Hauntings

by Vernon Lee

  10

  I had begun Mrs. Oke's portrait, and she was giving me a sitting. She wasunusually quiet that morning; but, it seemed to me, with the quietness of awoman who is expecting something, and she gave me the impression of beingextremely happy. She had been reading, at my suggestion, the "Vita Nuova,"which she did not know before, and the conversation came to roll upon that,and upon the question whether love so abstract and so enduring was apossibility. Such a discussion, which might have savoured of flirtation inthe case of almost any other young and beautiful woman, became in the caseof Mrs. Oke something quite different; it seemed distant, intangible, notof this earth, like her smile and the look in her eyes.

  "Such love as that," she said, looking into the far distance of theoak-dotted park-land, "is very rare, but it can exist. It becomes aperson's whole existence, his whole soul; and it can survive the death, notmerely of the beloved, but of the lover. It is unextinguishable, and goeson in the spiritual world until it meet a reincarnation of the beloved; andwhen this happens, it jets out and draws to it all that may remain of thatlover's soul, and takes shape and surrounds the beloved one once more."

  Mrs. Oke was speaking slowly, almost to herself, and I had never, I think,seen her look so strange and so beautiful, the stiff white dress bringingout but the more the exotic exquisiteness and incorporealness of herperson.

  I did not know what to answer, so I said half in jest--

  "I fear you have been reading too much Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. Thereis something dreadfully esoteric in all you say."

  She smiled contemptuously.

  "I know people can't understand such matters," she replied, and was silentfor some time. But, through her quietness and silence, I felt, as it were,the throb of a strange excitement in this woman, almost as if I had beenholding her pulse.

  Still, I was in hopes that things might be beginning to go better inconsequence of my interference. Mrs. Oke had scarcely once alluded toLovelock in the last two or three days; and Oke had been much more cheerfuland natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed so worried; andonce or twice I had caught in him a look of great gentleness andloving-kindness, almost of pity, as towards some young and very frailthing, as he sat opposite his wife.

  But the end had come. After that sitting Mrs. Oke had complained of fatigueand retired to her room, and Oke had driven off on some business to thenearest town. I felt all alone in the big house, and after having worked alittle at a sketch I was making in the park, I amused myself rambling aboutthe house.

  It was a warm, enervating, autumn afternoon: the kind of weather thatbrings the perfume out of everything, the damp ground and fallen leaves,the flowers in the jars, the old woodwork and stuffs; that seems to bringon to the surface of one's consciousness all manner of vague recollectionsand expectations, a something half pleasurable, half painful, that makes itimpossible to do or to think. I was the prey of this particular, not at allunpleasurable, restlessness. I wandered up and down the corridors, stoppingto look at the pictures, which I knew already in every detail, to followthe pattern of the carvings and old stuffs, to stare at the autumn flowers,arranged in magnificent masses of colour in the big china bowls and jars. Itook up one book after another and threw it aside; then I sat down to thepiano and began to play irrelevant fragments. I felt quite alone, althoughI had heard the grind of the wheels on the gravel, which meant that my hosthad returned. I was lazily turning over a book of verses--I remember itperfectly well, it was Morris's "Love is Enough"--in a corner of thedrawing-room, when the door suddenly opened and William Oke showed himself.He did not enter, but beckoned to me to come out to him. There wassomething in his face that made me start up and follow him at once. He wasextremely quiet, even stiff, not a muscle of his face moving, but verypale.

  "I have something to show you," he said, leading me through the vaultedhall, hung round with ancestral pictures, into the gravelled space thatlooked like a filled-up moat, where stood the big blasted oak, with itstwisted, pointing branches. I followed him on to the lawn, or rather thepiece of park-land that ran up to the house. We walked quickly, he infront, without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped, just where therejutted out the bow-window of the yellow drawing-room, and I felt Oke's handtight upon my arm.

  "I have brought you here to see something," he whispered hoarsely; and heled me to the window.

  I looked in. The room, compared with the out door, was rather dark; butagainst the yellow wall I saw Mrs. Oke sitting alone on a couch in herwhite dress, her head slightly thrown back, a large red rose in her hand.

  "Do you believe now?" whispered Oke's voice hot at my ear. "Do you believenow? Was it all my fancy? But I will have him this time. I have locked thedoor inside, and, by God! he shan't escape."

  The words were not out of Oke's mouth. I felt myself struggling with himsilently outside that window. But he broke loose, pulled open the window,and leapt into the room, and I after him. As I crossed the threshold,something flashed in my eyes; there was a loud report, a sharp cry, and thethud of a body on the ground.

  Oke was standing in the middle of the room, with a faint smoke about him;and at his feet, sunk down from the sofa, with her blond head resting onits seat, lay Mrs. Oke, a pool of red forming in her white dress. Her mouthwas convulsed, as if in that automatic shriek, but her wide-open white eyesseemed to smile vaguely and distantly.

  I know nothing of time. It all seemed to be one second, but a second thatlasted hours. Oke stared, then turned round and laughed.

  "The damned rascal has given me the slip again!" he cried; and quicklyunlocking the door, rushed out of the house with dreadful cries.

  That is the end of the story. Oke tried to shoot himself that evening, butmerely fractured his jaw, and died a few days later, raving. There were allsorts of legal inquiries, through which I went as through a dream; andwhence it resulted that Mr. Oke had killed his wife in a fit of momentarymadness. That was the end of Alice Oke. By the way, her maid brought me alocket which was found round her neck, all stained with blood. It containedsome very dark auburn hair, not at all the colour of William Oke's. I amquite sure it was Lovelock's.

  _A Wicked Voice_

  To M.W., IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE LAST SONG AT PALAZZO BARBARO, _Chi hainteso, intenda._

  They have been congratulating me again today upon being the onlycomposer of our days--of these days of deafening orchestral effects andpoetical quackery--who has despised the new-fangled nonsense ofWagner, and returned boldly to the traditions of Handel and Gluck andthe divine Mozart, to the supremacy of melody and the respect of thehuman voice.

  O cursed human voice, violin of flesh and blood, fashioned with thesubtle tools, the cunning hands, of Satan! O execrable art of singing,have you not wrought mischief enough in the past, degrading so muchnoble genius, corrupting the purity of Mozart, reducing Handel to awriter of high-class singing-exercises, and defrauding the world of theonly inspiration worthy of Sophocles and Euripides, the poetry of thegreat poet Gluck? Is it not enough to have dishonored a whole centuryin idolatry of that wicked and contemptible wretch the singer, withoutpersecuting an obscure young composer of our days, whose only wealth ishis love of nobility in art, and perhaps some few grains of genius?

  And then they compliment me upon the perfection with which I imitatethe style of the great dead masters; or ask me very seriously whether,even if I could gain over the modern public to this bygone style ofmusic, I could hope to find singers to perform it. Sometimes, whenpeople talk as they have been talking today, and laugh when I declaremyself a follower of Wagner, I burst into a paroxysm of unintelligible,childish rage, and exclaim, "We shall see that some day!"

  Yes; some day we shall see! For, after all, may I not recover from thisstrangest of maladies? It is still possible that the day may come whenall these things shall seem but an incredible nightmare; the day when_Ogier the Dane_ shall be completed, and men shall know whether Iam a follower of the great master of the Future or the miserablesinging-masters of the Past. I am but h
alf-bewitched, since I amconscious of the spell that binds me. My old nurse, far off in Norway,used to tell me that were-wolves are ordinary men and women half theirdays, and that if, during that period, they become aware of theirhorrid transformation they may find the means to forestall it. May thisnot be the case with me? My reason, after all, is free, although myartistic inspiration be enslaved; and I can despise and loathe themusic I am forced to compose, and the execrable power that forces me.

  Nay, is it not because I have studied with the doggedness of hatredthis corrupt and corrupting music of the Past, seeking for every littlepeculiarity of style and every biographical trifle merely to displayits vileness, is it not for this presumptuous courage that I have beenovertaken by such mysterious, incredible vengeance?

  And meanwhile, my only relief consists in going over and over again inmy mind the tale of my miseries. This time I will write it, writingonly to tear up, to throw the manuscript unread into the fire. And yet,who knows? As the last charred pages shall crackle and slowly sink intothe red embers, perhaps the spell may be broken, and I may possess oncemore my long-lost liberty, my vanished genius.

  It was a breathless evening under the full moon, that implacable fullmoon beneath which, even more than beneath the dreamy splendor ofnoon-tide, Venice seemed to swelter in the midst of the waters,exhaling, like some great lily, mysterious influences, which make thebrain swim and the heart faint--a moral malaria, distilled, as Ithought, from those languishing melodies, those cooing vocalizationswhich I had found in the musty music-books of a century ago. I see thatmoonlight evening as if it were present. I see my fellow-lodgers ofthat little artists' boarding-house. The table on which they lean aftersupper is strewn with bits of bread, with napkins rolled in tapestryrollers, spots of wine here and there, and at regular intervals chippedpepper-pots, stands of toothpicks, and heaps of those huge hard peacheswhich nature imitates from the marble-shops of Pisa. The whole_pension_-full is assembled, and examining stupidly the engravingwhich the American etcher has just brought for me, knowing me to be madabout eighteenth century music and musicians, and having noticed, as heturned over the heaps of penny prints in the square of San Polo, thatthe portrait is that of a singer of those days.

  Singer, thing of evil, stupid and wicked slave of the voice, of thatinstrument which was not invented by the human intellect, but begottenof the body, and which, instead of moving the soul, merely stirs up thedregs of our nature! For what is the voice but the Beast calling,awakening that other Beast sleeping in the depths of mankind, the Beastwhich all great art has ever sought to chain up, as the archangelchains up, in old pictures, the demon with his woman's face? How couldthe creature attached to this voice, its owner and its victim, thesinger, the great, the real singer who once ruled over every heart, beotherwise than wicked and contemptible? But let me try and get on withmy story.

  I can see all my fellow-boarders, leaning on the table, contemplatingthe print, this effeminate beau, his hair curled into _ailes depigeon_, his sword passed through his embroidered pocket, seatedunder a triumphal arch somewhere among the clouds, surrounded by puffyCupids and crowned with laurels by a bouncing goddess of fame. I hearagain all the insipid exclamations, the insipid questions about thissinger:--"When did he live? Was he very famous? Are you sure, Magnus,that this is really a portrait," &c. &c. And I hear my own voice, as ifin the far distance, giving them all sorts of information, biographicaland critical, out of a battered little volume called _The Theatre ofMusical Glory; or, Opinions upon the most Famous Chapel-masters andVirtuosi of this Century_, by Father Prosdocimo Sabatelli,Barnalite, Professor of Eloquence at the College of Modena, and Memberof the Arcadian Academy, under the pastoral name of Evander Lilybaean,Venice, 1785, with the approbation of the Superiors. I tell them allhow this singer, this Balthasar Cesari, was nick-named Zaffirinobecause of a sapphire engraved with cabalistic signs presented to himone evening by a masked stranger, in whom wise folk recognized thatgreat cultivator of the human voice, the devil; how much more wonderfulhad been this Zaffirino's vocal gifts than those of any singer ofancient or modern times; how his brief life had been but a series oftriumphs, petted by the greatest kings, sung by the most famous poets,and finally, adds Father Prosdocimo, "courted (if the grave Muse ofhistory may incline her ear to the gossip of gallantry) by the mostcharming nymphs, even of the very highest quality."

  My friends glance once more at the engraving; more insipid remarks aremade; I am requested--especially by the American young ladies--to playor sing one of this Zaffirino's favorite songs--"For of course you knowthem, dear Maestro Magnus, you who have such a passion for all oldmusic. Do be good, and sit down to the piano." I refuse, rudely enough,rolling the print in my fingers. How fearfully this cursed heat, thesecursed moonlight nights, must have unstrung me! This Venice wouldcertainly kill me in the long-run! Why, the sight of this idioticengraving, the mere name of that coxcomb of a singer, have made myheart beat and my limbs turn to water like a love-sick hobbledehoy.

  After my gruff refusal, the company begins to disperse; they prepare togo out, some to have a row on the lagoon, others to saunter before the_cafes_ at St. Mark's; family discussions arise, gruntings offathers, murmurs of mothers, peals of laughing from young girls andyoung men. And the moon, pouring in by the wide-open windows, turnsthis old palace ballroom, nowadays an inn dining-room, into a lagoon,scintillating, undulating like the other lagoon, the real one, whichstretches out yonder furrowed by invisible gondolas betrayed by the redprow-lights. At last the whole lot of them are on the move. I shall beable to get some quiet in my room, and to work a little at my opera of_Ogier the Dane_. But no! Conversation revives, and, of allthings, about that singer, that Zaffirino, whose absurd portrait I amcrunching in my fingers.

  The principal speaker is Count Alvise, an old Venetian with dyedwhiskers, a great check tie fastened with two pins and a chain; athreadbare patrician who is dying to secure for his lanky son thatpretty American girl, whose mother is intoxicated by all his mooninganecdotes about the past glories of Venice in general, and of hisillustrious family in particular. Why, in Heaven's name, must he pitchupon Zaffirino for his mooning, this old duffer of a patrician?

  "Zaffirino,--ah yes, to be sure! Balthasar Cesari, called Zaffirino,"snuffles the voice of Count Alvise, who always repeats the last word ofevery sentence at least three times. "Yes, Zaffirino, to be sure! Afamous singer of the days of my forefathers; yes, of my forefathers,dear lady!" Then a lot of rubbish about the former greatness of Venice,the glories of old music, the former Conservatoires, all mixed up withanecdotes of Rossini and Donizetti, whom he pretends to have knownintimately. Finally, a story, of course containing plenty about hisillustrious family:--"My great grand-aunt, the Procuratessa Vendramin,from whom we have inherited our estate of Mistra, on the Brenta"--ahopelessly muddled story, apparently, fully of digressions, but ofwhich that singer Zaffirino is the hero. The narrative, little bylittle, becomes more intelligible, or perhaps it is I who am giving itmore attention.

