ill to exclude brutal solutions. As my
confusion cooled I was lost in wonder at the importance I had attached
to Miss Bordereau's crumpled scraps; the thought of them became odious
to me, and I was as vexed with the old witch for the superstition that
had prevented her from destroying them as I was with myself for having
already spent more money than I could afford in attempting to control
their fate. I forget what I did, where I went after leaving the Lido and
at what hour or with what recovery of composure I made my way back to my
boat. I only know that in the afternoon, when the air was aglow with
the sunset, I was standing before the church of Saints John and Paul and
looking up at the small square-jawed face of Bartolommeo Colleoni, the
terrible condottiere who sits so sturdily astride of his huge bronze
horse, on the high pedestal on which Venetian gratitude maintains him.
The statue is incomparable, the finest of all mounted figures, unless
that of Marcus Aurelius, who rides benignant before the Roman Capitol,
be finer: but I was not thinking of that; I only found myself staring at
the triumphant captain as if he had an oracle on his lips. The western
light shines into all his grimness at that hour and makes it wonderfully
personal. But he continued to look far over my head, at the red
immersion of another day--he had seen so many go down into the lagoon
through the centuries--and if he were thinking of battles and stratagems
they were of a different quality from any I had to tell him of. He could
not direct me what to do, gaze up at him as I might. Was it before this
or after that I wandered about for an hour in the small canals, to
the continued stupefaction of my gondolier, who had never seen me so
restless and yet so void of a purpose and could extract from me no order
but "Go anywhere--everywhere--all over the place"? He reminded me that
I had not lunched and expressed therefore respectfully the hope that I
would dine earlier. He had had long periods of leisure during the day,
when I had left the boat and rambled, so that I was not obliged to
consider him, and I told him that that day, for a change, I would touch
no meat. It was an effect of poor Miss Tita's proposal, not altogether
auspicious, that I had quite lost my appetite. I don't know why it
happened that on this occasion I was more than ever struck with that
queer air of sociability, of cousinship and family life, which makes up
half the expression of