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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Child of Pleasure, by Gabriele D'Annunzio
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Child of Pleasure
+
+Author: Gabriele D'Annunzio
+
+Commentator: Ernest Boyd
+
+Translator: Georgina Harding
+              Arthur Symons
+
+Release Date: December 4, 2006 [EBook #20015]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILD OF PLEASURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: although a number of obvious typographical errors
+in the printed work have been corrected, the original orthography of the
+book has been retained. This includes a number of compound words,
+normally hyphenated, which retain their hyphenlessness.]
+
+
+
+
+                         _The_
+                    CHILD OF PLEASURE
+
+                   GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
+
+                     TRANSLATED BY
+                    GEORGINA HARDING
+
+                  VERSES TRANSLATED BY
+                      ARTHUR SYMONS
+
+                     INTRODUCTION BY
+                       ERNEST BOYD
+            [Illustration: The Modern Library logo]
+                   THE MODERN LIBRARY
+                 PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK
+        _Manufactured in the United States of America
+          Bound for_ THE MODERN LIBRARY _by H. Wolff_
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It is characteristic of the atmosphere of legend in which Gabriele
+d'Annunzio has lived that even the authenticity of his name has been
+disputed. It was said that his real name was Gaetano Rapagnetta, and the
+curious will find amongst the Letters of James Huneker the boast that he
+was the first person to reveal to America the fact that d'Annunzio's
+name was "Rapagnetto"--a purely personal contribution to the legend.
+Yet, the plain fact, as proven by his birth certificate, is that the
+author of "The Child of Pleasure" was born at Pescara, on the 12th of
+March, 1863, the son of Francesco Paolo d'Annunzio and Luisa de
+Benedictis. _Il Piacere_, to give this novel its Italian name, was
+published when d'Annunzio was only twenty-six years of age, and except
+for an unimportant and imitative volume of short stories, it was his
+first sustained prose work. It is the book which at once made the
+novelist famous in his own country and very soon afterwards in England
+and France, where it was the first of his works to be translated. In
+America d'Annunzio was already known as the author of a powerful
+realistic novelette, "Episcopo & Co.," which was published in Chicago in
+1896, two years before "The Child of Pleasure" appeared in London. As
+has so often happened since, America led the way in introducing into the
+English language a writer who is one of the foremost figures in
+Continental European literature.
+
+In order to realize the sensation which Gabriele d'Annunzio created, it
+is necessary to glance back at the opinions of some of his early
+champions in foreign countries. Ouida claims, I think rightly, that her
+article in the _Fortnightly Review_, which was reprinted in her
+"Critical Studies," was the first account in English of the author and
+his work. In the main, although besprinkled with moral asides, it is,
+with one exception, as good an essay as any that has since been written
+on the subject. Ouida was sure that the wickedness of d'Annunzio was
+such that the only work of his which will become known to the English
+public in general will be the _Vergini delle Rocce_, because "(as far as
+it has gone) it is not indecent. The other works could not be reproduced
+in English." In proof of her contentions Ouida disclosed the fact that
+the French versions of the trilogy, "The Child of Pleasure," "The
+Victim," and "The Triumph of Death," were bowdlerized. At the same time
+she obligingly referred her readers to some of the choicer passages in
+the original, such as Chapter X of "The Child of Pleasure," where she
+claimed that "ingenuities of indecency" had been gratuitously
+introduced. For the guidance of those interested in such matters I may
+explain that, by a coincidence, the "ingenuity" in question is almost
+identical with that which was cited in the earlier part of _La Garēonne_
+as proof that Victor Margueritte was unworthy of the Legion of Honor.
+
+After Ouida in England came the venerable Vicomte Melchior de Vogüé in
+France, who is best known to readers in this country for his standard
+tome on the Russian novel. In the austere pages of the _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_ he carefully explained to his readers that d'Annunzio's lewdness
+must not be confused with the obscenities of Zola, whereat Ouida
+protested that they were alike in their complacent preoccupation with
+mere filth. The Frenchman is the sounder critic, it must be said, for
+while d'Annunzio frequently parallels some of the most unclean--in the
+literal, not the moral sense--scenes and incidents in Zola, his attitude
+about sex is as unlike Zola's as that of the late W. D. Howells. Only in
+"Nana" did Zola describe the life and emotions of a woman whose whole
+life is given up to love, and then, as we know, he chose a singularly
+crude and professional person, using her career as a symbol of the
+Second Empire. D'Annunzio has never described women with any other
+reason for existence but love, yet none of his heroines has poor Nana's
+uninspiring motives. They are amateurs with a skill undreamed of in
+Nana's philosophy; they believe in love for art's sake. Consequently,
+the French critic was right in insisting that Zola and d'Annunzio are
+two very different persons, although confounded in an identical obloquy
+by the moralists. He is, however, not quite so subtle when he tries to
+argue from this that, in the conventional sense, d'Annunzio is more
+moral.
+
+At this point I will cite an unexpectedly intelligent witness, one of
+the early admirers of d'Annunzio in English, and the author of an essay
+on him which is assuredly the best which has appeared in that language.
+This is what Henry James has to say of "The Child of Pleasure" in his
+"Notes on Novelists": "Count Andrea Sperelli is a young man who pays,
+pays heavily, as we take it we are to understand, for an unbridled
+surrender to the life of the senses; whereby it is primarily a picture
+of that life that the story gives us. He is represented as inordinately,
+as quite monstrously, endowed for the career that from the first absorbs
+and that finally is to be held, we suppose to engulf him; and it is a
+tribute to the truth with which his endowment is presented that we
+should scarce know where else to look for so complete and convincing an
+account of such adventures. Casanova de Seingalt is of course infinitely
+more copious, but his autobiography is cheap loose journalism compared
+with the directed, finely-condensed iridescent epic of Count Andrea."
+
+It would be difficult to find, couched in such euphemistically
+appreciative language, so accurate a summary of the intention and
+quality of this book. Casanova is pale, diffuse, and unconvincing,
+indeed, beside the d'Annunzio who so early gave his full measure as the
+supreme novelist of sensual pleasure in this book. As Arthur Symons so
+well says, "Gabriele d'Annunzio comes to remind us, very definitely, as
+only an Italian can, of the reality and the beauty of sensation, of the
+primary sensations; the sensations of pain and pleasure as these come to
+us from our actual physical conditions; the sensation of beauty as it
+comes to us from the sight of our eyes and the tasting of our several
+senses; the sensation of love, which, to the Italian, comes up from a
+root in Boccaccio, through the stem of Petrarch, to the very flower of
+Dante. And so he becomes the idealist of material things, while seeming
+to materialize spiritual things. He accepts, as no one else of our time
+does, the whole physical basis of life, the spirit which can be known
+only through the body."
+
+D'Annunzio has declared that the central male character in all three
+novels, Andrea Sperelli in "The Child of Pleasure," Tullio Hermil in
+"The Intruder" and Giorgio Aurispa in "The Triumph of Death," are
+projections of himself. They are as autobiographical as Stelio Effrena
+in "The Fire of Life," which is generally accepted as an elaboration of
+the poet's life with Eleonora Duse. His attitude, therefore, is clearly
+defined in the passage where he says: "In the tumult of contradictory
+impulses Sperelli had lost all sense of will power and all sense of
+morality. In abdicating, his will had surrendered the sceptre to his
+instincts; the ęsthetic was substituted for the moral sense. This
+ęsthetic sense, which was very subtle, very powerful and always active,
+maintained a certain equilibrium in the mind of Sperelli. Intellectuals
+such as he, brought up in the religion of Beauty, always preserve a
+certain kind of order, even in their worst depravities. The conception
+of Beauty is the axis of their inmost being: all their passions turn
+upon that axis." He is, in other words, the re-incarnation of Don Juan,
+pursuing in woman an elusive and impossible ideal.
+
+If d'Annunzio had not gone into the adventure of the war, with its
+sequel at Fiume, we might have continued to enjoy the spectacle of the
+adventures of this restless soul amongst feminine masterpieces. As a
+soldier and a statesman his prestige in the English-speaking world is
+low, and we are apt to forget while reading the political bombast of the
+years of the war and the period after the Armistice that it differs in
+no respect from all other patriotic claptrap, except that it is the work
+of the greatest living master of Italian prose. Of this fact his early
+novels are a needed reminder to a generation which is making its
+acquaintance with Italian writers of to-day through the intermediary of
+a converted anti-clerical, who cannot even retell the story of Christ
+without branding himself a vulgarian. In the prim days when young
+d'Annunzio first flaunted his carnal delights and sorrows before a world
+not yet released from Victorian stuffiness, the word "vulgar" was a
+polite English epithet for "fleshly," an adjective much beloved by
+indignant gentlemen who were permitting their wrath to triumph over
+their desire to be respectable. It is a word which we apply nowadays to
+the writings of a vulgarian like Papini, whose name is now as familiar
+to the general public as d'Annunzio's was when "The Child of Pleasure"
+was first translated. That is a measure of progress in this connection
+which justifies the hope that the "idealist of material things" will
+find again an audience which can understand and appreciate his quest.
+
+D'Annunzio has nothing to offer the sterile theorists of the new
+illiterate literature, who are as incapable of appreciating his refined
+and subtle perversities as they are of admiring the beautiful form in
+which his full-blooded and exuberant imagination clothes his
+conceptions. He is an ęsthete, but his ęstheticism has never expressed
+itself in barren theory, but has always turned to life itself. He
+realized at the outset of his career that life is a physical thing,
+which we must compel to surrender all that it can offer us, which the
+artist must bend and shape to his own creative purposes. It has been
+said that d'Annunzio had a philosophy and Nietzsche and Tolstoy were
+invoked as influences, but there is as little of Tolstoy's moralizing in
+"The Intruder" as of Nietzsche's pessimistic idealism in "The Child of
+Pleasure" or "The Triumph of Death." Whatever conclusions may be drawn
+from the problem of the Eternal Feminine as postulated in all his
+novels--and that is the only problem which he confronts--it is hardly to
+be dignified by the name of a philosophy. One gathers that men can be
+exalted and destroyed by the attraction of women, but the author
+remains to the end--as late certainly as 1910, when the last of the
+novels in the first mood, _Forse che si, forse che no_, appeared--of the
+opinion that they are the one legitimate preoccupation of the artist in
+living. Elena Muti in "The Child of Pleasure," Foscarina in "The Flame
+of Life," Ippolita in "The Triumph of Death" are superb incarnations of
+the one and ever varied problem which troubles the world in which
+d'Annunzio lives.
+
+An American critic, Mr. Henry Dwight Sedgwick, once demanded in tones of
+passionate scorn that d'Annunzio be tried before a jury of
+"English-speaking men," and he called the tale: "Colonel Newcome! Adam
+Bede! Bailie Jarvie! Tom Brown! Sam Weller!"--notes of exclamation
+included, from which one was to conclude that the creator of Sperelli,
+Hermil and Aurispa would slink away discomfited at the very sound of
+those names. Yet, on the other hand, can one imagine Andrea and Elena,
+Giorgio and Ippolita arguing with our advanced thinkers of the moment:
+Is Monogamy Feasible? or Can Men and Women be Friends? D'Annunzio is not
+to be approached either in a mood of radical earnestness or of
+evangelical fervor. He must be regarded as an artist of sensations, an
+Italian of the Renaissance set down in the middle of a drab century. He
+began his life by a quest for perfect physical pleasure through all the
+senses, and inaugurated its last phase with a gesture of military
+courage which was not only a retort to those who, like Croce, had called
+him a dilettante, but an earnest of his conviction that he was a great
+artist of the lineage which bred men who were simultaneously great men
+of action.
+
+Ernest Boyd.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Andrea Sperelli dined regularly every Wednesday with his cousin the
+Marchesa d'Ateleta.
+
+The salons of the Marchesa in the Palazzo Roccagiovine were much
+frequented. She attracted specially by her sparkling wit and gaiety and
+her inextinguishable good humour. Her charming and expressive face
+recalled certain feminine profiles of the younger Moreau and in the
+vignettes of Gravelot. There was something Pompadouresque in her manner,
+her tastes, her style of dress, which she no doubt heightened purposely,
+tempted by her really striking resemblance to the favourite of Louis XV.
+
+One Tuesday evening, in a box at the Valle Theatre, she said laughingly
+to her cousin, 'Be sure, you come to-morrow, Andrea. Among the guests
+there will be an interesting, not to say _fatal_, personage. Forewarned
+is forearmed--Beware of her spells--you are in a very weak frame of mind
+just now.'
+
+He laughed. 'If you don't mind, I prefer to come unarmed,' he replied,
+'or rather in the guise of a victim. It is a character I have assumed
+for many an evening lately, but alas, without result so far.'
+
+'Well, the sacrifice will soon be consummated, _cugino mio_.'
+
+'The victim is ready!'
+
+The next evening, he arrived at the palace a few minutes earlier than
+usual, with a wonderful gardenia in his button-hole and a vague
+uneasiness in his mind. His _coupé_ had to stop in front of the
+entrance, the portico being occupied by another carriage, from which a
+lady was alighting. The liveries, the horses, the ceremonial which
+accompanied her arrival all proclaimed a great position. The Count
+caught a glimpse of a tall and graceful figure, a scintillation of
+diamonds in dark hair and a slender foot on the step. As he went
+upstairs he had a back view of the lady.
+
+She ascended in front of him with a slow and rhythmic movement; her
+cloak, lined with fur as white as swan's-down, was unclasped at the
+throat, and slipping back, revealed her shoulders, pale as polished
+ivory, the shoulder-blades disappearing into the lace of the corsage
+with an indescribably soft and fleeting curve as of wings. The neck rose
+slender and round, and the hair, twisted into a great knot on the crown
+of her head, was held in place by jewelled pins.
+
+The harmonious gait of this unknown lady gave Andrea such sincere
+pleasure that he stopped a moment on the first landing to watch her. Her
+long train swept rustling over the stairs; behind her came a servant,
+not immediately in the wake of his mistress on the red carpet, but at
+the side along the wall with irreproachable gravity. The absurd contrast
+between the magnificent creature and the automaton following her brought
+a smile to Andrea's lips.
+
+In the anteroom while the servant was relieving her of her cloak, the
+lady cast a rapid glance at the young man who entered.
+
+The servant announced--'Her Excellency the Duchess of Scerni!' and
+immediately afterwards--'Count Sperelli-Fieschi d'Ugenta!' It pleased
+Andrea that his name should be coupled so closely with that of the lady
+in question.
+
+In the drawing-room were already assembled the Marchese and Marchesa
+d'Ateleta, the Baron and Baroness d'Isola and Don Filippo del Monte. The
+fire burned cheerily on the hearth, and several low seats were
+invitingly disposed within range of its warmth, while large leaf plants
+spread their red-veined foliage over the low backs.
+
+The Marchesa, advanced to meet the two new arrivals with her delightful
+ready laugh.
+
+'Ah,' she said, 'a happy chance has forestalled me and made it
+unnecessary for me to tell you one another's names. Cousin Sperelli,
+make obeisance before the divine Elena.'
+
+Andrea bowed profoundly. The Duchess held out her hand with a frank and
+graceful gesture.
+
+'I am very glad to know you, Count,' she said, looking him full in the
+face. 'I heard so much about you last summer at Lucerne from one of your
+friends--Giulio Musellaro. I must confess I was rather curious--Besides,
+Musellaro lent me your exquisite "Story of the Hermaphrodite" and made
+me a present of your etching "Sleep"--a proof copy--a real gem. You have
+a most ardent admirer in me--please remember that.'
+
+She spoke with little pauses in between. Her voice was so warm and
+insinuating in tone that it almost had the effect of a caress, and her
+glance had that unconsciously voluptuous and disturbing expression which
+instantly kindles the desire of every man on whom it rests.
+
+'Cavaliere Sakumi!' announced the servant, as the eighth and last guest
+made his appearance.
+
+He was one of the secretaries to the Japanese Legation, very small and
+yellow, with prominent cheek-bones and long, slanting, bloodshot eyes
+over which the lids blinked incessantly. His body was disproportionately
+large for his spindle legs, and he turned his toes in as he walked. The
+skirts of his coat were too wide, there was a multitude of wrinkles in
+his trousers, his necktie bore visible evidence of an unpractised hand.
+It was as if a _daimio_ had been taken out of one of those cuirasses of
+iron and lacquer, so like the shell of some monstrous crustacean, and
+thrust into the clothes of a European waiter. And yet, with all his
+ungainliness and apparent stupidity there was a glint of malice in his
+slits of eyes and a sort of ironical cunning about the corners of his
+mouth.
+
+Arrived in the middle of the room, he bowed low. His gibus slipped from
+his hand and rolled over the floor.
+
+At this, the Baroness d'Isola, a tiny blonde with a cloud of fluffy
+curls all over her forehead, vivacious and grimacing as a young monkey,
+called to him in her piping voice:
+
+'Come over here, Sakumi--here, beside me.'
+
+The Japanese cavalier advanced with a succession of bows and smiles.
+
+'Shall we see the Princess Issé this evening?' asked Donna Francesca
+d'Ateleta, who had a mania for gathering in her drawing-rooms all the
+most grotesque specimens of the exotic colonies of Rome, out of pure
+love of variety and the picturesque.
+
+The Asiatic replied in a barbarous jargon, a scarcely intelligible
+compound of English, French, and Italian.
+
+For a moment everybody was speaking at once--a chorus through which now
+and then the fresh laughter of the Marchesa rang like silver bells.
+
+'I am sure I have seen you before--I cannot remember when and I cannot
+remember where, but I am certain I have seen you,' Andrea Sperelli was
+saying to the duchess as he stood before her. 'When I saw you going
+upstairs in front of me, a vague recollection rose up in my mind,
+something that took shape from the rhythm of your movements as a picture
+grows out of a melody. I did not succeed in making the recollection
+clear, but when you turned round, I felt that your profile answered
+incontestably to that picture. It could not have been a divination,
+therefore it must have been some obscure phenomenon of memory. I must
+have seen you somewhere before--who knows--perhaps in a dream--perhaps
+in another world, a previous existence--'
+
+As he pronounced this last decidedly hackneyed, not to say silly remark,
+Andrea laughed frankly as if to forestall the lady's smile, whether of
+incredulity or irony. But Elena remained perfectly serious. Was she
+listening, or was she thinking of something else? Did she accept that
+kind of speech, or was she, by her gravity, amusing herself at his
+expense? Did she intend assisting him in the scheme of seduction he had
+begun with so much care, or was she going to shut herself up in
+indifference and silence? In short, was she or was she not the sort of
+woman to succumb to his attack? Perplexed, disconcerted, Andrea examined
+the mystery from all sides. Most men, especially those who adopt bold
+methods of warfare, are well acquainted with this perplexity which
+certain women excite by their silence.
+
+A servant threw open the great doors leading to the dining-room.
+
+The Marchesa took the arm of Don Filippo del Monte and led the way.
+
+'Come,' said Elena, and it seemed to Andrea that she leaned upon his arm
+with a certain abandon--or was it merely an illusion of his
+desire?--perhaps. He continued in doubt and suspense, but every moment
+that passed drew him deeper within the sweet enchantment, and with every
+instant he became more desperately anxious to read the mystery of this
+woman's heart.
+
+'Here, cousin,' said Francesca, pointing him to a place at one end of
+the oval table, between the Baron d'Isola and the Duchess of Scerni with
+the Cavaliere Sakumi as his _vis-ą-vis_. Sakumi sat between the Baroness
+d'Isola and Filippo del Monte. The Marchesa and her husband occupied the
+two ends of the table, which glittered with rare china, silver, crystal
+and flowers.
+
+Very few women could compete with the Marchesa d'Ateleta in the art of
+dinner giving. She expended more care and forethought in the preparation
+of a menu than of a toilette. Her exquisite taste was patent in every
+detail, and her word was law in the matter of elegant conviviality. Her
+fantasies and her fashions were imitated on every table of the Roman
+upper ten. This winter, for instance, she had introduced the fashion of
+hanging garlands of flowers from one end of the table to the other, on
+the branches of great candelabras, and also that of placing in front of
+each guest, among the group of wine glasses, a slender opalescent Murano
+vase with a single orchid in it.
