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The Assignation
by Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849)
Stay for me
there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
HENRY KING, Bishop of Chichester,
Exequy on the death of his wife
Ill-fated and mysterious
man!--bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the
flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form
hath risen before me!--not--oh not as thou art--in the cold valley and shadow--but
as thou shouldst be--squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that
city of dim visions, thine own Venice--which is a star-beloved Elysium of the
sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and
bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I repeat it--as thou
shouldst be. There are surely other worlds than this--other thoughts than the
thoughts of the multitude-- other speculations than the speculations of the
sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy
visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which
were but the overflowing of thine everlasting energies?
It was at Venice,
beneath the covered archway there called the Ponte di Sospiri, that I met for
the third or fourth time the person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection
that I bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember--ah!
how should I forget?--the deep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs, the beauty of
woman, and the Genius of Romance that stalked up and down the narrow canal.
It was a night
of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza had sounded the fifth hour of
the Italian evening. The square of the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and
the lights in the old Ducal Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home
from the Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite
the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly
upon the night, in one wild, hysterical, and long-continued shriek. Startled
at the sound, I sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip his single
oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were
consequently left to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater
into the smaller channel. Like some huge and sable-feathered condor, we were
slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand flambeaux
flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal Palace, turned
all at once that deep gloom into a livid and preternatural day.
A child, slipping
from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an upper window of the lofty
structure into the deep and dim canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly
over their victim; and, although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many
a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon the surface,
the treasure which was to be found, alas! only within the abyss. Upon the broad
black marble flagstones at the entrance of the palace, and a few steps above
the water, stood a figure which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten.
It was the Marchesa Aphrodite--the adoration of all Venice--the gayest of the
gay--the most lovely where all were beautiful--but still the young wife of the
old and intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and
only one, who now deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of
heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to
call upon her name.
She stood alone.
Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of marble beneath
her. Her hair, not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room
array, clustered, amid a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head,
in curls like those of the young hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze-like drapery
seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form; but the midsummer
and midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion in the statue-like
form itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapour which hung
around it as the heavy marble hangs around the Niobe. Yet--strange to say!--her
large lustrous eyes were not turned downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest
hope lay buried-- but riveted in a widely different direction! The prison of
the Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in all Venice-- but how
could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath her lay stifling her only
child? Yon dark, gloomy niche, too, yawns right opposite her chamber window--what,
then, could there be in its shadows--in its architecture--in its ivy-wreathed
and solemn cornices--that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at a thousand
times before? Nonsense!-- Who does not remember that, at such a time as this,
the eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees
in innumerable far- off places the woe which is close at hand?
Many steps above
the Marchesa, and within the arch of the water-gate, stood, in full dress, the
Satyr-like figure of Mentoni himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming
a guitar, and seemed ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he gave directions
for the recovery of his child. Stupefied and aghast, I had myself no power to
move from the upright position I had assumed upon first hearing the shriek,
and must have presented to the eyes of the agitated group a spectral and ominous
appearance, as with pale countenance and rigid limbs, I floated down among them
in that funereal gondola.
All efforts proved
in vain. Many of the most energetic in the search were relaxing their exertions,
and yielding to a gloomy sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child (how much less than for the mother!); but now, from the interior of that dark
niche which has been already mentioned as forming a part of the Old Republican
prison, and as fronting the lattice of the Marchesa, a figure muffled in a cloak
stepped out within reach of the light, and, pausing a moment upon the verge
of the giddy descent, plunged headlong into the canal. As, in an instant afterwards,
he stood with the still living and breathing child within his grasp, upon the
marble flagstones by the side of the Marchesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching
water, became unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to
the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful person of a very young man, with
the sound of whose name the greater part of Europe was then ringing.
No word spoke
the deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will now receive her child--she will press
it to her heart--she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her
caresses. Alas! another's arms have taken it from the stranger--another's arms
have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace! And the
Marchesa! Her lip--her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes--those
eyes which, like Pliny's acanthus, are 'soft and almost liquid'. Yes! tears
are gathering in those eyes--and see! the entire woman thrills throughout the
soul, and the statue has started into life! The pallor of the marble countenance,
the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold
suddenly flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shudder
quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli about the rich silver
lilies in the grass.
Why should that
lady blush! To this demand there is no answer--except that, having left, in
the eager haste and terror of a mother's heart, the privacy of her own boudoir,
she has neglected to enthrall her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly forgotten
to throw over her Venetian shoulders that drapery which is their due. What other
possible reason could there have been for her so blushing?--for the glance of
those wild appealing eyes? for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom?--for
the convulsive pressure of that trembling hand?--that hand which fell, as Mentoni
turned into the palace, accidentally, upon the hand of the stranger. What reason
could there have been for the low--the singularly low tone of those unmeaning
words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu? 'Thou hast conquered--'
she said, or the murmurs of the water deceived me--'thou hast conquered--one
hour after sunrise--we shall meet-- so let it be!'
