hungry persons used me as a breadwinner;
brutal necessity cut and tore away from me all the dream-flowers
born of my trembling precocity. Oh, it was a time of weeping and
suffocation, of terror, of unthinking weariness, of mute horror. Those
that martyrized me knew not what they were doing, poor creatures, made
stupid by poverty and work. God pardon them and give them peace! Only
my mother--she, too, who 'for having loved too well and been too little
loved, unhappy lived and died'--only my mother had pity on my pain, and
knew how to take me in her arms, how to calm my horrible trembling, to
weep when I wept, to console me. My blessed mother!"
Her voice changed. Her mother's eyes once again looked upon her, kind
and firm and infinite as a peaceful horizon.--Tell me, tell me what I
must do! Guide me, teach me, you who know!--Her heart felt again the
clasp of those arms, and from the distance of years the old pain came
back, but not harshly; it was almost sweet. The memory of her struggles
and her sufferings seemed to bathe her soul in a warm wave, to sustain
and comfort it. The test had been hard and the victory difficult,
obtained at the price of persistent labor, against brutal and hostile
forces. She had witnessed the deepest misery and ruin, she had known
heroic efforts, pity, horror, and the face of Death.
"I know what hunger is, Stelio, and what the approach of night seems
like when a place of rest is uncertain," she said softly.
She stopped between the high walls, and lifted her little veil, looking
deep into her friend's eyes. He grew pale under that look, so sudden
was his emotion and surprise at her words. He felt confused, as if in
the incoherence of a dream, incapable of applying the true significance
of those words to the woman who was smiling at him, holding the
delicate glass in her ungloved hand. Yet he had heard what she said,
and she stood there before him in her rich fur cape, looking at him
with beautiful soft eyes, misty with unshed tears.
"And I have known other things."
It relieved her heart to speak like this; his humility gave her
strength, as if she had accomplished some proud and daring deed. She
never had felt conscious of her power and worldly glory in the presence
of her beloved, but now the memory of her obscure martyrdom, her
poverty and hunger, created in her heart a feeling of real superiority
over him she believed invincible.
"But I have no fear of suffering," she said, remembering the words he
had spoken once: "Tell me you do not fear to suffer.... I believe your
soul capable of bearing all the sorrow of the world." And her hand
stole up to his cheek and caressed it, and he understood that she had
answered those words spoken long ago.
He was silent, as intoxicated as if she had presented to his lips the
very essence of her heart pressed out into that crystal cup like the
blood of the grape. He waited for her to go on.
They reached a crossroads where stood a miserable hut, falling into
ruin. La Foscarina stopped to look at it. The rude, unhinged windows
were held open by a stick laid across them. The low sun struck the
smoked walls within, and revealed the furniture--a table, a bench, a
cradle.
"Do you remember, Stelio," said La Foscarina, "that inn at Dolo where
we waited for the train. Vampa's inn, I mean. A great fire burned
on the hearth, the dishes glittered on the shelves, and slices of
_polenta_ were toasting on the gridiron. Twenty years ago everything
was exactly the same--the same fire, the same dishes, the same
_polenta_. My mother and I used to go in there after the performance,
and sit on the bench before a table. I had wept, cried, raved, and
had died of poison or by the sword, on the stage. I still heard in
my ears the resonance of the verses I had uttered, in a voice that
was not my own, and a strange will still possessed my soul, and I
could not shake it off--it was as if another person, struggling with
my inertness, persisted in performing over again those movements and
actions. The simulation of an outside life remained in the muscles of
my face, and some evenings I could not calm them. Already, even then,
the mask, the sensation of the living mask, was beginning to grow. My
eyes would remain fixed, and a chill crept at the roots of my hair.
I had difficulty in recovering full consciousness of myself and my
surroundings.