+
+'What a diabolical flower!' said Elena Muti, taking up the vase and
+examining the orchid which seemed all blood-stained.
+
+Her voice was of such rich full _timbre_ that even her most trivial
+remarks acquired a new significance, a mysterious grace, like that King
+of Phrygia whose touch turned everything to gold.
+
+'A symbolical flower--in your hands,' murmured Andrea, gazing at his
+neighbour, whose beauty in that attitude was really amazing.
+
+She was dressed in some delicate tissue of palest blue, spangled with
+silver dots which glittered through antique Burano lace of an
+indefinable tint of white inclining to yellow. The flower, like
+something evil generated by a malignant spell, rose quivering on its
+slender stalk out of the fragile tube which might have been blown by
+some skilful artificer from a liquid gem.
+
+'Well, I prefer roses,' observed Elena, replacing the orchid with a
+gesture of repulsion, very different from her former one of curiosity.
+She then joined in the general conversation.
+
+Donna Francesca was speaking of the last reception at the Austrian
+Embassy.
+
+'Did you see Madame de Cahen?' asked Elena. 'She had on a dress of
+yellow tulle covered with humming birds with ruby eyes--a gorgeous
+dancing bird-cage. And Lady Ouless--did you notice her?--in a white
+gauze skirt draped with sea-weed and little red fishes, and under the
+sea-weed and fish another skirt of sea-green gauze--Did you see it?--a
+most effective aquarium!' and she laughed merrily.
+
+Andrea was at a loss to understand this sudden volubility These
+frivolous and malicious things were uttered by the same voice which, but
+a few moments, ago had stirred his soul to its very depths; they came
+from the same lips which, in silence, had seemed to him like the mouth
+of the Medusa of Leonardo, that human flower of the soul rendered divine
+by the fire of passion and the anguish of death. What then was the true
+essence of this creature? Had she perception and consciousness of her
+manifold changes, or was she impenetrable to herself and shut from her
+own mystery? In her expression, her manifestation of herself, how much
+was artificial and how much spontaneous? The desire to fathom this
+secret pierced him even through the delight experienced by the proximity
+of the woman whom he was beginning to love. But his wretched habit of
+analysis for ever prevented him losing sight of himself, though every
+time he yielded to its temptation he was punished, like Psyche for her
+curiosity, by the swift withdrawal of love, the frowns of the beloved
+object and the cessation of all delights. Would it not be better to
+abandon oneself frankly to the first ineffable sweetness of new-born
+love? He saw Elena in the act of placing her lips to a glass of pale
+gold wine like liquid honey. He selected from among his own glasses the
+one the servant had filled with the same wine, and drank at the same
+moment that she did. They replaced their glasses on the table together.
+The similarity of the action made them turn to one another, and the
+glance they exchanged inflamed them far more than the wine.
+
+'You are very silent,' said Elena, affecting a lightness of tone which
+somewhat disguised her voice. 'You have the reputation of being a
+brilliant conversationalist--exert yourself therefore a little!'
+
+'Oh cousin! cousin!' exclaimed Donna Francesca with a comical air of
+commiseration, while Filippo del Monte whispered something in his ear.
+
+Andrea burst out laughing.
+
+'Cavaliere Sakumi; we are the silent members of this party--we must wake
+up!'
+
+The long narrow eyes of the Asiatic--redder than ever now that the wine
+had kindled a deeper crimson on his high cheek-bones--glittered with
+malice. All this time he had done nothing but gaze at the Duchess of
+Scerni with the ecstatic look of a _bonze_ in presence of the divinity.
+His broad flat face, which might have come straight out of a page of
+O-kou-sai, the great classical humorist, gleamed red among the chains of
+flowers like a harvest moon.
+
+'Sakumi is in love,' said Andrea in a low voice, and leaning over
+towards Elena.
+
+'With whom?'
+
+'With you--have you not observed it yet?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Well, look at him.'
+
+Elena looked across at him. The amorous gaze of the disguised _daimio_
+suddenly affected her with such ill-disguised mirth that the Japanese
+felt deeply hurt and humiliated.
+
+'See,' she said, and to console him she detached a white camellia and
+threw it across the table to the envoy of the Rising Sun,--'find some
+comparison in praise of me!'
+
+The Oriental carried the flower to his lips with a ludicrous air of
+devotion.
+
+'Ah--ah--Sakumi!' cried the little Baroness d'Isola, 'you are unfaithful
+to me!'
+
+He stammered a few words while his face flamed. Everybody laughed
+unrestrainedly, as if the foreigner had been invited solely to provide
+entertainment for the other guests. Andrea turned laughing towards
+Elena.
+
+Her head was raised and a little thrown back, and she was gazing
+furtively at the young man under her eyelashes with one of those
+indescribably feminine glances which seem to absorb--almost one would
+say drink in--all that is most desirable, most delectable in the man of
+their choice. The long lashes veiled the soft dark eyes which were
+looking at him a little side-long, and her lower lip had a scarcely
+perceptible tremor. The full ray of her glance seemed to rest upon his
+lips as the most attractive point about him.
+
+And in truth his mouth was very attractive. Pure and youthful in outline
+and rich in colouring, a little cruel when firmly closed, it reminded
+one irresistibly of that portrait of an unknown gentleman in the
+Borghese gallery, that profound and mysterious work of art in which the
+fascinated imagination has sought to recognise the features of the
+divine Cesare Borgia depicted by the divine Sanzio. As soon as the lips
+parted in a smile the resemblance vanished, and the square, even
+dazzlingly white teeth lit up a mouth as fresh and jocund as a child's.
+
+The moment Andrea turned, Elena withdrew her eyes, though not so quickly
+but that the young man caught the flash. His delight was so poignant
+that it sent the blood flaming to his face.
+
+'She is attracted by me!' he thought to himself, inwardly exulting in
+the assurance of having found favour in the eyes of this rare creature.
+'This is a joy I have never experienced before!' he said to himself.
+
+There are certain glances from a woman's eye which a lover would not
+exchange for anything else she can offer him later. He who has not seen
+that first love-light kindle in a limpid eye has never touched the
+highest point of human bliss. No future moment can ever approach that
+one.
+
+The conversation around them grew more animated, and Elena asked
+him--'Are you staying the winter in Rome?'
+
+'The whole winter--and longer,' was Andrea's reply, to whom the simple
+question seemed to open up a promise.
+
+'Ah, then you have set up a home here?'
+
+'Yes, in the Casa Zuccari--_domus aurea_.'
+
+'At the Trinitą de' Monti?--Lucky being!'
+
+'Why lucky?'
+
+'Because you live on a spot I have a great liking for.'
+
+'You are quite right I always think--don't you?--that there the most
+perfect essence of Rome is concentrated as in a cup.'
+
+'Quite true! I have hung up my heart--both Catholic and Pagan--as an
+_ex-voto_ between the obelisk of the Trinitą and the column of the
+Conception.'
+
+She laughed as she spoke. A sonnet to this suspended heart rose
+instantly to his lips, but he did not give it utterance, for he was in
+no mood to continue their conversation in this light vein of false
+sentiment, which broke the sweet spell she had been weaving about him.
+He was silent therefore.
+
+She, too, remained a moment pensive, and then threw herself with renewed
+vivacity into the general conversation, prodigal of wit and laughter,
+flashing her teeth and her _bon mots_ at all in turn. Francesca was
+retailing spicily a piece of gossip about the Princess di Ferentino on
+the subject of a recent, and somewhat risky, adventure of hers with
+Giovanella Daddi.
+
+'By the by--the Ferentino announces another charity bazaar for
+Epiphany,' said the Baroness d'Isola. 'Does anybody know anything about
+it yet?'
+
+'I am one of the patronesses,' said Elena Muti.
+
+'And you are a most valuable patroness,' broke in Don Filippo del Monte,
+a man of about forty, almost bald, a keen sharpener of epigrams, whose
+face seemed a sort of Socratic mask; the right eye was forever on the
+move, and flashed with a thousand changing expressions, while the left
+remained stationary and glazed behind the single eye-glass, as if he
+used the one for expressing himself and the other for seeing. 'At the
+May bazaar, you brought in a perfect shower of gold.'
+
+'Oh, the May bazaar--what a mad affair that was!' exclaimed the
+Marchesa.
+
+While the servants were filling the glasses with iced champagne, she
+added, 'Do you remember, Elena, our stalls were close together?'
+
+'Five louis d'or a drink--five louis d'or a bite!' Don Filippo called,
+in the voice of a street-hawker. Elena and the Marchesa burst out
+laughing.
+
+'Why yes, of course, Filippo, you cried the wares,' said Donna
+Francesca. 'Now what a pity you were not there, _cugino mio_! For five
+louis you might have eaten fruit out of which I had had the first bite,
+and have drunk champagne out of the hollow of Elena's hands for five
+more.'
+
+'How scandalous!' broke in the Baroness d'Isola, with a horrified
+grimace.
+
+'Ah, Mary, I like that! And did you not sell cigarettes that you lighted
+up first yourself for a louis?' cried Francesca through her laughter.
+Then she became suddenly grave. 'Every deed, with a charitable object in
+view, is sacred,' she observed sententiously. 'By merely biting into
+fruit, I collected at least two hundred louis.'
+
+'And you?' Andrea Sperelli turned to Elena with as constrained
+smile--'With your human drinking-cup--how much did you get?'
+
+'I?--oh, two hundred and seventy louis.'
+
+Everybody was full of fun and laughter, excepting the Marchese
+d'Ateleta, who was old, and afflicted with incurable deafness; was
+padded and painted--in a word, artificial from head to foot. He was very
+like one of the figures one sees at a wax work show. From time to
+time--usually the wrong one--he would give vent to a little dry cackling
+laugh, like the rattle of some rusty mechanism inside him.
+
+'However,' Elena resumed, 'you must know, that after a certain point in
+the evening, the price rose to ten louis, and at last, that lunatic of a
+Galeazzo Secinaro came and offered me a five hundred lire note, if I
+would dry my hands on his great golden beard!'
+
+As was ever the case at the d'Ateletas', the dinner increased in
+splendour towards the end; for the true luxury of the table is shown in
+the dessert. A multitude of choice and exquisite things, delighting the
+eye no less than the palate, were disposed with consummate art in
+various crystal and silver-mounted dishes. Festoons of camellias and
+violets hung between the vine-wreathed eighteenth century candelabras,
+round which sported fairies and nymphs, and on the wall-hangings more
+fairies and nymphs, and all the charming figures of the pastoral
+mythology--the Corydons, the Phylises, the Rosalinds--animated with
+their sylvan loves one of those sunny Cytherean landscapes originated by
+the fanciful imagination of Antoine Watteau.
+
+The slightly erotic excitement, which is apt to take hold upon the
+spirits at the end of a dinner graced by fair women and flowers,
+betrayed itself in the tone of the conversations, and the reminiscences
+of this bazaar, at which the ladies--urged on by a noble spirit of
+emulation in collecting the largest sums--employed the most unheard of
+audacities to attract buyers.
+
+'And did you accept it?' asked Andrea of the Duchess.
+
+'I sacrificed my hands on the altar of Benevolence,' she replied.
+'Twenty-five louis more to my account!'
+
+'_All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand._' He
+laughed as he quoted Lady Macbeth's words, but, in reality, his heart
+was sore with a confused, ill-defined pain, that bore a strong
+resemblance to jealousy. And suddenly he became aware of something
+excessive, almost--it might be--a touch of the courtesan, defacing the
+manners of the great lady. Certain inflections of her voice, certain
+tones of her laughter, here a gesture, there an attitude, certain
+glances, exhaled a charm that was perhaps a trifle too Aphrodisiac. She
+was, besides, somewhat over-lavish with the visible favours of her
+graces, and the air she breathed was continually surcharged with the
+desire she herself excited.
+
+Andrea's heart swelled with bitterness; he could not take his eyes off
+Elena's hands. Out of those hands, so delicately, ideally white and
+transparent, with their faint tracery of azure veins--from those rosy
+hollowed palms, wherein a chiromancer would have discovered many an
+intricate crossing of lines, ten, twenty different men had drunk at a
+price. He could _see_ the heads of these unknown men bending over her
+and drinking the wine. But Secinaro was one of his friends--a great
+handsome jovial fellow, imperially bearded like a very Lucius Verus, and
+a most formidable rival to have. He felt as if the dinner would never
+come to an end.
+
+'You are such an innovator,' Elena was saying to Donna Francesca, as she
+dipped her fingers into warm water in a pale blue finger-glass rimmed
+with silver, 'Why do you not revive the ancient fashion of having the
+water offered to one after dinner with a basin and ewer? The modern
+arrangement is very ugly, do you not think so, Sperelli?'
+
+Donna Francesca rose. Every one followed her example. Andrea, with a
+bow, offered his arm to Elena and she looked at him without smiling as
+she slowly laid her hand on his arm. Her last words were gaily and
+lightly spoken, but her gaze was so grave and profound that the young
+man felt it sink into his very soul.
+
+'Are you going to the French Embassy to-morrow evening?' she asked him.
+
+'Are you?' Andrea asked in return.
+
+'I am.'
+
+'So am I.'
+
+They smiled at one another like two lovers.
+
+'Sit down,' she added as she sank into a seat.
+
+The seat was far from the fire, with its back to the curve of a grand
+piano which was partially draped in some rich stuff. At one end of the
+divan, a tall bronze crane held in his beak a tray hanging by three
+chains like one side of a pair of scales, and on it lay a new book and a
+little Japanese scimitar--a _waki-gashi_--the scabbard and hilt
+encrusted with silver chrysanthemums.
+
+Elena took up the book, which was only half cut, read the title, and
+then replaced it on the tray which swung to and fro. The scimitar fell
+to the ground. As both she and Andrea stooped to pick it up, their hands
+met. She straightened herself up and examined the beautiful weapon with
+some curiosity, retaining it in her hand while Andrea talked about the
+new novel, insinuating into his remarks general arguments upon love; and
+her fingers wandered absently over the chasing of the weapon, her
+polished nails seeming a repetition of the delicate gems that sparkled
+in her rings.
+
+Presently, after a pause, Elena said without looking at him: 'You are
+very young--have you often been in love?'
+
+He answered by another question--'Which do you consider the truest,
+noblest way of love--to imagine you have discovered every aspect of the
+eternal Feminine combined in one woman, or to run rapidly over the lips
+of woman as you run your fingers over the keys of a piano, till, at
+last, you find the sublime chord of harmony?'
+
+'I really cannot say--and you?'
+
+'Nor I either--I am unable to solve the great problem of sentiment.
+However, by personal instinct, I have followed the latter plan and have
+now, I fear, struck the grand chord--judging, at least, by an inward
+premonition.'
+
+'You fear?'
+
+'_Je crains ce que j'espčre._'
+
+He instinctively employed this language of affected sentiment to cloak
+his really strong emotion, and Elena felt herself caught by his voice as
+in a golden net and drawn forcibly out of the life surrounding them.
+
+'Her Excellency the Princess di Micigliano!' announced a footman.
+
+'Count di Gissi!'
+
+'Madame Chrysoloras!'
+
+'The Marchese and the Marchesa Massa d'Alba!'
+
+The rooms began to fill rapidly. Long shimmering trains swept over the
+deep red carpet, white shoulders emerged from bodices starred with
+diamonds, embroidered with pearls, covered with flowers, and in nearly
+every coiffure glittered those marvellous hereditary gems for which the
+Roman nobility are so much envied.
+
+'Her Excellency the Princess of Ferentino!'
+
+'His Excellency the Duke of Grimiti!'
+
+The guests formed themselves in various groups, the rallying points of
+gossip and of flirtation. The chief group, composed exclusively of men,
+was in the vicinity of the piano, gathered round the Duchess of Scerni,
+who had risen to her feet, the better to hold her own against her
+besiegers. The Princess of Ferentino came over to greet her friend with
+a reproach.
+
+'Why did you not come to Nini Santamarta's to-day? We all expected you.'
+
+She was tall and thin with extraordinary green eyes sunk deep in their
+shadowy sockets. Her dress was black, the bodice open in a point back
+and front, and in her hair, which was _blond cendré_, she wore a great
+diamond crescent like Diana. She waved a huge fan of red feathers
+hastily to and fro as she spoke.
+
+'Nini is at Madame Van Hueffel's this evening.'
+
+'I am going there later on for a little while, so I shall see her,'
+answered the Duchess.
+
+'Oh, Ugenta,' said the Princess turning to Andrea, 'I was looking for
+you to remind you of our appointment. To-morrow is Thursday and Cardinal
+Immenraet's sale begins at twelve. Will you fetch me at one?'
+
+'I shall not fail, Princess.'
+
+'I simply must have that rock crystal.'
+
+'Then you must be prepared for competition.'
+
+'From whom?'
+
+'My cousin for one.'
+
+'And who else?'
+
+'From me,' said Elena.
+
+'You?--Well, we shall see.'
+
+Several of the gentlemen asked for further enlightenment.
+
+'It is a contest between ladies of the 19th century for a rock crystal
+vase which belonged to Niccolo Niccoli,' Andrea explained with
+solemnity; 'a vase, on which is engraved the Trojan Anchises untying one
+of the sandals of Venus Aphrodite. The entertainment will be given
+gratis, at one o'clock to-morrow afternoon, in the Public Sale-rooms of
+the Via Sistina. Contending parties--the Princess of Ferentino, the
+Duchess of Scerni and the Marchesa d'Ateleta.'
+
+Everybody laughed, and Grimiti asked, 'Is betting permitted?'
+
+'The odds! The odds!' yelled Don Filippo del Monte, imitating the
+strident voice of the bookmaker Stubbs.
+
+The Princess gave him an admonitory tap on the arm with her red fan, but
+the joke seemed to amuse them hugely and the betting began at once.
+Hearing the bursts of laughter, other ladies and gentlemen joined the
+group in order to share the fun. The news of the approaching contest
+spread like lightning and soon assumed the proportions of a society
+event.
+
+'Give me your arm and let us take a turn through the rooms,' said Elena
+to Andrea Sperelli.
+
+As soon as they were in the west room, away from the noisy crowd,
+Andrea pressed her arm and murmured, 'Thanks.'
+
+She leaned on him, stopping now and again to reply to some greeting. She
+seemed fatigued, and was as pale as the pearls of her necklace. Each
+gentleman addressed her with some hackneyed compliment.
+
+'How stupid they all are! it makes me feel quite ill,' she said.
+
+As they turned, she saw Sakumi was following them noiselessly, her
+camellia in his button-hole, his eyes full of yearning not daring to
+come nearer. She threw him a compassionate smile.
+
+'Poor Sakumi!'
+
+'Did you not notice him before?' asked Andrea.
+
+'No.'
+
+'While we were sitting by the piano, he was in the recess of the window,
+and never took his eyes off your hands when you were playing with the
+weapon of his native country--now reduced to being a paper-cutter for a
+European novel.'
+
+'Just now, do you mean?'
+
+'Yes, just now. Perhaps he was thinking how sweet it would be to perform
+_Hara-Kiri_ with that little scimitar, the chrysanthemums on which
+seemed to blossom out of the lacquer and steel under the touch of your
+fingers.'
+
+She did not smile. A veil of sadness, almost of suffering, seemed to
+have fallen over her face; her eyes, faintly luminous under the white
+lids, seemed drowned in shadow, the corners of her mouth drooped
+wearily, her right arm hung straight and languid at her side. She no
+longer held out her hand to those who greeted her; she listened no
+longer to their speeches.
+
+'What is the matter?' asked Andrea.
+
+'Nothing--I must go to the Van Hueffels' now. Take me to Francesca to
+say good-bye, and then come with me down to my carriage.'
+
+They returned to the first drawing-room, where Luigi Gulli, a young man,
+swarthy and curly-haired as an Arab, who had left his native Calabria in
+search of fortune, was executing, with much feeling, Beethoven's sonata
+in C# minor. The Marchesa d'Ateleta, a patroness of his, was standing
+near the piano, with her eyes fixed on the keys. By degrees, the sweet
+and grave music drew all these frivolous spirits within its magic
+circle, like a slow-moving but irresistible whirlpool.
+
+'Beethoven!' exclaimed Elena in a tone of almost religious fervour, as
+she stood still and drew her arm from Andrea's.
+
+She had halted beside one of the great palms and, extending her left
+hand, began very slowly to put on her glove. In that attitude her whole
+figure, continued by the train, seemed taller and more erect; the shadow
+of the palm veiled and, so to speak, spiritualised the pallor of her
+skin. Andrea gazed at her in a kind of rapture, increased by the pathos
+of the music.
+
+As if drawn by the young man's impetuous desire, Elena turned her head a
+little, and smiled at him--a smile so subtle, so spiritual, that it
+seemed rather an emanation of the soul than a movement of the lips,
+while her eyes remained sad and as if lost in a far away dream. Thus
+overshadowed they were verily the eyes of the Night, such as Leonardo da
+Vinci might have imagined for an allegorical figure after having seen
+Lucrezia Crevelli at Milan.
+
+During the second that the smile lasted, Andrea felt himself absolutely
+alone with her in the crowd. An immense wave of pride flooded his heart.
+
+Elena now prepared to put on the other glove.
+
+'No, not that one,' he entreated in a low voice.
+
+She understood, and left her hand bare.
+
+He was hoping to kiss that hand before she left. And suddenly he had a
+vision of the May Bazaar, and the men drinking champagne out of those
+hollowed palms, and for the second time that night he felt the keen stab
+of jealousy.
+
+'We will go now,' she said, taking his arm once more.
+
+The sonata over, conversation was resumed with fresh vigour. Three or
+four new names were announced, amongst them that of the Princess Issé,
+who entered smiling, with funny little tottering steps, in European
+dress, her oval face as white and tiny as a little _netske_ figurine. A
+stir of curiosity ran round the room.
+
+'Good-night, Francesca,' said Elena, taking leave of her hostess, 'I
+shall see you to-morrow.'
+
+'Going so soon?'
+
+'I am due at the Van Hueffels'. I promised to go.'
+
+'What a pity! Mary Dyce is just going to sing.'
+
+'I must go--good-bye!'
+
+'Well, take this, and good-bye. Most amiable of cousins, please look
+after her.'
+
+The Marchesa pressed a bunch of double violets into her hand and hurried
+away to receive the Princess Issé very graciously. Mary Dyce, in a red
+dress, slender and undulating as a tongue of fire, began to sing.
+
+'I am so tired!' murmured Elena, leaning wearily on Andrea's arm.
+'Please ask for my cloak.'
+
+He took her cloak from the attendant, and in helping her to put it on,
+touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and felt her shiver.
+The words of one of Schumann's songs was borne to them on Mary Dyce's
+passionate soprano, _Ich kann's nicht fassen, nicht glauben!_
+
+They descended the stairs in silence. A footman preceded them to call
+the duchess's carriage. The stamping of the horses rang through the
+echoing portico. At every step, Andrea felt the pressure of Elena's arm
+grow heavier; she held her head high, and her eyes were half closed.
+
+'As you ascended these stairs, my admiration followed you, unknown to
+you. Now, as you come down, my love accompanies you,' he said softly,
+almost humbly, faltering a little between the two last words.
+
+She made no reply, but she lifted the bunch of violets to her face, and
+inhaled the perfume. In so doing, the wide sleeve of her evening cloak
+slipped back over her arm beyond her elbow, thrilling the young man's
+senses almost beyond control. His lips trembled, and he with difficulty
+restrained the burning words that rose to them.
+
+The carriage was standing at the foot of the great stairway; a footman
+held open the door.
+
+'To Madame Van Hueffel's,' said the duchess to him, while Andrea helped
+her in.
+
+The man left the door and returned to his seat beside the coachman. The
+horses stamped, striking out sparks from the stones.
+
+'Take care!' cried Elena, holding out her hand to the young man. Her
+eyes and her diamonds flashed through the gloom.
+
+'Oh, to be in there with her in the shadow--to press my lips to her
+satin neck under the perfumed fur of her mantle!'
+
+'Take me with you!' he would like to have cried.
+
+But the horses plunged. 'Oh, take care!' Elena repeated.
+
+He kissed her hand--pressing his lips to it as if to leave the mark of
+his burning passion. He closed the door and the carriage rolled rapidly
+away under the porch, and out to the Forum.
+
+And thus ended Andrea Sperelli's first meeting with the Duchess of
+Scerni.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The gray deluge of democratic mud, which swallows up so many beautiful
+and rare things, is likewise gradually engulfing that particular class
+of the old Italian nobility in which from generation to generation were
+kept alive certain family traditions of eminent culture, refinement and
+art.
+
+To this class, which I should be inclined to denominate Arcadian because
+it shone with greatest splendour in the charming atmosphere of the
+eighteenth century life, belonged the Sperelli. Urbanity, hellenism,
+love of all that was exquisite, a predilection for out-of-the-way
+studies, an ęsthetic curiosity, a passion for archęology, and an
+epicurean taste in gallantry were hereditary qualities of the house of
+Sperelli. An Alessandro Sperelli brought in 1466 to Frederic of Aragon,
+son of Ferdinand King of Naples, and brother to Alfonso Duke of
+Calabria, a manuscript in folio containing the 'less rude' poems of the
+old Tuscan writers which Lorenzo de Medici had promised him at Pisa in
+1465; and in concert with the most erudite scholars of his time, that
+same Alessandro wrote a Latin elegy on the death of the divine
+Simonetta--sad and melting numbers after the manner of Tibullus. Another
+Sperelli--Stefano,--was during the same century in Flanders, in the
+midst of all the pomp, the extravagant elegance, the almost fabulous
+magnificence of the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, where
+he remained, having allied himself with a Flemish family. A son of his,
+named Giusto, learned painting under the direction of Gossaert, in whose
+company he came to Italy in the suite of Philip of Burgundy, the
+ambassador of the Emperor Maximilian to Pope Julius II. in 1508. He
+settled in Florence, where the chief branch of his family continued to
+flourish, and had for his second master Piero di Cosimo, that jocund and
+facile painter and vivid and harmonious colourist, under whose brush the
+pagan deities came to life again. This Giusto was by no means a mediocre
+artist, but he consumed all his forces in the vain effort to reconcile
+his primary Gothic education with the newly awakened spirit of the
+Renaissance. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century the Sperelli
+family migrated to Naples. There a Bartolomeo Sperelli published in 1679
+an astrological treatise: _De Nativitatibus_; in 1720 a Giovanni
+Sperelli wrote for the theatre an opera bouffe entitled _La Faustina_
+and also a lyrical tragedy entitled _Progne_; 1756 a Carlo Sperelli
+brought out a book of amatory verses in which much licentious persiflage
+was expressed with the Horatian elegance so much affected at that
+period. A better poet, and moreover a man of exquisite gallantry, was
+Luigi Sperelli, attached to the court of the _lazzaroni_ king of Naples
+and his queen Caroline. His Muse was very charming, and affected a
+certain epicurean melancholy. He loved much and with a fine
+discrimination, and had innumerable adventures--some of them famous--as,
+for instance, that with the Marchesa di Bugnano who poisoned herself out
+of jealousy, and with the Countess of Chesterfield who died of
+consumption, and whom he mourned in a series of odes, sonnets and
+elegies--very moving, if perhaps somewhat overladen with metaphor.
+
+Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi d'Ugenta, sole heir to the family, carried
+on its traditions. He was, in truth, the ideal type of the young Italian
+nobleman of the nineteenth century, a true representative of a race of
+chivalrous gentlemen and graceful artists, the last scion of an
+intellectual line.
+
+He was, so to speak, thoroughly impregnated with art. His early youth,
+nourished as it was by the most varied and profound studies, promised
+wonders. Up to his twentieth year, he alternated between severe study
+and long journeys, in company with his father, and could thus complete
+his extraordinary ęsthetic education under paternal direction, without
+the restrictions and constraints imposed by tutors. And it was to his
+father that he owed his taste for everything pertaining to art, his
+passionate cult of the Beautiful, his paradoxical disdain of prejudice,
+and his keen appetite for the sensuous.
+
+That father, who had grown up in the midst of the last expiring
+splendours of the Bourbon court of Naples, understood life on a large
+scale, was profoundly initiated into all the arts of the voluptuary,
+combined with a certain Byronic leaning towards fantastic romanticism.
+His marriage had occurred under _quasi_ tragic circumstances, the finale
+of a mad passion; then, after disturbing and undermining the conjugal
+peace in every possible fashion, he had separated from his wife, and,
+keeping his son always with him, had travelled about the whole of
+Europe.
+
+Andrea's education had thus been a living one; that is to say, derived
+less from books than from the study of life as he had seen it. His mind
+was corrupted not only by over-refined culture, but also by actual
+experiments, and in him curiosity grew keener in proportion as his
+knowledge grew wider. From the beginning, he had ever been prodigal of
+his powers, for the great nervous force with which nature had endowed
+him was inexhaustible in providing him with the treasures he dispensed
+so lavishly. But the expansion of that energy caused in him the
+destruction of another force: the moral one, which his own father had
+not scrupled to repress in him. And he never perceived that his whole
+life was a steady retrogression of all his faculties, of his hopes, his
+joys--a species of gradual renunciation--and that the circle was slowly
+but inexorably narrowing round him.
+
+Among other fundamental maxims his father had given him the following:
+You must _make_ your own life as you would any other work of art. The
+life of a man of intellect should be of his own designing. Herein lies
+the only true superiority.
+
+Again: Never, let it cost what it may, lose the mastery over yourself
+even in the most intoxicating rapture of the senses. _Habere non haberi_
+is the rule from which the man of intellect should never swerve.
+
+And again--Regret is the idle pastime of an unoccupied mind. The best
+method, therefore, to avoid regret is to keep the mind constantly
+occupied with new fancies, fresh sensations.
+
+Unfortunately, however, these _voluntary_ axioms, which from their
+ambiguity might just as easily be interpreted as lofty moral rules, fell
+upon an _involuntary_ nature; that is to say, one in which the will
+power was extremely feeble.
+
+Another seed sown by the paternal hand had borne evil fruit in Andrea's
+spirit--the seed of sophistry. Sophistry, said this imprudent teacher,
+is at the bottom of all human pleasure or pain. Therefore, quicken and
+multiply your sophisms and you quicken and multiply your own pleasure or
+your own pain. It is possible that the whole science of life consists in
+obscuring the truth. The word is a very profound matter in which
+inexhaustible treasure is concealed for the man who knows how to use it.
+The Greeks, who were artists in words, were the most refined
+voluptuaries of antiquity. The sophists flourished in the greatest
+number during the age of Pericles, the Golden Age of pleasure.
+
+This germ had found a favourable soil in the unhealthy culture of the
+young man's mind. By degrees, insincerity--rather towards himself than
+towards others--became such a habit of Andrea's mind, that finally he
+was incapable of being wholly sincere or of regaining dominion over
+himself.
+
+The death of his father left him alone at the age of twenty, master of a
+considerable fortune, separated from his mother, and at the mercy of his
+passions and his tastes. He spent fifteen months in England. His mother
+married again, and he returned to Rome from choice.
+
+Rome was his passion--not the Rome of the Cęsars, but the Rome of the
+Popes--not the Rome of the Triumphal Arches, the Forums, the Baths, but
+the Rome of the Villas, the Fountains, the Churches. He would have given
+all the Colosseums in the world for the Villa Medici, the Campo Vaccino
+for the Piazza di Spagna, the Arch of Titus for the Fountain of the
+Tortoises. The princely magnificence of the Colonnas, the Dorias, the
+Barberinis, attracted him far more than the ruins of imperial grandeur.
+It was his dream to possess a palace crowned by a cornice of Michael
+Angelo's, and with frescos by the Carracci like the Farnese palace--a
+gallery of Raphaels, Titians and Domenichini like the Borghese; a villa
+like that of Alessandro Albani, where deep shadowy groves, red granite
+of the East, white marble from Luni, Greek statues and Renaissance
+pictures should weave an enchantment round some sumptuous amour of his.
+In an album of 'Confessions' at his cousin's, the Marchesa d'Ateleta,
+against the question--'What would you most like to be?' he had written,
+'A Roman prince.'
+
+Arriving in Rome about the end of September, he set up his 'home' in the
+Palazzo Zuccari, near the Trinitą de' Monti, where the obelisk of Pius
+VI. marks with its shadow the passing hours. The whole of October was
+devoted to furnishing them. When the rooms were all finished and
+decorated to his taste, he passed some days of invincible melancholy and
+loneliness in his new abode. It was a St. Martin's summer, a 'Springtime
+of the Dead,' calmly sad and sweet, in which Rome lay all golden, like a
+city of the Far East, under a milk-white sky, diaphanous as the
+firmament reflected in Southern seas.
+
+All this languor of atmosphere and light, in which things seemed to lose
+their substance and reality, oppressed the young man with an infinite
+weariness, an inexpressible sense of discontent, of discomfort, of
+solitude, emptiness and home-sickness, mostly, no doubt, the result of
+the change of climate and customs.
+
+It was just this, that he was entering upon a new phase of life. Would
+he find therein the woman and the work capable of dominating his heart
+and becoming an object in life to him? Within himself he felt neither
+the conviction of power nor the presage of fame or happiness. Though
+penetrated, impregnated with art, as yet he had not produced anything
+remarkable. Eager in the pursuit of pleasure and of love, he had never
+yet really loved or really enjoyed whole-heartedly. Tortured by
+aspirations after an Ideal, and abhorring pain both by nature and
+education, he was vulnerable on every side, accessible to pain at every
+point.
+
+In the tumult of his conflicting inclinations, he had lost all guiding
+will-power and moral perception. Will, in abdicating had yielded the
+sceptre to instinct and the ęsthetic sense was substituted for the
+moral. But, it was nevertheless precisely to his ęsthetic sense--in him
+most subtle and powerful--that he owed a certain strength and
+equilibrium of mind, so that one might say his existence was a perpetual
+struggle between contrary forces, enclosed within the limits of that
+equilibrium. Men of intellect, educated in the cult of the beautiful,
+preserve a certain sense of order even in their worst depravities. The
+conception of the beautiful is, so to speak, the axis of their being,
+round which all their passions revolve.
+
+Over this sadness, the recollection of Constance Landbrooke still
+floated like a faded perfume. His love for Conny had been a very
+delicate affair, for she was a very sweet little creature. She was like
+one of Lawrence's creations, with all the dainty feminine graces so dear
+to that painter of furbelows and laces and velvets, of lustrous eyes and
+pouting lips, a very re-incarnation of the little Countess of
+Shaftesbury. Lively, chattering, never still, lavish of infantile
+diminutives and silvery peals of laughter, easily moved to sudden
+caresses and as sudden melancholies and quick bursts of anger, she
+contributed to her share of love a vast amount of movement, much variety
+and many caprices. But Conny Landbrooke's melodious twitterings had left
+no more mark on Andrea's heart than the light musical echo left in one's
+ear for a time by some gay ritornella. More than once in some pensive
+hour of twilight melancholy, she had said to him with a mist of tears
+before her eyes--'I know you do not love me.' And in truth he did not
+love her, she did not by any means satisfy his longings. His ideal was
+less northern in character. Ideally he felt himself attracted by those
+courtesans of the sixteenth century, over whose faces there would appear
+to be drawn some indefinable veil of sorcery, some transparent mask of
+enchantment, some divine nocturnal spell.
+
+The moment Andrea set eyes on the Duchess of Scerni, he said to
+himself--'_This_ is my Ideal Woman!' and his whole soul went out to her
+in a transport of joy, in the presentiment of the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The next day the public sale-room of the Via Sistina was thronged with
+fashionable people, come to look on at the famous contest.
+
+It was raining hard; the light in the low-roofed damp rooms was dull and
+gray. Along the walls were ranged various pieces of carved furniture,
+several large diptychs and triptychs of the Tuscan school of the
+fourteenth century; four pieces of Flemish tapestry representing the
+Story of Narcissus hung from ceiling to floor; Metaurensian majolicas
+occupied two long shelves; stuffs--for the most part ecclesiastical--lay
+spread out on chairs or heaped up on tables; antiquities of the rarest
+kind--ivories, enamels, crystals, engraved gems, medals, coins,
+breviaries, illuminated manuscripts, silver of delicate workmanship were
+massed together in high cabinets behind the auctioneer's table. A
+peculiar musty odour, arising from the clamminess of the atmosphere and
+this collection of ancient things, pervaded the air.
+
+When Andrea Sperelli entered the room with the Princess di Ferentino, he
+looked about him rapidly with a secret tremor--Is _she_ here? he said to
+himself.
+
+She was there, seated at the table between the Cavaliere Davila and Don
+Filippo del Monte. Before her on the table lay her gloves and her muff,
+to which a little bunch of violets was fastened. She held in her hand a
+little bas-relief in silver, attributed to Caradosso Foppa, which she
+was examining with great attention. Each article passed from hand to
+hand along the table while the auctioneer proclaimed its merits in a
+loud voice, those standing behind the line of chairs leaning over to
+look.
+
+The sale began.
+
+'Make your bids, gentlemen! make your bids!' cried the auctioneer from
+time to time.
+
+Some amateur encouraged by this cry bid a higher sum with his eye on his
+competitors. The auctioneer raised his hammer.
+
+'Going--Going--Gone!'
+
+He rapped the table. The article fell to the last bidder. A murmur went
+round the assemblage, then the bidding recommenced. The Cavaliere
+Davila, a Neapolitan gentleman of gigantic stature and almost femininely
+gentle manners, a noted collector and connoisseur of majolica, gave his
+opinion on each article of importance. Three lots in this sale of the
+Cardinal's effects were really of 'superior' quality: the Story of
+Narcissus, the rock-crystal goblet, and an embossed silver helmet by
+Antonio del Pollajuolo presented by the City of Florence to the Count of
+Urbino in 1472 for services rendered during the taking of Volterra.
+
+'Here is the Princess,' said Filippo del Monte to the Duchess.
+
+Elena rose and shook hands with her friend.
+
+'Already in the field!' exclaimed the Princess.
+
+'Already.'
+
+'And Francesca?'
+
+'She has not come yet.'
+
+Four or five young men--the Duke of Grimiti, Roberto Casteldieri,
+Ludovico Barbarisi, Gianetto Rutolo--drew up round them. Others joined
+them. The rattle of the rain against the windows almost drowned their
+voices.
+
+Elena held out her hand frankly to Sperelli as to everybody else, but
+somehow he felt that that handshake set him at a distance from her.
+Elena seemed to him cold and grave. That instant sufficed to freeze and
+destroy all his dreams; his memories of the preceding evening grew
+confused and dim, the torch of hope was extinguished. What had happened
+to her?--She was not the same woman. She was wrapped in the folds of a
+long otter-skin coat, and wore a toque of the same fur on her head.
+There was something hard, almost contemptuous, in the expression of her
+face.
+
+'The goblet will not come on for some time yet,' she observed to the
+Princess, as she resumed her seat.
+
+Every object passed through her hands. She was much tempted by a centaur
+cut in a sardonyx, a very exquisite piece of workmanship, part, perhaps,
+of the scattered collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent. She took part in
+the bidding, communicating her offers to the auctioneer in a low voice
+without raising her eyes to him. Presently the competition stopped; she
+obtained the intaglio for a good price.
+
+'A most admirable acquisition,' observed Andrea Sperelli from behind her
+chair.
+
+Elena could not repress a slight start. She took up the sardonyx and
+handed it to him to look at over her shoulder without turning round. It
+was really a very beautiful thing.
+
+'It might be the centaur copied by Donatello,' Andrea added.
