La congiontura.
It was, in truth, the song of the last roses that entwined the candelabra. It called up in Perdita's mind the funeral cortège of the dead Summer, the opalescent veil in which Stelio had wrapped the sweet body in its golden robe. Through the glass, sealed by the Master of Fire, she could see her own image at the bottom of the lagoon, lying on a field of seaweed. A sudden chill stole over her; once more she felt horror and disgust of her own body, no longer young. And, remembering her recent promise, thinking that perhaps this very night the beloved one would claim its fulfilment, she shuddered with a sort of sorrowful modesty, a mingling of fear and pride. Her experience and despairing eyes ran over the young girl beside her, studying her, penetrating her, realizing her occult but certain power, her intact freshness, pure health, and that indefinable virtue of love that emanates like an aroma from chaste maidens when they have arrived at the perfection of their bloom. She felt that some secret current of affinity existed between this fair creature and the poet; she could almost divine the words he addressed to her in the silence of his heart. A bitter pang seized her, so intolerable that, with an involuntary movement, her fingers clutched convulsively the black rope of the arm-rest beside her, so that the little metal griffin that held it creaked audibly.
This movement did not escape Stelio's anxious vigilance. He understood her agitation, and for a moment he experienced the same pang, but it was mingled with impatience and almost with anger, for her anguish, like a cry of destruction, interrupted the fiction of transcendent life that he had been constructing within himself in order to conciliate the contrast, to conquer this new force that offered itself to him like a bow to be drawn, yet at the same time not to lose the savor of that ripe maturity which life had impregnated with all its essences, and the benefit of that devotion and that passionate faith which sharpened his intelligence and fed his pride.
"Ah, Perdita!" he said to himself, "From the ferment of your human loves, why has not a love more than human sprung. Ah, why have I finally vanquished you by my pleading, although I know it is too late? and why do you allow me to read in your eyes the certainty of your yielding, amid a flood of doubts which, nevertheless, never again will have power to reëstablish the abolished interdiction. Each of us knows full well that that interdiction conferred the highest dignity upon our long communion, yet we have not known how to preserve its rule, and at the last hour we yield blindly to an imperious internal call. Yet, a short time ago, when your noble head dominated the belt of constellations, I no longer saw in you an earthly love, but the illuminating, revelatory Muse of my poetry; and all my heart went out to you in gratitude, not for the promise of a fleeting happiness, but for the promise of glory. Do you not understand—you, who understand everything? By a marvelous inspiration, such as always comes to you, have you not turned my inclination, by the ray of your smile, toward a resplendent youthfulness which you have chosen and reserved for me? When you descended the stairway together, and approached me, had you not the appearance of one that bears a gift or an unexpected message? Not wholly unexpected, perhaps, Perdita! For I have anticipated from your infinite wisdom some extraordinary action toward me."
"How happy the beautiful Nineta is, with her monkey and her little dog!" sighed the actress, looking back at the light songsters and the smiling woman on the balcony.
La zoventù xe un fior
Che apena nato el mor,
E un zorno gnanca mi
No sarò quela.
Donatella Arvale and Stelio also looked back, while the light barque, without sinking, bore over the water and past the music the three faces of a heavy destiny.
E vegna quel che vol,
Lassè che voga!
Suddenly, in front of the red palace of the Foscari, at the curve of the canal, they saw the state vessel of the Doge of Venice so brightly illumined that it looked like a burning tower. New streaks of fire flashed against the sky. Other flaming doves flew up from the deck, rose above the terraces, sank among the statues, hissed as they fell into the water, multiplied themselves in thousands of sparks, and floated along in smoke. Along the parapets, from the decks, the poop, the prow, in a simultaneous explosion, a thousand fountains of fire opened, dilated, blended, illuminating with an intense, fiery radiance each side of the canal as far as San Vitale and the Rialto. Then the vessel of the Doge glided out of sight, transformed into a purple thunder-cloud.