midnight
She stood alone . Her small , bare , and silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of marble beneath her . Her hair , not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array , clustered , amid a shower of diamonds , round and round her classical head , in curls like those of the young hyacinth . A snowy-white and gauze-like drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form ; but the mid-summer and midnight air was hot , sullen , and still , and no motion in the statue-like form itself , stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble hangs around the Niobe . Yet -- strange to say ! -- her large lustrous eyes were not turned downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay buried -- but riveted in a widely different direction ! The prison of the Old Republic is , I think , the stateliest building in all Venice -- but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it , when beneath her lay stifling her only child ?