reached it, he took a seat-and what ensued was a woeful calvary through the depths of remorse. It was the familiar ride across the lagoon, past San Marco and up the Grand Canal. Aschenbach sat on the curved bench in the bow, an arm on the railing and a hand shading his eyes. The Public Gardens faded into the distance, and the Piazzetta once more displayed its princely elegance, but it, too, retreated, and after a great rush of palazzi the splendid marble arch of the Rialto came into view around a bend in the waterway. The traveler looked on, his breast riven. The atmosphere of the city, that faintly fetid odor of sea and swamp he had been so anxious to flee-he now breathed it in, in deep, delicately throbbing drafts. Was it possible he had not known or even considered how much it all meant to him? What that morning had been a pang of sorrow, a vague doubt as to the validity of his actions was now grief, true pain, an affliction of the soul so bitter that it brought tears to his eyes more than once and, as he told himself, was totally unforeseen. What he found so hard to bear and even utterly intolerable at times was clearly the thought that he would never see Venice again, that this was a farewell forever. For now that the city had twice made him ill, now that he had twice been forced to pick up and leave it, he would henceforth be obliged to consider it an impossible and forbidden destination, one he was not up to and could never think of revisiting. Indeed, he felt that should he leave now, shame and pride must prevent him from setting eyes again on the beloved city that had twice brought him low, and this conflict between the soul's inclination and the body's capabilities suddenly struck the aging man as so serious and significant, his physical defeat seemed so ignominious, in such urgent need of redress, that he could not comprehend the frivolous resignation with which he had decided to acknowledge and bear it with no true struggle. Meanwhile the vaporetto was approaching the station and his pain and perplexity grew to the point of distraction. Tormented as he was, he felt it impossible to depart, yet none the less so to turn back. He entered the station racked by indecision. It was very late; he had not a moment to lose if he was to catch the train. He both wished to and did not. But time was pressing, goading him onward, and he hastened to purchase his ticket and then peered through the tumult for the hotel employee on duty there. The man appeared and informed him that the large trunk had been dispatched. Dispatched? Already? Yes, as ordered: to Como To Como? And after a flurry of comings and goings, irate questions and embarrassed answers, it came out that back in the luggage room of the Hotel Excelsior the trunk had been thrown together with some other people's luggage and routed in a totally misguided direction. Aschenbach had difficulty maintaining the only plausible facial expression in the circumstances. A reckless joy, an unbelievable glee took almost convulsive hold of his breast. The hotel employee rushed off to do what he could to stop the trunk, but returned, as was to be expected, unsuccessful. Aschenbach accordingly announced that he was unwilling to travel on without his luggage and had decided to go back and wait at the Hotel des Bains until the article was retrieved. Was the hotel motor launch still at the station? The man assured him it was just outside, and in a torrent of Italian he induced the ticket clerk to take back the ticket Aschenbach had purchased. Then he swore that telegrams would be sent and no effort spared, nothing left undone to ensure that the trunk be recovered as soon as possible. And thus a most unusual thing came to pass: twenty minutes after arriving at the station the traveler found himself on the Grand Canal making his way back to the Lido. What an oddly improbable, humiliating, comically dreamlike adventure: taking brokenhearted leave of places forever and then, turned round and
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