  "It seems," says the Count, "that there was one of his songs inparticular which was called the 'Husbands' Air'--_L'Aria deiMarit_--because they didn't enjoy it quite as much as theirbetter-halves.... My grand-aunt, Pisana Renier, married to theProcuratore Vendramin, was a patrician of the old school, of the stylethat was getting rare a hundred years ago. Her virtue and her priderendered her unapproachable. Zaffirino, on his part, was in the habitof boasting that no woman had ever been able to resist his singing,which, it appears, had its foundation in fact--the ideal changes, mydear lady, the ideal changes a good deal from one century toanother!--and that his first song could make any woman turn pale andlower her eyes, the second make her madly in love, while the third songcould kill her off on the spot, kill her for love, there under his veryeyes, if he only felt inclined. My grandaunt Vendramin laughed whenthis story was told her, refused to go to hear this insolent dog, andadded that it might be quite possible by the aid of spells and infernalpacts to kill a _gentildonna_, but as to making her fall in l
ovewith a lackey--never! This answer was naturally reported to Zaffirino,who piqued himself upon always getting the better of any one who waswanting in deference to his voice. Like the ancient Romans, _parceresubjectis et debellare superbos_. You American ladies, who are solearned, will appreciate this little quotation from the divine Virgil.While seeming to avoid the Procuratessa Vendramin, Zaffirino took theopportunity, one evening at a large assembly, to sing in her presence.He sang and sang and sang until the poor grand-aunt Pisana fell ill forlove. The most skilful physicians were kept unable to explain themysterious malady which was visibly killing the poor young lady; andthe Procuratore Vendramin applied in vain to the most veneratedMadonnas, and vainly promised an altar of silver, with massive goldcandlesticks, to Saints Cosmas and Damian, patrons of the art ofhealing. At last the brother-in-law of the Procuratessa, MonsignorAlmoro Vendramin, Patriarch of Aquileia, a prelate famous for thesanctity of his life, obtained in a vision of Saint Justina, for whomhe entertained a particular devotion, the information that the onlything which could benefit the strange illness of his sister-in-law wasthe voice of Zaffirino. Take notice that my poor grand-aunt had nevercondescended to such a revelation.

  "The Procuratore was enchanted at this happy solution; and his lordshipthe Patriarch went to seek Zaffirino in person, and carried him in hisown coach to the Villa of Mistra, where the Procuratessa was residing.

  "On being told what was about to happen, my poor grand-aunt went intofits of rage, which were succeeded immediately by equally violent fitsof joy. However, she never forgot what was due to her great position.Although sick almost unto death, she had herself arrayed with thegreatest pomp, caused her face to be painted, and put on all herdiamonds: it would seem as if she were anxious to affirm her fulldignity before this singer. Accordingly she received Zaffirinoreclining on a sofa which had been placed in the great ballroom of theVilla of Mistra, and beneath the princely canopy; for the Vendramins,who had intermarried with the house of Mantua, possessed imperial fiefsand were princes of the Holy Roman Empire. Zaffirino saluted her withthe most profound respect, but not a word passed between them. Only,the singer inquired from the Procuratore whether the illustrious ladyhad received the Sacraments of the Church. Being told that theProcuratessa had herself asked to be given extreme unction from thehands of her brother-in-law, he declared his readiness to obey theorders of His Excellency, and sat down at once to the harpsichord.

  "Never had he sung so divinely. At the end of the first song theProcuratessa Vendramin had already revived most extraordinarily; by theend of the second she appeared entirely cured and beaming with beautyand happiness; but at the third air--the _Aria dei Mariti_, nodoubt--she began to change frightfully; she gave a dreadful cry, andfell into the convulsions of death. In a quarter of an hour she wasdead! Zaffirino did not wait to see her die. Having finished his song,he withdrew instantly, took post-horses, and traveled day and night asfar as Munich. People remarked that he had presented himself at Mistradressed in mourning, although he had mentioned no death among hisrelatives; also that he had prepared everything for his departure, asif fearing the wrath of so powerful a family. Then there was also theextraordinary question he had asked before beginning to sing, about theProcuratessa having confessed and received extreme unction.... No,thanks, my dear lady, no cigarettes for me. But if it does not distressyou or your charming daughter, may I humbly beg permission to smoke acigar?"

  And Count Alvise, enchanted with his talent for narrative, and sure ofhaving secured for his son the heart and the dollars of his fairaudience, proceeds to light a candle, and at the candle one of thoselong black Italian cigars which require preliminary disinfection beforesmoking.

  ... If this state of things goes on I shall just have to ask the doctorfor a bottle; this ridiculous beating of my heart and disgusting coldperspiration have increased steadily during Count Alvise's narrative.To keep myself in countenance among the various idiotic commentaries onthis cock-and-bull story of a vocal coxcomb and a vaporing great lady,I begin to unroll the engraving, and to examine stupidly the portraitof Zaffirino, once so renowned, now so forgotten. A ridiculous ass,this singer, under his triumphal arch, with his stuffed Cupids and thegreat fat winged kitchenmaid crowning him with laurels. How flat andvapid and vulgar it is, to be sure, all this odious eighteenth century!

  But he, personally, is not so utterly vapid as I had thought. Thateffeminate, fat face of his is almost beautiful, with an odd smile,brazen and cruel. I have seen faces like this, if not in real life, atleast in my boyish romantic dreams, when I read Swinburne andBaudelaire, the faces of wicked, vindictive women. Oh yes! he isdecidedly a beautiful creature, this Zaffirino, and his voice must havehad the same sort of beauty and the same expression of wickedness....

  "Come on, Magnus," sound the voices of my fellow-boarders, "be a goodfellow and sing us one of the old chap's songs; or at least somethingor other of that day, and we'll make believe it was the air with whichhe killed that poor lady."

  "Oh yes! the _Aria dei Mariti_, the 'Husbands' Air,'" mumbles oldAlvise, between the puffs at his impossible black cigar. "My poorgrand-aunt, Pisana Vendramin; he went and killed her with those songsof his, with that _Aria dei Mariti_."

  I feel senseless rage overcoming me. Is it that horrible palpitation(by the way, there is a Norwegian doctor, my fellow-countryman, atVenice just now) which is sending the blood to my brain and making memad? The people round the piano, the furniture, everything togetherseems to get mixed and to turn into moving blobs of color. I set tosinging; the only thing which remains distinct before my eyes being theportrait of Zaffirino, on the edge of that boarding-house piano; thesensual, effeminate face, with its wicked, cynical smile, keepsappearing and disappearing as the print wavers about in the draughtthat makes the candles smoke and gutter. And I set to singing madly,singing I don't know what. Yes; I begin to identify it: 'tis the_Biondina in Gondoleta_, the only song of the eighteenth centurywhich is still remembered by the Venetian people. I sing it, mimickingevery old-school grace; shakes, cadences, languishingly swelled anddiminished notes, and adding all manner of buffooneries, until theaudience, recovering from its surprise, begins to shake with laughing;until I begin to laugh myself, madly, frantically, between the phrasesof the melody, my voice finally smothered in this dull, brutallaughter.... And then, to crown it all, I shake my fist at thislong-dead singer, looking at me with his wicked woman's face, with hismocking, fatuous smile.

