SANTA BARBARA

...
" Santa Barbara ! " he murmured ; for the woman who stood above him resembled marvellously that picture which he loved, and which he had gazed on that morning for the hundredth time where it hangs in the shadow of the side altar in the church of Sta Maria Formosa.
" It is bad to sleep upon old walls, they harbor dangerous beasts," said the woman, gravely, in the soft liquid Venetian accents.
" See, Signor, I killed her, or very surely she would have killed you."
" You have done me a service indeed ; I was asleep and dreaming of Sta Barbara," said Dorat ; he was still but half awake, and
he looked dreamily at the little black crushed adder lying on a slab of discolored marble. Was it possible ? One touch from that small creature, one drop of venom from its fangs, and all the power of his brain and cunning of his hand might have been dulled and dead forever !
The idea seemed so strange to him that he was absorbed by it for a moment. The next his eyes, still dim and heavy with slumber in the heat, saw only the face of his saviour, a face like Sta Barbara's, of the old noble warmhued Venetian type, with strength as well as beauty in its lines, and dusky golden hair, and a mouth like a carnation. She w'as a woman of the people, she had a black shawl worn over her head as Venetian women so often wear one ; a linen bodice and a woollen skirt ; but these poor clothes could not conceal the magnificent lines of her form and the mingled grace and strength of her limbs ;
while her throat and bosom and arms were those of Veronese's Europa.
" All the types in one ! " he murmured to himself, feasting his eyes on this incarnation of womanhood till the ardor and abstraction of his gaze called up a vivid blush over the cheeks and brows of the young matron, who, half offended, half diverted, frowned and laughed and turned away. " By the Virgin, how you stare, 'llustrissima ! " she murmured, as she drew her shawl closer about her breast.
" It is well for you that my man is away over the seas."
The homely words recalled ...

Dettagli