'
'I see, by all the gods at once, 'tis an immortal idea! Let's take
Othello--I'll set about it to-morrow--to-night, by Jove! A gay young
Venetian nobleman, of singular beauty, charmed by her tales of
"anthropophagites and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,"
is seduced from his father's house, and married by a middle-aged,
somewhat hard-featured black woman, Juno, or Dido, who takes him
away--not to Cyprus--we must be original, but we'll suppose to the
island of Stromboli--and you can have an eruption firing away during the
last act. There Dido grows jealous of our hero, though he's as innocent
as Joseph; and while his valet is putting him to bed he'll talk to him
and prattle some plaintive little tale how his father had a man called
Barbarus. And then, all being prepared, and his bed-room candle put out,
Dido enters, looking unusually grim, and smothers him with a pillow in
spite of his cries and affecting entreaties, and---- By Jupiter! here's
a letter from Bath, too.'
He had lighted the candles, and the letter with its great red eye of a
seal, lying upon the table, transfixed his wandering glance, and smote
somehow to his heart with an indefinite suspense and misgiving.
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