  "Ah! you would like to be revenged on me also!" I exclaim. "You wouldlike me to write you nice roulades and flourishes, another nice _Ariadei Mariti_, my fine Zaffirino!"

  That night I dreamed a very strange dream. Even in the bighalf-furnished room the heat and closeness were stifling. The airseemed laden with the scent of all manner of white flowers, faint andheavy in their intolerable sweetness: tuberoses, gardenias, andjasmines drooping I know not where in neglected vases. The moonlighthad transformed the marble floor around me into a shallow, shining,pool. On account of the heat I had exchanged my bed for a bigold-fashioned sofa of light wood, painted with little nosegays andsprigs, like an old silk; and I lay there, not attempting to sleep, andletting my thoughts go vaguely to my opera of _Ogier the Dane_, ofwhich I had long finished writing the words, and for whose music I hadhoped to find some inspiration in this strange Venice, floating, as itwere, in the stagnant lagoon of the past. But Venice had merely put allmy ideas into hopeless confusion; it was as if there arose out of itsshallow waters a miasma of long-dead melodies, which sickened butintoxicated my soul. I lay on my sofa watching that pool of whitishlight, which rose higher and higher, little trickles of light meetingit here and there, wherever the moon's rays struck upon some polishedsurface; while huge shadows waved to and fro in the draught of the openbalcony.

  I went over and over that old Norse story: how the Paladin, Ogier, oneof the knights of Charlemagne, was decoyed during his homewardwanderings from the Holy Land by the arts of an enchantress, the samewho had once held in bondage the great Emperor Caesar and
given him KingOberon for a son; how Ogier had tarried in that island only one day andone night, and yet, when he came home to his kingdom, he found allchanged, his friends dead, his family dethroned, and not a man who knewhis face; until at last, driven hither and thither like a beggar, apoor minstrel had taken compassion of his sufferings and given him allhe could give--a song, the song of the prowess of a hero dead forhundreds of years, the Paladin Ogier the Dane.

  The story of Ogier ran into a dream, as vivid as my waking thoughts hadbeen vague. I was looking no longer at the pool of moonlight spreadinground my couch, with its trickles of light and looming, waving shadows,but the frescoed walls of a great saloon. It was not, as I recognizedin a second, the dining-room of that Venetian palace now turned into aboarding-house. It was a far larger room, a real ballroom, almostcircular in its octagon shape, with eight huge white doors surroundedby stucco moldings, and, high on the vault of the ceiling, eight littlegalleries or recesses like boxes at a theatre, intended no doubt formusicians and spectators. The place was imperfectly lighted by only oneof the eight chandeliers, which revolved slowly, like huge spiders,each on its long cord. But the light struck upon the gilt stuccoesopposite me, and on a large expanse of fresco, the sacrifice ofIphigenia, with Agamemnon and Achilles in Roman helmets, lappets, andknee-breeches. It discovered also one of the oil panels let into themoldings of the roof, a goddess in lemon and lilac draperies,foreshortened over a great green peacock. Round the room, where thelight reached, I could make out big yellow satin sofas and heavy gildedconsoles; in the shadow of a corner was what looked like a piano, andfarther in the shade one of those big canopies which decorate theanterooms of Roman palaces. I looked about me, wondering where I was: aheavy, sweet smell, reminding me of the flavor of a peach, filled theplace.

  Little by little I began to perceive sounds; little, sharp, metallic,detached notes, like those of a mandolin; and there was united to thema voice, very low and sweet, almost a whisper, which grew and grew andgrew, until the whole place was filled with that exquisite vibratingnote, of a strange, exotic, unique quality. The note went on, swellingand swelling. Suddenly there was a horrible piercing shriek, and thethud of a body on the floor, and all manner of smothered exclamations.There, close by the canopy, a light suddenly appeared; and I could see,among the dark figures moving to and fro in the room, a woman lying onthe ground, surrounded by other women. Her blond hair, tangled, full ofdiamond-sparkles which cut through the half-darkness, was hangingdisheveled; the laces of her bodice had been cut, and her white breastshone among the sheen of jeweled brocade; her face was bent forwards,and a thin white arm trailed, like a broken limb, across the knees ofone of the women who were endeavoring to lift her. There was a suddensplash of water against the floor, more confused exclamations, ahoarse, broken moan, and a gurgling, dreadful sound.... I awoke with astart and rushed to the window.

  Outside, in the blue haze of the moon, the church and belfry of St.George loomed blue and hazy, with the black hull and rigging, the redlights, of a large steamer moored before them. From the lagoon rose adamp sea-breeze. What was it all? Ah! I began to understand: that storyof old Count Alvise's, the death of his grand-aunt, Pisana Vendramin.Yes, it was about that I had been dreaming.

  I returned to my room; I struck a light, and sat down to mywriting-table. Sleep had become impossible. I tried to work at myopera. Once or twice I thought I had got hold of what I had looked forso long.... But as soon as I tried to lay hold of my theme, there arosein my mind the distant echo of that voice, of that long note swelledslowly by insensible degrees, that long note whose tone was so strongand so subtle.

  There are in the life of an artist moments when, still unable to seizehis own inspiration, or even clearly to discern it, he becomes aware ofthe approach of that long-invoked idea. A mingled joy and terror warnhim that before another day, another hour have passed, the inspirationshall have crossed the threshold of his soul and flooded it with itsrapture. All day I had felt the need of isolation and quiet, and atnightfall I went for a row on the most solitary part of the lagoon. Allthings seemed to tell that I was going to meet my inspiration, and Iawaited its coming as a lover awaits his beloved.

  I had stopped my gondola for a moment, and as I gently swayed to andfro on the water, all paved with moonbeams, it seemed to me that I wason the confines of an imaginary world. It lay close at hand, envelopedin luminous, pale blue mist, through which the moon had cut a wide andglistening path; out to sea, the little islands, like moored blackboats, only accentuated the solitude of this region of moonbeams andwavelets; while the hum of the insects in orchards hard by merely addedto the impression of untroubled silence. On some such seas, I thought,must the Paladin Ogier, have sailed when about to discover that duringthat sleep at the enchantress's knees centuries had elapsed and theheroic world had set, and the kingdom of prose had come.

  While my gondola rocked stationary on that sea of moonbeams, I ponderedover that twilight of the heroic world. In the soft rattle of the wateron the hull I seemed to hear the rattle of all that armor, of all thoseswords swinging rusty on the walls, neglected by the degenerate sons ofthe great champions of old. I had long been in search of a theme whichI called the theme of the "Prowess of Ogier;" it was to appear fromtime to time in the course of my opera, to develop at last into thatsong of the Minstrel, which reveals to the hero that he is one of along-dead world. And at this moment I seemed to feel the presence ofthat theme. Yet an instant, and my mind would be overwhelmed by thatsavage music, heroic, funereal.

  Suddenly there came across the lagoon, cleaving, checkering, andfretting the silence with a lacework of sound even as the moon wasfretting and cleaving the water, a ripple of music, a voice breakingitself in a shower of little scales and cadences and trills.

