And, as the exaggerated radiance of the city and the event had suddenly disappeared, the glory of this woman of the night reappeared to his mind still more closely blended with the city of the wonderful necklaces and the thousand emerald girdles. In the city and in the woman, the poet now saw a power of expression that he never had seen before: each glowed in the Autumn night; the same feverish fire that coursed through the canals ran also in her veins.
The stars sparkled, the trees waved their branches behind Perdita's head, back of which were the shadows of a garden. Through the open balconies the sweet air of heaven entered the room; shook the flames of the candelabra and the chalices of flowers; swept through the doorways, making the draperies wave to and fro, animating that old house of the Capello, wherein the last great daughter of San Marco whom the people had covered with gold and glory had gathered relics of republican magnificence. Galleon lamps, Turkish targets, bronze helmets, leathern quivers, and velvet scabbards ornamented the apartments inhabited by the last descendant of that marvelous Cesare Darbes who maintained the Art of Comedy against the Goldonian reform, and changed the agony of the Most Serene Republic into a burst of laughter.
"I only ask that I may be the humble servitor of that idea," was La Foscarina's reply to Antimo della Bella's words. Her voice trembled a little, her eyes had met Stelio's gaze.
"You alone could make it triumphant," said Francesco de Lizo. "The soul of the people is yours forever."
"The drama can only be a rite or a message," declared Glauro sententiously. "Acting should again become as solemn as a religious ceremony, since it embraces the two constituent elements of all worship: the living person, in whom, on the stage as before an altar, the word of the revealer is made incarnate, before a multitude as silent as if in a temple"—
"Bayreuth!" interrupted Prince Hoditz.
"No; the Janiculum!" exclaimed Stelio, suddenly breaking his silence of blissful dizziness. "A Roman hill. We do not need the wood and brick of Upper Franconia; we will have a marble theater on a Roman hill."
The sudden opposition of his words seemed to spring from a light, good-natured disdain.
"Do you not admire the work of Richard Wagner?" Donatella Arvale inquired, with a slight frown that for a moment made her Hermes-like face look almost hard.
Stelio looked deep into her eyes; he felt that there was something obscurely hostile in the young girl's manner, and also that he himself experienced against her an indistinct suggestion of enmity. At this moment he again saw her living her own isolated life, fixed in some deep, secret thought, strange and inviolable.