+
+And in his heart, with his admiration for the work of art, there rose up
+also a sincere admiration for the noble taste of the lady who now filled
+all his thoughts. 'What a rare creature both in mind and body!' he
+thought. But the higher she rose in his imagination, the further she
+seemed removed from him in reality. All the security of the preceding
+evening was transformed into uneasiness, and his first doubts re-awoke.
+He had dreamed too much last night with waking eyes, bathed in a
+felicity that knew no bounds, while the memory of a gesture, a smile, a
+turn of the head, a fold of her raiment held him captive as in a net.
+Now all this imaginary world had tumbled miserably about his ears at the
+touch of reality. In Elena's eyes there had been no sign of that special
+greeting to which he had so ardently looked forward; she had in no wise
+singled him out from the crowd, had offered him no mark of favour. Why
+not? He felt himself slighted, humiliated. All these fatuous people
+irritated him, he was exasperated by the things which seemed to engross
+Elena's attention, and more particularly by Filippo del Monte, who
+leaned towards her every now and then to whisper something to
+her--scandal no doubt. The Marchesa d'Ateleta now arrived, cheerful as
+ever. Her laugh, out of the centre of the circle of men who hastened to
+surround her, caused Don Filippo to turn round.
+
+'Ah--so the trinity is complete!' he exclaimed, rising from his seat.
+
+Andrea instantly slipped into it at Elena Muti's side. As the subtle
+perfume of the violets reached him, he murmured--
+
+'These are not those of last night, are they?'
+
+'No,' she answered coldly.
+
+In all her varying moods, changeful and caressing as the waves of the
+sea, there always lay a hidden menace of rebuff. She was often taken
+with fits of cold restraint. Andrea held his tongue, bewildered.
+
+'Make your bids, gentlemen,' cried the auctioneer.
+
+The bids rose higher. Antonio del Pollajuolo's silver helmet was being
+hotly contested. Even the Cavaliere Davila entered the lists. The very
+air seemed gradually to become hotter; the feverish desire to possess so
+beautiful an object seemed to spread like a contagion.
+
+In that year the craze for _bibelots_ and _bric-ą-brac_ reached the
+point of madness. The drawing-rooms of the nobility and the upper middle
+classes were crammed with curios; every lady must needs cover the
+cushions of her sofas and chairs with some piece of church vestment, and
+put her roses into an Umbrian ointment pot, or a chalcedony jar. The
+sale-rooms were the favourite meeting-places, and every sale crowded. It
+was the fashion for the ladies when they dropped in anywhere for tea in
+the afternoon, to enter with some such remark as--'I have just come from
+the sale of the painter Campos' things. Tremendous bidding! Such
+Hispano-Moresque plaques! I secured a jewel belonging to Maria
+Leczinska. Look!'
+
+The bidding continued. Fashionable purchasers crowded round the table,
+vieing with each other in artistic and critical comparisons between the
+Giottoesque Nativities and Annunciations. Into this atmosphere of
+mustiness and antiquity the ladies brought the perfume of their furs,
+and more especially of the violets which each one wore on her muff,
+according to the then prevailing charming fashion, and their presence
+diffused a delicious air of warmth and fragrance. Outside, the rain
+continued to fall, and the light to fade. Here and there a little flame
+of gas struggled feebly with such daylight as remained.
+
+'Going--going--gone!' The stroke of the hammer put Lord Humphrey
+Heathfield in possession of the Florentine helmet. The bidding then
+began for smaller articles, which passed in turn from hand to hand down
+the long table. Elena handled them carefully, examined them, and placed
+them in front of Andrea without remark. There were enamels, ivories,
+eighteenth century watches, Milanese goldsmiths' work of the time of
+Ludovico the Moor, Books of Hours inscribed in gold letters on pale blue
+vellum. These precious things seemed to increase in value under the
+touch of Elena's fingers; her little hands had a faint tremor of
+eagerness when they came in contact with some specially desirable
+object. Andrea watched them intently, and his imagination transformed
+every movement of her hands into a caress. 'But why did she place each
+thing upon the table instead of passing it to him?'
+
+He forestalled her next time by holding out his hand. And from
+thenceforth the ivories, the enamels, the ornaments passed from the
+hands of the lady to those of her lover, to whom they communicated an
+ineffable thrill of delight. He felt that thus some particle of the
+charm of the beloved woman entered into these objects, just as a portion
+of the virtue of the magnet enters into the iron. It was, in truth, the
+magnetic sense of love--one of those acute and profound sensations which
+are rarely felt but at love's beginning, and which, differing
+essentially from all others, seem to have no physical or moral seat, but
+to exist in some neutral element of our being--an element that is
+intermediate, and the nature of which is unknown.
+
+'Here again is a rapture I have never felt before,' thought Andrea.
+
+A kind of torpor seemed creeping over him. Little by little, he was
+losing consciousness of time and place.
+
+'I recommend this clock to your notice,' Elena was saying to him, with a
+look the full significance of which he did not for the first moment
+understand.
+
+It was a small Death's-head, carved in ivory with extraordinary power
+and anatomical skill. Each jaw was furnished with a row of diamonds, and
+two rubies flashed from the deep eye-sockets. On the forehead was
+engraved, _Ruit Hora_; and on the occiput _Tibi_, _Hippolyta_. It opened
+like a box, the hinging being almost imperceptible, and the ticking
+inside lent an indescribable air of life to the diminutive skull. This
+sepulchral jewel, the offering of some unknown artist to his mistress,
+had doubtless marked many an hour of rapture, and served as a warning
+symbol to their amorous souls.
+
+Could a lover wish for anything more exquisite and more suggestive? 'Has
+she any special reason for recommending this to me?' thought Andrea, all
+his hopes reviving on the instant. He threw himself into the bidding
+with a sort of fury. Two or three others bid against him, notably
+Giannetto Rutolo, who, being in love with Donna Ippolita Albonico, was
+attracted by the dedication: _Tibi, Hippolyta_.
+
+Presently Rutolo and Sperelli were left alone in the contest. The
+bidding rose higher than the actual value of the article, which forced a
+smile from the auctioneer. At last, vanquished by his adversary's
+determination, Giannetto Rutolo was silent.
+
+'Going--going--!'
+
+Donna Ippolita's lover, a little pale, cried one last sum. Sperelli
+named a higher--there was a moment's silence. The auctioneer looked from
+one to the other, then he raised his hammer and slowly, still looking at
+the two--'Going--going--gone!'
+
+The Death's-head fell to the Conte d'Ugenta. A murmur ran round the
+room. A sudden flood of light burst through the windows, lit up the
+gleaming gold backgrounds of the triptychs, and played over the
+sorrowfully patient brow of the Siennese Madonna and the glittering
+steel scales on the Princess di Ferentino's little grey hat.
+
+'When is the goblet coming on?' asked the princess impatiently.
+
+Her friends consulted the catalogue. There was no hope of the goblet for
+that day. The unusual amount of competition made the sale go slowly.
+There was still a long list of smaller articles--cameos, medallions,
+coins. Several antiquaries and Prince Stroganow disputed each piece
+hotly. The rest felt considerably disappointed. The Duchess of Scerni
+rose to go.
+
+'Good-bye, Sperelli,' she said. 'I shall see you again this
+evening--perhaps.'
+
+'Why perhaps?'
+
+'I do not feel well.'
+
+'What is the matter?'
+
+She turned away without replying, and took leave of the others. Many of
+them followed her example and left with her. The young men were making
+fun of the 'spectacle manqué.' The Marchesa d'Ateleta laughed, but the
+princess was evidently thoroughly out of temper. The footmen waiting in
+the hall called for the carriages as if at the door of a theatre or
+concert hall.
+
+'Are you not coming on to Laura Miano's?' Francesca asked the duchess.
+
+'No, I am going home.'
+
+She waited on the pavement for her brougham to come up. The rain was
+passing over; patches of blue were beginning to appear between the great
+banks of white cloud; a shaft of sunshine made the wet flags glitter.
+Flooded by this pale rose splendour, her magnificent furs falling in
+straight symmetrical folds to her feet, Elena was very beautiful. As
+Andrea caught a glimpse of the inside of her brougham, all cosily lined
+with white satin like a little boudoir, with its shining silver
+foot-warmer for the comfort of her small feet, his dream of the
+preceding evening came back to him--'Oh, to be there with her alone,
+and feel the warm perfume of her breath mingling with the
+violets--behind the mist-dimmed windows through which one hardly sees
+the muddy streets, the gray houses, the dull crowd!'
+
+But she only bowed slightly to him at the door, without even a smile,
+and the next moment the carriage had flashed away in the direction of
+the Palazzo Barberini, leaving the young man with a dim sense of
+depression and heartache.
+
+She only said 'perhaps,' so it was quite possible that she would not be
+at the Palazzo Farnese that evening. What should he do then? The thought
+that he might not see her was intolerable; already every hour he passed
+far from her weighed heavily on his spirits. 'Am I then so deeply in
+love with her already?' he asked himself. His spirit seemed imprisoned
+within a circle in which the phantoms of all his sensations in presence
+of this woman surged and wheeled around him. Suddenly there would emerge
+from this tangle of memory, with singular precision, some phrase of
+hers, an inflection of her voice, an attitude, a glance, the seat where
+they had sat, the finale of the Beethoven sonata, a burst of melody from
+Mary Dyce, the face of the footman who had held back the
+_portičre_--anything that happened to have caught his attention at the
+moment--and these images obscured by their extreme vividness the actual
+life around him. He pleaded with her; said to her in thought what he
+would say to her in reality by and by.
+
+Arrived in his own rooms, he ordered tea of his man-servant, installed
+himself in front of the fire and gave himself up to the fictions of his
+hope and his desire. He took the little jewelled skull out of its case
+and examined it carefully. The tiny diamond teeth flashed back at him in
+the firelight, and the rubies lit up the shadowy orbits. Behind the
+smooth ivory brow time pulsed unceasingly--_Ruit Hora_. Who was the
+artist who had contrived for his Hippolyta so superb and bold a fantasy
+of Death, at a period too when the masters of enamelling had been wont
+to ornament with tender idylls the little watches destined to warn
+Coquette of the time of the rendezvous in the parks of Watteau? The
+modelling gave evidence of a masterly hand--vigorous and full of
+admirable style; altogether it was worthy of a fifteenth century artist
+as forcible as Verrocchio.
+
+'I recommend this clock to your consideration.' Andrea could not help
+smiling a little at Elena's words uttered in so peculiar a tone after so
+cold a silence. He was assured that she intended him to put the
+construction upon her words which he had afterwards done, but then why
+retire into impenetrable reserve again--why take no further notice of
+him--what ailed her? Andrea lost himself in a maze of conjecture.
+Nevertheless, the warm atmosphere of the room, the luxurious chair, the
+shaded lamp, the fitful gleams of firelight, the aroma of the tea--all
+these soothing influences combined to mitigate his pain. He went on
+dreamingly, aimlessly, as if wandering through a fantastic labyrinth.
+With him reverie sometimes had the effect of opium--it intoxicated him.
+
+'May I take the liberty of reminding the Signor Conte that he is
+expected at the Casa Doria at seven o'clock,' observed his valet in a
+subdued and discreet murmur, one of his offices being to jog his
+master's memory. 'Everything is ready.'
+
+He went into an adjoining octagonal room to dress, the most luxurious
+and comfortable dressing-room any young man of fashion could possibly
+desire. On a great Roman sarcophagus, transformed with much taste into a
+toilet table, were ranged a selection of cambric handkerchiefs, evening
+gloves, card and cigarette cases, bottles of scent, and five or six
+fresh gardenias in separate little pale blue china vases--all these
+frivolous and fragile things on this mass of stone, on which a funeral
+_cortčge_ was sculptured by a masterly hand!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+At the Casa Doria, speaking of one thing and another, the Duchess
+Angelieri remarked--'It seems that Laura Miano and Elena Muti have
+quarrelled.'
+
+'About Giorgio perhaps?' returned another lady laughing.
+
+'So they say. The story began this summer at Lucerne--'
+
+'But Laura was not at Lucerne,'
+
+'Exactly--but her husband was--'
+
+'I believe it is a pure invention,' broke in the Florentine countess
+Donna Bianca Dolcebuono--'Giorgio is in Paris now.'
+
+Andrea heard it all in spite of the chattering of the little Contessa
+Starnina, who sat at his right hand, and never gave him a moment's
+peace. Bianca Dolcebuono's words did little to ease the smart of his
+wound. At least, he would have liked to know the whole story. But the
+Duchess Angelieri did not resume the thread of her discourse, and other
+conversations crossed and recrossed the table under the great gorgeous
+roses from the Villa Pamfili.
+
+Who was this Giorgio? A former lover? Elena had spent part of the summer
+at Lucerne,--she had just come from Paris. After the sale she had
+refused to go to Laura Miano's. A fierce desire assailed him to see her,
+to speak to her again. The invitation at the Palazzo Farnese was for ten
+o'clock--half past ten found him there waiting anxiously.
+
+He waited long. The rooms filled rapidly; the dancing began. In the
+Carracci gallery the divinities of fashionable Rome vied in beauty with
+the Ariadnes, the Galateas, the Auroras, the Dianas of the frescos;
+couples whirled past; heads glittering with jewels drooped or raised
+themselves, bosoms panted, the breath came fast through parted crimson
+lips.
+
+'You are not dancing, Sperelli?' asked Gabriella Barbarisi, a girl brown
+as the _oliva speciosa_, as she passed him on the arm of her partner,
+fanning herself and smiling to show a dimple she had at the corner of
+her mouth.
+
+'Yes--later on,' Andrea responded hastily--'later on.'
+
+Heedless of introductions or greetings, his torment increased with every
+moment of this fruitless expectation, and he roamed aimlessly from room
+to room. That 'perhaps' made him sadly afraid that Elena would not come.
+And supposing she really did not? When was he likely to see her again?
+Donna Bianca Dolcebuono passed, and, almost without knowing why, he
+attached himself to her side, saying a thousand agreeable things to her,
+feeling some slight comfort in her society. He had the greatest desire
+to speak to her about Elena, to question her, to reassure himself; but
+the orchestra struck up a languorous mazurka and the Florentine countess
+was carried off by her partner.
+
+Thereupon, Andrea joined a group of young men near one of the
+doors--Ludovico Barbarisi, the Duke di Beffi, Filippo del Gallo and Gino
+Bomminaco. They were watching the couples, and exchanging observations
+not over refined in quality. One of them turned to Andrea as he came up.
+
+'Why, what has become of you this evening? Your cousin was looking for
+you a moment ago. There she is dancing with my brother now.'
+
+'Look!' exclaimed Filippo del Gallo--'the Albonico has come back, she is
+dancing with Giannetto.'
+
+'The Duchess of Scerni came back last week,' said Ludovico; 'what a
+lovely creature!'
+
+'Is she here?'
+
+'I have not seen her yet,'
+
+Andrea's heart stopped beating for a moment, fearing that something
+would be said against her by one or other of these malicious tongues.
+But the passing of the Princess Issé on the arm of the Danish Minister
+diverted their attention. Nevertheless, his desire for further knowledge
+was so intense, that it almost drove him to lead back the conversation
+to the name of his lady-love. But he was not quite bold enough. The
+mazurka was over; the group broke up. 'She is not coming! She is not
+coming!' His secret anxiety rose to such a pitch that he half thought of
+leaving the place altogether; the contact of this laughing, careless
+throng was intolerable.
+
+As he turned away, he saw the Duchess of Scerni entering the gallery on
+the arm of the French ambassador. For one instant their eyes met, but
+that one glance seemed to draw them to each other, to penetrate to the
+very depths of their souls. Both knew that each had only been looking
+for the other, and at that moment there seemed to fall a silence upon
+both hearts, even in the midst of the babel of voices, and all their
+surroundings to vanish and be swept away by the force of their own
+absorbing thought.
+
+She advanced along the frescoed gallery where the crowd was thinnest,
+her long white train rippling like a wave over the floor behind her. All
+white and simple, she passed slowly along, turning from side to side in
+answer to the numerous greetings, with an air of manifest fatigue and a
+somewhat strained smile which drew down the corners of her mouth, while
+her eyes looked larger than ever under the low white brow, her extreme
+pallor imparting to her whole face a look so ethereal and delicate as to
+be almost ghostly. This was not the same woman who had sat beside him at
+the Ateleta's table, nor the one of the Sale Rooms, nor the one standing
+waiting for a moment on the pavement of the Via Sistina. Her beauty at
+this moment was of ideal nobility, and shone with additional splendour
+among all these women heated with the dance, over-excited and restless
+in their manner. The men looked at her and grew thoughtful; no mind was
+so obtuse or empty that she did not exercise a disturbing influence upon
+it, inspire some vague and indefinable hope. He whose heart was free
+imagined with a thrill what such a woman's love would be; he who loved
+already conceived a vague regret, and dreamed of raptures hitherto
+unknown; he who bore a wound dealt by some woman's jealousy or
+faithlessness suddenly felt that he might easily recover.
+
+Thus she advanced amid the homage of the men, enveloped by their gaze.
+Arrived at the end of the gallery, she joined a group of ladies who were
+talking and fanning themselves excitedly under the fresco of Perseus
+turning Phineus to stone. They were the Princess di Ferentino, Hortensa
+Massa d'Alba, the Marchesa Daddi-Tosinghi and Bianca Dolcebuono.
+
+'Why so late?' asked the latter.
+
+'I hesitated very much whether to come at all--I don't feel well.'
+
+'Yes, you look very pale.'
+
+'I believe I am going to have neuralgia badly again, like last year.'
+
+'Heaven forefend!'
+
+'Elena, do look at Madame de la Boissičre,' exclaimed Giovanella Daddi
+in her queer husky voice; 'doesn't she look like a camel with a yellow
+wig!'
+
+'Mademoiselle Vanloo is losing her head over your cousin,' said Hortensa
+Massa d'Alba to the Princess as Sophie Vanloo passed on Ludovico
+Barbarisi's arm. 'I heard her say just now when they passed me in the
+mazurka--_Ludovic, ne faites plus ēa en dansant; je frissonne toute_--'
+
+The ladies laughed in chorus, fluttering their fans. The first notes of
+a Hungarian waltz floated in from the next room. The gentlemen came to
+claim their partners. At last Andrea was able to offer Elena his arm and
+carry her off.
+
+'I thought I should have died waiting for you! If you had not come I
+should have gone to find you--anywhere. When I saw you come in I could
+scarcely repress a cry. This is only the second evening I have met you,
+and yet I feel as if I had loved you for years. The thought of you and
+you alone is now the life of my life.'
+
+He uttered his burning words of love in a low voice, looking straight
+before him, and she listened in a similar attitude, apparently quite
+impassive, almost stony. Only a sprinkling of people remained in the
+gallery. Between the busts of the Cęsars along the walls, lamps with
+milky globes shaped like lilies shed an even, tempered light. The
+profusion of palms and flowering plants gave the whole place the look of
+a sumptuous conservatory. The music floated through the warm-scented air
+under the vaulted roof and over all this mythology like a breeze though
+an enchanted garden.
+
+'Can you love me?' he asked: 'tell me if you think you can ever love
+me.'
+
+'I came only for you,' she returned slowly.
+
+'Tell me that you will love me,' he repeated, while every drop of blood
+seemed to rush in a tumult of joy to his heart.
+
+'Perhaps----' she answered, and she looked into his face with that same
+look which, on the preceding evening, had seemed to hold a divine
+promise, that ineffable gaze which acts like the velvet touch of a
+loving hand. Neither of them spoke; they listened to the sweet and
+fitful strains of the music, now slow and faint as a zephyr, now loud
+and rushing like a sudden tempest.
+
+'Shall we dance?' he asked with a secret tremor of delight at the
+prospect of encircling her with his arm.
+
+She hesitated a moment before replying. 'No; I would rather not.'
+
+Then, seeing the Duchess of Bugnare, her aunt, entering the gallery with
+the Princess Alberoni and the French ambassadress, she added hurriedly,
+'Now--be prudent, and leave me.'