  I sank back upon my cushions. The vision of heroic days had vanished,and before my closed eyes there seemed to dance multitudes of littlestars of light, chasing and interlacing like those suddenvocalizations.

  "To shore! Quick!" I cried to the gondolier.

  But the sounds had ceased; and there came from the orchards, with theirmulberry-trees glistening in the moonlight, and their black swayingcypress-plumes, nothing save the confused hum, the monotonous chirp, ofthe crickets.

  I looked around me: on one side empty dunes, orchards, and meadows,without house or steeple; on the other, the blue and misty sea, emptyto where distant islets were profiled black on the horizon.

  A faintness overcame me, and I felt myself dissolve. For all of asudden a second ripple of voice swept over the lagoon, a shower oflittle notes, which seemed to form a little mocking laugh.

  Then again all was still. This silence lasted so long that I fell oncemore to meditating on my opera. I lay in wait once more for thehalf-caught theme. But no. It was not that theme for which I waswaiting and watching with baited breath. I realized my delusion when,on rounding the point of the Giudecca, the murmur of a voice arose fromthe midst of the waters, a thread of sound slender as a moonbeam,scarce audible, but exquisite, which expanded slowly, insensibly,taking volume and body, taking flesh almost and fire, an ineffablequality, full, passionate, but veiled, as it were, in a subtle, downywrapper. The note grew stronger and stronger, and warmer and morepassionate, until it burst through that strange and charming veil, andemerged beaming, to break itself in the luminous facets of a wonderfulshake, long, superb, triumphant.

  There was a dead silence.

  "Row to St. Mark's!" I exclaimed. "Quick!"

  The gondola glided through the long, glittering track of moonbeams, andrent the great band of yellow, reflected light, mirroring the cupolasof St. Mark's, the lace-like pinnacles of the palace, and the slenderpink belfry, which rose from the lit-up water to the pale and bluishevening sky.

  In the larger of the two squares the military band was blaring throughthe last spirals of a _crescendo_ of Rossini. The crowd wasdispersing in this great open-air ballroom, and the sounds arose whichinvariably follow upon out-of-door music. A clatter of spoons andglasses,
a rustle and grating of frocks and of chairs, and the click ofscabbards on the pavement. I pushed my way among the fashionable youthscontemplating the ladies while sucking the knob of their sticks;through the serried ranks of respectable families, marching arm in armwith their white frocked young ladies close in front. I took a seatbefore Florian's, among the customers stretching themselves beforedeparting, and the waiters hurrying to and fro, clattering their emptycups and trays. Two imitation Neapolitans were slipping their guitarand violin under their arm, ready to leave the place.

  "Stop!" I cried to them; "don't go yet. Sing me _something--sing_La Camesella_ or _Funiculi, funicula_--no matter what,provided you make a row;" and as they screamed and scraped their utmost,I added, "But can't you sing louder, d--n you!--sing louder, do youunderstand?"

  I felt the need of noise, of yells and false notes, of something vulgarand hideous to drive away that ghost-voice which was haunting me.

  Again and again I told myself that it had been some silly prank of aromantic amateur, hidden in the gardens of the shore or glidingunperceived on the lagoon; and that the sorcery of moonlight andsea-mist had transfigured for my excited brain mere humdrum rouladesout of exercises of Bordogni or Crescentini.

  But all the same I continued to be haunted by that voice. My work wasinterrupted ever and anon by the attempt to catch its imaginary echo;and the heroic harmonies of my Scandinavian legend were strangelyinterwoven with voluptuous phrases and florid cadences in which Iseemed to hear again that same accursed voice.

  To be haunted by singing-exercises! It seemed too ridiculous for a manwho professedly despised the art of singing. And still, I preferred tobelieve in that childish amateur, amusing himself with warbling to themoon.

  One day, while making these reflections the hundredth time over, myeyes chanced to light upon the portrait of Zaffirino, which my friendhad pinned against the wall. I pulled it down and tore it into half adozen shreds. Then, already ashamed of my folly, I watched the tornpieces float down from the window, wafted hither and thither by thesea-breeze. One scrap got caught in a yellow blind below me; the othersfell into the canal, and were speedily lost to sight in the dark water.I was overcome with shame. My heart beat like bursting. What amiserable, unnerved worm I had become in this cursed Venice, with itslanguishing moonlights, its atmosphere as of some stuffy boudoir, longunused, full of old stuffs and potpourri!

  That night, however, things seemed to be going better. I was able tosettle down to my opera, and even to work at it. In the intervals mythoughts returned, not without a certain pleasure, to those scatteredfragments of the torn engraving fluttering down to the water. I wasdisturbed at my piano by the hoarse voices and the scraping of violinswhich rose from one of those music-boats that station at night underthe hotels of the Grand Canal. The moon had set. Under my balcony thewater stretched black into the distance, its darkness cut by the stilldarker outlines of the flotilla of gondolas in attendance on themusic-boat, where the faces of the singers, and the guitars andviolins, gleamed reddish under the unsteady light of theChinese-lanterns.

  "_Jammo, jammo; jammo, jammo ja_," sang the loud, hoarse voices;then a tremendous scrape and twang, and the yelled-out burden,_"Funiculi, funicula; funiculi, funicula; jammo, jammo, jammo, jammo,jammo ja_."

  Then came a few cries of "_Bis, Bis_!" from a neighboring hotel, abrief clapping of hands, the sound of a handful of coppers rattlinginto the boat, and the oar-stroke of some gondolier making ready toturn away.

  "Sing the _Camesella___," ordered some voice with a foreignaccent.

  "No, no! _Santa Lucia_."

  "I want the _Camesella_."

  "No! _Santa Lucia_. Hi! sing _Santa Lucia_--d'you hear?"

  The musicians, under their green and yellow and red lamps, held awhispered consultation on the manner of conciliating thesecontradictory demands. Then, after a minute's hesitation, the violinsbegan the prelude of that once famous air, which has remained popularin Venice--the words written, some hundred years ago, by the patricianGritti, the music by an unknown composer--_La Biondina inGondoleta_.

  That cursed eighteenth century! It seemed a malignant fatality thatmade these brutes choose just this piece to interrupt me.

  At last the long prelude came to an end; and above the cracked guitarsand squeaking fiddles there arose, not the expected nasal chorus, but asingle voice singing below its breath.

  My arteries throbbed. How well I knew that voice! It was singing, as Ihave said, below its breath, yet none the less it sufficed to fill allthat reach of the canal with its strange quality of tone, exquisite,far-fetched.

  They were long-drawn-out notes, of intense but peculiar sweetness, aman's voice which had much of a woman's, but more even of achorister's, but a chorister's voice without its limpidity andinnocence; its youthfulness was veiled, muffled, as it were, in a sortof downy vagueness, as if a passion of tears withheld.

  There was a burst of applause, and the old palaces re-echoed with theclapping. "Bravo, bravo! Thank you, thank you! Sing again--please, singagain. Who can it be?"

  And then a bumping of hulls, a splashing of oars, and the oaths ofgondoliers trying to push each other away, as the red prow-lamps of thegondolas pressed round the gaily lit singing-boat.

  But no one stirred on board. It was to none of them that this applausewas due. And while every one pressed on, and clapped and vociferated,one little red prow-lamp dropped away from the fleet; for a moment asingle gondola stood forth black upon the black water, and then waslost in the night.

  For several days the mysterious singer was the universal topic. Thepeople of the music-boat swore that no one besides themselves had beenon board, and that they knew as little as ourselves about the owner ofthat voice. The gondoliers, despite their descent from the spies of theold Republic, were equally unable to furnish any clue. No musicalcelebrity was known or suspected to be at Venice; and every one agreedthat such a singer must be a European celebrity. The strangest thing inthis strange business was, that even among those learned in music therewas no agreement on the subject of this voice: it was called by allsorts of names and described by all manner of incongruous adjectives;people went so far as to dispute whether the voice belonged to a man orto a woman: every one had some new definition.

  In all these musical discussions I, alone, brought forward no opinion.I felt a repugnance, an impossibility almost, of speaking about thatvoice; and the more or less commonplace conjectures of my friend hadthe invariable effect of sending me out of the room.

  Meanwhile my work was becoming daily more difficult, and I soon passedfrom utter impotence to a state of inexplicable agitation. Everymorning I arose with fine resolutions and grand projects of work; onlyto go to bed that night without having accomplished anything. I spenthours leaning on my balcony, or wandering through the network of laneswith their ribbon of blue sky, endeavoring vainly to expel the thoughtof that voice, or endeavoring in reality to reproduce it in my memory;for the more I tried to banish it from my thoughts, the more I grew tothirst for that extraordinary tone, for those mysteriously downy,veiled notes; and no sooner did I make an effort to work at my operathan my head was full of scraps of forgotten eighteenth century airs,of frivolous or languishing little phrases; and I fell to wonderingwith a bitter-sweet longing how those songs would have sounded if sungby that voice.

  At length it became necessary to see a doctor, from whom, however, Icarefully hid away all the stranger symptoms of my malady. The air ofthe lagoons, the great heat, he answered cheerfully, had pulled me downa little; a tonic and a month in the country, with plenty of riding andno work, would make me myself again. That old idler, Count Alvise, whohad insisted on accompanying me to the physician's, immediatelysuggested that I should go and stay with his son, who was boringhimself to death superintending the maize harvest on the mainland: hecould promise me excellent air, plenty of horses, and all the peacefulsurroundings and the delightful occupations of a rural life--"Besensible, my dear Magnus, and just go quietly to Mistra."

  Mis
tra--the name sent a shiver all down me. I was about to declinethe invitation, when a thought suddenly loomed vaguely in my mind.

  "Yes, dear Count," I answered; "I accept your invitation withgratitude and pleasure. I will start tomorrow for Mistra."

  The next day found me at Padua, on my way to the Villa of Mistra. Itseemed as if I had left an intolerable burden behind me. I was, for thefirst time since how long, quite light of heart. The tortuous,rough-paved streets, with their empty, gloomy porticoes; theill-plastered palaces, with closed, discolored shutters; the littlerambling square, with meager trees and stubborn grass; the Venetiangarden-houses reflecting their crumbling graces in the muddy canal; thegardens without gates and the gates without gardens, the avenuesleading nowhere; and the population of blind and legless beggars, ofwhining sacristans, which issued as by magic from between theflag-stones and dust-heaps and weeds under the fierce August sun, allthis dreariness merely amused and pleased me. My good spirits wereheightened by a musical mass which I had the good fortune to hear atSt. Anthony's.

  Never in all my days had I heard anything comparable, although Italyaffords many strange things in the way of sacred music. Into the deepnasal chanting of the priests there had suddenly burst a chorus ofchildren, singing absolutely independent of all time and tune; gruntingof priests answered by squealing of boys, slow Gregorian modulationinterrupted by jaunty barrel-organ pipings, an insane, insanely merryjumble of bellowing and barking, mewing and cackling and braying, suchas would have enlivened a witches' meeting, or rather some mediaevalFeast of Fools. And, to make the grotesqueness of such music still morefantastic and Hoffmannlike, there was, besides, the magnificence of thepiles of sculptured marbles and gilded bronzes, the tradition of themusical splendor for which St. Anthony's had been famous in days goneby. I had read in old travelers, Lalande and Burney, that the Republicof St. Mark had squandered immense sums not merely on the monuments anddecoration, but on the musical establishment of its great cathedral ofTerra Firma. In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossiblevoices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice of Guadagni, thesoprano for whom Gluck had written _Che faru senza Euridice_, andthe fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once comeand made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously,grotesquely, fantastically incongruous as such a performance in such aplace was heightened by a sense of profanation: such were thesuccessors of those wonderful musicians of that hated eighteenthcentury!

  The whole thing had delighted me so much, so very much more than themost faultless performance could have done, that I determined to enjoyit once more; and towards vesper-time, after a cheerful dinner with twobagmen at the inn of the Golden Star, and a pipe over the rough sketchof a possible cantata upon the music which the devil made for Tartini,I turned my steps once more towards St. Anthony's.

  The bells were ringing for sunset, and a muffled sound of organs seemedto issue from the huge, solitary church; I pushed my way under theheavy leathern curtain, expecting to be greeted by the grotesqueperformance of that morning.

  I proved mistaken. Vespers must long have been over. A smell of staleincense, a crypt-like damp filled my mouth; it was already night inthat vast cathedral. Out of the darkness glimmered the votive-lamps ofthe chapels, throwing wavering lights upon the red polished marble, thegilded railing, and chandeliers, and plaqueing with yellow the musclesof some sculptured figure. In a corner a burning taper put a halo aboutthe head of a priest, burnishing his shining bald skull, his whitesurplice, and the open book before him. "Amen" he chanted; the book wasclosed with a snap, the light moved up the apse, some dark figures ofwomen rose from their knees and passed quickly towards the door; a mansaying his prayers before a chapel also got up, making a great clatterin dropping his stick.

  The church was empty, and I expected every minute to be turned out bythe sacristan making his evening round to close the doors. I wasleaning against a pillar, looking into the greyness of the greatarches, when the organ suddenly burst out into a series of chords,rolling through the echoes of the church: it seemed to be theconclusion of some service. And above the organ rose the notes of avoice; high, soft, enveloped in a kind of downiness, like a cloud ofincense, and which ran through the mazes of a long cadence. The voicedropped into silence; with two thundering chords the organ closed in.All was silent. For a moment I stood leaning against one of the pillarsof the nave: my hair was clammy, my knees sank beneath me, anenervating heat spread through my body; I tried to breathe morelargely, to suck in the sounds with the incense-laden air. I wassupremely happy, and yet as if I were dying; then suddenly a chill ranthrough me, and with it a vague panic. I turned away and hurried outinto the open.

  The evening sky lay pure and blue along the jagged line of roofs; thebats and swallows were wheeling about; and from the belfries allaround, half-drowned by the deep bell of St. Anthony's, jangled thepeel of the _Ave Maria_.

