Part 12

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 piles of gloomy, yet fantastic grandeur, 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 splendor burst through the opening door with an actual glare, making me sick 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 far more than imperial magnificence which burned and blazed around.

Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I judged 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 vibrations of low, melancholy music, whose unseen origin, undoubtedly lay in the recesses of the crimson trelliss work which tapestried the ceiling. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange Arabesque censers, which seemed actually endued with a monstrous vitality, as their particolored fires writhed up and down, and around about their extravagant proportions. 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. Here then had the hand of genius been at work. A chaos--a wilderness of beauty lay before me. A sense of dreamy and incoherent grandeur took possession of my soul, and I remained within the door-way speechless.

Ha! ha! ha!--ha! ha! ha!--laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat, 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, my dear sir, 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--Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end, in the _Absurdities_ of Ravisius Textor. Do you know, however,"--continued he musingly--"that at Sparta (which is now Palæochori), 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 [Greek: LASM]. They are undoubtedly part of [Greek: GELASMA]. 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--"in the present instance 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, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts."

I bowed in acknowledgement: for the overpowering sense of splendor 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 Virtû. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here too, are some _chéf d'oeuvres_ 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 Pietà?"

"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 Medicis?--she of the gilded hair?--the work of Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian? 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. 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 Michæl Angelo was by no means original in his couplet--

'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto Chè un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.'"

* * * * *

It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentlemen, 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 demeanor 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 _intensity_ 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 visiter, 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 "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 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 around about with flowers; And the flowers--they all were mine.

But the dream--it could not last; And the star of Hope did rise But to be overcast. A voice from out the Future cries "Onward!"--while o'er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies, Mute, motionless, aghast!

For alas!--alas!--with me Ambition--all--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!

And all my hours are trances; And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark 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--but 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 coarse 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 Vin de Barâc. "Come!" he said abruptly, "let us drink! It is early--but let us drink! It is _indeed_ early," he continued thoughtfully 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 the 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 sphynxes of Egypt are stretching 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." Thus saying, he confessed the power of the wine, and 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 chokeing with emotion, the incoherent words, "My mistress!--my mistress!--poisoned!--poisoned! Oh beautiful--oh beautiful Aphrodite!"

Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored 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.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

PETER'S MOUNTAIN.

An extract from the unpublished Journal of a Tourist.

The third and last mountain over which the traveller passes, as he proceeds from Fincastle to the Sweet Springs, is Peter's Mountain--here called the Sweet Spring Mountain. This is, on several accounts, one of the most remarkable mountains in Virginia. It is remarkable, in the first place, for the appearance of regularity which it presents to the eye of the traveller, when viewed from the west. It extends sixty or seventy miles, between Jackson river on the north, and New river on the south, apparently in a straight line, and of nearly a uniform elevation. But this is not its whole extent. The mountain north of Jackson river, and that south of New river, are evidently continuations of the same mountain, and exhibit the same unbroken and regular appearance. While on the east there are numerous spurs extending from it in every direction, there is nothing of the kind observable on the west. Were it not for the magnitude of this mountain, its elevation, and its peculiar structure, we might readily have imagined it to be, like the Chinese wall, the work of man, constructed by the line and the plummet, in a former age, as a bulwark of defence, by some hardier race than ours; but these point us to the heavens for its great original.

As we looked back upon it from the valley on its west, our thoughts reverted to the period, when the red men of the forest took up the line of march, and relinquished the east to the peaceable possession of their treacherous invaders. Here, it was natural to suppose, they halted, and pitched their tents, and constructed their villages, and began again to feel as though they were "monarchs of all they surveyed." As they looked upon the mountain behind them, feelings of security would be restored, and they would consider this mountain as a barrier, reared by the Great Spirit for their protection.

