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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 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. 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. Stupified 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
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