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The Assignation By Edgar Allan Poe
PAGE: 1

THE ASSIGNATION

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 imagination, 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 - 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
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.  Stupified 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 enthral 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
belied 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.

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