“QUASI PLATANUS EXALTATA SUM JUXTA AQUAS.”
And then the three maidens knelt down together and prayed.
“If we were to leave thee in this refuge with the water-lilies and the swallows!” I thought, looking at Massimilla, who was bending lower and lower as she prayed. “Thou wouldest live here like a hermit Naiad who has forsaken Artemis to worship the new sorrowful divinity.” And I pictured her metamorphosis: after completing her solitary rites amid the choir of swallows, she would plunge into the water and descend to the roots of the flowers....
But to my eyes nothing here surpassed the whiteness of a neck burdened with a weight of hair thicker than the marble clusters of grapes that decorated the front of the altar. For the first time I saw Violante on her knees, and the attitude was so unsuited to the quality of her beauty that it pained me like a discord; and I waited with strange restlessness for her to rise from the place between the two symbolical peacocks, who were spreading their feathers among the clusters of grapes.
She rose before the others, with one of those magnificent movements in which her beauty seemed to surpass itself, as a steady light seems to wax larger before it suddenly breaks into sparks. Exaltata juxta aquas!
When we returned she came with me on the river, sitting in the little prow opposite me while I stood and paddled. I was overcome by uncontrollable emotion as I remembered the hand beaded with blood and the hill-slope covered with blossom. It was the first time since that far-away hour that I had found myself alone with Violante face to face.
“I am so thirsty,” she said, leaning over the water with a movement which, while expressive of her desire, seemed to identify her with the liquid voluptuous element.
“Don’t drink that water!” I begged her, seeing that she bared her hands.
“Why?”
“Don’t drink it!”