"Yes, let us go on."
Still they clasped each other's hand closely, as if they were about to go through some strange test, and were resolved to experiment as to what depths could be reached by the combined force of their melancholy. At the Dolo, the wheels made the chestnut-leaves rustle and crackle beneath them, and the tall changing trees flamed over their heads like crimson draperies on fire. At a distance was the Villa Barbariga, silent, deserted, of a reddish hue in its denuded garden, showing vestiges of old paintings in the cracks of its façade, like streaks of rouge on the wrinkled cheeks of an old woman. And, at every glance, the distances of the landscape seemed fainter and bluer, like things slowly submerged.
"Here is Strà."
They alighted before the Villa Pisani, and, accompanied by its guardian, they visited the deserted apartments. They heard the sound of their own footsteps on the marble that reflected them, the echoes in the historic arches, the creaking of the doors, the tiresome voice of the keeper awakening the memories of the place. The rooms were vast, hung with faded draperies and furnished in the style of the Empire, with Napoleonic emblems. The walls of one room were covered with portraits of the Pisani, procurators of San Marco; of another, with marble medallions of all the Doges; of a third, with a series of flowers painted in water-colors and mounted in delicate frames, pale as the dry flowers that are laid under glass, in memory of love or death.
As La Foscarina entered one room, she said:
"In time! Here, too!"
There, on a bracket, stood a transformation into marble of La Vecchia by Francesco Torbido, made even more repulsive by the relief, by the subtle skill of the sculptor, to bring out with his chisel each tendon, wrinkle, and hollow place in the old woman's face. And at the doors of this room seemed to appear the ghosts of the crowned women that had hidden their unhappiness and their decay in that vast dwelling, at once like a palace and a monastery.
"Maria Luisa di Parma, in eighteen hundred and seventeen," continued the monotonous voice.
"Ah, the Queen of Spain, wife of Charles the Fourth, and mistress of Manuel Godoï," said Stelio. "She attracts me more than all the others. She came here when they were in exile. Do you know whether she stayed here with the King and the favorite!"