"'"Ah, senza amare andar sulla mare,
Col sposo del mare non può consolare."
"'Other voices joined in, and the words were repeated again and again till they died away over the sea at last, like the breath of the breeze. Old Falieri seemed to pay no attention. He was telling Annunziata, at much length, about the ceremony of the Doge's betrothal to the sea, when he throws a ring into it from the Bucentoro on Ascension Day. He spoke of the victories of the Republic, of the time when the ceremony was first instituted, after the taking of Istria and Dalmatia, under Peter Urseolus the Second. If the words of the song made no impression on Falieri, the tale he told was utterly lost on the Dogaressa. She sate with all her attention fixed upon the sweet tones floating over the sea. When the song ceased, she gazed before her with the expression of one who awakes from a dream, and is still striving to see and understand its images.
"'"Senza Amare," she whispered gently. "Senza Amare--non può consolare." Tears, like pearls, rose in her heavenly eyes; sighs heaved her breast, which rose and fell, oppressed. Still chuckling and laughing, the old Doge landed with her at the verandah of his house opposite San Giorgio Maggiore, not observing Annunziata, how she stood beside him in silence, moved by the dim sensations awaking within her, her gaze, heavy with tears, fixed upon a distant realm. A young man, dressed as a boatman, blew a shell-shaped horn, whose tones echoed far over the waters. At this signal another gondola came up, a man, carrying a sunshade, and a woman appeared, and, attended by them, the Doge and Dogaressa went into the palace. The second gondola came to the shore, and from it there landed Bodoeri and other persons, amongst whom were merchants, artists, and people of the lower classes even. These followed the Doge.
"'Antonio could scarcely wait for the next evening, for he expected some private message from his beloved Annunziata. At last, however, the old woman came hobbling in, set herself down, coughing, in the arm-chair, clapped her bony, withered hands two or three times, and cried--
"'"Ah, Tonino! what has happened to our poor little dove? When I went to her to-day, she was lying on her cushions, with half-shut eyes, leaning her head on her arm, neither sleeping nor waking, neither ill nor well. 'What has befallen you, gracious Lady Dogaressa?' I cried. 'Is it your wound, not quite whole yet, which is paining you?' But she looked at me with eyes such as I had never seen in her, and scarce had I peeped into these moist moonbeams than they hid themselves behind silken lashes, as if amongst dark clouds. And then she heaved a deep sigh, turned her beautiful face to the wall, and whispered softly, very softly, but so mournfully that it went sharply to my very heart--
"'"'Amare! Amare! Ah! Senza Amare!'
"'"I got a little stool and sate down beside her. I began to talk of you. She hid her face in the cushions. Her breathing came quicker and quicker, till it became sighing. I told her that you had been in the gondola, disguised; that you were dying of love and longing, and that I should bring you to her at once.
"'"'No, no! for the love of Christ and the saints, I implore you tell him I must never see him again--never! Tell him he must leave Venice immediately.'
"'"'Then my darling Tonino must die,' I interrupted. She fell back in the most unspeakable pain, and sobbed, in a voice hidden in tears: