textfiles/etext/AUTHORS/POE/poe-assignation-667.txt

                                      1834

                                THE ASSIGNATION

                               by Edgar Allan Poe

  (The Visionary)

    Stay for me there! I will not fail

    To meet thee in that hollow vale.

    [Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of

                        Chichester.]

  ILL-FATED and mysterious man! --bewildered in the brilliancy of
thine own and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in
fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen before me! --not
--oh not as thou art --in the cold valley and shadow --but as thou
shouldst be --squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in
that city of dim visions, thine own Venice --which is a star-beloved
Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces
look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her
silent waters. Yes! I repeat it-as thou shouldst be. There are
surely other worlds than this --other thoughts than the thoughts of
the multitude --other speculations than the speculations of the
sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee
for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a 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 --aah! 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 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 little life in struggles to call upon her name.

  She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the
black mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more than
half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered,
amid a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head, in
curls like those of the young hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze-like
drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form;
but the mid-summer and midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no
motion in the statue-like form itself, stirred even the folds of
that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble
hangs around the Niobe. Yet --strange to say! --her large lustrous
eyes were not turned downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest
hope lay buried --but riveted in a widely different direction! The
prison of the Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in all
Venice --but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath
her lay stifling her only child? Yon dark, gloomy niche, too, yawns
right opposite her chamber window --what, then, could there be in
its shadows --in its architecture --in its ivy-wreathed and solemn
cornices --that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at a thousand
times before? Nonsense! --Who does not remember that, at such a time
as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of
its sorrow, and sees in innumerable far-off places, the wo which is
close at hand?

  Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the
water-gate, stood, in full dress, the Satyr-like figure of Mentoni
himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming a guitar, and
seemed ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he gave directions
for the recovery of his child. Stupefied and aghast, I had myself no
power to move from the upright position I had assumed upon first
hearing the shriek, and must have presented to the eyes of the
agitated group a spectral and ominous appearance, as with pale
countenance and rigid limbs, I floated down among them in that
funereal gondola.

  All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in the search
were relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy sorrow.
There seemed but little hope for the child; (how much less than for
the mother!) but now, from the interior of that dark niche which has
been already mentioned as forming a part of the Old Republican prison,
and as fronting the lattice of the Marchesa, a figure muffled in a
cloak, stepped out within reach of the light, and, pausing a moment
upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged headlong into the
canal. As, in an instant afterwards, he stood with the still living
and breathing child within his grasp, upon the marble flagstones by
the side of the Marchesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching water,
became unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to
the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful person of a very young
man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of Europe was
then ringing.

  No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will now
receive her child --she will press it to her heart --she will cling to
its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas! another's
arms have taken it from the stranger --another's arms have taken it
away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace! And the
Marchesa! Her lip --her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in
her eyes --those eyes which, like Pliny's acanthus, are "soft and
almost liquid." Yes! tears are gathering in those eyes-and see! the
entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started
into life! The pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the
marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly
flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shudder
quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli about
the rich silver lilies in the grass.

  Why should that lady blush! To this demand there is no answer
--except that, having left, in the eager haste and terror of a
mother's heart, the privacy of her own boudoir, she has neglected to
enthrall her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly forgotten to
throw over her Venetian shoulders that drapery which is their due.
What other possible reason could there have been for her so
blushing? --for the glance of those wild appealing eyes? for the
unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom? --for the convulsive
pressure of that trembling hand? --that hand which fell, as Mentoni
turned into the palace, accidentally, upon the hand of the stranger.
What reason could there have been for the low --the singularly low
tone of those unmeaning words which the lady uttered hurriedly in
bidding him adieu? "Thou hast conquered --" she said, or the murmurs
of the water deceived me-"thou hast conquered --one hour after sunrise
--we shall meet --so let it be!"

  The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the palace,
and the stranger, whom I now recognized, stood alone upon the flags.
He shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye glanced around in
search of a gondola. I could not do less than offer him the service of
my own; and he accepted the civility. Having obtained an oar at the
water-gate, we proceeded together to his residence, while he rapidly
recovered his self-possession, and spoke of our former slight
acquaintance in terms of great apparent cordiality.