"The odors from the kitchen sickened me; the food on our plates seemed
too coarse, heavy as a stone, impossible to swallow. My disgust at
everything sprang from something indescribably delicate and precious,
of which I was conscious under all my weariness--a vague feeling
of nobility beneath my humiliation. I hardly know how to express
it. Perhaps it was the obscure presence of that power which later
developed in me, of that election, of that difference wherewith Nature
has marked me. Sometimes the consciousness of that difference from
others became so strong that it almost raised a barrier between my
mother and myself--God forgive me!--almost separated me from her. A
great loneliness possessed me; nothing around me had power to touch
me any more. I was alone with my destiny. My mother, even though she
was with me, gradually receded into an infinite distance. Ah, she was
to die soon, and was already preparing to leave me, and perhaps this
withdrawal was the forerunner. She used to urge me to eat, with the
words only she knew how to say. I answered: 'Wait! Wait!' I could only
drink; I had a great craving for cold water. At times, when I was more
tired and trembling than usual, I smiled a long-continued smile. And
even that dear woman herself, with her deep heart, could not understand
whence came my smile!
"Incomparable hours, wherein it seemed that the bodily prison was being
broken through by the soul that wandered to the extremest limits of
life! What must your youth have been, Stelio! Who can imagine it? We
have all felt the weight of sleep that descends upon us after fatigue
or intoxication, heavy and sudden as a stroke from a hammer, and it
seems to annihilate us. But the power of dreams sometimes seizes upon
us in waking hours with the same force; it holds us and we cannot
resist it, though the whole thread of our existence seems on the point
of being destroyed. Ah, some of the beautiful things you said that
night in Venice come back to my mind, when you spoke of her marvelous
hands weaving her own lights and shadows in a continuous work of
beauty. You alone know how to describe the indescribable.
"Well, ... on that bench, in front of that rustic table, in Vampa's
inn at Dolo, where destiny led me again with you, I had the most
extraordinary visions that dreams ever have called up in my brain.
I saw that which is unforgettable; I saw the real forms around me
obliterated by the dream-figures born of my instinct and my thoughts.
Under my fixed eyes, dazzled and scorched by the smoky petroleum lamps
of the improvised stage, the world of my expression began to throb
with life. The first lines of my art were developed in that state of
anguish, of weariness, fever, disgust, in which my sensibility became,
so to speak, plastic, after the manner of the incandescent material we
saw the workmen holding at the end of the tube. In it was a natural
aspiration to be modeled, to receive breath, to fill a mold. On certain
evenings, in that wall covered with copper utensils, I could see myself
reflected as in a mirror, in attitudes of grief or rage; with an
unrecognizable face; and, in order to escape from this hallucination,
to break the fixity of my gaze, I opened and shut my eyes rapidly. My
mother would say, over and over: 'Eat, my daughter, at least eat this.'
But what were bread, wine, meat, fruits, all those heavy things, in
comparison with what I had within me? I said to her: 'Wait!' and when
we rose to go, I used to take only a large piece of bread with me.
I liked to eat it in the country the next morning, under a tree, or
sitting on the bank of the Brenta.... Oh, those statues! They did not
recognize me the other day, Stelio, but I recognized them!
"It was in the month of March, I remember. I went out into the country
very early with my bread. I walked at random, though I meant to go to
the statues. I went from one to another, and stopped before every one,
as if I were paying a visit. Some appeared very beautiful to me, and I
tried to imitate their poses. But I remained longer with the mutilated
ones, as if to console them. In the evening, on the stage, I remembered
some of them while I was acting, and with so deep a feeling of their
distance and their solitude that I felt as if I could not speak any
more. The audience would grow impatient at these pauses too prolonged.
At times, when I had to wait for my companion in the scene to finish
his tirade, I used to stand in the attitude of one of those statues,
and remain as motionless as if I had been made of stone. I was already
beginning to carve my own destiny.
"I loved one of them tenderly; it had lost its arms, which once
balanced a basket of fruit on its head. But the hands still remained
attached to the basket, and the sight of them always aroused my pity.