The tumult had subsided,
the lights had died away within the palace, and the stranger, whom I now recognized,
stood alone upon the flags. He shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye
glanced around in search of a gondola. I could not do less than offer him the
service of my own; and he accepted the civility. Having obtained an oar at the
water-gate, we proceeded together to his residence, while he rapidly recovered
his self-possession, and spoke of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great
apparent cordiality.
There are some
subjects upon which I take pleasure in being minute. The person of the stranger--let
me call him by this title, who to all the world was still a stranger--the person
of the stranger is one of these subjects. In height he might have been below
rather than above the medium size: although there were moments of intense passion
when his frame actually expanded and belied the assertion. The light, almost
slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he
evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has
been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency.
With the mouth and chin of a deity-- singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose
shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet--and a profusion
of curling, black hair, from which a forehead of unusual breadth gleamed forth
at intervals all light and ivory--his were features than which I have seen none
more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus.
Yet his countenance was, nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen
at some period of their lives, and have never afterwards seen again. It had
no peculiar--it had no settled predominant expression to be fastened upon the
memory; a countenance seen and instantly forgotten--but forgotten with a vague
and never-ceasing desire of recalling it to mind. Not that the spirit of each
rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw its own distinct image upon the
mirror of that face--but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of
the passion, when the passion had departed.
Upon leaving him
on the night of our adventure, he solicited me, in what I thought an urgent
manner, to call upon him very early the next morning. Shortly after sunrise,
I found myself accordingly at his Palazzo, one of those huge structures of gloomy,
yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity
of the Rialto. I was shown up a broad winding staircase of mosaics, into an
apartment whose unparalleled splendour burst through the opening door with an
actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness.
I knew my acquaintance
to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his possessions in terms which I had even
ventured to call terms of ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me,
I could not bring myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe
could have supplied the princely magnificence which burned and blazed around.
Although, as I
say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I judge
from this circumstance, as well as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance
of my friend, that he had not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding
night. In the architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design
had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the decora
of what is technically called keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality.
The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon none-- neither the grotesques
of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the
huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled
to the vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be discovered.
The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from
strange convolute censers, together with multitudinous flaring and flickering
tongues of emerald and violet fire. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in
upon the whole, through windows formed each of a single pane of crimson- tinted
glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections, from curtains which rolled
from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural glory
mingled at length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued
masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold.
'Ha! ha! ha!--ha!
ha! ha!'--laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat as I entered the room,
and throwing himself back at full-length upon an ottoman. 'I see,' said he,
perceiving that I could not immediately reconcile myself to the bienseance of
so singular a welcome--'I see you are astonished at my apartment--at my statues--my
pictures--my originality of conception in architecture and upholstery--absolutely
drunk, eh? with my magnificence? But pardon me, my dear sir,' (here his tone
of voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality) 'pardon me for my uncharitable
laughter. You appeared so utterly astonished. Besides, some things are so completely
ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious
of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More--a very fine man was Sir Thomas More--Sire
Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in the Absurdities of Ravisius
Textor, there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent
end. Do you know, however,' continued he musingly, 'that at Sparta (which is
now Palaeochori)--at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos
of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which are still legible
the letters . They are undoubtedly part of . Now at Sparta were a thousand temples
and shrines to a thousand different divinities. How exceedingly strange that
the altar of Laughter should have survived all the others! But in the present
instance,' he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice and manner, 'I have
no right to be merry at your expense. You might well have been amazed. Europe
cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My other apartments
are by no means of the same order; mere ultras of fashionable insipidity. This
is better than fashion--is it not? Yet this has but to be seen to become the
rage--that is, with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony.
I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one exception you
are the only human being besides myself and my valet, who has been admitted
within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they have been bedizened
as you see!'
I bowed in acknowledgment;
for the overpowering sense of splendour and perfume, and music, together with
the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing,
in words, my appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment.
'Here,' he resumed,
arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment--'here are
paintings from the Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour.
Many are chosen, as you see, with little deference to the opinions of Virtu.
They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here too,
are some chefs d'oeuvre of the unknown great--and here unfinished designs by
men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies
has left to silence and to me. What think you,' said he, turning abruptly as
he spoke--'what think you of this Madonna della Pieta?'
'It is Guido's
own!' I said with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been poring intently
over its surpassing loveliness. 'It is Guido's own!--how could you have obtained
it?--she is undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in sculpture.'
'Ha!' said he
thoughtfully, 'the Venus--the beautiful Venus?--the Venus of the Medici?--she
of the diminutive head and the gilded hair? Part of the left arm' (here his
voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty), 'and all the right are restorations,
and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all
affectation. Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too!--is a copy--there can be no
doubt of it--blind fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration
of the Apollo! I cannot help --pity me!--I cannot help preferring the Antinous.
Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary found his statue in the block
of marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet--
'Non ha l'ottimo
artista alcun concetto
Che un marmo solo
in se non circonscriva.'
It has been, or
should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentleman, we are always
aware of a difference from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once
precisely able to determine in what such difference consists. Allowing the remark
to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanour of my acquaintance,
I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral
temperament and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit
which seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other human beings,
than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading even
his most trivial actions--intruding upon his moments of dalliance--and interweaving
itself with his very flashes of merriment--like adders which writhe from out
the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.
I could not help ,
however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity
with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain
air of trepidation--a degree of nervous unction in action and in speech- -an
unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times unaccountable,
and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing
in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten,
he seemed to be listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary
expectation of a visitor, or to sounds which must have had existence in his
imagination alone.
It was during
one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in turning over
a page of the poet and scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy of The Orfeo (the
first native Italian tragedy) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered
a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third
act--a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement--a passage which, although
tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion--no
woman without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears, and, upon
the opposite interleaf, were the following English lines, written in a hand
so very different from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had
some difficulty in recognizing it as his own.
Thou wast that
all to me, love,
For which my soul
did pine--
A green isle in
the sea, love,
A fountain and
a shrine,
All wreathed with
fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers
were mine.
Ah, dream too
bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope!
that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out
the Future cries,
'On! on!'--but
o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my
spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless,
aghast!
For alas! alas!
with me.
The light of life
is o'er.
'No more--no more--no
more'
(Such language
holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon
the shore)
Shall bloom the
thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken
eagle soar!
Now all my days
are trances,
And all my nightly
dreams
Are where thy
grey eye glances,
And where thy
footstep gleams--
In what ethereal
dances,
By what Italian
streams.
Alas! for that
accursed time
They bore thee
o'er the billow,
From Love to titled
age and crime,
And an unholy
pillow--
From me, and from
our misty clime,
Where weeps the
silver willow!
That these lines
were written in English--a language with which I had not believed their author
acquainted--afforded me little matter for surprise. I was too well aware of
the extent of his acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing
them from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery; but the place
of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little amazement. It had been originally
written London, and afterwards carefully overscored--not, however, so effectually
as to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say this occasioned me no
little amazement; for I well remember that, in a former conversation with my
friend, I particularly inquired if he had at any time met in London the Marchesa
di Mentoni (who for some years previous to her marriage had resided in that
city), when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that he had
never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well here mention,
that I have more than once heard (without of course giving credit to a report
involving so many improbabilities), that the person of whom I speak was not
only by birth, but in education, an Englishman.
*
'There is one
painting,' said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy--'there
is still one painting which you have not seen.' And throwing aside a drapery,
he discovered a full-length portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.
Human art could
have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal
figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal
Palace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance,
which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible
anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable
from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom.
With her left she pointed downwards to a curiously fashioned vase. One small,
fairy foot, alone visible, barely touched the earth--and, scarcely discernible
in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness,
floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My glance fell from the
painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman's Bussy
D'Ambois quivered instinctively upon my lips:
He is up
There like a Roman
statue! He will stand
Till Death hath
made him marble!
'Come!' he said
at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled and massive silver, upon
which were a few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan
vases, fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the foreground of
the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be Johannisberger. 'Come!'
he said abruptly, 'let us drink! It is early--but let us drink. It is indeed
early,' he continued, musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made
the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise--'It is indeed early, but
what matters it? Let us drink! Let us pour out an offering to yon solemn sun
which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue!' And, having made
me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets
of the wine.
'To dream,' he
continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to
the rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases--'to dream has been
the business of my life. I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower
of dreams. In the heart of Venice, could I have erected a better? You behold
around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The chastity
of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the sphinxes of Egypt are
outstretched upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid
alone. Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which
terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself
a decorist: but that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this
is now the fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is
writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder
visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now rapidly departing.' He
here paused abruptly, bent his head to his bosom, and seemed to listen to a
sound which I could not hear. At length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards
and ejaculated the lines of the Bishop of Chichester:--
Stay for me there!
I will not fail
To meet thee in
that hollow vale.
In the next instant,
confessing the power of the wine, he threw himself at full length upon an ottoman.
A quick step was
now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded.
I was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's
household burst into the room, and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion,
the incoherent words, 'My mistress!--my mistress!--poisoned!--poisoned! Oh beautiful--oh
beautiful Aphrodite!'
Bewildered, I
flew to the ottoman, and endeavoured to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the
startling intelligence. But his limbs were rigid--his lips were livid--his lately
beaming eyes were riveted in death. I staggered back towards the table--my hand
fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet--and a consciousness of the entire
and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.
###
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