I foresaw that I should have a summer after my own literary heart,
and the sense of holding my opportunity was much greater than
the sense of losing it. There could be no Venetian business
without patience, and since I adored the place I was much
more in the spirit of it for having laid in a large provision.
That spirit kept me perpetual company and seemed to look
out at me from the revived immortal face--in which all
his genius shone--of the great poet who was my prompter.
I had invoked him and he had come; he hovered before me half the time;
it was as if his bright ghost had returned to earth to tell me
that he regarded the affair as his own no less than mine and
that we should see it fraternally, cheerfully to a conclusion.
It was as if he had said, "Poor dear, be easy with her;
she has some natural prejudices; only give her time.
Strange as it may appear to you she was very attractive in 1820.
Meanwhile are we not in Venice together, and what better
place is there for the meeting of dear friends?
See how it glows with the advancing summer; how the sky
and the sea and the rosy air and the marble of the palaces
all shimmer and melt together." My eccentric private errand
became a part of the general romance and the general glory--
I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity with all
those who in the past had been in the service of art. They had
worked for beauty, for a devotion; and what else was I doing?
That element was in everything that Jeffrey Aspern had written,
and I was only bringing it to the light.
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