This statue stood on its pedestal in a flax-field; a little canal of
stagnant water was near it, in which the reflected sky repeated the
tender blue of the flowers. And always, since that time, in my most
glowing moments on the stage, visions of some landscape rise in my
memory, particularly when by the mere force of silence I succeed in
producing a thrill in the listening throng."
Her cheeks had flushed a little, and as the sun wrapped her in a
radiant garment, drawing sparkles from her furs and from the crystal
cup, her animation seemed like an increase of light.
"What a spring that was! In one of my wandering journeys I saw a
great river for the first time. It appeared to me suddenly, swollen,
and flowing rapidly between two wild banks. I felt then how much of
divinity there is in a great stream running through the earth. It was
the Adige, flowing down from Verona, from the city of Juliet."
An ambiguous emotion filled her heart while she recalled the poverty
and poetry of her youth. She was impelled to continue, though she
did not know how she had arrived at these confidences, when she had
intended to speak to her friend of another young life, not belonging
to the past, but to the present. By what surprise of love had she been
turned from an effort of her will, from her firm decision to face the
painful truth, from the concentration of her slumbering energy to
linger in the memory of the past, and to cover with the image of her
own lost virgin self that other image which was so different?
"We reached Verona one evening in May. I was devoured by anxiety. I
clasped close to my heart the book in which I had copied the lines
of Juliet, and continually repeated to myself the words of my first
entrance: 'How now? Who calls? I am here. What is your will?' My
imagination was excited by a strange coincidence: on that very day I
was fourteen years old--the age of Juliet. The Nurse's gossip sounded
in my ears; and, little by little, my own destiny seemed mingled with
that of the Veronese. At the corner of every street I thought I could
see a throng approaching me, accompanying a coffin covered with white
roses. When I saw the Arche degli Scaligeri behind its iron bars, I
cried to my mother, 'Here is Juliet's tomb!' And I burst into sobs,
and had a desperate desire to love and to die. 'O thou too early seen
unknown, and known too late!'"
Her voice, repeating the immortal words, penetrated the heart of her
lover like a heart-rending melody. She paused a moment, then repeated:
"Too late!"
They were the ominous words spoken by her lover, which she herself had
repeated in the garden, when both were on the brink of being swept
away on the flood of their passion: "It is late; too late!" The woman
that was no longer young now faced the former image of herself, in her
maidenhood, throbbing in the form of Juliet before her first dream of
love. Having reached the limit of experience, had she not at the same
time preserved the dream intact--but to what purpose? If to-day she
looked at the image of her far-distant youth, it was only to trample
upon it in leading her beloved to the other woman, to her who lived and
waited.
With her smile of inimitable sadness, she said:
"I _was_ Juliet! One Sunday in May, in the immense arena in the
amphitheater under the open sky, before an audience that had breathed
in the legend of love and death, I was Juliet herself. No thrill from
the most responsive audience, no applause, no triumph, ever has had
from me the fulness and intoxication of that unique hour. Actually,
when I heard Romeo say: 'O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright,'
my whole being kindled. With great economy, I had managed to buy a
large bunch of roses, and these were my only ornament. I mingled the
roses with my words, my gestures, with every attitude. I dropped one
at Romeo's feet when we first met; I strewed the petals of another on
his head, as I stood on the balcony; and I covered his body with them
as he lay in the tomb. The words came with the strangest ease, almost
involuntarily, as in delirium, and I could feel the throbbing in my
veins accompanying them.
"I could see the great amphitheater, half in sunlight, half in
shadow, and in the lighter part a sparkling from thousands of eyes.