  "You really don't seem well," young Count Alvise had said the previousevening, as he welcomed me, in the light of a lantern held up by apeasant, in the weedy back-garden of the Villa of Mistra. Everythinghad seemed to me like a dream: the jingle of the horse's bells drivingin the dark from Padua, as the lantern swept the acacia-hedges withtheir wide yellow light; the grating of the wheels on the gravel; thesupper-table, illumined by a single petroleum lamp for fear ofattracting mosquitoes, where a broken old lackey, in an old stablejacket, handed round the dishes among the fumes of onion; Alvise's fatmother gabbling dialect in a shrill, benevolent voice behind thebullfights on her fan; the unshaven village priest, perpetuallyfidgeting with his glass and foot, and sticking one shoulder up abovethe other. And now, in the afternoon, I felt as if I had been in thislong, rambling, tumble-down Villa of Mistra--a villa three-quarters ofwhich was given up to the storage of grain and garden tools, or to theexercise of rats, mice, scorpions, and centipedes--all my life; as if Ihad always sat there, in Count Alvise's study, among the pile ofundusted books on agriculture, the sheaves of accounts, the samples ofgrain and silkworm seed, the ink-stains and the cigar-ends; as if I hadnever heard of anything save the cereal basis of Italian agriculture,the diseases of maize, the peronospora of the vine, the breeds ofbullocks, and the iniquities of farm laborers; with the blue cones ofthe Euganean hills closing in the green shimmer of plain outside thewindow.

  After an early dinner, again with the screaming gabble of the fat oldCountess, the fidgeting and shoulder-raising of the unshaven priest,the smell of fried oil and stewed onions, Count Alvise made me get intothe cart beside him, and whirled me along among clouds of dust, betweenthe endless glister of poplars, acacias, and maples, to one of hisfarms.

  In the burning sun some twenty or thirty girls, in colored skirts,laced bodices, and big straw-hats, were threshing the maize on the bigred brick threshing-floor, while others were winnowing the grain ingreat sieves. Young Alvise III. (the old one was Alvise II.: every oneis Alvise, that is to say, Lewis, in that family; the name is on thehouse, the carts, the barrows, the very pails) picked up the maize,touched it, tasted it, said something to the girls that made themlaugh, and something to the head farmer that made him look very glum;and then led me into a huge stable, where some twenty or thirty whitebullocks were stamping, switching their tails, hitting their hornsagainst the mangers in the dark. Alvise III. patted each, called him byhis name, gave him some salt or a turnip, and explained which was theMantuan breed, which the Apulian, which the Romagnolo, and so on. Thenhe bade me jump into the trap, and off we went again through the dust,among the hedges and ditches, till we came to some more brick farmbuildings with pinkish roofs smoking against the blue sky. Here therewere more young women threshing and winnowing the maize, which made agreat golden Danae cloud; more bullocks stamping and lowing in the cooldarkness; more joking, fault-finding, explaining; and thus through fivefarms, until I seemed to see the rhythmical rising and falling of theflails against the hot sky, the shower of golden grains, the yellowdust from the winnowing-sieves on to the bricks, the switching ofinnumera
ble tails and plunging of innumerable horns, the glistening ofhuge white flanks and foreheads, whenever I closed my eyes.

  "A good day's work!" cried Count Alvise, stretching out his long legswith the tight trousers riding up over the Wellington boots. "Mamma,give us some aniseed-syrup after dinner; it is an excellent restorativeand precaution against the fevers of this country."

  "Oh! you've got fever in this part of the world, have you? Why, yourfather said the air was so good!"

  "Nothing, nothing," soothed the old Countess. "The only thing to bedreaded are mosquitoes; take care to fasten your shutters beforelighting the candle."

  "Well," rejoined young Alvise, with an effort of conscience, "of coursethere _are_ fevers. But they needn't hurt you. Only, don' go outinto the garden at night, if you don't want to catch them. Papa told methat you have fancies for moonlight rambles. It won't do in thisclimate, my dear fellow; it won't do. If you must stalk about at night,being a genius, take a turn inside the house; you can get quiteexercise enough."

  After dinner the aniseed-syrup was produced, together with brandy andcigars, and they all sat in the long, narrow, half-furnished room onthe first floor; the old Countess knitting a garment of uncertain shapeand destination, the priest reading out the newspaper; Count Alvisepuffing at his long, crooked cigar, and pulling the ears of a long,lean dog with a suspicion of mange and a stiff eye. From the darkgarden outside rose the hum and whirr of countless insects, and thesmell of the grapes which hung black against the starlit, blue sky, onthe trellis. I went to the balcony. The garden lay dark beneath;against the twinkling horizon stood out the tall poplars. There was thesharp cry of an owl; the barking of a dog; a sudden whiff of warm,enervating perfume, a perfume that made me think of the taste ofcertain peaches, and suggested white, thick, wax-like petals. I seemedto have smelt that flower once before: it made me feel languid, almostfaint.

  "I am very tired," I said to Count Alvise. "See how feeble we city folkbecome!"

  But, despite my fatigue, I found it quite impossible to sleep. Thenight seemed perfectly stifling. I had felt nothing like it at Venice.Despite the injunctions of the Countess I opened the solid woodenshutters, hermetically closed against mosquitoes, and looked out.

  The moon had risen; and beneath it lay the big lawns, the roundedtree-tops, bathed in a blue, luminous mist, every leaf glistening andtrembling in what seemed a heaving sea of light. Beneath the window wasthe long trellis, with the white shining piece of pavement under it. Itwas so bright that I could distinguish the green of the vine-leaves,the dull red of the catalpa-flowers. There was in the air a vaguescent of cut grass, of ripe American grapes, of that white flower (itmust be white) which made me think of the taste of peaches all meltinginto the delicious freshness of falling dew. From the village churchcame the stroke of one: Heaven knows how long I had been vainlyattempting to sleep. A shiver ran through me, and my head suddenlyfilled as with the fumes of some subtle wine; I remembered all thoseweedy embankments, those canals full of stagnant water, the yellowfaces of the peasants; the word malaria returned to my mind. No matter!I remained leaning on the window, with a thirsty longing to plungemyself into this blue moonmist, this dew and perfume and silence, whichseemed to vibrate and quiver like the stars that strewed the depths ofheaven.... What music, even Wagner's, or of that great singer of starrynights, the divine Schumann, what music could ever compare with thisgreat silence, with this great concert of voiceless things that singwithin one's soul?

  As I made this reflection, a note, high, vibrating, and sweet, rent thesilence, which immediately closed around it. I leaned out of thewindow, my heart beating as though it must burst. After a brief spacethe silence was cloven once more by that note, as the darkness iscloven by a falling star or a firefly rising slowly like a rocket. Butthis time it was plain that the voice did not come, as I had imagined,from the garden, but from the house itself, from some corner of thisrambling old villa of Mistra.

  Mistra--Mistra! The name rang in my ears, and I began at length tograsp its significance, which seems to have escaped me till then."Yes," I said to myself, "it is quite natural." And with this oddimpression of naturalness was mixed a feverish, impatient pleasure. Itwas as if I had come to Mistra on purpose, and that I was about to meetthe object of my long and weary hopes.

