It is with a confused recollection that I bring to mind the
circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember --aah! 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 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.
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