The day was as calm as this. Not a breath of air disturbed the folds
of my robes, or the hair that floated on my uncovered neck. I felt
my strength and animation momentarily increasing. How I spoke of the
lark and the nightingale! I had heard them both a thousand times in
the country. I knew all their songs of the woods, the meadows, and
the sky. Every word, as it left my lips, seemed to have been steeped
in the warmth of my blood. There was no fiber in me that did not give
forth harmonious sound. Ah, the grace, the state of grace! Every time
it is given to me to rise to the highest summit of my art I live again
in that indescribable _abandon_. Yes, I was Juliet! I cried out in
terror at the approach of dawn. The breeze stirred my hair. I could
feel the extraordinary silence on which my lamentation fell. The
multitude seemed to have sunk into the ground. I spoke of the terror
of the coming day, but already I felt in reality 'the mask of night
upon my face.' Romeo had descended. We were already dead; already
both had entered the vale of shadows. Do you remember? My eyes sought
the fading light of the sky. The people were noisy in the arena; they
were impatient for the death scene; they would listen no more to
the mother, the nurse, or the friar. The quiver of that impatience
quickened my throbbing heart. The tragedy swept on. I recall the odor
of the pitch from the funeral torches, and of the roses that covered
me, and I remember the sound of far-off bells, and of the sky that was
losing its light, little by little, as Juliet was losing her life, and
a star, the first star, that swam in my eyes with my tears. When I
fell dead on Romeo's body, the cry of the multitude in the shadows was
so violent that I was frightened. Some one lifted me and dragged me
toward that cry. Some one held the torch close to my tear-stained face,
which must have been the color of death.... And thus, Stelio, one night
in May, Juliet came to life again, and appeared before the people of
Verona."
Again she paused, and closed her eyes as if she were dizzy, but her
sorrowful lips still smiled at her friend.
"And then? Then came the need to move, to go no matter where, to
traverse space, to breathe in the wind. My mother followed me in
silence. We crossed a bridge, walked beside the Adige, and went on and
on. My mother asked at times where we were going. I wished to find the
Franciscan convent where Juliet's tomb was hidden, since, to my great
regret, she was not buried in one of those beautiful tombs behind the
great iron gates. But I did not wish to say so, and I could not speak.
My voice seemed to have been lost with the last word of the dying
Juliet. 'Where are we going?' again asked that indefatigable kindness.
Ah, then the last word of Juliet came to me in reply. We were again
near the Adige, beside a bridge. I think I began to run, because soon
afterward I felt myself seized by my mother's arms, and I stood leaning
against the parapet, choking with sobs. 'There let me die!' I wished
to say, but could not. The river carried with it the night and all its
stars. I felt that the desire to die was not mine alone. Ah, blessed
mother!"
She became very pale; her whole heart felt once more the embrace of
those arms, the kiss of those lips, those tender tears, the depth of
that suffering.
With a mingled feeling of surprise and alarm, Stelio watched the great
waves of life that passed over her, the extraordinary expressions,
the alternating lights and shadows; but he dared not speak, dared not
break in upon the occult workings of that great, unhappy soul. He could
only feel confusedly in her words the beauty and sadness of things
unexpressed.
"Speak to me still," he said. "Draw nearer to me, sweet soul! No moment
since I first loved you has been worth the steps that we have taken
together to-day."
Again her first sudden question returned to her mind: "Do you think
often of Donatella?"
A short path led to the Fondamenta degli Angeli, whence the lagoon
could be seen, smooth and luminous.
"How beautiful that light is!" she said. "It is like that night when my
name was still Perdita, Stelio."
She now touched a note that she had touched in an interrupted prelude.
"The last night of September," she added. "Do you remember?"
Her heart was filled with exaltation to such a degree that she almost
feared it would fail her. But she resolved that her voice should utter
firmly the name that must break the silence between her friend and
herself.
"Do you remember the ship anchored before the gardens? A salute greeted
the flag as it slid down the mast. Our gondola touched the ship as we
passed under its shadow."
A moment's pause. Her pallor was animated by a wonderful vitality.
"Then, in that shadow, you first spoke Donatella's name."
She made a new effort, as a swimmer, submerged by a wave, rises again
and shakes his head free of the foam.
"She began then to be yours!"
She felt as if she were growing rigid from head to foot. Her eyes
stared fixedly at the glittering water.
"She must be yours," she said at last, with the sternness of necessity
in her voice, as if to repel with a second shock the terrible things
that were ready to surge up from her fiery heart.