+
+She held out her gloved hand to him and advanced alone to meet the
+ladies with a light firm step. Her long white train lent an additional
+grace to her figure, the wide and heavy folds of brocade serving to
+accentuate the slenderness of her waist. Andrea, as he followed her with
+his eyes, kept repeating her words to himself, 'I came for you alone--I
+came for you alone!' The orchestra suddenly took up the waltz measure
+with a fresh impetus. And never, through all his life, did he forget
+that music, nor the attitude of the woman he loved, nor the sumptuous
+folds of the brocade trailing over the floor, nor the faintest shadow on
+the rich material, nor one single detail of that supreme moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Elena left the Farnese palace very soon after this, almost stealthily,
+without taking leave of Andrea or of any one else. She had therefore not
+stayed more than half an hour at the ball. Her lover searched for her
+through all the rooms in vain. The next morning, he sent a servant to
+the Palazzo Barberini to inquire after the duchess, and learned from him
+that she was ill. In the evening he went in person, hoping to be
+received; but a maid informed him that her mistress was in great pain
+and could see no one. On the Saturday, towards five o'clock, he came
+back once more, still hoping for better luck.
+
+He left his house on foot. The evening was chill and gray, and a heavy
+leaden twilight was settling over the city. The lamps were already
+lighted round the fountain in the Piazza Barberini like pale tapers
+round a funeral bier, and the Triton, whether being under repair or for
+some other reason, had ceased to spout water. Down the sloping roadway
+came a line of carts drawn by two or three horses harnessed in single
+file, and bands of workmen returning home from the new buildings. A
+group of these came swaying along arm in arm, singing a lewd song at the
+pitch of their voices.
+
+Andrea stopped to let them pass. Two or three of the debased,
+weather-beaten faces impressed themselves on his memory. He noticed that
+a carter had his hand wrapped in a blood-stained bandage, and that
+another, who was kneeling in his cart, had the livid complexion, deep
+sunken eyes and convulsively contracted mouth of a man who has been
+poisoned. The words of the song were mingled with guttural cries, the
+cracking of whips, the grinding of wheels, the jingling of horse bells
+and shrill discordant laughter.
+
+His mental depression increased. He found himself in a very curious
+mood. The sensibility of his nerves was so acute that the most trivial
+impression conveyed to them by external means assumed the gravity of a
+wound. While one fixed thought occupied and tormented his spirit, the
+rest of his being was left exposed to the rude jostling of surrounding
+circumstances. Groups of sensations rushed with lightning rapidity
+across his mental field of vision, like the phantasmagoria of a magic
+lantern, startling and alarming him. The banked-up clouds of evening,
+the form of the Triton surrounded by the cadaverous lights, this sudden
+descent of savage looking men and huge animals, these shouts and songs
+and curses aggravated his condition, arousing a vague terror in his
+heart, a foreboding of disaster.
+
+A closed carriage drove out of the palace garden. He caught a glimpse of
+a lady bowing to him, but he failed to recognise her. The palace rose up
+before him, vast as some royal residence. The windows of the first floor
+gleamed with violet reflections, a pale strip of sunset sky rested just
+above it; a brougham was turning away from the door.
+
+'If I could but see her!' he thought to himself, standing still for a
+moment. He lingered, purposely to prolong his uncertainty and his hope.
+Shut up in this immense edifice she seemed to him immeasurably far
+away--lost to him.
+
+The brougham stopped, and a gentleman put his head out of the window and
+called--'Andrea!'
+
+It was the Duke of Grimiti, a near relative of his.
+
+'Going to call on the Scerni?' asked the duke with a significant smile.
+
+'Yes,' answered Andrea, 'to inquire after her--she is ill, you know.'
+
+'Yes, I know--I have just come from there. She is better.'
+
+'Does she receive?'
+
+'Me--no. But she may perhaps receive you.' And Grimiti laughed
+maliciously through the smoke of his cigarette.
+
+'I don't understand,' Andrea answered coldly.
+
+'Bah!' said the duke. 'Report says you are high in favour. I heard it
+last night at the Pallavicinis', from a lady, a great friend of
+yours--give you my word!'
+
+Andrea turned on his heel with a gesture of impatience.
+
+'_Bonne chance_!' cried the duke.
+
+Andrea entered the portico. In reality he was delighted and flattered
+that such a report should be circulated already. Grimiti's words had
+suddenly revived his courage like a draught of some cordial. As he
+mounted the steps, his hopes rose high. He waited for a moment at the
+door to allow his excitement to calm down a little. Then he rang.
+
+The servant recognised him and said at once: 'If the Signor Conte will
+have the kindness to wait a moment I will go and inform _Mademoiselle_.'
+
+He nodded assent, and began pacing the vast ante-chamber, which seemed
+to echo the violent beating of his heart. Hanging lamps of wrought iron
+shed an uncertain light over the stamped leather panelling of the walls,
+the carved oak chests, the antique busts on pedestals. Under a
+magnificently embroidered baldachin blazed the ducal arms: a unicorn on
+a field gules. A bronze card-tray, heaped with cards, stood in the
+middle of a table, and happening to cast his eye over them, Andrea
+noticed the one which Grimiti had just left lying on the top--_Bonne
+chance!_--The ironical augury still rang in his ears.
+
+Mademoiselle now made her appearance. 'The duchess is feeling a little
+better,' she said. 'I think the Signor Conte might see her for a moment.
+This way, if you please.'
+
+She was a woman past her first youth, rather thin and dressed in black,
+with a pair of gray eyes that glittered curiously under the curls of her
+false fringe. Her step and her movements generally were light, not to
+say furtive, as of one who is in the habit of attending upon invalids
+or of executing secret orders.
+
+'This way, Signor Conte.'
+
+She preceded Andrea though the long flight of dimly-lighted rooms, the
+thick soft carpets deadening every sound; and even through the almost
+uncontrollable tumult of his soul, the young man was conscious of an
+instinctive feeling of repulsion against her, without being able to
+assign an adequate reason for it.
+
+Arrived in front of a door concealed by two pieces of tapestry of the
+Medicean period, bordered with deep red velvet, she stopped.
+
+'I will go first and announce you. Please to wait here.'
+
+A voice from within, which he recognised as Elena's, called,
+'Christina!'
+
+At the sound of her voice coming thus unexpectedly, Andrea began to
+tremble so violently that he thought to himself--'I am sure I am going
+to faint.' He had a dim presentiment of some more than mortal happiness
+in store for him which should exceed his utmost expectations, his
+wildest dreams--almost beyond his powers to support. She was there--on
+the other side of that door. All perception of reality deserted him. It
+seemed to him that he had already imagined--in some picture, some
+poem--a similar adventure, under the self-same circumstances, with these
+identical surroundings and enveloped in the same mystery, but of which
+_another_--some fiction of his own brain--was the hero. And now, by some
+strange trick of the imagination, the fictitious was confounded with the
+real, causing him an indescribable sense of confusion and bewilderment.
+On each of the pieces of tapestry was a large symbolical figure--Silence
+and Slumber--two Genii, tall and slender, which might have been designed
+by Primaticcio of Bologna, guarding the door. And he--he himself--stood
+before the door waiting, and on the other side of it was his divine
+lady. He almost thought he could hear her breathe.
+
+At last Mademoiselle returned. Holding back the heavy draperies she
+smiled, and in a low voice said:
+
+'Please go in.'
+
+She effaced herself, and Andrea entered the room.
+
+He noticed first of all that the air was very hot, almost stifling, and
+that there was a strong odour of chloroform. Then, through the
+semi-darkness, he became aware of something red--the crimson of the wall
+paper and the curtains of the bed--and then he heard Elena's languid
+voice murmuring, 'Thank you so much for coming, Andrea--I feel better
+now.'
+
+He made his way to her with some difficulty, being unable to distinguish
+things very clearly in the half light.
+
+She smiled wanly at him from among the pillows out of the gloom. Across
+her forehead and round her face, like a nun's wimple, lay a band of
+white linen which was scarcely whiter than the cheeks it encircled, such
+was her extreme pallor. The outer angles of her eyelids were contracted
+by the pain of her inflamed nerves, the lower lids quivering
+spasmodically from time to time, and the eyes were dewy and infinitely
+melting as if veiled by a mist of unshed tears under the trembling
+lashes.
+
+A flood of pity and tenderness swept over the young man's heart when he
+came close to her and could see her clearly. Very slowly she drew one
+hand from under the coverlet and held it out to him. He bent over it
+till he half knelt on the edge of the couch and rained kisses thick and
+fast upon that burning, fevered hand, and the white wrist with its
+hurrying pulse.
+
+'Elena--Elena--my love!'
+
+Elena had closed her eyes, as if to resign herself more wholly to the
+ecstasy that penetrated to the most hidden fibre of her being. Then she
+turned her hand over that she might feel those kisses on her palm, on
+each finger, all round her wrist, on every vein, in every pore.
+
+'Enough!' she murmured at last, opening her eyes again, and passed her
+languid hand softly over Andrea's hair.
+
+Her caress, though light, was so ineffably tender, that to the lover's
+soul it had the effect of a rose leaf falling into a full cup of water.
+His passion brimmed over. His lips trembled under a confused torrent of
+words which rose to them but which he could not express. He had the
+violent and divine sensation as of a new life spreading in widening
+circles round him beyond all physical perception.
+
+'What bliss!' said Elena, repeating her fond gesture, and a tremor ran
+through her whole person, visible through the coverlet.
+
+But when Andrea made as if to take her hand again--'No,' she entreated,
+'do not move--stay as you are, I like to have you so.'
+
+She gently pressed his head down till his cheek lay against her knee.
+She gazed at him a little, still with that caressing touch upon his
+head, and then in a voice that seemed to faint with ecstasy she
+murmured, lingering over the syllables--
+
+'How I love you!'
+
+There was an ineffable seduction in the way she pronounced the words--so
+liquid, so enthralling on a woman's lips.
+
+'Again!' whispered her lover, whose senses were languishing with passion
+under the touch of those hands, the sound of that caressing voice. 'Say
+it again--go on speaking.'
+
+'I love you,' repeated Elena, noticing that his eyes were fixed upon her
+lips, and being perhaps aware of the fascination that emanated from them
+while pronouncing the words.
+
+With a sudden movement she raised herself from the pillows, and taking
+Andrea's head between her two hands, she drew him to her, and their lips
+met in a long and passionate kiss.
+
+Afterwards she fell back again, and lying with her arms stretched
+straight along the coverlet at her sides, she gazed at Andrea with wide
+open eyes, while one by one the great tears gathered slowly, and
+silently rolled down her cheeks.
+
+'What is it, Elena--tell me--What is it?' asked her lover, clasping her
+hands and leaning over her to kiss away the tears.
+
+She clenched her teeth and bit her lips to keep back the sobs.
+
+'Nothing--nothing--go now, leave me--please! You shall see me
+to-morrow--go now.'
+
+Her voice and her look were so imploring that Andrea obeyed.
+
+'Good-bye,' he said, and kissed her tenderly on the lips, carrying away
+upon his own the taste of her salt tears. 'Good-bye! Love me--and do not
+forget.'
+
+As he crossed the threshold, he seemed to hear her break into sobs
+behind him. He went on a little unsteadily, like a man who is not sure
+of his sight. The odour of chloroform lingered in his nostrils like the
+fumes of an intoxicating vapour; but, with every step he took, some
+virtue seemed to go out of him, to be dissipated in the air. The rooms
+lay empty and silent before him. 'Mademoiselle' appeared at a door
+without any warning sound of steps or rustle of garments, like a ghost.
+
+'This way Signor Conte, you will not be able to find your way.'
+
+She smiled in an ambiguous and irritating manner, her gray eyes
+glittering with ill-concealed curiosity. Andrea did not speak. Once more
+the presence of this woman annoyed and disturbed him, arousing an
+undefined sense of repulsion and anger in him.
+
+No sooner was he outside the door than he drew a deep breath like a man
+relieved from some heavy burden. The gentle splash of the fountain came
+through the trees, broken now and then by some clearer, louder sound;
+the whole firmament glittered with stars, veiled here and there by long
+trailing strips of cloud like tresses of pale hair; carriage lamps
+flitted rapidly hither and thither, the life of the great city sent up
+its breath into the keen air, bells were ringing far and near. At last,
+he had the full consciousness of his overwhelming felicity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Thus began for them a bliss that was full, frenzied, for ever changing
+and for ever new; a passion that wrapped them round and rendered them
+oblivious of all that did not minister immediately to their mutual
+delight.
+
+'What a strange love!' Elena said once, recalling those first days--her
+illness, her rapid surrender--'My heart was yours from the first moment
+I saw you.'
+
+She felt a certain pride in the fact.
+
+'And when, on that evening, I heard my name announced immediately after
+yours,' her lover replied, 'I don't know why, but I suddenly had the
+firm conviction that my life was bound to yours--for ever!'
+
+And they really believed what they said. Together they re-read Goethe's
+Roman elegy--_Lass dich, Geliebte, nicht reu'n, dass du mir so schnell
+dich ergeben!_--Have no regrets, my Beloved, that thou didst yield thee
+so soon--'Believe me, dearest, I do not attribute one base or impure
+thought to you. Cupid's darts have varying effects--some inflict but a
+slight scratch, and the poison they insinuate lingers for years before
+it really touches the heart, while others, well feathered and armed with
+a sharp and penetrating point, pierce to the heart's core at once and
+send the fever racing through the blood. In the old heroic days of the
+loves of the gods and goddesses desire followed upon sight. Think you
+that the goddess of Love considered long in the grove of Ida that day
+Anchises found favour in her eyes? And Luna?--had she hesitated, envious
+Aurora would soon have wakened her handsome shepherd.'
+
+For them, as for Faustina's divine singer, Rome was illumined by a new
+light. Wherever their footsteps strayed they left a memory of love. The
+forgotten churches of the Aventine--Santa Sabina with its wonderful
+columns of Parian marble, the charming garden of Santa Maria del
+Priorata, the campanile of Santa Maria in Cosmedin piercing the azure
+with its slender rose-coloured spire grew to know them well. The villas
+of the cardinals and the princes--the Villa Pamfili mirrored in its
+fountains and its lakes, all sweetness and grace, where every shady
+grove seems to harbour some noble idyll; the Villa Albani, cold and
+silent as a church, with its avenues of sculptured marble and
+centenarian trees; where in the vestibules, under the porticos and
+between the granite pillars, Caryatides and Hermes, symbols of
+immobility, gaze at the immutable symmetry of the verdant lawns; and the
+Villa Medici--like a forest of emerald green spreading away in a fairy
+tale, and the Villa Ludovici--a little wild--redolent of violets,
+consecrated by the presence of that Juno adored by Goethe in the days
+when the plane-trees and the cypresses, that one might well have thought
+immortal, had already begun to tremble with the foreboding of sale and
+death--all the patrician villas, the crowning glory of Rome, became well
+acquainted with their love. The picture and sculpture galleries too--the
+room in the Borghese where, before Correggio's 'Danae' Elena smiled as
+at her own reflection; and the Mirror Room, where her image glided among
+the Cupids of Ciro Ferri and the garlands of Mario de' Fiori; the
+chamber of Heliodorus, where Raphael has succeeded in making the dull
+walls throb and palpitate with life; and the apartments of the Borgias,
+where the great fantasia of Penturicchio unfolds its marvellous web of
+history, fable, dreams, caprices and audacities; and the Galatea Room,
+through which is diffused an ineffable freshness, a perennial serenity
+of light and grace; and the room where the Hermaphrodite, that gentle
+monster, offspring of the loves of a nymph and a demi-god, extends his
+ambiguous form amidst the sparkle of polished stone--all these
+unfrequented abodes of Beauty were well acquainted with them.
+
+They echoed fervently the sublime cry of the poet--_Eine Welt zwar bist
+du, O Rom!_ Thou art a world in thyself, oh Rome! But as without love
+the world would not be the world, so Rome without love would not be
+Rome, and the stairway of the Trinitą, glorified by the slow ascension
+of the Day, became the Stairway of Felicity by the ascent of Elena the
+Fair on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+'At times,' Elena said to him, 'my feeling for you is so delicate, so
+profound, that it becomes--how shall I describe it?--maternal almost!'
+
+Andrea laughed, for she was his senior by barely three years.
+
+'And at times,' he rejoined, 'I feel the communion of our spirits to be
+so chaste that I could call you sister while I kiss your hands.'
+
+These fallacious ideas of purity and loftiness of sentiment were but the
+reaction after more carnal delights, when the soul experiences a vague
+yearning for the ideal. At such times too, the young man's aspirations
+towards the art he so much loved were apt to revive. The desire to give
+pleasure to his mistress by his literary or artistic efforts drove him
+to work. He accordingly wrote _La Simona_, and executed his two
+engravings: _The Zodiac_ and _Alexander's Bowl_.
+
+For the execution of his art, he chose by preference, the most
+difficult, exact, and incorruptible vehicles--verse and engraving; and
+he aimed at adhering strictly to, and reviving, the traditional Italian
+methods, by going back to the poets of the _stil novo_, and the painters
+who were precursors of the Renaissance. His tendencies were essentially
+towards form; his mind more occupied by the expression of his thought
+than the thought itself. Like Taine, he considered it a greater
+achievement to write three really fine lines, than to win a pitched
+battle. His _Story of the Hermaphrodite_ imitated in its structure
+Poligiano's _Story of Orpheus_ and contained lines of extraordinary
+delicacy, power and melody, particularly in the choruses of hybrid
+monsters--the Centaurs, Sirens and Sphinxes. His new tragedy, _La
+Simona_, of moderate length, possessed a most singular charm. Written
+and rhymed though it was, on the ancient Tuscan rules, it might have
+been conceived by an English poet of Elizabeth's time, after a story
+from the _Decameron_, and it breathed something of the strange and
+delicious charm of certain of the minor dramas of Shakespeare.
+
+On the frontispiece of the single copy, the author had signed his work:
+A. S. CALCOGRAPHUS AQUA FORTI SIBI TIBI FECIT.
+
+Copper had greater attractions for him than paper, nitric acid than ink,
+the graving-tool than the pen. One of his ancestors before him, Giusto
+Sperelli, had tried his hand at engraving. Certain plates of his,
+executed about 1520, showed distinct evidences of the influence of
+Antonio del Pollajuolo by the depth and acidity, so to speak, of the
+design. Andrea used the Rembrandt method _a tratti liberi_ and the
+_maniera nera_ so much affected by the English engravers of the school
+of Green, Dixon, and Earlom. He had formed himself on all models, had
+studied separately the effects sought after by each engraver, had
+schooled himself under Albrecht Dürer and Parmigianino, Marc' Antonio
+and Holbein, Hannibal Carracci, MacArdell, Guido, Toschi and Audran; but
+once his copper plate before him, his one aim was to light up, by
+Rembrandtesque effects, the elegance in design of the fifteenth-century
+Florentines of the second generation, such as Botticelli, Ghirlandajo
+and Filippino Lippi.
+
+One of Andrea's most precious possessions was a bed-cover of finest silk
+in faded blue, round the border of which circled the twelve signs of the
+Zodiac, each with its appropriate legend: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer,
+Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius,
+Pisces--in gothic characters. A flaming golden sun occupied the centre;
+the animal figures, drawn in somewhat archaic style, as one sees in
+mosaics, were extraordinarily brilliant. The whole thing was worthy to
+grace an Emperor's bed, and had, in fact, formed part of the trousseau
+of Bianca Maria Sforza, niece of Ludovico the Moor, when she espoused
+the Emperor Maximilian.
+
+One of the engravings represented Elena asleep under this celestial
+counterpane. The rounded limbs appeared outlined under the silken folds,
+the head thrown carelessly back towards the edge of the couch, the hair
+rippling in a torrent to the floor, one arm hanging down, the other
+stretched along her side. The parts which were left uncovered, the face,
+the neck, the shoulders, and the arms, were extremely luminous, and the
+stile had reproduced most effectively the glitter of the embroidery in
+the half-light and the mysterious quality of the symbols. A tall white
+hound, Famulus, brother to the one which lays its head on the knee of
+the Countess of Arundel in Rubens' picture, stretched his muzzle towards
+the lady, guarding her slumbers, and was designed with much felicitous
+boldness of foreshortening. The background of the room was sumptuous and
+shadowy.
