A snowy-white and gauze-like
drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form;
but the mid-summer 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 vapor 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 wo 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.
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