Seized by sudden anguish, incapable of interrupting by a word the
lightning-like apparitions of her tragic soul, Stelio halted, and laid
his hand on his companion's arm to make her stop also.
"Is it not true?" she asked with a sweetness almost calm, as if her
tension had suddenly relaxed, and her passion had quietly accepted the
yoke laid upon it by her will. "Speak! I do not fear to suffer. Let us
sit down here. I am a little tired."
They sat down on a low wall, facing the water.
"What can I say to you?" said the young man in a stifled voice, after
a pause, unable to overcome the agitation arising from the certainty
of his present love and the consciousness of his desires, inexorable
as fate. "Perhaps what you have imagined is true; perhaps it is only
a fancy of your own mind. I am certain to-day of only one thing, and
that is that I love you and recognize in you all that is noble. I know
one other thing that is noble--that I have a work to do and a life to
live according to the dictates of Nature. You, too, must remember. On
that September evening I spoke to you a long time of my life and of the
genii that are leading it to its final destiny. You know that I can
renounce nothing."
He trembled as if he held in his hand a sharp weapon, with which, as he
was compelled to move it, he could not avoid wounding the defenseless
woman.
"No, nothing; and especially your love, which ceaselessly exalts my
strength and my hope. But did you not promise me more than love? Can
you not do for me things that love alone cannot do? Do you not desire
to be the constant inspiration of my life and my work?"
She listened motionless, with fixed eyes.
"It is true," he continued, after an anxious pause, recovering his
courage, and feeling that on the sincerity of this moment depended
the fate of that free alliance whereby he had hoped to be broadened,
not confined. "It is true; that evening, when I saw you descend the
stairs in the midst of the throng in company with her who had sung, I
believed that a secret thought guided you from the moment that you did
not come alone to meet me."
The woman felt a chill run through the roots of her hair. Her fingers
trembled round the crystal cup, wherein the colors of sky and water
were blended.
"I believed that you yourself had chosen her. Your look was that of one
who knows and foresees. I was struck by it."
By her keen torture, the woman realized how sweet a falsehood would
have been. She wished that he would either lie or be silent. She
measured the distance that lay between her and the canal--the water
that swallows and lulls to sleep.
"There was something about her that was hostile to me. She remained
to me obscure, incomprehensible. Do you remember the way she
disappeared? Her image faded, and only the desire of her song remained.
You yourself, who led her to me, have more than once revived the
remembrance of her. You have seen her shadow even where she was not."
She saw Death itself. No other wound had gone deeper, had hurt her
so cruelly.--I alone! I alone have brought it on myself!--And she
remembered the cry that had brought this misery: "Go! She awaits you!"
Suddenly the internal tempest seemed to become a mere hallucination.
She thought herself non-existent, and wondered to see the glass shining
in her hand; she lost all corporeal sense. All that had happened was
only a trick of the imagination. Her name was Perdita. The dead Summer
was lying in the depths of the lagoon. Words were words, that was all.
"Could I love her? Were I to see her again, should I desire to turn her
destiny toward mine? Perhaps. But of what use would that be? And of
what use would all the vicissitudes and necessities of life be against
the faith that links us? Could you and I resemble commonplace lovers
who pass their days in quarreling, weeping, and cursing?"
The woman gnashed her teeth. She had a wild instinct to defend herself,
and to hurt him as in a hopeless struggle. A murderous desire flashed
across her maddened brain.
--No, you shall not have her!--And the brutality of her tyrant seemed
monstrous to her. Under the measured and repeated blows, she felt that
she was like a man she had once seen on the dusty road of a mining
town, prostrated by repeated blows on his head from a mallet in his
enemy's hand. That hideous memory mingled with her mental torture. She
sprang up, impelled by the savage force that filled her being. The
glass broke in her convulsed hand, cut her, fell in a sparkling shower
at her feet.
