"de Musset, Alfred - Tizianello" - читать интересную книгу автора (Musset Alfred De)

with interest for the injury she had done him. All her life she thought that a
state secret was really connected with the purse, which she had wished to steal,
and as in this strange event everything was a mystery to her, she could only
conjecture. The parents of Ser Orio made this the subject of their particular
conversation. Beginning with suppositions they finished by creating a plausible
tale. "A great lady," said they, "had become enamored of Tizianello, that is to
say, of Titian's son, who himself was in love with Monna Bianchina, and of
course in vain. Now this great lady, who had herself embroidered a purse for
Tizianello, was no other than the Doge's wife. Imagine her wrath on learning
that Tizianello had sacrificed this gift of love to La Bianchina!"
Such was the family tradition repeated with lowered voices in the little house
of Ser Orio in Padua.
Pleased with the success of his first enterprise, our hero now thought of
attempting the secondЧto write a poem for his beautiful unknown. As the strange
comedy in which he had taken part had moved him, in spite of himself, he
commenced by rapidly writing one or two verses full of a certain rapture. Hope,
love, mystery, all the impassioned expressions common to poets, rushed headlong
through his mind. "But," thought he, "my godmother told me it was to do with one
of the most noble and most beautiful ladies in Venice: I must therefore be
proper and approach her with more respect."
He effaced what he had written, and passing from one extreme to the other, he
put together a few sonorous lines to which he tried hard to adapt, not without
trouble, thoughts similar to his lady; that is to say, the most beautiful and
noble he could think of. For hope too bold, he substituted a fearful doubt; in
the place of mystery and love, he spoke of respect and gratitude. Unable to
eulogize the charms of a woman he had never seen, he, as delicately as possible,
made use of some vague terms which might apply to all faces. Shortly, after two
hours of thought and work, he had written twelve passable verses, extremely
harmonious and very significant.
He made a careful copy on a fine sheet of parchment, and on the margins designed
birds and flowers which he carefully colored. But directly his task was finished
he read over his verses once more, and thereupon threw them out of the window
into the canal, which passed close to the house. "Whatever am I doing?" he asked
himself. "Of what use to follow up this adventure, if my conscience does not
speak?"
He took his mandolin and walked up and down the room, singing and playing an old
tune composed for some of Petrarch's sonnets. At the end of a quarter of an hour
he stopped; his heart was throbbing. He no longer thought of conventionalities,
nor of the effect he might produce. The purse he had seized from La Bianchina,
and which he had just brought back in triumph, was lying on the table. He looked
at it and said to himself: "The woman who made that for me must love me and know
how to love, too. Such a work is long and difficult; those light threads, those
brilliant colors take time, and in working, she thought of me. In the few words
that accompanied that purse there was a friend's advice and not one ambiguous
word. It is a love challenge sent by a woman with a heart. If she thought of me
but for one day, I must bravely take up the glove."
He started again and in taking up his pen was more agitated by fear and hope
than when he had risked the largest sums on the throw of the dice. Without
reflecting and without stopping, he hastily wrote a sonnet, of which the
following is about the meaning: