early years of her residence she had made an attempt
to see them, but this had been successful only as regards the little
one, as Mrs. Prest called the niece; though in reality as I afterward
learned she was considerably the bigger of the two. She had heard Miss
Bordereau was ill and had a suspicion that she was in want; and she had
gone to the house to offer assistance, so that if there were suffering
(and American suffering), she should at least not have it on her
conscience. The "little one" received her in the great cold, tarnished
Venetian sala, the central hall of the house, paved with marble and
roofed with dim crossbeams, and did not even ask her to sit down. This
was not encouraging for me, who wished to sit so fast, and I remarked
as much to Mrs. Prest. She however replied with profundity, "Ah, but
there's all the difference: I went to confer a favor and you will go
to ask one. If they are proud you will be on the right side." And she
offered to show me their house to begin with--to row me thither in her
gondola. I let her know that I had already been to look at it half a
dozen times; but I accepted her invitation, for it charmed me to hover
about the place. I had made my way to it the day after my arrival in
Venice (it had been described to me in advance by the friend in England
to whom I owed definite information as to their possession of the
papers), and I had besieged it with my eyes while I considered my plan
of campaign. Jeffrey Aspern had never been in it that I knew of;
but some note of his voice seemed to abide there by a roundabout
implication, a faint reverberation.

Mrs. Prest knew nothing about the papers, but she was interested in my
curiosity, as she was always interested in the joys and sorrows of her
friends. As we went, however, in her gondola, gliding there under the
sociable hood with the bright Venetian picture framed on either side by
the movable window, I could see that she was amused by my infatuation,
the way my interest in the papers had become a fixed idea. "One would
think you expected to find in them the answer to the riddle of the
universe," she said; and I denied the impeachment only by replying
that if I had to choose between that precious solution and a bundle
of Jeffrey Aspern's letters I knew indeed which would appear to me the
greater boon. She pretended to make light of his genius, and I took
no pains to defend him. One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is
in himself a de