  Grasping the lamp with its singed green shade, I gently opened the doorand made my way through a series of long passages and of big, emptyrooms, in which my steps re-echoed as in a church, and my lightdisturbed whole swarms of bats. I wandered at random, farther andfarther from the inhabited part of the buildings.

  This silence made me feel sick; I gasped as under a suddendisappointment.

  All of a sudden there came a sound--chords, metallic, sharp, ratherlike the tone of a mandolin--close to my ear. Yes, quite close: I wasseparated from the sounds only by a partition. I fumbled for a door;the unsteady light of my lamp was insufficient for my eyes, which wereswimming like those of a drunkard. At last I found a latch, and, aftera moment's hesitation, I lifted it and gently pushed open the door. Atfirst I could not understand what manner of place I was in. It was darkall round me, but a brilliant light blinded me, a light coming frombelow and striking the opposite wall. It was as if I had entered a darkbox in a half-lighted theatre. I was, in fact, in something of thekind, a sort of dark hole with a high balustrade, half-hidden by anup-drawn curtain. I remembered those little galleries or recesses forthe use of musicians or lookers-on--which exist under the ceiling ofthe ballrooms in certain old Italian palaces. Yes; it must have beenone like that. Opposite me was a vaulted ceiling covered with giltmoldings, which framed great time-blackened canvases; and lower down,in the light thrown up from below, stretched a wall covered with fadedfrescoes. Where had I seen that goddess in lilac and lemon draperiesforeshortened over a big, green peacock? For she was familiar to me,and the stucco Tritons also who twisted their tails round her gildedframe. And that fresco, with warriors in Roman cuirasses and green andblue lappets, and knee-breeches--where could I have seen them before? Iasked myself these questions without experiencing any surprise.Moreover, I was very calm, as one is calm sometimes in extraordinarydreams--could I be dreaming?

  I advanced gently and leaned over the balustrade. My eyes were met atfirst by the darkness above me, where, like gigantic spiders, the bigchandeliers rotated slowly, hanging from the ceiling. Only one of themwas lit, and its Murano-glass pendants, its carnations and roses, shoneopalescent in the light of the guttering wax. This chandelier lightedup the opposite wall and that piece of ceiling with the goddess and thegreen peacock; it illumined, but far less well, a corner of the hugeroom, where, in the shadow of a kind of canopy, a little group ofpeople were crowding round a yellow satin sofa, of the same kind asthose that lined the walls. On the sofa, half-screened from me by thesurrounding persons, a woman was stretched out: the silver of herembroidered dress and the rays of her diamonds gleamed and shot forthas she moved uneasily. And immediately under the chandelier, in thefull light, a man stooped over a harpsichord, his head bent slightly,as if collecting his thoughts before singing.

  He struck a few chords and sang. Yes, sure enough, it was the voice,the voice that had so long been persecuting me! I recognized at oncethat delicate, voluptuous quality, strange, exquisite, sweet beyondwords, but lacking all youth and clearness. That passion veiled intears which had troubled my brain that night on the lagoon, and againon the Grand Canal singing the _Biondina_, and yet again, only twodays since, in the deserted cathedral of Padua. But I recognized nowwhat seemed to have been hidden from me till then, that this voice waswhat I cared most for in all the wide world.

  The voice wound and unwound itself in long, languishing phrases, inrich, voluptuous _rifiorituras_, all fretted with tiny scales andexquisite, crisp shakes; it stopped ever and anon, swaying as ifpanting in languid delight. And I felt my body melt even as wax in thesunshine, and it seemed to me that I too was turning fluid andvaporous, in order to mingle with these sounds as the moonbeams minglewith the dew.
>
  Suddenly, from the dimly lighted corner by the canopy, came a littlepiteous wail; then another followed, and was lost in the singer'svoice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, thesinger turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintivelittle sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and witha thread of voice so hushed as to be scarcely audible, slid softly intoa long _cadenza_. At the same moment he threw his head backwards,and the light fell full upon the handsome, effeminate face, with itsashy pallor and big, black brows, of the singer Zaffirino. At the sightof that face, sensual and sullen, of that smile which was cruel andmocking like a bad woman's, I understood--I knew not why, by whatprocess--that his singing _must_ be cut short, that the accursedphrase _must_ never be finished. I understood that I was before anassassin, that he was killing this woman, and killing me also, with hiswicked voice.

  I rushed down the narrow stair which led down from the box, pursued, asit were, by that exquisite voice, swelling, swelling by insensibledegrees. I flung myself on the door which must be that of the bigsaloon. I could see its light between the panels. I bruised my hands intrying to wrench the latch. The door was fastened tight, and while Iwas struggling with that locked door I heard the voice swelling,swelling, rending asunder that downy veil which wrapped it, leapingforth clear, resplendent, like the sharp and glittering blade of aknife that seemed to enter deep into my breast. Then, once more, awail, a death-groan, and that dreadful noise, that hideous gurgle ofbreath strangled by a rush of blood. And then a long shake, acute,brilliant, triumphant.

  The door gave way beneath my weight, one half crashed in. I entered. Iwas blinded by a flood of blue moonlight. It poured in through fourgreat windows, peaceful and diaphanous, a pale blue mist of moonlight,and turned the huge room into a kind of submarine cave, paved withmoonbeams, full of shimmers, of pools of moonlight. It was as bright asat midday, but the brightness was cold, blue, vaporous, supernatural.The room was completely empty, like a great hayloft. Only, there hungfrom the ceiling the ropes which had once supported a chandelier; andin a corner, among stacks of wood and heaps of Indian-corn, whencespread a sickly smell of damp and mildew, there stood a long, thinharpsichord, with spindle-legs, and its cover cracked from end to end.

  I felt, all of a sudden, very calm. The one thing that mattered was thephrase that kept moving in my head, the phrase of that unfinishedcadence which I had heard but an instant before. I opened theharpsichord, and my fingers came down boldly upon its keys. Ajingle-jangle of broken strings, laughable and dreadful, was the onlyanswer.

  Then an extraordinary fear overtook me. I clambered out of one of thewindows; I rushed up the garden and wandered through the fields, amongthe canals and the embankments, until the moon had set and the dawnbegan to shiver, followed, pursued for ever by that jangle of brokenstrings.

  People expressed much satisfaction at my recovery.

  It seems that one dies of those fevers.

  Recovery? But have I recovered? I walk, and eat and drink and talk; Ican even sleep. I live the life of other living creatures. But I amwasted by a strange and deadly disease. I can never lay hold of my owninspiration. My head is filled with music which is certainly by me,since I have never heard it before, but which still is not my own,which I despise and abhor: little, tripping flourishes and languishingphrases, and long-drawn, echoing cadences.

  O wicked, wicked voice, violin of flesh and blood made by the EvilOne's hand, may I not even execrate thee in peace; but is it necessarythat, at the moment when I curse, the longing to hear thee again shouldparch my soul like hell-thirst? And since I have satiated thy lust forrevenge, since thou hast withered my life and withered my genius, is itnot time for pity? May I not hear one note, only one note of thine, Osinger, O wicked and contemptible wretch?

  _Other books by Vernon Lee_

  Fiction

  _Miss Brown_

  _Baldwin_