Descending From The Palace By A Staircase, Called, I Thought, The
Giant's--I Had Some Imaginary Recollection Of An Old
Man
abdicating, coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, when he
heard the bell, proclaiming his successor--I glided
Off, in one of
the dark boats, until we came to an old arsenal guarded by four
marble lions. To make my Dream more monstrous and unlikely, one of
these had words and sentences upon its body, inscribed there, at an
unknown time, and in an unknown language; so that their purport was
a mystery to all men.
There was little sound of hammers in this place for building ships,
and little work in progress; for the greatness of the city was no
more, as I have said. Indeed, it seemed a very wreck found
drifting on the sea; a strange flag hoisted in its honourable
stations, and strangers standing at its helm. A splendid barge in
which its ancient chief had gone forth, pompously, at certain
periods, to wed the ocean, lay here, I thought, no more; but, in
its place, there was a tiny model, made from recollection like the
city's greatness; and it told of what had been (so are the strong
and weak confounded in the dust) almost as eloquently as the
massive pillars, arches, roofs, reared to overshadow stately ships
that had no other shadow now, upon the water or the earth.
An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled; but an armoury.
With a fierce standard taken from the Turks, drooping in the dull
air of its cage. Rich suits of mail worn by great warriors were
hoarded there; crossbows and bolts; quivers full of arrows; spears;
swords, daggers, maces, shields, and heavy-headed axes. Plates of
wrought steel and iron, to make the gallant horse a monster cased
in metal scales; and one spring-weapon (easy to be carried in the
breast) designed to do its office noiselessly, and made for
shooting men with poisoned darts.
One press or case I saw, full of accursed instruments of torture
horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind and crush men's
bones, and tear and twist them with the torment of a thousand
deaths. Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces:
made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of living
sufferers; and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil,
where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease, and
listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions
of the wretch within. There was that grim resemblance in them to
the human shape--they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained
and cramped--that it was difficult to think them empty; and
terrible distortions lingering within them, seemed to follow me,
when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or
public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees. But I
forgot them when I stood upon its farthest brink--I stood there, in
my dream--and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun; before
me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush; and behind me the
whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple, on the water.
In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed
of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there
were days and nights in it; and when the sun was high, and when the
rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still
afloat, I thought: plashing the slippery walls and houses with the
cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed
along the streets.
Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast palaces, I
wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle, through
labyrinths of rich altars, ancient monuments; decayed apartments
where the furniture, half awful, half grotesque, was mouldering
away. Pictures were there, replete with such enduring beauty and
expression: with such passion, truth and power: that they seemed
so many young and fresh realities among a host of spectres. I
thought these, often intermingled with the old days of the city:
with its beauties, tyrants, captains, patriots, merchants,
counters, priests: nay, with its very stones, and bricks, and
public places; all of which lived again, about me, on the walls.
Then, coming down some marble staircase where the water lapped and
oozed against the lower steps, I passed into my boat again, and
went on in my dream.
Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane
and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon
the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a
tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long
steeping in the wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone
green and bright, making unusual shadows on the pavement with its
trembling leaves. Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully
veiled, were passing and repassing, and where idlers were reclining
in the sunshine, on flag-stones and on flights of steps. Past
bridges, where there were idlers too; loitering and looking over.
Below stone balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the
loftiest windows of the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden,
theatres, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture--Gothic--
Saracenic--fanciful with all the fancies of all times and
countries. Past buildings that were high, and low, and black, and
white, and straight, and crooked; mean and grand, crazy and strong.
Twining among a tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out
at last into a Grand Canal! There, in the errant fancy of my
dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all
built upon with shops and humming with the tongues of men; a form I
seemed to know for Desdemona's, leaned down through a latticed
blind to pluck a flower.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 31 of 72
Words from 30734 to 31734
of 73541
