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 downward 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.
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