November 9.—The wind woke me from sleep, rattling the wooden shutter against the panes of the windows, and I could hear it lifting the water up the steps of the landing-place, where there is always a chafing and gurgling whenever the wind is not quite still. I looked out, and, pressing my face close against the glass, I could just distinguish the black bundle of stakes in the dim water, which I could see throbbing under a very faint light, where the gas-lamp, hung from the next house, shone upon it. Beyond, there was nothing but darkness, and the level row of lights on the Riva, and the white walls, cut into stone lacework, of the Doges' Palace. The wind seemed to pass down the canal, as if on its way from the sea to the sea. I felt it go by, like a living thing, not turning to threaten me.
November 13.—I am beginning almost to wish that she were here. She writes that she is coming, and I scarcely know whether to be glad or sorry. I fear her more than anything in the world, but there is something here which is hardly of the world, a vague, persistent image of death, impalpable, unintelligible, not to be shaken off; and I know not what I am dreading, not the mere fear of water, though I have always had that, but some terrible expectancy, which keeps me now from getting any rest by day or by night.
November 22.—At last something has happened, nothing indeed to my hurt, but it has broken the strain a little. The last days have been windless, warm, and, till yesterday afternoon, cloudless. Suddenly, as I sat in the Piazza, the daylight seemed to be put out by a great blackness which came up rapidly out of the north, and hung over half the sky. A wind swept suddenly in from the lagoon, and blew sharply across the open space and along the arcades. In hardly more than a moment the Piazza was empty. I went down to the Riva, and called to my gondolier, who swung to and fro in his moored boat. The water was blackening, and had begun to race past. He called to me that we must wait, and I saw one or two gondolas hurrying up the Grand Canal, carried along by the tide, the men rowing hard. As the rain began I went into the Grand Hotel, and sat looking out on the water, which blackened and whitened and flung itself forward in actual waves, and splashed right up the steps and over the balcony. The rain came down steadily, and the lightning flickered across the sky behind the Salute, and lit up the domes, the windows, the steps, and a few people huddled there. Every now and then the water turned white; I saw every outline as it shouldered forward like a sea and broke on the marble steps; and the water was empty, not a gondola, not even a steamer; and then a steamer which had turned home drifted past without a passenger. I went out, and felt the rain on my face, and the water splashing on the steps; not far off I could see the gondolas tossing on their moorings. I seemed to be on the shore of some horrible island, and I had to cross the sea, which there was no crossing. I was afraid the gondola would come for me; but nothing, I thought, should tempt me upon that tossing water: I saw the black hull whirled sideways, and the man reeling over on his oar. No gondola came, and I slept that night in the Grand Hotel, which seemed to me, as I heard the water splashing under my windows, impregnably safe.
November 27.—She is here, she has become kind to me now, only kind and gentle; I am no longer afraid of her love. I have been ill again, and she has taken care of me, she has taken me away from this horrible Giudecca. I look out on a great garden, in which I can forget there is any water in Venice; I am near the land and I see nothing but trees. The house is full of pictures, beautiful old Venetian things; it is like living in another century, yet in the midst of a comfort which rests me. I am no longer afraid of her love; I seem to have become a child, and her love is maternal. When I look at her I can see her face as it was, as it is, without a scar; I see that she is beautiful. If I get well again I will never leave her.
December 12.—There is a phrase of Balzac which turns over and over in my head. It is in the story called 'Sur Catherine de Médicis,' and he is speaking of the Calvinist martyr, who is recovering after being tortured. 'On ne saurait croire' says Balzac, 'à quel point un homme, seul dans son lit et malade, devient personnel.' Since I have been lying in bed, in this queer fever which keeps me shaking and hot (some Venetian chill which has got into my very bones), I have had so singularly little feeling of personality, I seem to have become so suddenly impersonal, that I wonder if Balzac was right. The world, ideas, sensations, all are fluid, and I flow through them, like a gondola carried along by the current; no, like a weed adrift on it.