She wished to add:—This story will be the last.—But she restrained herself, because up to this time she had not spoken to him of her fixed resolution.
He laughed.
"You are as eager for stories as Sofia."
At that name, as when she heard the name of Spring, she felt her resolution weaken; the cruelty of her fate pierced her heart, and her whole being turned with yearning toward her escaping happiness.
"Look!" he said, pointing to the mirror-like lagoon, rippled here and there by a light breeze. "Do not those infinite lines of silence aspire to become music?"
Silvery-white in the calm afternoon, the estuary seemed to bear the islets on its breast as lightly as the softest clouds hung from the sky.
"Well, the master glassblower heard at Zeno's house praises of the famous organ of the King of Hungary, and cried: 'Corpo di Bacco! You shall see what an organ I will build, with my stick, liquida musa canente! I will make the god of organs! Dant sonitum glaucæ per stagna loquacia cannæ. The waters of the lagoon shall give it its tone, and in it the stones, the buoys, and the fish also shall sing. Multisonum silentium. You shall see, by the body of Diana!' All his hearers laughed, save Giulia da Ponte—because she had black teeth! And the Sansovino gave a dissertation on hydraulic organs. But the boaster, before taking his leave, invited the company to hear his new music on the day of the Sensa, and promised that the Doge on his Bucentaur should halt in the middle of the lagoon to listen. That evening the news that Dardi Seguso had lost his senses spread to Venice, and the Council, which had a tender regard for its famous workmen, sent a messenger to Murano to learn the truth about the report. The messenger found the artisan with his sweetheart, Perdilanza, who was very loving to him because she was anxious, and feared that Dardi was insane. The master, after looking at the messenger with fiery eyes, burst into a hearty laugh, which reassured her as to his state of mind; then, quite calm again, Seguso ordered the messenger to report to the Council that, on the day of the Sensa, Venice, San Marco, the Grand Canal, and the Palace of the Doges should possess yet another miracle. On the following day, he made a formal request for the possession of one of the five little islets that circled Murano like the satellites of a planet, but have now disappeared, or have dwindled to mere sandbanks. After exploring the waters around Temòdia, Trencòre, Galbaia, Mortesina, and La Folèga, he chose Temòdia as one chooses a bride, and Perdilanza entered the shadow of affliction. Look, Fosca; perhaps even now we are passing over the memory of Temòdia. The organ-pipes are sunk deep in the mud, but they never will decay. There are seven thousand of them. We are passing over the ruins of a forest of melodious glass. How delicate the seaweed is here!"
"Tell me the reason why Perdilanza entered the shadow of affliction," said La Foscarina, as both leaned over and looked deep into the beautiful clear waters.
"Because her name had been driven from the lips and the heart of her lover by the name of Temòdia, which he constantly uttered with vehement ardor, and because the island was the only place to which she might not follow him. There he had constructed his new work-rooms, and there he stayed the greater part of the day, and almost all night, assisted by his workmen, whom he had bound to silence by a solemn oath before the altar. The Council, in ordering that the master should be provided with everything necessary for his tremendous task, had decreed that he should lose his head should his work prove inferior to his proud boast. Then Dardi tied a scarlet thread around his bare neck."
La Foscarina felt as if she were in a dream. Stelio seemed to have been speaking of himself in those strange figures of speech, as on that last night of September when he had explained the myth of the pomegranate, and the name of the imaginary woman began with the first two syllables of the name he had given her in those days! Was any personal significance veiled behind this story? Why had he, deliberately, in the vicinity of the place where she had been seized with that terrible laughter, called up, by that fanciful tale, the memory of the broken vase? In trying to understand, she made for herself an instrument of torture, with the dream-fancies of Stelio's brain. She did not remember that as yet he was ignorant of her approaching departure. Instinctively she said within herself:—I am going far-away; do not wound me.—