“I, too, know nothing; and, therefore, cannot answer; but, for your sake, Marianna, well could wish that I were that happy one of the happy house you dream you see; for then you would behold him now, and, as you say, this weariness might leave you.”
—Enough. Launching my yawl no more for fairyland, I stick to the piazza. It is my box-royal; and this amphitheatre, my theatre of San Carlo. Yes, the scenery is magical—the illusion so complete. And Madam Meadow Lark, my prima donna, plays her grand engagement here; and, drinking in her sunrise note, which, Memnon-like, seems struck from the golden window, how far from me the weary face behind it.
But, every night, when the curtain falls, truth comes in with darkness. No light shows from the mountain. To and fro I walk the piazza deck, haunted by Marianna’s face, and many as real a story.
Endnotes
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The American Spaniards have long been in the habit of making presents of islands to deserving individuals. The pilot Juan Fernandez procured a deed of the isle named after him, and for some years resided there before Selkirk came. It is supposed, however, that he eventually contracted the blues upon his princely property, for after a time he returned to the main, and as report goes, became a very garrulous barber in the city of Lima. ↩
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They who may be disposed to question the possibility of the character above depicted, are referred to the 2nd vol. of Porter’s Voyage Into the Pacific, where they will recognize many sentences, for expedition’s sake derived verbatim from thence, and incorporated here; the main difference—save a few passing reflections—between the two accounts being, that the present writer has added to Porter’s facts accessory ones picked up in the Pacific from reliable sources; and where facts conflict, has naturally preferred his own authorities to Porter’s. As, for instance, his authorities place Oberlus on Hood’s Isle: Porter’s, on Charles’s Isle. The letter found in the hut is also somewhat different; for while at the Encantadas he was informed that, not only did it evince a certain clerkliness, but was full of the strangest satiric effrontery which does not adequately appear in Porter’s version. I accordingly altered it to suit the general character of its author. ↩
Colophon
Short Fiction
was compiled from short stories published between 1853 and 1856 by
Herman Melville.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton,
and is based on transcriptions produced between 2005 and 2017 by
Dave Maddock, Josephine Paolucci, Joshua Hutchinson, Chris Whitehead, Mary Glenn Krause, David Edwards, Eric Lehtonen, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg (The Piazza Tales and The Apple-Tree Table)
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive (The Piazza Tales and The Apple-Tree Table).
The cover page is adapted from
A Rooster with Hens and Chicks,
a painting completed in 1855 by
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