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 Genius of Romance that 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 weredying 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

flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal Palace,

turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid and preternatural 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 tocall 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 those of the young hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze-like drapery

seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form ; but the mid-summer and

midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion in the 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 ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he gave

directions for the recovery of his child. Stupefied and aghast, I had myself nopower 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;

(how much less than for the mother!) 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 acanthus, are "soft and almost liquid." Yes! tears are gathering in those eyes ---

and see! the entire woman thrills throughout thesoul, 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 Venetian 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 ourformer 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 --- singular,

wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet --

- and a profusion of curling, black hair, from which a forehead of unusual breadth

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 --- 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, mirrorlike,

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, tocall upon him very early the next morning. Shortly after sunrise, I

found myself accordingly at his Palazzo, one of those huge structures of gloomy, yet

fantastic pomp, 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

blind 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 princely magnificence which burned and blazed around.

Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I

judge 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 vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to

be discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking

up from strange convolute censers, together with multitudinous flaring and flickering

tongues of emerald and violet fire. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in upon the

whole, through windows, formed each of a singlepane 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.

"Ha! ha! ha! --- ha! ha! ha!" --- laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat as I

entered the room, 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 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 in the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list

of characters who came to the same magnificent end. 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 ΛΑΣΜ. They are undoubtedly part of ΓΕΛΑΣΜΑ. 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 ofvoice and manner, "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 and my

valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they

have been bedizened as you see!"

I bowed in acknowledgment --- 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 Virtu.

They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here, too, are some

chefs d'oeuvre 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 Pieta?"

"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 insculpture."

"Ha!" said he thoughtfully, "the Venus --- the beautiful Venus? --- the Venus of the

Medici? --- she of the diminutive head and the gilded hair? 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. Give me

the Canova! 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 Michael Angelo was by no means original

in his couplet ---

'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto

Che un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.' "

It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentleman, 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 withwhich he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air

of trepidation --- a degree of nervous unction 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 visitor, 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

English 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 with fairy fruits and flowers ;

And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise

But to be overcast!

A voice from out the Future cries,

"Onward!" --- but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies,

Mute --- motionless --- aghast!

For alas! alas! with me

The light of life is o'er.

"No more --- no more --- no more,"

(Such language holds the solemnsea

To the sands upon the shore),

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

Or the stricken eagle soar!

Now all my hours are trances;

And all my nightly dreams

Are where the 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 --- 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 a 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 course, 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 ofthe 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

downward 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 Johannisberger. "Come," he said,

abruptly, "let us drink! It is early --- but let us drink. It is indeed early," he continued,

musingly, 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 yon 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, resumingthe 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 outstretched 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." He here paused abruptly, bent his head to

his bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound which I could not hear. At length, erecting his

frame, he looked upwards, and ejaculated the lines of the Bishop of Chichester:

"Stay for me there! I will not fail To meet thee in that hollow vale."

In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he 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 choking 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 thesleeper 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.