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As he watched Massimilla's gondola, navigated by men in livery, and cutting through the water a few yards in front, poor Emilio, with only an old gondolier who had been his father's servant in the days when Venice was still a living city, could not repress the bitter reflections suggested to him by the assumption of his title. "What a mockery of fortune!
The Prince, seeing Vendramin wandering about the parterre, went out for a few minutes of confidential talk with his friend, whom he had not seen for three months; and as they walked round the gangway which divides the seats in the pit from the lowest tier of boxes, he had an opportunity of observing Massimilla's reception of the foreigner. "Who is that Frenchman?" asked the Prince.
Massimilla's voice fell on your soul in waves of light; her touch released a thousand imprisoned joys which emerged from the convolutions of your brain to gather about you in clouds, to waft your etherealized body through the blue air to a purple glow far above the snowy heights, to where the pure love of angels dwells.
Evening after evening Massimilla's box was the first object of every opera-glass, and each woman would say to her lover, as she studied the Duchess and her adorer: "How far have they got?" The lover would examine Emilio, seeking some evidence of success; would find no expression but that of a pure and dejected passion.
Then in a passage that is pleasanter to think about than to read for Balzac when he spoke about art was something of a sciolist, and I am not sure that the passage is altogether grammatical he tells how the ideas of all the great artists, painters, and sculptors the ideas they have wrought on panels and in stone escaped from their niches and their frames all these disembodied maidens gathered round Massimilla's bed and wept.
But as he thought of the King of France Emilio's brow was knit, his ivory skin burned yellower, tears gathered in his black eyes and hung to his long lashes; he raised a hand worthy to be painted by Titian to push back his thick brown hair, and gazed again at Massimilla's gondola. "And this insolent mockery of fate is carried even into my love affair," said he to himself.
"My dear, love that poor Emilio," said the Signora Vulpato to Massimilla, as they met on the stairs in going out. "I do love him with all my might," replied the Duchess. "Then why does not he look happy?" Massimilla's reply was a little shrug of her shoulders.
Do not such peerless spirits scorn the coarser joys lavished by the Sicilian singer the material expression of that angelic union? These noble thoughts were in the Prince's mind as he reposed in heavenly calm on Massimilla's cool, soft, white bosom, under the gentle radiance of her eyes veiled by long, bright lashes; and he gave himself up to this dream of an ideal orgy.
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