+
+The other engraving referred to an immense silver basin which Elena had
+inherited from her aunt Flaminia.
+
+This basin was historical, and was known as Alexander's Bowl. It had
+been given to the Princess of Bisenti by Caesar Borgia on his departure
+for France, when he went to carry the Papal Bill of divorce and
+dispensation to Louis XII. The design for the figures running round it
+and the two which rose over the edge at either side were attributed to
+Raphael.
+
+It was called the Bowl of Alexander because it purported to be a
+reproduction of the prodigious vessel out of which the famous King of
+Macedonia was wont to drink at his splendid festivals. Groups of archers
+surrounded its base, their bows stretched, in the admirable attitudes of
+those painted by Raphael aiming their arrows at Hermes in the fresco of
+that room in the Borghese decorated by John of Bologna. They were in
+pursuit of a great Chimera, which emerged over the edge of the bowl in
+guise of a handle, while on the opposite side bounded the youthful
+Bellerophon, his bow at full stretch against the monster. The ornaments
+of the base and the edge were of rare elegance. The inside was gilded,
+the metal sonorous as a bell, and weighed three hundred pounds. Its
+shape was extremely harmonious.
+
+Never had Andrea Sperelli experienced so intensely both the delight and
+the anxiety of the artist who watches the blind and irreparable action
+of the acid; never before had he brought so much patience to bear upon
+the delicate work of the dry point. The fact was, that like Lucas of
+Leyden, he was a born engraver, possessed of an admirable knowledge, or,
+more properly speaking, a rare instinct as to the most minute
+particularity of time and degree, which may aid in varying the efficacy
+of the acid on copper. It was not only practice, industry, and
+intelligence, but more especially this inborn, well-nigh infallible
+instinct which warned him of the exact instant at which the corrosion
+had proceeded far enough to give such and such a value to the shadows
+as, in the artist's intention, the engraving required. It was just this
+triumph of mind over matter, this power of infusing an ęsthetic spirit
+into it, as it were, this mysterious correspondence between the throb of
+his pulses and the progressive gnawing of the acid that was his pride,
+his torment, and his joy.
+
+In his dedication of these works to her, Elena felt herself deified by
+her lover as was Isotta di Rimini by the medals which Sigismondo
+Malatesta caused to be struck in her honour; and yet, on those days when
+Andrea was at work, she would become moody and taciturn, as if under the
+influence of some secret grief, or she would give way to such sudden
+bursts of tenderness, mingled with tears and half-suppressed sobs, that
+the young man was startled and, not understanding her, became
+suspicious.
+
+One evening, they were returning on horseback from the Aventine down the
+Via di Santa Sabina, their eyes still filled with a vision of imperial
+palaces flaming under the setting sun that burned red through the
+cypresses and seemed to cover them with golden dust. They rode in
+silence, for Elena seemed out of spirits, and her depression had
+communicated itself to her lover. As they passed the church of Santa
+Sabina, Andrea reined up his horse.
+
+'Do you remember?' he said.
+
+Some fowls, picking about peacefully in the grass, skurried away at the
+barking of Famulus. The whole place was as quiet and unassuming as the
+purlieus of a village church, but the walls had that singular luminous
+glow which the buildings of Rome seem to give out at 'Titian's hour.'
+
+Elena drew up beside him.
+
+'That day--how long ago it seems now!' she said with a little tremor in
+her voice.
+
+In truth, the memory of it had already dropped away into the gulf of
+time as if their love had endured for years. Elena's words raised that
+illusion in Andrea's mind, but, at the same time, a certain uneasiness.
+She began recalling the details of their visit to Santa Sabina one
+afternoon in January under a prematurely mild sun. She dwelt insistently
+upon the most trivial incidents, breaking off from time to time as if
+following a separate train of thought, distinct from the words she
+uttered. Andrea fancied he caught a note of regret in her voice. Yet,
+what had she to regret? Surely their love had many a sweeter day before
+it still--the Spring had come again to Rome. Doubting and perplexed, he
+ceased to listen to her. The horses went on down the hill at a walk,
+side by side, snorting noisily from time to time, and putting their
+heads together, as if exchanging confidences. Famulus sped on before, or
+bounded after them, perpetually on the gallop.
+
+'Do you remember,' Elena went on, 'do you remember the Brother who came
+to open the gates for us when we rang the bell?'
+
+'Yes--yes.'
+
+'And how perfectly aghast he looked when he saw who it was? He was such
+a little, little red-faced man without any beard. When he went to get
+the keys of the church, he left us alone in the vestibule--and you
+kissed me--do you remember?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And all those barrels in the vestibule! And the smell of wine while the
+Brother was explaining the legends carved on the cypress-wood door. And
+then about the Madonna of the Rosary--do you remember?--his explanation
+made you laugh, and I could not help laughing too, and the poor man was
+so put out, that he would not open his mouth again, not even to thank
+you at the last--'
+
+There was a little pause. Then she began again.
+
+'And at Sant' Alexio, where you would not let me look at the cupola
+through the keyhole. How we laughed then too!'
+
+Renewed silence. Along the road towards them came a party of men
+carrying a coffin, and followed by a hired conveyance full of tearful
+relatives. They were on their way to the Jewish cemetery. It was a grim
+and silent funeral. The men with their hooked noses and rapacious eyes
+were all as like one another as brothers. The two horses separated to
+let the procession pass, keeping close to the wall on either side, and
+the lovers looked at each other across the dead, their spirits sinking
+lower with every moment.
+
+When presently they rejoined one another, Andrea said--'Tell me--what is
+the matter? What is on your mind?'
+
+She hesitated a moment before replying, keeping her eyes on her horse's
+neck and stroking it with the end of her riding whip, irresolute and
+very pale.
+
+'You have something on your mind,' persisted the young man.
+
+'Very well then--yes--and I had better tell you and get it over. I am
+going away next Wednesday. I do not know for how long--perhaps for a
+long time--perhaps for ever. I cannot say. We must break with one
+another. It is entirely my fault. But do not ask me why--do not ask me
+anything, I entreat you--I could not answer you.'
+
+Andrea looked at her incredulously. The thing seemed to him so utterly
+impossible that it did not affect him painfully.
+
+'Of course you are only joking, Elena?'
+
+She shook her head; there was a lump in her throat, and she could not
+speak. She suddenly set her horse into a trot.
+
+Behind them the bells of Santa Sabina and Santa Prisca began to ring
+through the twilight. They trotted on in silence, awakening the echoes
+under the arches and among the temples--all the solitary and desolate
+ruins on their way. They passed San Giorgio in Velabo on their left,
+which still retained a gleam of rosy light on its campanile; they passed
+the Roman Forum, the Forum of Nerva already full of blue shadow like
+that which hovers over the glaciers at night, and stopped at last at the
+Arco dei Pantani, where their grooms and carriages awaited them.
+
+Hardly was Elena out of the saddle, than she held out her hand to Andrea
+without meeting his eyes. She seemed in a great hurry to be gone.
+
+'Well?' said Andrea as he helped her into the carriage.
+
+'To-morrow--not this evening--I cannot----'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The Campagna stretched away before them under an ideal light, as a
+landscape seen in dreams, where the objects seem visible at a great
+distance by virtue of some inward irradiation which magnifies their
+outlines.
+
+The closed carriage rolled along smoothly at a brisk trot; the walls of
+ancient patrician villas, grayish-white and dim, slid past the windows
+with a continuous and gentle motion. Great iron gateways came in view
+from time to time, through which you caught a glimpse of an avenue of
+lofty beech trees, or some verdant cloister inhabited by antique
+statues, or a long green arcade pierced here and there by a laughing ray
+of pale sunshine.
+
+Wrapped in her ample furs, her veil drawn down, her hands encased in
+thick chamois leather gloves, Elena sat and mutely watched the passing
+landscape. Andrea breathed with delight the subtle perfume of heliotrope
+exhaled by the costly fur, while he felt Elena's arm warm against his
+own. They felt themselves far from the haunts of men--alone--although
+from time to time the black carriage of a priest would flit past them,
+or a drover on horseback, or a herd of cattle.
+
+Just before they reached the bridge she said--'Let us get out here.'
+
+Here in the open country the light was translucent and cold as the
+waters of a spring, and when the trees waved in the wind their
+undulation seemed to communicate itself to all the surrounding objects.
+
+She clung close to his arm, stumbling a little on the uneven ground. 'I
+am going away this evening,' she said,--'this is the last time----'
+
+There was a moment's silence; then in plaintive tones, and with frequent
+pauses in between, she began to speak of the necessity of her departure,
+the necessity of their rupture. The wind wrenched the words from her
+lips, but she continued in spite of it, till Andrea interrupted her by
+seizing her hand.
+
+'Don't!' he cried--'be quiet.'
+
+They walked on struggling against the fierce gusts of wind.
+
+'Don't go--don't leave me! I want you--want you always.'
+
+He had managed to unfasten her glove and laid hold of her bare wrist
+with a caressing insistent clasp that was full of tormenting desire.
+
+She threw him one of those glances that intoxicate like wine. They were
+quite near the bridge now, all rosy under the setting sun. The river
+looked motionless and steely throughout its sinuous length. Reeds swayed
+and shivered on the banks, and some stakes, fixed in the clay of the
+river-bed to fasten nets, shook with the motion of the water.
+
+He then endeavoured to move her by reminiscences. He recalled those
+first days--the ball at the Farnese palace, a certain hunting party out
+in the Campagna, their early morning meetings in the Piazza di Spagna in
+front of the jewellers' windows, or in the quiet and aristocratic Via
+Sistina when she came out of the Barberini palace followed by the flower
+girls offering her baskets of roses.
+
+'Do you remember--do you remember?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And that evening--quite at the beginning, when I brought in such a mass
+of flowers.--You were alone--beside the window--reading. You remember?'
+
+'Yes--yes.'
+
+'I came in. You scarcely turned your head and you spoke quite harshly to
+me--what was the matter?--I do not know. I laid the flowers upon the
+tables and waited. You spoke of trivial things at first, with
+indifference--without interest. I thought to myself bitterly--"She is
+tired of me already--she does not love me." But the scent of the flowers
+was very strong--the room was full of it. I can see you now--how you
+suddenly seized the whole mass in your two hands and buried your face in
+it, drinking in the perfume. When you lifted it again all the blood
+seemed to have left your face, and your eyes were swimming in a kind of
+ecstasy----'
+
+'Go on--go on!' said Elena feverishly, as she leaned over the parapet
+fascinated by the rushing waters below.
+
+'Afterwards, you remember on the sofa--I smothered you in flowers--your
+face, your bosom, your shoulders, and you raised yourself out of them
+every moment to offer me your lips, your throat, your half closed lids.
+And between your skin and my lips I felt the rose leaves soft and cool.
+I kissed your throat and a shiver ran through you, and you put out your
+hands to keep me away.--Oh, then--your head was sunk in the cushions,
+your breast hidden under the roses, your arms bare to the elbow--nothing
+in this world could be so dear and sweet as the little tremor of your
+white hands upon my temples--do you remember?'
+
+'Yes--go on.'
+
+He went on with ever-increasing fervour. Carried away by his own
+eloquence, he was hardly conscious of what he said. Elena, her back
+turned to the light, leaned nearer and nearer to him. Under them the
+river flowed cold and silent; long slender rushes, like strands of hair,
+bent with every gust and trailed on the surface of the water.
+
+He had ceased to speak, but they were gazing into one another's eyes and
+their ears were filled with a low continuous murmur which seemed to
+carry away part of their life's being--as if something sonorous had
+escaped from their very brains and were spreading away in waves of sound
+till it filled the whole air about them.
+
+Elena rose from her stooping posture. 'Let us go on,' she said. 'I am so
+thirsty--where can we get some water?' They crossed the bridge to a
+little inn on the other side, in front of which some carters were
+unharnessing their horses with much lively invective. The setting sun
+lit up the group of men and beasts vividly.
+
+The people at the inn showed not the faintest sign of surprise at the
+entry of the two strangers. Two or three men shivering with ague, morose
+and jaundiced, were crouching round a square brazier. A red-haired
+bullock-driver was snoring in a corner, his empty pipe still between his
+teeth. A pair of haggard, ill-conditioned young vagabonds were playing
+at cards, fixing one another in the pauses with a look of tigerish
+eagerness. The woman of the inn, corpulent to obesity, carried in her
+arms a child which she rocked heavily to and fro.
+
+While Elena drank the water out of a rude earthenware mug, the woman,
+with wails and plaints, drew her attention to the wretched infant.
+
+'Look, signora mia--look at it!'
+
+The poor little creature was wasted to a skeleton, its lips purple and
+broken out, the inside of its mouth coated with a white eruption. It
+looked as if life had abandoned the miserable little body, leaving but a
+little substance for fungoid growths to flourish in.
+
+'Feel, dear lady,--its hands are icy cold. It cannot eat, it cannot
+drink--it does not sleep any more----'
+
+The mother broke into loud sobs. The ague-stricken men looked on with
+eyes full of utter prostration, while the sound of the weeping only drew
+an impatient movement from the two youths.
+
+'Come away--come away!' said Andrea, taking Elena by the arm and
+dragging her away, after throwing a piece of money on the table.
+
+They returned over the bridge. The river was lighted up by the flames of
+the dying day, and in the distance the water looked smooth and
+glistening as if great spots of oil or bitumen were floating on it. The
+Campagna, stretching away like an ocean of ruins, was of a uniform
+violet tint. Nearer the town the sky flushed a deep crimson.
+
+'Poor little thing!' murmured Elena in a tone of heartfelt compassion,
+and pressing closer to Andrea.
+
+The wind had risen to a gale. A flock of crows swept across the burning
+heavens, very high up, croaking hoarsely.
+
+A sudden passionate exaltation suddenly filled the souls of the two at
+sight of this vast solitude. Something tragic and heroic seemed to enter
+into their love and the hill-tops of their passion to catch the blaze of
+the stormy sunset. Elena stood still.
+
+'I can go no further,' she gasped.
+
+The carriage was still at some distance, standing motionless where they
+had left it.
+
+'A little further, Elena, just a step or two! Shall I carry you?'
+
+Then, seized with a sort of frenzy, he burst out again--Why was she
+going away? Why did she want to break with him? Surely their destinies
+were indissolubly knit together now? He could not live without
+her--without her eyes, her voice, the constant thought of her. He was
+saturated through and through with love of her--his whole blood was on
+fire as with some deadly poison. Why was she running away from him?--He
+would hold her fast--would suffocate her on his heart first----No--it
+could not, must not be--never!
+
+Elena listened, with bent head to meet the blast, but she did not
+answer. Presently she raised her hand and beckoned to the coachman. The
+horses pawed and pranced as they started.
+
+'Stop at the Porta Pia,' she called to the man, and entered the carriage
+with her lover. Then she turned and with a sudden gesture yielded
+herself to his desire, and he kissed her greedily--her lips, her brow,
+her hair, her eyes--rapidly, without giving himself time to breathe.
+
+'Elena! Elena!'
+
+A vivid gleam of crimson light reflected from the red brick houses
+penetrated the carriage. The ringing trot of several horses came nearer
+along the road.
+
+Leaning against her lover's shoulder with ineffable tenderness she
+said--'Good-bye, dear love--good-bye--good-bye!'
+
+As she raised herself again, ten or twelve red-coated horsemen passed
+to right and left of the carriage returning from a fox hunt. One of
+them, the Duke di Beffi, bent low over his saddle to peer in at the
+window as he rode by.
+
+Andrea said no more. His whole soul was weighed down by hopeless
+depression. The first impulse of revolt over, the childish weakness of
+his nature almost led him to give way to tears. He wanted to cast
+himself at her feet, to humble himself, to beg and entreat, to move this
+woman to pity by his tears. He felt giddy and confused; a subtle
+sensation of cold seemed to grip the back of his head and penetrate to
+the roots of his hair.
+
+'Good-bye,' repeated Elena for the last time, and the carriage stopped
+under the archway of the Porta Pia to let him get out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Their final farewells _au grand air_, by Elena's desire, did nothing
+towards dissipating Andrea's suspicions. 'What could be her secret
+reasons for this abrupt departure?' He tried in vain to penetrate the
+mystery; he was oppressed with doubt and fear.
+
+During the first days, the anguish of his loss was so cruelly poignant
+that he thought he must die of it. His jealousy, lulled to sleep by the
+persistent ardour of Elena's affection, awoke now with redoubled vigour,
+and the suspicion that a man was at the bottom of this enigmatical
+affair increased his sufferings a hundredfold. Sometimes he would be
+seized with sullen anger against the absent woman, a bitter rancour,
+almost a desire for revenge, as if she had mystified and duped him in
+order to give herself to another. Then again he would feel that he did
+not long for her, did not love her any more, had never loved her. But
+these fits of oblivion were but of short duration. The Spring had come
+again to Rome in a riot of colour and sunshine. The city of limestone
+and brick absorbed the light as a parched forest the rain, the papal
+fountains rose into a limpid sapphire sky, the Piazza di Spagna was
+fragrant as a rose-garden, and above the great flight of steps, alive
+with little children, the Trinitą de' Monti shone in a blaze of gold.
+
+Excited by the re-awakened beauty of Rome, all that still remained of
+Elena's fascination in his blood and his spirit revived and re-kindled.
+He was stirred to his very depths by sudden invincible pain, by
+implacable inward tumults, by indefinable languors, almost like some
+strange renewal of his adolescence.
+
+Andrea's liaison with Elena Muti had been perfectly well known, as
+sooner or later every adventure and every flirtation becomes known in
+Roman society, or the society of any other city for the matter of that.
+Precautions are useless. To the initiated a look, a gesture, a smile
+suffices to betray the secret. Besides which, in every society there are
+certain persons who make it their business in life to ferret out and
+follow up the traces of a love affair with an assiduity only to be
+equalled by the hunter of rare game. They are ever on the watch, though
+not apparently so; never, by any chance, miss a murmured word, the
+faintest smile, a tremor, a blush, a lightning glance. At balls or any
+large gatherings, where there is more probability of imprudence, they
+are ubiquitous, with ear stretched to catch a fragment of dialogue, and
+eye keenly on the watch to note a stolen hand-clasp, a tremulous sigh,
+the nervous pressure of delicate fingers on a partner's shoulder.
+
+One such terrible trapper, for example, was Don Filippo del Monte. But
+to tell the truth, Elena Muti did not trouble herself overmuch about
+what society said of her covering her every audacity with the mantle of
+her beauty, her wealth, and her ancient name; and she went on her way
+serenely, surrounded by adulation and homage, by reason of a certain
+good-natured tolerance which is one of the most pleasing qualities of
+Roman society, amounting almost to an article of faith.
+
+In any case, Andrea's connection with the Duchess of Scerni had
+instantly raised him enormously in the estimation of the women. An
+atmosphere of favour surrounded him and his successes became
+astonishing. Moreover, he owed something to his reputation as a
+mysterious artist, and two sonnets which he wrote in the Princess di
+Ferentino's album became famous, in which, as in an ambiguous diptych,
+he lauded in turn a diabolical and an angelic mouth--the one that
+destroys souls and the other that sings 'Ave!'
+
+He responded, without a moment's hesitation, to every advance. No longer
+restrained by Elena's complete dominion over him, his energies returned
+to their original state of disorder. He passed from one liaison to
+another with incredible frivolity, carrying on several at the same time,
+and weaving without scruple a great net of deceptions and lies, in which
+to catch as much prey as possible. The habit of duplicity undermined his
+conscience, but one instinct remained alive, implacably alive in
+him--the repugnance at all this which attracted without holding him
+captive. His will, as useless to him now as a sword of indifferently
+tempered steel, hung as if at the side of an inebriated or paralysed
+man.
