wasting away of life, which were but the
overflowings of thine everlasting energies?

It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the _Ponte di
Sospiri_, that I met for the third or fourth time the person of whom
I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I bring to mind
the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember--ah! how should I
forget?--the deep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs, the beauty of woman,
and the Genius of Romance that stalked up and down the narrow canal.

It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza had
sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of the
Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old Ducal
Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home from the Piazetta, by
way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth
of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly
upon the night, in one wild, hysterical, and long continued shriek.
Startled at the sound, I sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier,
letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a
chance of recovery, and we were consequently left to the guidance of the
current which here sets from the greater into the smaller channel.
Like some huge and sable-feathered condor, we were slowly drifting down
towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand flambeaux flashing from the
windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal Palace, turned all at once
that deep gloom into a livid and preternatural day.

A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an
upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal. The
quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim; and, although my own
gondola 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 l