  There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being
minute. The person of the stranger --let me call him by this title,
who to all the world was still a stranger --the person of the stranger
is one of these subjects. In height he might have been below rather
than above the medium size: although there were moments of intense
passion when his frame actually expanded and belled the assertion. The
light, almost slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that
ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that
Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort,
upon occasions of more dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of
a deity --singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from
pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet --and a profusion of
curling, black hair, from which a forehead of unusual breadth
gleamed forth at intervals all light and ivory --his were features
than which I have seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps,
the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his countenance was,
nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen at some period of
their lives, and have never afterwards seen again. It had no
peculiar --it had no settled predominant expression to be fastened
upon the memory; a countenance seen and instantly forgotten --but
forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of recalling it to
mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any time,
to throw its own distinct image upon the mirror of that face --but
that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the passion, when
the passion had departed.

  Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me,
in what I thought an urgent manner, to call upon him very early the
next morning. Shortly after sunrise, I found myself accordingly at his
Palazzo, one of those huge structures of gloomy, yet fantastic pomp,
which tower above the waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity of the
Rialto. I was shown up a broad winding staircase of mosaics, into an
apartment whose unparalleled splendor burst through the opening door
with an actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness.

  I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his
possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of
ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not bring
myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe could
have supplied the princely magnificence which burned and blazed
around.

  Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still
brilliantly lighted up. I judge from this circumstance, as well as
from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had
not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. In the
architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design had
been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the
decora of what is technically called keeping, or to the proprieties of
nationality. The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon
none --neither the grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the
sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of
untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled
to the vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to
be discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting
perfumes, reeking up from strange convolute censers, together with
multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and violet
fire. The rays of the newly, risen sun poured in upon the whole,
through windows formed each of a single pane of crimson-tinted
glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections, from curtains
which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver,
the beams of natural glory mingled at length fitfully with the
artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of
rich, liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold.

  "Ha! ha! ha! --ha! ha! ha!" --laughed the proprietor, motioning me
to a seat as I entered the room, and throwing himself back at full
length upon an ottoman. "I see," said he, perceiving that I could
not immediately reconcile myself to the bienseance of so singular a
welcome --"I see you are astonished at my apartment --at my statues
--my pictures --my originality of conception in architecture and
upholstery --absolutely drunk, eh? with my magnificence? But pardon
me, my dear sir, (here his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit of
cordiality,) pardon me for my uncharitable laughter. You appeared so
utterly astonished. Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous
that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most
glorious of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More --a very fine man was
Sir Thomas More --Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in
the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of characters
who came to the same magnificent end. Do you know, however," continued
he musingly, "that at Sparta (which is now Palaeochori,) at Sparta,
I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible
ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which are still legible the letters
'LASM'. They are undoubtedly part of 'GELASMA'. Now at Sparta were a
thousand temples and shrines to a thousand different divinities. How
exceedingly strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived
all the others! But in the present instance," he resumed, with a
singular alteration of voice and manner, "I have no right to be
merry at your expense. You might well have been amazed. Europe
cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My
other apartments are by no means of the same order; mere ultras of
fashionable insipidity. This is better than fashion --is it not? Yet
this has but to be seen to become the rage --that is, with those who
could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded,
however, against any such profanation. With one exception you are
the only human being besides myself and my valet, who has been
admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since
they have been bedizened as you see!"

  I bowed in acknowledgment; for the overpowering sense of splendor
and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected eccentricity of
his address and manner, prevented me from expressing, in words, my
appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment.

  "Here," he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered
around the apartment, "here are paintings from the Greeks to
Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you
see, with little deference to the opinions of Virtu. They are all,
however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here too, are
some chefs d'oeuvre of the unknown great --and here unfinished designs
by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity
of the academies has left to silence and to me. What think you,"
said he, turning abruptly as he spoke --"what think you of this
Madonna della Pieta?"

  It is Guido's own!" I said with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for
I had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. "It is
Guido's own! --how could you have obtained it? --she is undoubtedly in
painting what the Venus is in sculpture."

  "Ha!" said he thoughtfully, "the Venus --the beautiful Venus?
--the Venus of the Medici? --she of the diminutive head and the gilded
hair? Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard
with difficulty,) and all the right are restorations, and in the
coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all
affectation. Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too! --is a copy
--there can be no doubt of it --blind fool that I am, who cannot
behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot help --pity me!
--I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who
said that the statuary found his statue in the block of marble? Then
Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet --

            'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto

             Che tin marmo solo in se non circonscriva.'"