+
+One evening, at the Dolcebuonos', when he had outstayed the rest of the
+guests in the drawing-room, full of flowers and still vibrating with a
+_Cachoucha_ of Raff's, he had spoken of love to Bianca. He did it almost
+without thinking, attracted instinctively by the reflected charm of her
+being a friend of Elena's. Maybe too, that the little germ of sympathy
+sown in his heart by her kindly championship at the dinner in the Doria
+palace was now bearing fruit. Who can say by what mysterious process
+some contact--whether spiritual or material--- between a man and a woman
+may generate and nourish in them a sentiment which, latent and
+unsuspected for long, may suddenly wake to life through unforeseen
+circumstances? It is the same phenomenon so often encountered in our
+mental world, when the germ of an idea or a shadowy fancy suddenly
+reappears before us after a long interval of unconscious development as
+a finished picture, a complex thought. The same law governs all the
+varying activities of our being; and the activities of which we are
+conscious form but a small part of the whole.
+
+Donna Bianca Dolcebuono was the ideal type of Florentine beauty, such as
+Ghirlandajo has given us in the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni at Santa
+Maria Novella. Her face was fair and oval, with a broad white brow, a
+sweet and expressive mouth, a nose a trifle _retroussé_ and eyes of that
+deep hazel so dear to Firenzuola. She was fond of wearing her hair
+parted and arranged in full puffs half way over her cheeks in the quaint
+old style. Her name suited her admirably for into the artificial life of
+fashionable society she brought a great natural sweetness of temper,
+much indulgence for the failings of others, courtesy accorded
+impartially to high and low, and a most melodious voice.
+
+On hearing Andrea's hackneyed phrases, she exclaimed in graceful
+surprise--
+
+'What, have you forgotten Elena so soon?'
+
+Then after a few days of engaging hesitation, it pleased her to yield to
+his solicitations, and she often spoke of Elena to the faithless young
+lover, but with perfect frankness and without jealousy.
+
+'But why did she go away sooner than usual this year?' she asked him one
+day with a smile.
+
+'I have no idea,' answered Andrea, not without a touch of impatience and
+bitterness.
+
+'Then it is all over between you--quite over?'
+
+'For pity's sake, Bianca, let us talk about ourselves,' he retorted
+sharply. The subject disturbed and irritated him.
+
+She remained pensive for a moment, as if seeking to unravel some enigma,
+then she smiled and shook her head with a little fugitive shadow of
+melancholy in her eyes.
+
+'Such is love!' she sighed, and returned Andrea's kisses.
+
+In her he seemed to possess all those charming women of whom Lorenzo the
+Magnificent sang:
+
+    'And on every side we find,
+    Absence, as men say, estranges,
+    Fancy ranges as the eye ranges,
+    Out of sight is out of mind.
+
+    Love departs and is not love:
+    As from sight the eye departs
+    Even so do hearts from hearts;
+    And at other hands we prove
+    Fancies love as the eyes rove,
+    Parted pleasures come again.'
+
+When the summer came, and she was on the point of leaving Rome, she
+said to him, without seeking to conceal her gentle emotion--
+
+'When we meet again I know you will not love me any more. That is love.
+But think of me always as a friend.'
+
+He did not love her, certainly; nevertheless during the heat and tedium
+of the days that followed, certain cadences of that dulcet voice
+returned to him like a haunting melody, suggesting visions of a garden,
+fresh with splashing fountains, where Bianca wandered in company with
+other fair women playing on the viol and singing as in a vignette of the
+'Dream of Polyphilo.'
+
+And Bianca passed and was succeeded by others--sometimes two at a time;
+but it was finally the little ivory Death's-head which had belonged to
+the Cardinal Immenraet, the funereal jewel dedicated to an unknown
+Ippolita, that suggested to him the caprice of tempting Donna Ippolita
+Albonico.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Donna Ippolita Albonico had a great air of princely nobility in her
+whole person, and bore some resemblance to Maria Maddalena of Austria,
+wife of Cosimo II. of Medici, whose portrait by Suttermans is at
+Florence in the possession of the Corsinis. She affected a sumptuous
+style of dress--brocades, velvets, laces--and the high Medici collars
+which seemed the most appropriate setting to her superb and imperial
+head.
+
+One day at the races, when seated beside her, Andrea was suddenly seized
+with the whim to get her to promise to come to the Palazzo Zuccari and
+receive the mysterious little clock dedicated to her namesake. Hearing
+his audacious words, she frowned, wavering between curiosity and
+prudence; but as he, nothing daunted, persevered in the attack, an
+irrepressible smile quivered on her lips. Under the shadow of her large
+hat with its white plumes, and with her lace-flounced parasol as a
+background, she was marvellously handsome.
+
+'_Tibi, Hippolyta!_ Then you will come? I shall be on the look-out for
+you all the afternoon, from two o'clock till evening--Is that settled?'
+
+'You must be mad!'
+
+'What have you to fear? I swear that I will not rob Your Majesty of so
+much as a glove. You shall remain seated as on a throne, as befits your
+regal state, and even in taking a cup of tea, you shall not lay aside
+the invisible sceptre you carry for ever in your imperial right hand. On
+these conditions is the grace accorded?'
+
+'No.'
+
+But she smiled nevertheless, flattered by this exaltation of the regal
+aspect of her beauty, wherein she gloried. And Sperelli continued to
+tempt her, always in a tone of banter or entreaty, but adding to the
+seduction of his voice a gaze so subtle, so penetrating and disturbing
+that, at length, Donna Ippolita, half offended and blushing faintly,
+said to him--
+
+'I will not have you look at me like that.'
+
+Few persons besides themselves remained upon the stand. Ladies and
+gentlemen strolled up and down across the grass, along the barrier, or
+surrounded the victorious horse or the yelling bookmakers, under the
+inconstant rays of the sun that came and went between the floating
+archipelago of clouds.
+
+'Let us go down,' she said, unaware of Giannetto Rutolo leaning with
+watchful eyes upon the railing of the staircase.
+
+As they passed him, Sperelli called back over his shoulder--
+
+'Addio, Marchese--see you again soon. Our race is on directly.'
+
+Rutolo bowed profoundly to Donna Ippolita, and a deep flush rose
+suddenly to his face. He seemed to have caught a touch of derision in
+Sperelli's greeting. Leaning on the railing, he followed the retreating
+couple with hungry eyes. He was obviously suffering.
+
+'Rutolo, be on your guard!' said the Contessa di Lucoli with a malicious
+laugh as she passed down the stairs on the arm of Don Filippo del Monte.
+
+The blow struck home. Donna Ippolita and the Conte d'Ugenta having
+penetrated as far as the umpire's stand were now retracing their steps.
+The lady held her sunshade over her shoulder, twirling the handle
+languidly in her fingers; the white cupola stood out round her head like
+a halo, and the lace frills rose and fluttered incessantly. Within this
+revolving circle, she laughed from time to time at what her companion
+said, and a delicate flush stained the noble pallor of her face.
+Sometimes they would both stand still.
+
+Under pretext of examining the horses now entering the race-course,
+Giannetto turned his field-glass upon the two. His hands trembled
+visibly. Every smile, every movement, every glance of Ippolita's was a
+sword-thrust in his heart. When he dropped his glass, he was deadly
+pale. He had surprised a look in the eyes that met Sperelli's which he
+knew full well of old. Everything seemed crumbling to ruins around him.
+The love of years was over--irrevocably lost--slain by that glance. The
+sun was the sun no longer, life was not life any more.
+
+The grand stand was rapidly refilling; the signal for the third race was
+about to be given. The ladies stood up on their seats. A murmur ran
+along the tiers like a breeze over a sloping garden. The bell rang. The
+horses started like a flight of arrows.
+
+'I shall ride in your honour, Donna Ippolita,' said Andrea Sperelli as
+he look leave of her to get ready for the next race, which was for
+gentlemen riders--'_Tibi, Hippolyta, Semper!_'
+
+She pressed his hand warmly for luck, never remembering that Giannetto
+Rutolo was also among the competitors. When, a moment later, she noticed
+him going down the stairs, pale and alone, the unconcealed cruelty of
+indifference shone in her beautiful dark eyes. The old love had fallen
+away from her like a useless garment, and had given place to the new.
+This man was nothing to her, had no claims of any kind upon her now that
+she no longer loved him. It is inconceivable how quickly a woman regains
+entire possession of her own heart once she has ceased to love a man.
+
+'He has stolen her from me!' he thought to himself, as he made his way
+to the Jockey Club tent, and the grass seemed to give beneath his feet
+like sand. At a little distance in front of him walked the other with a
+firm and elastic step. In his long gray overcoat his tall and shapely
+figure had that peculiar and inimitable air of elegance which only
+breeding can give. He was smoking, and Giannetto Rutolo, coming up
+behind him, caught the delicate aroma of the cigarette with every puff,
+causing him an intolerable nausea as if it had been poison.
+
+The Duke di Beffi and Paolo Caligaro were at the entrance, already in
+racing dress. The duke was making gymnastic movements to test the
+elasticity of his leather breeches and the strength of his knees. Little
+Caligaro was execrating last night's rain, which had made the ground
+heavy.
+
+'You have a very good chance with _Miching Mallecho_, I consider,' he
+remarked to Sperelli when he came up.
+
+Giannetto Rutolo heard this forecast with a bitter pang. He had founded
+a vague hope on the event of his own victory. He represented to himself
+the advantage he might gain over his enemy by a victorious race and a
+successful duel. As he changed his clothes his every movement betrayed
+his preoccupation.
+
+'Here is a man who before getting on horseback sees the grave open
+before him,' said the duke, laying his hand on the young man's shoulder
+with a serio-comic air--'_Ecce homo novus_.'
+
+Andrea Sperelli, who felt in the best of spirits at that moment, gave
+vent to one of those frank bursts of laughter which were the most
+engaging trait of his youth.
+
+'What are you laughing at?' demanded Rutolo, lividly pale, glaring at
+him from under frowning brows.
+
+'It seems to me, my dear fellow,' returned Sperelli unmoved 'that you
+are a little out of temper----'
+
+'And if I am?'
+
+'You are at liberty to think what you like about my laughing.'
+
+'Then I think it is idiotic.'
+
+Sperelli bounded to his feet and made a stride forward with uplifted
+whip. By a miracle, Paolo Caligaro managed to catch his arm. Violent
+words followed. Don Marc Antonio Spada appeared upon the scene and heard
+the altercation.
+
+'That's enough, boys--you both know what you have to do
+to-morrow--you've got to ride now.'
+
+The two adversaries finished their dressing in silence and then went
+out. The news of the quarrel had already spread through the enclosure
+and up to the grand stand, increasing the excitement of the race. With
+a refinement of perfidy, the Contessa di Lucoli repeated it to Donna
+Ippolita.
+
+The latter gave no sign of inward perturbation. 'I am sorry to hear
+that,' was her only comment, 'I thought they were friends.'
+
+The crowd surged round the bookmakers. _Miching Mallecho_, the horse of
+the Conte d'Ugenta, and _Brummel_, that of the Marchese Rutolo, were the
+favourites; then came the Duke di Beffi's _Satirist_ and Caligaro's
+_Carbonilla_. However, the best judges had not overmuch confidence in
+the two first, thinking that the nervous excitement of their riders must
+inevitably tell upon the racing.
+
+But Andrea Sperelli was perfectly calm, not to say gay.
+
+His sense of superiority over his rival gave him assurance; moreover,
+his romantic taste for any adventure savouring of peril, inherited from
+his Byronic father, shed a halo of glory round the situation, and all
+the inborn generosity of his young blood awoke at the prospect of
+danger.
+
+With a beating heart, he went forward to meet his horse as to a friend
+who was bringing him the news of some great good fortune. He stroked its
+nose fondly, and the glances of the animal's eye, an eye that flashed
+with the inextinguishable fire of noblest breeding, intoxicated him like
+a woman's magnetic gaze.
+
+'Mallecho,' he whispered as he caressed the horse, 'this is a great
+day--we must win!'
+
+His trainer, a little red-faced man, who was engaged in scrutinising the
+other horses as they were led past by their grooms, answered in his
+rough husky voice,--'There's no doubt but you will!'
+
+Miching Mallecho was a superb bay from the stables of the Baron de
+Soubeyran, and combined extreme elegance of build with extraordinary
+strength of muscle. His fine and shining coat, under which the tracery
+of veins was distinctly visible on chest and flank, seemed almost to
+exhale a fiery vapour, so intense was the creature's vitality. A
+splendid jumper, he had often carried his master in the hunting-field
+over every obstacle of the Roman countryside, irrespective of the nature
+of the ground, never refusing the highest gate, the most forbidding
+wall, for ever at the tail of the hounds. A word from his rider had more
+effect on him than the spur, a caress made him quiver with delight.
+
+Before mounting, Andrea carefully examined every strap and buckle, then
+with a smile he vaulted into the saddle. As he watched his master move
+away the trainer expressed his confidence in an eloquent gesture.
+
+A crowd of bettors pressed round the indicator. Andrea felt that every
+eye was upon him. Gazing eagerly at the stand to the right, he tried to
+catch sight of Ippolita Albonico, but could distinguish no one among the
+multitude of ladies. The Marchesa d'Ateleta, who had heard of the
+quarrel, made him a sign of reproof from afar.
+
+'How is the betting on Mallecho?' he asked of Ludovico Barbarisi.
+
+As he moved towards the starting-post, he reflected calmly on the means
+he would employ for winning, and considered his three rivals critically,
+calculating the strength and science of each of them. Paolo Caligaro was
+a tricky devil, as thoroughly versed in all the knavery of the stable as
+any jockey; but Carbonilla, although fast, had little staying power. The
+Duke di Beffi, a rider of the 'haute école' style, who had come off
+victorious in more than one race in England, was mounted on an animal of
+uncertain temper which would probably refuse some of the jumps.
+Giannetto Rutolo, on the contrary, was riding a well-bred and
+well-trained horse, but though he was a very capable rider he was too
+impetuous; moreover, this was the first time he had taken part in a
+public race. Besides, he must be in a terrible state of nervous
+irritation, as was apparent from numerous signs.
+
+As he looked at him, Andrea thought to himself--'I have no doubt that my
+victory to-day would influence the course of the duel to-morrow. In both
+instances, he will lose his head--it behoves me to keep calm on both
+fields----' Then--'I wonder what Donna Ippolita feels about it?' There
+seemed to be an unusual silence round about him. With his eye he
+measured the distance that separated him from the first hurdle; he
+noticed a shining stone on the course; he observed that Rutolo was
+watching him, and a tremor ran through him from head to foot.
+
+The bell gave the signal, but Brummel was off too soon and the start was
+no good. The second time too they made a false start, and again through
+Brummel's fault. Sperelli and the duke exchanged a furtive smile.
+
+The third start was successful. Brummel instantly detached himself from
+the group and swept along by the palings. The other three horses
+followed abreast for a moment or so, and cleared the first hurdle and
+then the second very well. Each of the three riders played a different
+game. The Duke di Beffi tried to keep with the group, so that Satirist
+might be induced to follow the example of the other horses at the
+obstacles; Caligaro moderated Carbonilla's pace in order to save up her
+strength for the last five hundred yards. Sperelli increased his speed
+gradually with the intention of catching up with his adversary in the
+neighbourhood of the most difficult obstacle. In effect, Mallecho soon
+distanced his two companions and began to press Brummel very closely.
+
+Rutolo heard the rapidly approaching hoof-thuds behind him and was
+seized with such nervousness that his sight seemed to fail him.
+Everything swam before his eyes as if he were on the point of swooning.
+He made a frightful effort to keep his spurs at his horse's sides,
+overcome by terror at the thought that his senses might leave him. There
+was a muffled roar in his ears, and through that roar he caught the
+hard, clear sound of Andrea Sperelli's 'Hi!'
+
+More susceptible to the voice than any other mode of urging, Mallecho
+simply devoured the intervening space; he was not more than two or three
+lengths behind Brummel--was on the point of joining--of passing him.
+
+'Hi!'
+
+A high barrier intersected the course. Rutolo actually did not see it,
+having lost all sense of his surroundings, and only preserved a furious
+instinct to remain glued to his horse and force it along, never mind
+how. Brummel jumped, but receiving no aid from his rider, caught his
+hind legs against the barrier, and came down so awkwardly on the other
+side that the rider lost his stirrups, without, however, coming out of
+the saddle, and he continued to run. Andrea Sperelli now took the lead,
+Giannetto Rutolo, without having recovered his stirrups, being second,
+with Paolo Caligaro close upon his heels; the duke, retarded by a
+refusal from Satirist, came last. In this order they passed the grand
+stand. They heard a confused clamour but it soon died away.
+
+The spectators held their breath in suspense. From time to time,
+somebody would remark aloud on the various incidents of the running. At
+every change in the order of the horses numerous exclamations sounded
+through the continuous murmur, and the ladies thrilled visibly. Donna
+Ippolita Albonico, mounted on a seat, with her hands on the shoulders of
+her husband who stood below her, watched the race with marvellous
+self-control and without a trace of apparent emotion, unless the
+over-tight compression of her lips and a scarcely perceptible furrow
+between her brows might have revealed the effort to an observant eye. At
+a certain moment, however, she drew her hands away from her husband's
+shoulder, fearful of betraying herself by some involuntary movement.
+
+'Sperelli is down!' announced the Contessa di Lucoli in a loud voice.
+
+Mallecho, in jumping, had slipped on the wet grass and come down on his
+knees, but recovered himself in an instant. Andrea had gone over his
+head, but was none the worse, and with lightning rapidity was back in
+the saddle as Rutolo and Caligaro came up with him. Brummel performed
+prodigies, in spite of the wounded leg, and showed the quality of his
+blood. Carbonilla was at last putting out all her speed, guided with
+consummate skill by her rider. There were still about eight hundred
+yards to the winning post.
+
+Sperelli saw victory escaping him and gathered up all his forces to
+grasp it again. Standing in the stirrups, bent low over his horse's
+neck, he uttered from time to time that short, sharp, ringing word which
+always acted so effectively upon the noble creature. While Brummel and
+Carbonilla, fatigued by the heaviness of the ground, began to lose the
+pace, Mallecho steadily increased the vehemence of his rush and had
+nearly reconquered his former position, scenting victory already with
+his fiery nostrils. Flying over the last obstacle, he passed
+Brummel--his head was level with Carbonilla's shoulder--a hundred yards
+from the post he skirted the barrier--on--on--leaving Caligaro's black
+mare ten lengths behind. The bell rang--a furious clapping of hands,
+like the pelting of hail-stones, and then a dull roar spread through the
+great crowd on the green sward under the flood of brilliant sunshine.
+
+As he entered the enclosure, Andrea Sperelli thought to
+himself--'Fortune is with me to-day, but how will it be to-morrow?' And
+feeling the breath of triumph surge round him, a vague sense of
+resentment rose up in him against the possibilities of the morrow. He
+would have preferred to face it to-day and get it over, that he might
+enjoy a double victory and then taste the fruit offered to him by the
+hand of Ippolita Albonico. He was possessed, for the moment, by that
+inexplicable intoxication which results--with certain men of
+intellect--from the exercise of their physical powers, the experience of
+their courage and the revelation of their inherent brutality. The
+substratum of primitive ferocity which exists at the bottom of most of
+us rushes to the surface, on occasion, with curious vehemence, and under
+the skin-deep varnish of modern civilisation, our hearts swell sometimes
+with a nameless sanguinary fury, and visions of carnage rise up before
+us. Inhaling the hot and acrid exhalations of his horse, Andrea Sperelli
+felt that none of the delicate perfumes affected by him up till now, had
+ever afforded him such intense enjoyment.
