Madame de Staël gives Venice over to the inspiration of Corinne: the latter hears the sound of the cannon that announces "the obscure sacrifice of a young girl[142] ...a solemn counsel, which a woman resigned to her fate gives to those who still struggle with destiny." ...Corinne climbs to the top of the tower of St. Mark's, contemplates the city and the waves, turns her eyes towards Greece "enveloped in clouds;" at night she sees "nothing but the reflection of the lanterns which light the gondolas:" they give her the idea of "spectres gliding upon the water, guided by a little star[143]."
Oswald departs; Corinne darts out of the room to recall him: "The rain then fell in torrents, a most violent wind arose;" Corinne descends to the banks of the canal:
"The night was so dark that not a single bark was to be seen.... Corinne called to the gondoliers, who took her cries for those of some wretch drowning in the tempest; nevertheless none dared approach to offer assistance, so formidable were the waves of the Grand Canal[144]."
There again you have Lord Byron's Margherita.
I find an unspeakable pleasure in meeting the masterpieces of those great masters in the very place for which they were made. I breathe freely in the midst of the immortal band, like a humble traveller admitted to the hospitable hearth of a rich and beautiful family.
[60] This book was written on the road from Paris to Venice, between the 7th and 10th of September 1833, and in Venice, from the 10th to the 15th of September 1833.—T.
[61] Salins suffered from a terrible conflagration in 1825. It was rebuilt, with regular streets, by public subscription.—T.
[62] Pierre Joseph Thoulier, Abbé d'Olivet (1682-1768) was born at Salins, on the Furieuse, a tributary of the Loire. He first joined the Jesuits, where he was known as the Père Thoulier, but soon left the Company, in order to follow a literary career. Meantime Voltaire had been his pupil at the college of Louis-le-Grand. He became a member of the French Academy in 1723; Voltaire in 1746. D'Olivet is the author of an Histoire de l'Académie française, up to 1700, and of several important grammatical works and translations, and he worked much on the Dictionary of the French Academy.—T.
[63] Mirabeau was imprisoned in the Castle of Joux, at his father's instance, in 1775; Toussaint-Louverture (cf. Vol. III., p. 191, n. 3) died there on the 27th of April 1803, after a ten months' confinement—T.