Nohant, January, 1853.
[I]
We were at Venice. The cold and the rain had driven the promenaders and the masks from the square and the quays. We could hear naught save the monotonous voice of the Adriatic in the distance, breaking on the islands, and from time to time the shouts of the watch aboard the frigate which guards the entrance to Canal Saint-George, and the answering hail from the custom-house schooner. It was a fine carnival evening inside the palaces and theatres, but outside, everything was dismal, and the street-lights were reflected in the streaming pavements, where the hurried footstep of a belated masker, wrapped in his cloak, echoed loudly from time to time.
We were alone in one of the rooms of the old Nasi palace, to-day transformed into a hotel, the best in Venice. A few candles scattered about the tables, and the blaze on the hearth only partially lighted the enormous room, and the flickering of the flame seemed to make the allegorical divinities painted in fresco on the ceiling move to and fro. Juliette was indisposed, and had refused to go out. Lying on a sofa and half-covered by a fur cloak, she seemed to be dozing; and I walked back and forth noiselessly on the thick carpet, smoking Serraglio cigarettes.
We recognize in my country a certain state of the mind which is, I think, peculiar to Spaniards. It is a sort of serious tranquillity which does not exclude activity of thought, as among the Teutonic races and in the cafés of the Orient. Our intellect does not grow dull during the trances in which we are buried. When we walk to and fro with measured step for hours at a time, on the same line of mosaics, without swerving a hair's breadth and puffing away at our cigars—that is the time when the operation that we may call mental digestion takes place most easily. Momentous resolutions are formed at such times, and excited passions calm down and give birth to vigorous acts. A Spaniard is never calmer than when he is meditating some scheme; it may be sinister or it may be sublime. As for myself, I was digesting my plan; but there was nothing heroic or alarming about it. When I had made the circuit of the room about sixty times and smoked a dozen cigarettes, my mind was made up. I halted by the sofa, and said to my young companion, regardless of her sleep:
"Juliette, will you be my wife?"
She opened her eyes and looked at me without answering. I thought that she had not heard me, and I repeated my question.
DON ALEO AND JULIETTE.