Stelio startled. The woman's motionless silence had deceived him, but
now he looked at her and saw her at last; and once more he saw, as on
that night in her room when the logs had crackled on the hearth, the
expression of madness on her agitated face. He stammered some words of
regret, but impatience boiled under his concern.
"Ah," said La Foscarina, mastering her agony with a bitterness that
convulsed her mouth, "how strong I am! Another time have a care that
your wounds are not made so slowly, since my resistance is so slight,
my friend."
She saw that blood was dripping from her fingers; she wrapped them in
her handkerchief. She looked at the sparkling fragments on the grass.
"The cup is broken! You had praised it too highly. Shall we raise a
mausoleum for it here?"
She was very bitter, almost mocking, her lips opening slightly to utter
a mirthless laugh. Stelio stood silent, chagrined, his heart full of
rancor at beholding the destruction of so beautiful an effort as that
perfect cup.
"Let us imitate Nero, since we have already imitated Xerxes!"
She felt even more keenly than he the harshness of her sarcasm, the
insincerity of her voice, the malignity of the laugh that was like a
muscular spasm. But she was unable to conquer her soul at that moment.
She felt a bitter, irresistible necessity to scorn, to devastate,
to trample under foot, invaded by a sort of perfidious demon. Every
vestige of tenderness and benevolence had vanished, every hope, every
illusion. The bitter hatred that lurks under the love of ardent natures
was dominant. On the man's face she could discern the same shadow that
darkened her own.
"Do I irritate you? Do you wish to return to Venice alone? Would you
like to leave the dying season behind you? The tide is falling, but
there is always enough water for one who has no intention of returning.
Would it suit you to have me try it? Am I not as docile as you could
wish?"
She said these insensate things in a hissing tone, and became almost
livid, as if suddenly burned by some corroding poison. And Stelio
remembered having seen the same mask on her face on a distant day of
love, madness and sadness. His heart contracted, then softened.
"Ah, if I have hurt you, I ask for pardon," he said, trying to take her
hand and soothe her by a gentle act. "But did we not begin together to
approach this matter? Was it not you that"--
She interrupted him, exasperated by his gentleness.
"Hurt me? And what does that matter? Have no pity, no pity! Do not weep
over the beautiful eyes of the wounded hare!"
The words broke between her teeth. Her contracted lips opened in a
convulsion of wild laughter that was like heart-rending sobs. Her
companion shuddered, spoke to her in a low tone, aware of the curious
eyes of the women who sat at the thresholds of their cabins.
"Calm yourself! Calm yourself! Oh, Foscarina, I beg of you! Do not act
so, I entreat! We shall soon be at the quay, and then we shall go home.
I will tell you--You will understand me then. Come, now we are in the
street. Do you hear me?"
He feared she would fall in her hysterical convulsion, and stood ready
to support her. But she only walked faster, unable to speak, smothering
that wild laughter with her bandaged hand.
"What ails you? What do you see?" Stelio inquired anxiously.
Never could he forget the change in those eyes. They were dull,
staring, sightless, yet they seemed to see something that was not
there; they were filled with an unknown vision, occupied by some
monstrous image which without doubt had generated that mad and
anguished laughter.
"Shall we stop here a little while? Would you like some water?"
They found themselves now on the Fondamenta dei Vetrai. How long was it
since they had walked beside the stagnant canal? How much of their life
had vanished in the interval? What profound shadow were they leaving
behind them?
Having descended into the gondola, and wrapped herself in her cloak,
La Foscarina tried to control her hysteria, holding her face with both
hands, but from time to time the terrible laugh would escape; then
she pressed her hands closer to her mouth, as if she were trying to
suffocate herself.
The lagoon and the deep twilight obliterated all forms and colors; only
the rows of posts, like a file of monks on a path of ashes, showed
against the dark background. When the bells began their clamor, her
soul remembered, her tears gushed forth; the horror was vanquished.
She took her hands from her face, leaned toward her friend's shoulder,
and found again her voice in saying:
"Forgive me!"