FONS LUCET, PLAUDE, ELOQUITUR FONS LUMINE: GAUDE.
FONS SONAT, ADCLAMA, MURMURE DICIT: AMA.
The rugged rhymes with their eternal commentary of running water threw a vague spell over my spirit. I could hear in those echoes the veiled accents of the melancholy which adds an indefinable grace to pleasure, and by troubling it gives it greater depth. No less soft and sad were the divine youthful figures that stretched their bare limbs over the margin in curves as graceful as those of the mirror into which they had so long been gazing.
“Weep here, ye lovers who come to slake your thirst. Too sweet is the water. Season it with the salt of your tears.”
FLETE HIC OPTANTES, NIMIS EST AQUA DULCIS, AMANTES
SALSUS, UT APTA VEHAM, TEMPERET HUMOR EAM.
Thus the gentle fountain, envying the savour of tears, pointed out to the joyous the subtle art of imparting a touch of bitterness to the fullest enjoyment. “It is well to mix among the roses some dewy flower of the deadly hellebore, scarcely distinguishable from the rest of the garland, so that thus redeemed the head may from time to time be bent.” It seemed as if step by step, on that long Way of Love, enjoyment became more collected, wiser, and yet more passionate. The liquid mirrors invited lovers to lay down heads heavy with dreams, and to gaze at their own reflections, until, having at last attained to perceiving in them only symbols of unknown beings risen into the light from an inaccessible world, they may better realise the presence of the unspeakably strange and remote in their own lives. “Lean over to your reflections that your kisses may be doubled by the mirror.”
OSCULA JUCUNDA UT DUPLICENTUR IMAGINE IN UNDA
VULTUS HIC VERO CERNITE FONTE MERO.
Was not that simple action a token revealing a hidden thing? The two lovers bending over the reflection of their caress unconsciously figured the mystic power of voluptuous enjoyment, which consists in banishing for a few moments from our souls the unknown man whom we all carry hidden within us, and thus rendering him as remote and strange as a phantom. Does not the dim vagueness of such a sentiment perhaps increase the delirium and produce the terror of lovers who in the mirrors of deep alcoves admire the reflection of their mutual caresses repeated by figures in their own likeness, yet immeasurably unlike and remote in their supernatural silence? With a confused consciousness of the extraordinary alienation taking place within them, they think they have found an enlightening symbol of it in those outward images, which analogy leads them no longer to consider as visible objects, but as inexplicable forms of life, and finally as visions of death.
This was the vision called up by the last of the musical fountains, as Violante’s face bent over it and the shadow of the pines fell slowly like a dark blue veil. “Here did Pleasure and Death admire their united reflection, and their two faces were fused into one.”
SPECTARUNT NUPTAS HIC SE MORS ATQUE VOLUPTAS
UNUS [FAMA FERAT] QUUM DUO, VULTUS ERAT.
A soft white cloud passed by and veiled the sun, and the air became softer still; it was like transparent milk into which some perfume had been emptied. And the cadence of the Latin couplets rang in my ears as we walked through enclosed meadows yellow with daffodils, where one could imagine the scenes of a pastoral fête held under tents wreathed with garlands. On the base of a statue of a nymph who had lost both her arms was carved the emblem of the Arcadian Academy: the fountain with seven pipes within a laurel wreath.