Alone with the statues in one of the rooms of the neighboring museum, Stelio Effrena rested for a moment, shrinking from any other contact, feeling the need of gathering his strength and quieting his nerves, to free himself from the unusual vibration through which it seemed to him all the essence of his spirit had been dissipated and scattered over the composite soul of the throng. Of his recent words, no trace remained in his memory, and of recent images he perceived no vestige. The only phrase that lingered in his mind was that "inmost flower of the flame," which he had conjured up in speaking of the glory of the first Bonifacio, and which he had plucked with his own incombustible fingers to offer to his promised love. He remembered how, at the precise instant of this spontaneous offering, the woman had turned away her head, and how, instead of a glance from her dreamy eyes, he had encountered the indicating smile. Then the intoxicating cloud that had been just on the point of melting away, seemed to condense itself anew in his brain, in the vague form of the creature of music; and he fancied that she held in her hand the flower of flame, as, in a dominating attitude, she emerged above his inward agitation as from the trembling waves of a summer sea.
As if to celebrate that image, from the Hall of the Greater Council came the first notes of the symphony of Benedetto Marcello, the fugue-like movement of which revealed at once its grand style. A sonorous idea, clear and strong as a living person, developed itself in the powerful measure; and in that melody Stelio recognized the virtue of the same principle around which, as around a thyrsus, he had twined the garlands of his poesy.
Then the name that had already resounded against the sides of the vessel, in the silence and the shadow, that name which, in the great wave of sound from the evening bells, had been lost like a sibylline leaf, seemed to his fancy to propose its syllables to the orchestra as a new theme to be interpreted by the musicians' bows. The violins, viols, and violoncellos sang it in turn; the sudden blasts of the heroic trumpets exalted it; and at last a whole quartette, in one great, thrilling chord, flung it toward that heaven of joy where later would sparkle the starry crown offered to Ariadne by the golden Aphrodite.
In the pause that followed, Stelio experienced a singular agitation, almost like a religious ecstasy, before that annunciation. He realized what it was worth to him, in that inestimable lyric moment, to find himself alone amid this group of white and motionless statues. A shred of the same mystery which, under the quarter of the ship, had seemed to float lightly across his senses like a misty veil, again waved before his eyes in that deserted hall, which was so near to the human throng. It was like the silence of the sea-shell, lying on the shore beside the stormy ocean. He again felt a conviction, such as he had already experienced in certain extraordinary hours of his journey, of the presence of his fate, which was about to give to his spirit a new impulse, perhaps to quicken within him a marvelous act of will. And, as he remembered the thousands of obscure destinies hanging over the heads of that crowd, which had been so stirred by his images of an ideal life, he congratulated himself on being able to adore alone the propitious demon that came to visit him secretly, to offer to him a veiled gift, in the name of an unknown mistress.
He thrilled at the burst of human voices that saluted with triumphal acclamation the unvanquished god.
Viva il forte, viva il grande!
The vast hall resounded like a great timbrel, and the reverberation penetrated through the Censors' Stairway, the Golden Stairway, the corridors and the vestibules to the furthermost parts of the palace, like a thunder of joy echoing in the serene night.
Viva il forte, viva il grande!
Vincitor dell' Indie dome!
It seemed indeed that the chorus was saluting the apparition of the magnificent god invoked by the poet on the City Beautiful. It seemed that in those vocal notes the folds of his purple draperies quivered like flames in a crystal tube. The living image hung suspended over the assemblage, which nourished it with its own dream.
Viva il forte, viva il grande!