It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true
gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing of the
vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such
difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full
force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that
eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament
and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit
which seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other human
beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought,
pervading even his most trivial actions --intruding upon his moments
of dalliance --and interweaving itself with his very flashes of
merriment --like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning
masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.

  I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled
tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon
matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation --a
degree of nervous unction in action and in speech --an unquiet
excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times
unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm.
Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose
commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening in
the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a
visitor, or to sounds, which must have had existence in his
imagination alone.

  It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent
abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar
Politian's beautiful tragedy "The Orfeo," (the first native Italian
tragedy,) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage
underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third
act --a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement --a passage
which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a
thrill of novel emotion --no woman without a sigh. The whole page
was blotted with fresh tears, and, upon the opposite interleaf, were
the following English lines, written in a hand so very different
from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some
difficulty in recognising it as his own.

          Thou wast that all to me, love,

            For which my soul did pine --

          A green isle in the sea, love,

            A fountain and a shrine,

          All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers;

            And all the flowers were mine.

          Ah, dream too bright to last;

            Ah, starry Hope that didst arise

          But to be overcast!

            A voice from out the Future cries

          "Onward!" --but o'er the Past

            (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies,

          Mute, motionless, aghast!

          For alas! alas! me

            The light of life is o'er.

          "No more-no more-no more,"

            (Such language holds the solemn sea

          To the sands upon the shore,)

            Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

          Or the stricken eagle soar!

          Now all my hours are trances;

            And all my nightly dreams

          Are where the dark eye glances,

            And where thy footstep gleams,

          In what ethereal dances,

            By what Italian streams.

          Alas! for that accursed time

            They bore thee o'er the billow,

          For Love to titled age and crime,

            And an unholy pillow --

          From me, and from our misty clime,

            Where weeps the silver willow!

  That these lines were written in English --a language with which I
had not believed their author acquainted --afforded me little matter
for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his
acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing
them from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery;
but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little
amazement. It had been originally written London, and afterwards
carefully overscored --not, however, so effectually as to conceal
the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say this occasioned me no little
amazement; for I well remember that, in a former conversation with a
friend, I particularly inquired if he had at any time met in London
the Marchesa di Mentoni, (who for some years previous to her
marriage had resided in that city,) when his answer, if I mistake not,
gave me to understand that he had never visited the metropolis of
Great Britain. I might as well here mention, that I have more than
once heard, (without of course giving credit to a report involving
so many improbabilities,) that the person of whom I speak was not only
by birth, but in education, an Englishman.

  "There is one painting," said he, without being aware of my notice
of the tragedy --"there is still one painting which you have not
seen." And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full length
portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.

  Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her
superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me
the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before
me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was
beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible
anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found
inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay
folded over her bosom. With her left she pointed downward to a
curiously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone visible, barely
touched the earth --and, scarcely discernible in the brilliant
atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness,
floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My glance fell
from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words
of Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois quivered instinctively upon my lips:

                      "He is up

           There like a Roman statue! He will stand

           Till Death hath made him marble!"

"Come!" he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled
and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets fantastically
stained, together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same
extraordinary model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and
filled with what I supposed to be Johannisberger. "Come!" he said
abruptly, "let us drink! It is early --but let us drink. It is
indeed early," he continued, musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden
hammer, made the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise
--"It is indeed early, but what matters it? let us drink! Let us
pour out an offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and
censers are so eager to subdue!" And, having made me pledge him in a
bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine.

  "To dream", he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory
conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the
magnificent vases --"to dream has been the business of my life. I have
therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the
heart of Venice could I have erected a better? You behold around
you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The
chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the
sphynxes of Egypt are outstretched upon carpets of gold. Yet the
effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and
especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the
contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself a decorist: but
that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the
fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is
writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me
for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now
rapidly departing." He here paused abruptly, bent his head to his
bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound which I could not hear. At
length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards and ejaculated the lines
of the Bishop of Chichester: --

           Stay for me there! I will not fail

           To meet thee in that hollow vale.

In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw
himself at full length upon an ottoman.

  A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at
the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a second
disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's household burst into the room,
and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent
words, "My mistress! --my mistress! --poisoned! --poisoned! Oh
beautiful --oh beautiful Aphrodite!"

  Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the
sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs were
rigid --his lips were livid --his lately beaming eyes were riveted
in death. I staggered back toward the table --my hand fell upon a
cracked and blackened goblet --and a consciousness of the entire and
terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.

                                                     -THE END-
.