"Reassure yourself," he said. "I was only jesting. I will go ad bestias, and I will go unarmed. Did you not see the sign reappear just now? Do you believe, after the miracle of Torcello, that it reappeared in vain? It has come to warn me again that the only attitude that suits me is the one to which Nature disposes me. Now, you well know, my friend, that I do not know how to speak of anything but myself. And so, from the throne of the Doges, I must speak to my listeners only of my own soul, under the veil of some seductive allegory, with the charm of flowing musical cadences. I purpose to do this extemporaneously, if the fiery spirit of Tintoretto will only inspire me, from the heights of his Paradise, with sufficient ardor and audacity. The risk tempts me. But into what a strange error I was about to fall, Perdita! When the Dogaressa announced the feast to me, and begged me to do the honors, I undertook to compose a dignified discourse, a really ceremonious effort in prose, ample and solemn as one of those great robes of state behind glass in the Correr Museum; not without making in the exordium a profound genuflexion to the Queen; nor omitting to weave an impressive garland for the head of the most serene Andriana Duodo! And for several days it has given me a curious pleasure to dwell in spiritual communion with a Venetian patrician of the sixteenth century, a master of letters like Cardinal Bembo, a member of the Academy Uracini or Adorni, a frequent visitor to the gardens of Murano and the hills of Asolo. Certain it is that I felt a marked resemblance between the turn of my periods and the massive gold frames that surround the paintings on the ceiling of the Hall of Council. But, alas! yesterday morning, when I arrived here, and, in passing along the Grand Canal, when I wished to steep my weariness in the damp, transparent shade where the marble still exhales the spirit of the night, I had a sudden impression that my papers were worth much less than the dead seaweed tossed by the tide, and they seemed as strange to me as the Trionfi of Celio Magno and the Favole Marittime of Anton Maria Consalvi, quoted and commented on in them by me. What should I do, then?"
He threw around him an all-sweeping glance, as if exploring the waters and the sky in search of an invisible presence, or a newly arrived phantom. A yellowish light spread toward the solitary shores, which stood out in sharp lines like the dark veins in agate. Behind him, toward the Salute, the sky was scattered with light rosy and violet ribbon-like clouds, giving it the appearance of a glaucous sea, peopled with Medusas. From the gardens near the water descended the odor of foliage saturated with light and heat—an odor so heavy one might almost see it float on the waves like aromatic oil.
"Do you feel the Autumn, Perdita?" Stelio asked his dreamy friend, in a penetrating voice.
Again she had a vision of the dead Summer, enclosed within opalescent glass and sunk among the masses of seaweed.
"Yes, I feel it—within myself!" she replied, with a melancholy smile.
"Did you not see it last night, when it descended upon the city? Where were you last night, at sunset?"
"In a garden of the Giudecca."
"I was here, on the Riva. When human eyes have contemplated such a spectacle of joy and beauty, does it not seem to you that the eyelids should close and seal themselves forever? I should like to speak to-night, Perdita, of these hidden, secret matters. I should like to celebrate within myself the nuptials of Venice and Autumn, in almost the same tonality that Tintoretto used when he painted the nuptials of Ariadne and Bacchus for the hall of the Anticollegio—azure, purple and gold. Last night an old germ of poetry suddenly blossomed in my soul. I recalled a fragment of a forgotten poem that I wrote when I began to write in nona rima, one September in my early youth, when I had come by sea to Venice for the first time. The title of the poem was simply 'The Allegory of Autumn,' and the god was no longer represented as crowned with vine-leaves, but with jewels, like one of Paolo Veronese's princes, his being aglow with passion, about to approach the Anadyomenean City, with her arms of marble and her thousand green girdles. But the idea had not at that time reached the right degree of intensity to be admitted to the realm of Art, and instinctively I gave up the effort to manifest it in its entirety. But, in an active mind, as in a fertile soil, no seed is lost; and now this idea returns to me at an opportune moment and urgently demands expression. What a just and mysterious fatality governs the mental world! It was necessary that I should respect that first germ in order to feel its multiplied virtues develop in me to-day. That Vinci, who looked deep into all things profound, certainly meant something of this kind in his fable of the grain of millet that says to the ant: 'If you will be kind enough to let me satisfy my desire to be born again, I will render myself to you again a hundredfold.' Admire the touch of grace in those fingers capable of breaking iron! Ah, he is always the incomparable master! How can I forget him for a time, that I may give myself to the Venetians?"
The playful irony with which he had been speaking was suddenly extinguished in his last words, and again he seemed plunged in his own thoughts.
"It is already late; the hour approaches; we must return," he said presently, rousing himself as if from a troubled dream, for he had seen reappear that formidable monster with the thousand human faces filling the depth and width of the great hall. "I must go back to the hotel in time to dress."