He would then be convinced that the report was
groundless.”

Madame Montoni seemed to assume the air of a princess; but Montoni was
restless and discontented, and did not even observe the civility of
bidding her welcome to her home. Soon after his arrival, he ordered his gondola, and, with Cavigni, went
out to mingle in the scenes of the evening. Madame then became serious
and thoughtful. Emily, who was charmed with everything she saw,
endeavoured to enliven her; but reflection had not, with Madame
Montoni, subdued caprice and ill-humour, and her answers discovered so
much of both, that Emily gave up the attempt of diverting her, and
withdrew to a lattice, to amuse herself with the scene without, so new
and so enchanting. The first object that attracted her notice was a group of dancers on
the terrace below, led by a guitar and some other instruments. The
girl, who struck the guitar, and another, who flourished a tambourine,
passed on in a dancing step, and with a light grace and gaiety of
heart, that would have subdued the goddess of spleen in her worst
humour. After these came a group of fantastic figures, some dressed as
gondolieri, others as minstrels, while others seemed to defy all
description. They sung in parts, their voices accompanied by a few soft
instruments. At a little distance from the portico they stopped, and
Emily distinguished the verses of Ariosto. They sung of the wars of the
Moors against Charlemagne, and then of the woes of Orlando: afterwards
the measure changed, and the melancholy sweetness of Petrarch
succeeded. The magic of his grief was assisted by all that Italian
music and Italian expression, heightened by the enchantments of
Venetian moonlight, could give. Emily, as she listened, caught the pensive enthusiasm; her tears flowed
silently, while her fancy bore her far away to France and to
Valancourt. Each succeeding sonnet, more full of charming sadness than
the last, seemed to bind the spell of melancholy: with extreme regret
she saw the musicians move on, and her attention followed the strain
till the last faint warble died in air. She then remained sunk in that
pensive tranquillity which soft music leaves on the mind—a state like
that produced by the view of a beautiful landscape by moonlight, or by
the recollection of scenes marked with the tenderness of friends lost
for ever, and with sorrows, which time has mellowed into mild regret. Such scenes are indeed, to the mind, like “those faint traces which the
memory bears of music that is past.”

Other sounds soon awakened her attention: it was the solemn harmony of
horns, that swelled from a distance; and, observing the gondolas
arrange themselves along the margin of the terraces, she threw on her
veil, and, stepping into the balcony, discerned, in the distant
perspective of the canal, something like a procession, floating on the
light surface of the water: as it approached, the horns and other
instruments mingled sweetly, and soon after the fabled deities of the
city seemed to have arisen from the ocean; for Neptune, with Venice
personified as his queen, came on the undulating waves, surrounded by
tritons and sea-nymphs. The fantastic splendour of this spectacle,
together with the grandeur of the surrounding palaces, appeared like
the vision of a poet suddenly embodied, and the fanciful images, which
it awakened in Emily’s mind, lingered there long after the procession
had passed away. She indulged herself in imagining what might be the
manners and delights of a sea-nymph, till she almost wished to throw
off the habit of mortality, and plunge into the green wave to
participate them. “How delightful,” said she, “to live amidst the coral bowers and
crystal caverns of the ocean, with my sister nymphs, and listen to the
sounding waters above, and to the soft shells of the tritons! and then,
after sunset, to skim on the surface of the waves round wild rocks and
along sequestered shores, where, perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes
to weep! Then would I soothe his sorrows with my sweet music, and offer
him from a shell some of the delicious fruit that hangs round Neptune’s
palace.”

She was recalled from her reverie to a mere mortal supper, and could
not forbear smiling at the fancies she had been indulging, and at her
conviction of the serious displeasure, which Madame Montoni would have
expressed, could she have been made acquainted with them. After supper, her aunt sat late, but Montoni did not return, and she at
length retired to rest. If Emily had admired the magnificence of the
saloon, she was not less surprised, on observing the half-furnished and
forlorn appearance of the apartments she passed in the way to her
chamber, whither she went through long suites of noble rooms, that
seemed, from their desolate aspect, to have been unoccupied for many
years. On the walls of some were the faded remains of tapestry; from
others, painted in fresco, the damps had almost withdrawn both colours
and design. At length she reached her own chamber, spacious, desolate,
and lofty, like the rest, with high lattices that opened towards the
Adriatic. It brought gloomy images to her mind, but the view of the
Adriatic soon gave her others more airy, among which was that of the
sea-nymph, whose delights she had before amused herself with picturing;
and, anxious to escape from serious reflections, she now endeavoured to
throw her fanciful ideas into a train, and concluded the hour with
composing the following lines:

THE SEA-NYMPH

Down, down a thousand fathom deep,
Among the sounding seas I go;
Play round the foot of ev’ry steep
Whose cliffs above the ocean grow. There, within their secret cares,
I hear the mighty rivers roar;
And guide their streams through Neptune’s waves
To bless the green earth’s inmost shore:

And bid the freshen’d waters glide,
For fern-crown’d nymphs of lake, or brook,
Through winding woods and pastures wide,
And many a wild, romantic nook. For this the nymphs, at fall of eave,
Oft dance upon the flow’ry banks,
And sing my name, and garlands weave
To bear beneath the wave their thanks. In coral bow’rs I love to lie,
And hear the surges roll above,
And through the waters view on high
The proud ships sail, and gay clouds move. And oft at midnight’s stillest hour,
When summer seas the vessel lave,
I love to prove my charmful pow’r
While floating on the moonlight wave. And when deep sleep the crew has bound,
And the sad lover musing leans
O’er the ship’s side, I breathe around
Such strains as speak no mortal means! O’er the dim waves his searching eye
Sees but the vessel’s lengthen’d shade;
Above—the moon and azure sky;
Entranc’d he hears, and half afraid! Sometimes, a single note I swell,
That, softly sweet, at distance dies;
Then wake the magic of my shell,
And choral voices round me rise! The trembling youth, charm’d by my strain,
Calls up the crew, who, silent, bend
O’er the high deck, but list in vain;
My song is hush’d, my wonders end!