"It is true, the white men made them wings--they flapped the winds, and passed over the wide waters, and up the big rivers. They gathered on the plains--they cleared the land, and made it theirs. But their wings were made for the waters, and not for the rugged mountains--and their feet are tender--they cannot encounter the flinty rock. Here, then, shall the waves of pride and oppression be stayed. Here may our wives and our children once more sit them down secure from foes, and build their fires, and gather their nuts, while we chase the deer and the buffalo in the far off west." Such we may suppose to have been the reflections of some savage chieftain, _nescius auræ fallacis_, as he looked upon the lofty, and seemingly interminable mountain bulwark before him. But, if such they were, they proved deceptive. A few revolving years passed away, and the white man was again on his borders. His track was seen on the mountain, and the stroke of his axe, and the shrill sound of his rifle were heard in the hollows. A few years more, and the Indian again disappeared, and the white man stood in his place--and the green grass grew, and the corn-blade rustled, and the farm house was seen, where once stood the rude villages, in which the chieftains had told the tale of the white man's fraud, and of their own and their father's wrong, and their own and their father's valor.

The circumstance which, more than any other, renders this mountain remarkable, is its intersection with that chain of mountains known as the Alleghany, which divides the waters that flow east into the Atlantic, from those which flow west into the Ohio and Mississippi. At about an equal distance between the Sweet Springs and Peterton, or the Grey Sulphur, the Alleghany dips under this mountain, and emerges again on its eastern side. The principal branches of the James river, head on the west of Peter's Mountain, but east of the Alleghany; while New river, the principal branch of the Great Kanawha, arises far to the east of Peter's Mountain, though west of the Alleghany. The waters of the Warm, Hot and Sweet Springs pass off to the ocean through the James river; while those of the White, Salt, Red and Grey Sulphur communicate with the Ohio, through the Kanawha.

This mountain, though uniform in its outline, is sufficiently variegated in other respects. In some places it sustains heavy forests, and is arable nearly to its summit; while in other places it is nearly denuded, sustaining only a stinted shrubbery. In some places, the large masses of sandstone which project near its summit, exhibit the most grotesque and romantic appearance. In the neighborhood of the Hot and Warm Springs, there are several very picturesque views. There is one in particular, which seen at the distance of three, four or five miles, has the appearance of a village in ruins, with some of its public edifices standing, and numerous villas or country mansions in a dilapidated state, scattered around it. In the skirts of this rocky village, is what appears to be an extensive burying-ground, with its vaults and tomb-stones, protecting the dust of the dead from the unhallowed tread of the living. In other places, the projections are less extensive, and resemble fortified outposts. As one gazes on such scenes, the mind is involuntarily led back to former ages, and the spectator is apt to fancy that he views one of the castles or fortified places, in which were transacted the tragical events of which he had heard or read in the records of a feudal age.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

THE DUEL.

"McCarthy is no more!" said George, as I rushed out on learning his arrival from the scene of conflict. "Raymond reserved his fire; then deliberately taking aim, sent his ball through the heart of our gallant friend, who stood firm and undaunted to receive his fire."

"Good God!" I exclaimed, "was there no man present whose humanity prompted him to interpose for the prevention of so murderous a deed?"

"The attempt was made," said George, "but unavailingly. Raymond was the challenged party, and with a savage sternness of purpose insisted on his right, according to the rules which were agreed upon to govern the conflict."

"He is a hardened villain," cried I, "stained with the blood of four victims; and palsied be the hand that has robbed society of so pure and generous a spirit as McCarthy's."

Struck with horror at the occurrence, and overwhelmed with sorrow at the loss of so worthy a friend, needing consolation myself rather than capable of affording any, I hurried nevertheless to the house of the deceased, to share, if not to alleviate the sufferings of his bereaved mother and sister. Never, never shall I forget the scene which there awaited me. The lifeless body of McCarthy, weltering in his own blood, lay extended on a large folding table. The ball had entered the right side, and with fatal energy had passed through the body, leaving a corresponding wound on the left. The mother and sister, with disordered hair and the wild expression of maniacs, stood at either side of the corpse, applying their mouths to the wounds from which the blood was still oozing; nor could anything short of absolute violence withdraw them from the body. They wept not--they spoke not; but in all the wild impassioned energy of despair, kept their mouths still applied to the gaping wounds of the son and brother.