Excerpt from The Flame of Life: A Novel "Stelio, does not your heart fail you for the first time?" La Foscarina asked with a slight smile, touching the hand of the silent friend sitting beside her. "I see you are a little pale, and you seem preoccupied. Yet this is a beautiful night for the triumph of a great poet!" She gathered into one deeply conscious glance all the beauty scattered so divinely through that last hour of the September twilight. In the dark, living firmament of her eyes the neighbouring garlands of light, created by the oar as it dipped in the water, seemed to encircle the fiery angels that shone from afar on the towers of San Marco and of San Giorgio Maggiore. "As ever," she added in her sweetest voice, - "as ever, all things are favourable to you. On an evening like this what soul could remain closed to the dreams that it shall please your words to bring forth? Do not you feel already that the crowd is eager to welcome your revelation?" Thus, delicately, she soothed her friend, wrapping him round with continual praise, exalting him with continual hope. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.