"How many magnificent villas shone beneath intensely dark, silvered green on the shores! Which was hers? I did not venture to ask, and she did not point to the spot on which she had taken up her abode.
"We stand under so many influences of culture, that not only our thoughts, but also our feelings, are regulated by it. That which great poets have described, bears for us the significance of personal experience; it is just as vivid in our imagination. Shakespeare's characters, which he received from Italian novels, stood before my fancy. Not a Julia was my companion, but she reminded me much of Portia; was not this the same moonlight glamour that hovered around the Belmont Villa? She possessed the figure and demeanour of a much-courted, aristocratic lady, the spirit and fervour of that enterprising rich heiress: where was her Villa Belmont? In her presence, I stood beneath the magic spell of Shakespearean poetry.
"At Stresa, I went on shore; her skiff was rowed still farther on. She vanished like a beautiful dream in the twilight of the moon's illumination that in the shrubs on the shore mingled with the shadowed mirror of the waters.
"For three evenings in succession I returned to the Isola Bella, and on each evening I found the mysterious beauty there. This adventure had gay shimmering butterfly's wings; I could not brush the coloured down from them. Naturally, liking and intimacy grew out of this constant intercourse; I hazarded bolder expression of the same. I praised her as my Armida, who held me within her spell; I praised the greater bliss that Rinaldo had enjoyed. She did not turn aside; she looked at me with her luminous eyes, as though she would read deeply in my soul. Then she sighed, plucked a camellia which bloomed beside us, and pulled it musingly to pieces.
"As we traversed the little fishing harbour of the island, in order to enter our gondola for the homeward journey, we perceived that a heavy storm was coming toward us from the Simplon, and with increasing rapidity was darkening the lake. Its billows surged uneasily, and the forks of lightning broke in the disturbed mirror of the waves. The return passage was impossible; where should we wait until the storm was over?
"'I know a comfortable place of refuge,' said she; 'here, the little fisherman's chapel. It is, as a rule, lifeless and deserted; the fishermen only pray there when they go out to fish. It is the Madonna of eels and salmon-trout who protects that sanctuary.'
"We entered the little church; all was still and pleasant there. Outside the tempest raged, and the thunder rolled with such might that the building rocked on its foundations.
"Italian churches are accustomed to be used as asylums of love. Protestant churches would be desecrated by every love which does not come before the altar; the Madonna's eye rests without anger upon the bliss of lovers exchanging vows.
"Indeed, it was only a delusion of my senses when I believed she cast an angry glance upon me, while I held my beautiful companion firmly, and pressed a fervid kiss upon her lips; it was only a sudden flash of lightning that quivered over the altar-picture.
"The glorious woman whom I encircled with my arms, was just as little wrath as the Madonna.