Grew less and less; contracting to a span
An iron door, urged onward by a screw,
Forcing out life!
I sail, listening to nothing but the dip of the gondolier’s oar, or to her gentle words, fast under the palace door, which closed that fearful morning on the guilt and shame of Bianca Capello. Or, with souls lit up by the scene, into a buoyancy that can scarce distinguish between what is real and what is merely written—we chase the anxious step of the forsaken Corinna; or seek among the veteran palaces the casement of the old Brabantio—the chamber of Desdemona—the house of Jessica, and trace among the strange Jew money-changers, who yet haunt the Rialto, the likeness of the bearded Shylock. We wander into stately churches, brushing over grass, or tell-tale flowers that grow in the court, and find them damp and cheerless; the incense rises murkily and rests in a thick cloud over the altars, and over the paintings; the music, if so be that the organ notes are swelling under the roof, is mournfully plaintive.
Of an afternoon we sail over to the Lido, to gladden our eyes with a sight of land and green things, and we pass none upon the way, save silent oarsmen, with barges piled high with the produce of their gardens—pushing their way down toward the floating city. And upon the narrow island, we find Jewish graves, half covered by drifted sand; and from among them, watch the sunset glimmering over a desolate level of water. As we glide back, lights lift over the lagoon, and double along the Guideca and the Grand Canal. The little neighbor isles will have their company of lights dancing in the water; and from among them will rise up against the mellow evening sky of Italy gaunt, unlighted houses.
After the nightfall, which brings no harmful dew with it, I stroll, with her hand within my arm—as once upon the sea, and in the English park, and in the home-land—over that great square which lies before the palace of St. Marks. The white moon is riding in the middle heaven, like a globe of silver; the gondoliers stride over the echoing stones; and their long black shadows, stretching over the pavement, or shaking upon the moving water, seem like great funereal plumes, waving over the bier of Venice.
Carrying thence whole treasures of thought and fancy, to feed upon in the after years, we wander to Rome.
I find the old one-eyed maestro, and am met with cordial welcome by the mother of the pretty Enrica. The count has gone to the marshes of Ancona. Lame Pietro still shuffles around the boards at the Leprè, and the flower sellers at the corner bind me a more brilliant bouquet than ever for a new beauty at Rome. As we ramble under the broken arches of the great aqueduct stretching toward Frascati, I tell Carry the story of my trip in the Appenines, and we search for the pretty Carlotta. But she is married, they tell us, to a Neapolitan guardsman. In the spring twilight we wander upon those heights which lie between Frascati and Albano, and looking westward, see that glorious view of the Campagna, which can never be forgotten. But beyond the Campagna, and beyond the huge hulk of St. Peter’s, heaving into the sky from the middle waste, we see, or fancy we see, a glimpse of the sea, which stretches out and on to the land we love, better than Rome. And in fancy we build up that home, which shall belong to us on the return—a home that has slumbered long in the future, and which, now that the future has come, lies fairly before me.