[Footnote A:  I use, here, words corresponding to the Marchesa’s.]

“He brought with him a friend whom he had met in the East.  Together upon the summit of the great pyramid they had seen the day break over Cairo, and on the plain of Thebes had listened for Memnon to gush with music as the sun struck him with his rod of light.  Together they had travelled over the sea-like desert, breaking the awful silence only with words that did not profane it.  My brother conversing with wise sadness—­his friend Luigi with hope and enthusiasm.

“Luigi was a poor man, and an artist.  My brother was proud, but real grief prunes the foolish side of pride, while it fosters the nobler.  It was a rare and noble friendship.  Rare, because pride often interferes with friendships among men, where all conditions are not equal.  Noble, because the two men were so, although only one had the name and the means of a nobleman.  But he shared these with his friend, as naturally as his friend shared his thoughts with him.  Neither spoke much of the past.  My brother had rolled a stone over the mouth of that tomb, and his friend was occupied with the suggestions and the richness of the life around him.  If some stray leaf or blossom fell forward upon their path from the past, it served to Luigi only as a stimulating mystery.

“‘This is my memory,’ he would say, touching his portfolio, which was full of eastern sketches.  ’These are the hieroglyphics Egypt has herself written, and we can decipher them at leisure upon your languid lagunes.’

“It was not difficult for my brother to persuade Luigi to return with him to Venice.  I shall not forget the night they came, as long as I remember anything.”

The Marchesa paused a moment, dreamily.

“It was the eve of the Purification,” she said, at length, pausing again.  After a little, she resumed: 

“We were ignorant of the probable time of Camillo’s return; and about sunset my mother, my younger sister Fiora, and I, were rowing along the Guidecca, when I saw a gondola approaching, containing two persons only beside the rowers, followed by another with trunks and servants.  I have always watched curiously new arrivals in Venice, for no other city in the world can be entered with such peculiar emotion.  I had scarcely looked at the new comers before I recognized my brother, and was fascinated by the appearance of his companion, who lay in a trance of delight with the beauty of the place and the hour.

“His long hair flowed from under his slouched hat, hanging about a face that I cannot describe; and his negligent travelling dress did not conceal the springing grace of his figure.  But to me, educated in Venice, associated only with its silent, stately nobles; a child, early solemnized by the society of decay and of elders whose hearts were never young, to me the magnetic charm of the young man was his youth, and I gazed at him with the same admiring earnestness with which he looked at the city and the scene.