'70 MARCEL PROUSTcross the square with Marie to work on Ruskin in the 'dazzling
coolness' of Saint Mark's. Mile Nordlinger remembered an after-
noon when the sky darkened and a storm burst over Venice: she
took shelter with Marcel in the great basilica, and translated for
him the passage of The Stones of Venice in which Ruskin explains
the decadence and fall of the Republic. In the mosaics of the
domes of Saint Mark's are represented not only the prophets and
the evangelists, but (for here the Bible of Venice differs from the
Bible of Amiens) the very words of their texts. "The sins of
Venice," repeated Marie, "were done with the Bible at her right
hand. When in her last hours she threw off all shame and all
restraint, be it remembered how much her sin was greater, because
it was done in the face of the house of God, burning with the
letters of His Law. Through century after century of gathering
vanity and festering guilt, that white dome of Saint Mark's had
uttered in the dead ear of Venice: 'Know thou, that for all these
things God will bring thee into judgement.''' Proust took this
tremendous warnjl).g, uttered in the oblivious voice of the young
girl, to himself and defied it. When he came to write the last
chapter of his introduction to La Bible d'Amiens, he had a logical
answer ready. 'If Ruskin had been quite sincere with himself, he
would not have thought the sins of the Venetians more inexcus-
able and more severely punished than those of other men, just
because they had a church of many-coloured marble instead of a
cathedral of limestone, or because the Palace of the Doges
happened to be next-door to Saint Mark's instead of being at the
other end of the town,' he ironically objected. But at the moment
he was more serious. 'It was dark, and the mosaics shone only
with their own material light, with an ancient, internal, terrestrial
gold to which the Venetian sun had ceased to contribute. The
emotion I felt on hearing these words, surrounded by all those
angels illumined only by the environing darkness, was very
strong.' And Marie N ordlinger noticed, as had Reynaldo on the
day of the Bengal roses at Reveillon, that her companion was
'strangely moved, and exalted by a kind of ecstasy'.
In the evening it was more necessary than ever to evade the
high moral standards of Mlle Nordlinger's aunt-'that charming
Venetian atmt, fervent and meticulous, devoted to art, kindness
and comfort, and so very full of goodwill towards the person who
signs this letter,' he wrote to Marie Nordlinger some years later.