As to the Prince: in the presence of the Duchess, the sovereign
divinity who lifted him to the skies, he had forgotten where he was,
he no longer heard the voice of the woman who had initiated him into
the mysteries of earthly pleasure, for deep dejection made his ears
tingle with a chorus of plaintive voices, half-drowned in a rushing
noise as of pouring rain.
Vendramin saw himself in an ancient Venetian costume, looking on at
the ceremony of the _Bucentaur_. The Frenchman, who plainly discerned
that some strange and painful mystery stood between the Prince and the
Duchess, was racking his brain with shrewd conjecture to discover what
it could be.
The scene had changed. In front of a fine picture, representing the
Desert and the Red Sea, the Egyptians and Hebrews marched and
countermarched without any effect on the feelings of the four persons
in the Duchess' box. But when the first chords on the harps preluded
the hymn of the delivered Israelites, the Prince and Vendramin rose
and stood leaning against the opposite sides of the box, and the
Duchess, resting her elbow on the velvet ledge, supported her head on
her left hand.
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