Gondola days

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

Angelo evidently knew my companion and his ways, for in a few moments the girl returned, bringing a basket of grapes, some figs, and a flask of wine. The Professor thanked her, and then, dismissing her with one of his gentle hand-waves and brushing the fallen leaves from the stone bench with his handkerchief, sat down.

“And now, right here,” said the old fellow, placing his straw hat on the seat beside him, his gray hair glistening in the soft light, “right here, where she loved and died, I will tell you the story of the Contessa Alberoni.

“This most divine of women once lived in a grand old palace above the Rialto. She belonged to a noble family of Florence, whose ancestors fought with Philip, before the Campanile was finished. All over Italy she was known as the most beautiful woman of her day, and that, let me tell you, at a time when to be counted as beautiful in Venice was to be beautiful the world over. She was a woman,”—here the Professor rested his head on the marble seat and half closed his eyes, as if he were recalling the vision of loveliness from out his own past,—“well, one of those ideal women, with fathomless eyes and rounded white arms and throat; a Catherine Cornaro type, of superb carriage and presence. Titian would have lost his heart over the torrent of gold that fell in masses about her shapely head, and Canova might have exhausted all his skill upon the outlines of her form.

“In the beginning of her womanhood, when yet barely sixteen, she had married, at her father’s bidding, a decrepit Italian count nearly thrice her age, who, in profound consideration of her sacrifice, died in a becoming manner within a few years of their marriage, leaving her his titles and estates. For ten years of her wedded life and after, she lived away off in the secluded villa of Valdagna, a small town nestling among the foothills of the Alps. Then, suddenly awakening to the power of her wonderful beauty, she took possession of the great palace on the Grand Canal above the Rialto. You can see it any day; and save that some of the spindles in the exquisite rose-marble balconies are broken and the façade blackened and weather-stained, the exterior is quite as it appeared in her time. The interior, however, owing to the obliteration of this noble family and the consequent decay of its vast estates, is almost a ruin. Every piece of furniture and all the gorgeous hangings are gone; together with the mantels, and the superb well-curb in the court below. Tell Espero to take you there some day. You will not only find the grand entrance blocked with wine casks, but my lady’s boudoir plastered over with cheap green paper and rented as cheaper lodgings to still cheaper tenants. Bah!”

Then the Professor, dropping easily and gracefully into a style of delivery as stilted as if he were remembering the very words of some old chronicle, told me how she had lived in this grand palace during the years of her splendor, the pride and delight of all who came under her magic spell, as easily Queen of Venice as Venice was Queen of the Sea. How at thirty, then in the full radiance of her beauty, beloved and besought by every hand that could touch her own, painters vied with each other in matching the tints of her marvelous skin; sculptors begged for models of her feet to grace their masterpieces; poets sang her praises, and the first musicians of Italy wrote the songs that her lovers poured out beneath her windows. How there had come a night when suddenly the whole course of her life was changed,—the night of a great ball given at one of the old palaces on the Grand Canal, the festivities ending with a pageant that revived the sumptuous days of the Republic, in which the Contessa herself was to take part.

When the long-expected hour arrived, she was seen to step into her gondola, attired in a dress of the period, a marvel of velvet and cloth of gold. Then she disappeared as completely from human sight as if the waters of the canal had closed over her forever.

For days all investigation proved fruitless. The only definite clue came from her gondolier, who said that soon after the gondola had left the steps of her palace, the Contessa ordered him to return home at once; that on reaching the landing she covered her face with her veil and reëntered the palace. Later it was whispered that for many weeks she had not left her apartments. Then she sent for her father confessor, and at a secret interview announced her decision never again to appear to the world.

At this point of the story the Professor had risen from his seat and poured half the flagon in his glass. He was evidently as much absorbed in the recital as if it had all happened yesterday. I could see, too, that it appealed to those quaint, romantic views of life which, for all their absurdities, endeared the old fellow to every one who knew him.

“For a year,” he continued, “this seclusion was maintained; no one saw the Contessa, not even her own servants. Her meals were served behind a screen. Of course, all Venice was agog. Every possible solution of so strange and unexpected a seclusion was suggested and discussed.

“In the beginning of the following winter vague rumors reached the good father’s ears. One morning he left his devotions, and, waylaying her duenna outside the palace garden, pressed his rosary into her hands and said: ‘Take this to the Contessa.’” Here the Professor became very dramatic, holding out his hand with a quick gesture, as if it clasped the rosary. “‘Tell her that to-night, when San Giorgio strikes twelve, I shall be at the outer gate of the palace and must be admitted.’”