Penelope's Postscripts

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Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith. Penelope's Postscripts

I. PENELOPE IN SWITZERLAND

II. PENELOPE IN VENICE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

III. PENELOPE’S PRINTS OF WALES

IV. PENELOPE IN DEVON

V. PENELOPE AT HOME

Отрывок из книги

I have always wished that I might have discovered Venice for myself.  In the midst of our mad acquisition and frenzied dissemination of knowledge, these latter days, we miss how many fresh and exquisite sensations!  Had I a daughter, I should like to inform her mind on every other possible point and keep her in absolute ignorance of Venice.  Well do I realize that it would be impracticable, although no more so, after all, than Rousseau’s plan of educating Émile, which certainly obtained a wide hearing and considerable support in its time.  No, tempting as it would be, it would be difficult to carry out such a theory in these days of logic and common sense, and in some moment of weakness I might possibly succumb and tell her all about it, for fear that some stranger, whom she might meet at a ball, would have the pleasure of doing it first.

The next best woman-person in the world with whom to see Venice, barring the lovely non-existent daughter, is Salemina.

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I could see the Doge descend the Giant’s Stairs, and issue from the gate of the Ducal Palace.  I could picture the great Bucentaur as it reached the open beyond the line of the tide.  I could see the white-mitred Patriarch walking from his convent on the now deserted isle of Sant’ Elena to the shore where his barge lay waiting to join the glittering procession.

And then there floated before my entranced vision the princely figure of the Doge taking the Pope-blessed ring, and, advancing to the little gallery behind his throne on the Bucentaur, raising it high, and dropping it into the sea.  I could almost hear the faint splash as it sank in the golden waves, and hear, too, the sonorous words of the old wedding ceremony: “Desponsamus te, Mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii!”

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