+
+He had scarcely quitted the saddle, before he found himself surrounded
+by friends of both sexes, eager to congratulate him. Mallecho, breathing
+hard, smoking and covered with foam, snorted and stretched his neck,
+shaking the bridle. His sides rose and fell with a deep continuous
+movement, as if they must burst; his muscles vibrated under skin like a
+bow-string after the shot; his eyes, dilated and bloodshot, had the
+cruel glare of those of a beast of prey; his coat, now showing great
+patches of darker colour, ran down with rivulets of perspiration. The
+incessant trembling of his whole body was pitiable to see, like the
+suffering of a human being.
+
+'Poor fellow!' murmured one of the ladies.
+
+Andrea examined his knees to see if he had taken any hurt from his fall.
+They were sound. Then patting him softly on the neck, he said in an
+indefinable tone of gentleness--'Go, Mallecho, go----'
+
+And he followed him with his eyes till he disappeared.
+
+Directly he had changed his clothes, he went in search of Ludovico
+Barbarisi and the Baron di Santa Margherita.
+
+Both instantly accepted the office of arranging preliminaries with
+Rutolo. He begged them to hasten matters as much as possible.
+
+'Fix it all by this evening. To-morrow by one o'clock I absolutely must
+be free. But let me sleep till nine to-morrow morning. I dine with the
+Ferentinos, then I shall look in at the Palazzo Giustiniani, and after
+that I shall go to the Club, but it will be late--You will know where to
+find me. Many thanks, my dear fellows, and _a rividerci_.'
+
+He repaired to the grand stand, but avoided approaching Donna Ippolita
+at once. He smiled, feeling every feminine eye upon him. Many
+a fair hand was held out, many a sweet voice called him
+familiarly--'Andrea'--some of them even a little ostentatiously. The
+ladies who had bet upon his horses told him the amount of their
+winnings, others asked curiously if he were really going to fight.
+
+It seemed to him that in one day he had reached the summit of
+adventurous glory. He had come out victor in a record race, had gained
+the graces of a new love, magnificent and serene as a Venetian
+Dogaressa, had provoked a man to mortal combat and now was passing calm
+and courteous--but neither more so nor less than usual--amid the openly
+adoring smiles of all these fair women.
+
+'See the conquering hero comes!' cried Ippolita's husband with
+outstretched hand and pressing Andrea's with unusual warmth.
+
+'Yes, indeed; quite a hero!' echoed Donna Ippolita in the superficial
+tone of necessary compliment, affecting ignorance of the real drama.
+
+Sperelli bowed and passed on, feeling strangely embarrassed by
+Albonico's excessive friendliness. A suspicion crossed his mind that he
+was grateful to him for having provoked a quarrel with his wife's lover,
+and the cowardice of the man brought a supercilious smile to his lips.
+
+Returning from the races on the Prince di Ferentino's mail coach, he
+espied Giannetto Rutolo tearing back to Rome in a little two-wheeled
+trap behind a great fast-trotting roan; bending forward with head down,
+a cigar between his teeth and utterly regardless of the injunctions of
+the police to keep in the line. Rome rose up before them, black against
+a band of saffron light, and in the violet sky above that light the
+statues on the Basilica of San Giovanni stood out exaggeratedly large.
+And Andrea then fully realised the pain he was inflicting on this man's
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+At the Palazzo Giustiniani that evening, Andrea said to Ippolita
+Albonico, 'Well then, it is a fixed thing that I expect you to-morrow
+between two and five?'
+
+She would like to have said: 'Then you are not going to fight
+to-morrow?' but she did not dare.
+
+'I have promised,' she replied.
+
+A minute or two afterwards, her husband came up to Andrea and taking his
+arm with much effusion, began asking particulars about the duel. He was
+a youngish man, slim, with very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and
+projecting teeth. He had a slight stammer.
+
+'Well, well--so it is to come off to-morrow, is it?'
+
+Andrea could not repress his disgust, and let his arm hang loosely at
+his side to show that he was in no mood for these familiarities. Seeing
+the Baron di Santa Margherita enter the room, he disengaged himself
+quickly.
+
+'Excuse me, Count,' he said, 'I want to speak to Santa Margherita.'
+
+The Baron met him with the assurance that all was in order. 'Very
+good--at what hour?'
+
+'Half-past ten at the Villa Sciarra. Rapiers and fencing-gloves, _ą
+outrance_.'
+
+'Whom else have you got for seconds?'
+
+'Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo de Souza. We settled everything as
+quickly as possible, avoiding formalities. Giannetto had got his seconds
+already. We arranged the proceedings at the Club without any fuss. Try
+not to be too late in going to bed--you must be dead tired.'
+
+But, heedless of this good advice, on leaving the Palazzo Giustiniani,
+Andrea betook himself to the Club, where Santa Margherita came upon him
+at two o'clock in the morning, and, forcing him to leave the
+card-tables, bore him off on foot to the Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+'My dear boy,' he said reproachfully as they walked along, 'you are
+really foolhardy. In a case like this, the smallest imprudence might
+lead to fatal results. To preserve his full strength and activity, a
+good swordsman should have as much care for his person as a tenor has
+for his voice. The wrist is as delicate an organ as the throat--the
+articulations of the legs as sensitive as the vocal chords. The
+mechanism suffers from the smallest disturbance; the instrument gets out
+of gear and will not answer to the player. After a night of play or
+drink, Camillo Agrippa himself could not thrust straight, and his
+parries were neither sure nor rapid. An error of a hair's breadth will
+suffice to let three inches of steel into one's body.' They were at the
+top of the Via Condotti, and in the distance they could see the Piazza
+di Spagna, lighted up by the full moon, the stairway bathed in silver,
+and the Trinitą de' Monti rising into the soft blue.
+
+'Certainly,' continued the Baron, 'you have great advantages over your
+adversary, amongst others, a cool head--also you have been out before. I
+saw you in Paris in your affair with Gauvaudan--you remember? A grand
+duel that! You fought like a god!'
+
+Andrea laughed, much gratified. The praise of this unrivalled duellist
+made his heart swell with pride, and infused fresh vigour into his
+muscles. Instinctively, he grasped his walking stick, and repeated the
+famous pass which pierced the arm of the Marquis de Gauvaudan the
+previous winter.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'it was a direct return hit after a parry of "contre de
+tierce."'
+
+'On the floor, Giannetto Rutolo is a skilful swordsman, but in the open
+he gets confused. He has only been out once before with my cousin
+Cassibile, and he came off badly. He does far too much of the one,
+two,--one, two, three business in attacking. Stop thrusts and hits with
+a _half volte_ would be useful to you. It was just in that way that my
+cousin touched him in the second round. And those thrusts are your
+special _forte_. Keep a sharp look-out and try to keep your distance.
+And do not forget that you have to do with a man whom, as I hear, you
+have robbed of his mistress, and to whom you lifted your whip.'
+
+They had reached the Piazza di Spagna. The Barcaccia splashed and
+gurgled softly, glistening under the moon that was mirrored in its
+waters. Four or five hackney carriages stood in a line with their lamps
+lighted. From the Via del Babuino came a tinkle of bells, and the dull
+tramp of hoofs, as of a herd in motion.
+
+At the foot of the steps the Baron took leave of him.
+
+'Good-bye then, till to-morrow. I shall be with you a little before nine
+with Ludovico. You must make a pass or so, just to unstiffen the
+muscles. We will see about the doctor. Off with you now and get a good
+sleep.'
+
+Andrea mounted the steps. At the first broad landing, he stood still to
+listen to the tinkle of the approaching bells. In truth, he did feel
+rather tired, and even a little heartsick. Now that the excitement
+called up by the conversation on fencing, and the recollection of his
+former doughty deeds in that line had subsided, a sense of
+dissatisfaction had come upon him, confusedly, as yet, and mingled with
+doubt and regret. After being on the stretch throughout the violent
+feverish incidents of the day, his nerves relaxed under the balmy
+influences of the spring night. Why should he, without any excuse of
+passion, out of mere caprice, from pure vanity and arrogance, have taken
+pleasure in awakening the hatred, and deeply wounding the heart of a
+fellow man? The thought of the horrid pain that must be torturing his
+adversary filled him with a sort of compassion. Elena's image flashed
+before him, and he called to mind the anguish he had endured the year
+before, what time he had lost her--his jealousy, his anger, his nameless
+torments. Then, as now, the nights were serene and calm, and filled
+with perfume, and yet how they weighed upon his spirit! He inhaled the
+fragrant breath of the roses blooming in the little gardens about, and
+watched the flock of sheep passing through the Piazza below.
+
+The mass of thick white fleece advanced with a continuous undulating
+motion, a compact and unbroken surface, like a muddy wave pouring over
+the pavement. A sharp quavering bleat would mingle with the tinkling
+bells to be answered by other voices, fainter and more timid; from time
+to time, the mounted shepherds, riding at either side or behind the
+flock, gave a sharp word of command, or used their long staves. The
+splendour of the moonlight lent to this passage of flocks through the
+midst of the slumbering city the mystery of things seen in a dream.
+
+Andrea recalled one serene February night when, on coming away from a
+ball at the English Embassy, he and Elena had met a flock of sheep in
+the Via Venti Settembre which obliged their carriage to stop. Elena, her
+face pressed to the window, watched the sheep crowding against the
+carriage wheels, and pointed to the little lambs with childish delight;
+and he with his face close to hers, his eyes half closed, listened to
+the pattering hoofs, the bleating, the tinkling bells.
+
+Why should these recollections of Elena come back to him just now?--He
+resumed his way slowly up the steps, his feet heavy with fatigue, his
+knees giving way beneath him. Suddenly the thought of death flashed
+across his mind. 'What if I were killed, or received such a wound as to
+maim me for life?' But his thirst for life and pleasure caused his whole
+being to revolt against such a sinister possibility. 'I _must_ come off
+victorious!' he said to himself. And he began reviewing all the
+advantages that would fall to him from this second victory: the prestige
+of his success, the fame of his prowess, Ippolita's kisses, new loves,
+new pleasures, the gratification of new whims.
+
+Presently, however, he bethought him of the necessary precautions for
+insuring his bodily vigour. He went to bed and slept soundly till he
+was awakened by the arrival of his seconds; took his customary
+shower-bath; had a strip of linoleum laid down and invited Santa
+Margherita and then Barbarisi to exchange a few passes with him, during
+which he executed with precision several stop thrusts.
+
+'In capital form!' the Baron congratulated him.
+
+Sperelli then took two cups of tea and some biscuits, donned a very easy
+pair of trousers, comfortable shoes with low heels and a very slightly
+starched shirt; he prepared his gloves by moistening the palm slightly
+and rubbing in powdered resin; arranged a leather strap for fastening
+the guard to his wrist; examined the blade and the point of both
+rapiers; omitted no precaution, no detail.
+
+When all was to his satisfaction--'Let us be going now,' he said;
+'better be on the ground before the others. What about the doctor?'
+
+'He will be waiting for us there.'
+
+On the way down stairs they met Grimiti, who had come on behalf of the
+Marchesa d'Ateleta.
+
+'I shall follow you to the Villa and then bring the news as quickly as
+possible to Francesca,' said he.
+
+They all went down together. The Duke jumped into his buggy and the
+others entered a closed carriage. Andrea made no show of indifference or
+good spirits--to make jokes before engaging in a serious duel seemed to
+him execrably bad taste--but he was perfectly calm. He smoked and
+listened composedly to Santa Margherita and Barbarisi, who were
+discussing--apropos of a recent case in France--whether it was
+legitimate or not to use the left hand against an adversary. Now and
+again, he leaned forward to look out of the window.
+
+On this May morning Rome shone resplendent under the caressing sun. Here
+a fountain lit up with its silvery laughter a little piazzetta still
+plunged in shadow; there the open gates of a palace disclosed a vista of
+courtyard with a background of portico and statues; from the baroque
+architecture of a brick church hung the decorations for the month of
+Mary. Under the bridge, the Tiber gleamed and glistened as it hurried
+away between the gray-green houses towards the island of San Bartolomeo.
+After a short ascent, the whole city spread out before them, immense,
+imperial, radiant, bristling with spires and columns and obelisks,
+crowned with cupolas and rotundas, clean cut out of the blue like a
+citadel.
+
+'_Ave Roma, moriturus te salutat!_' exclaimed Andrea Sperelli, throwing
+away the end of his cigarette. 'Though, to tell the truth, my dear
+fellows.' he added, 'a sword-thrust would decidedly inconvenience me
+this morning.'
+
+They had reached the Villa Sciarra, already partially profaned by the
+builders of modern houses, and were passing through an avenue of tall
+and slender laurels bordered by hedges of roses. Santa Margherita,
+putting his head out of the window, caught sight of another carriage
+standing in the drive before the villa.
+
+'They are waiting for us,' he said.
+
+He consulted his watch--ten minutes yet to the hour agreed upon. He got
+out of the carriage and went across with the other seconds and the
+surgeons to the opponents. Andrea stayed behind in the avenue. He went
+over, in his own mind, certain points of attack and defence he hoped to
+employ successfully, but the miracles of light and shadow playing
+fitfully through the interlacing laurels distracted his attention. While
+his mind was occupied with the position of the wound he intended
+inflicting, his eyes were attracted by the reeds shivering in the
+morning breeze, and the trees, tender as the amorous allegories of
+Petrarch, sighed gently over a head that was wholly absorbed in plans of
+dealing a mortal blow.
+
+Barbarisi came to call him.
+
+'Everything is ready,' he said. 'The caretaker has opened the villa for
+us--we have the rooms on the ground floor at our disposal--most
+convenient. Come and undress.'
+
+Andrea followed him. While he undressed, the two surgeons opened their
+surgical cases and displayed the array of glittering steel instruments
+within. One of them was a youngish man, pale, bald, and with feminine
+hands and a hard mouth, with a continual and visible contraction of the
+lower jaw, which was extraordinarily developed. The other was a thickset
+man of mature years with a freckled face, bushy red beard and the neck
+of an ox. The one seemed the antithesis of the other, and their
+disparity excited Sperelli's curiosity and attention. They set out upon
+a table bandages and carbolic acid for disinfecting the weapons. The
+smell of the acid diffused itself through the room.
+
+As soon as Sperelli was ready, he went out accompanied by his second and
+the surgeons. Once again, the view of Rome seen through the laurels
+attracted his eyes and made his heart beat fast. He was full of
+impatience. He wished he could put himself on guard at that very
+instant, and hear the signal for the attack. He seemed to have the
+decisive thrust, the victory in his hand.
+
+'Ready?' asked Santa Margherita advancing to meet him.
+
+'Quite ready.'
+
+The spot chosen for the encounter was a path at the side of the villa,
+in the shade, and covered with fine rolled gravel. Rutolo was already
+stationed there, at the further end, with Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo
+di Souza. Everybody wore a grave, not to say solemn, air. The two
+adversaries were placed opposite to one another and their eyes met.
+Santa Margherita, who had the direction of the combat, noticed that
+Rutolo's shirt was very stiffly starched and the collar too high. He
+remarked upon it to Casteldieri who exchanged a few words with his
+principal, and Sperelli saw the blood rush to his adversary's face while
+he proceeded resolutely to divest himself of his shirt. Andrea with cold
+composure followed his example. He then turned up his trousers and Santa
+Margherita handed him the glove, the strap and the rapier. He armed
+himself with scrupulous care, and shook his weapon slightly to see that
+he had it well in hand. The movement brought out the play of his biceps
+very visibly bearing witness to long practice of the arm and the
+strength it had thereby acquired.
+
+When the two combatants measured their swords for the distance, that of
+Giannetto Rutolo shook convulsively. After the usual set phrases as to
+the honour and good faith of the combatants, Santa Margherita gave the
+word in a ringing powerful voice.
+
+'Gentlemen--on guard!'
+
+The duellists threw themselves on guard simultaneously; Rutolo, with a
+stamp of the foot, Sperelli, bending forward lightly. Rutolo was of
+medium height, very slender, all nerves, with an olive face, to which
+the curled moustaches and the little pointed beard ą la Charles I. in
+Van Dyck's pictures lent a certain piquant and dashing air. Sperelli was
+taller, more dignified, admirable of attitude, calm and collected,
+perfectly balanced between grace and strength, his whole person
+proclaiming the _grand seigneur_. They looked each other full in the
+eye, and each experienced a curious internal thrill at the sight of the
+bare flesh against which he pointed his sharp blade. Through the silence
+came the fresh murmur of the fountain mingled with the rustle of the
+breeze among the climbing rose-bushes, where innumerable yellow and
+white roses nodded their fragrant heads.
+
+'Play!' cried the Baron.
+
+Andrea was prepared for an impetuous attack from Rutolo, but the latter
+did not move. For about a minute, they stood watching each other closely
+without ever crossing swords, almost motionless. Sperelli bending his
+knees still more, on guard with the point low, assumed the tierce guard
+and sought to provoke his adversary by the insolent challenge of his
+eyes and by stamping his foot. Rutolo made a step forward with a menace
+of straight thrust, accompanying it with a cry after the manner of
+certain Sicilian fencers. The duel began.
+
+Sperelli avoided any decisive movement, restricting himself to parrying
+only, forcing his opponent to discover his intentions, to exhaust all
+his methods, to bring out his whole repertoire of sword-play. His
+parries were neat and rapid, never yielding a foot of ground, admirable
+in precision, as if he were taking part in a fencing match in the school
+with blunt foils; whereas Rutolo attacked him warmly, accompanying each
+thrust with a hoarse cry like that of the wood-cutters when they use
+their hatchets.
+
+'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita, whose vigilant eye marked every flash of
+the blades.
+
+He went up to Rutolo, 'You are touched, if I am not mistaken,' he said.
+
+True, Rutolo had a scratch on the forearm, but so slight that there was
+no need even of sticking-plaster. Nevertheless, he was breathing hard,
+and his livid pallor bore witness to his suppressed anger.
+
+'I know my man thoroughly now,' whispered Sperelli with a smile to
+Barbarisi. 'You watch the second round. I mean to pink him on the right
+breast.'
+
+As he spoke, he absently rested the point of his rapier on the ground.
+The bald young surgeon with the strong jaw immediately came up to him
+with a sponge soaked in carbolic acid and proceeded to purify the weapon
+again.
+
+'Good heavens!' Andrea exclaimed in a low voice to Barbarisi, 'he has
+all the air of a _jettatore_. This rapier is certain to break.'
+
+A thrush began to sing somewhere in the trees. Here and there a rose
+scattered its petals on the breeze. Some low-lying fleecy clouds rose to
+meet the sun, broke up into airy flakes and gradually dispersed.
+
+'On guard!'
+
+Conscious of his inferiority, Rutolo determined to hamper his opponent's
+play, to attack him at close quarters and so break his continuity of
+action. For this he enjoyed the advantage of shorter stature and a frame
+which, being wiry, thin and flexible, offered but little mark to the
+other's weapon.
+
+Andrea foresaw that Rutolo would adopt this plan. He stood on guard,
+bent like a taut bow, watching for the right moment.
+
+'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita.
+
+A streak of blood showed on Rutolo's breast. The rapier had penetrated,
+just under the right breast, almost to the rib. The surgeons hurried
+over, but the wounded man instantly turned to Casteldieri, and with a
+tremor of anger in his voice said roughly:--
+
+'It is a mere scratch. I shall go on.'
+
+He refused to go inside to have the wound-dressed. The bald doctor,
+after squeezing the small hole, which scarcely bled, and sponging it
+with antiseptic lotion, applied a simple piece of lint and said:--
+
+'You may go on now.'
+
+At Casteldieri's invitation, the Baron gave the word without delay for
+the third round.
+
+'On guard!'
+
+Sperelli perceived his danger. Directly in front of him stood his
+adversary, his knees firmly bent, masked, as it were, behind his rapier,
+his whole strength resolutely collected for one supreme effort. His eyes
+had a singular glitter, and the calf of his left leg quivered
+perceptibly under the excessive tension of the muscles. This time, in
+order to avoid the shock of his opponent's impetus, Andrea determined to
+throw himself to one side and repeat the thrust which Cassibile had
+employed so successfully, the white patch of lint on Rutolo's breast
+serving him as a mark. It was there he proposed wounding him again, but,
+this time, the rapier should enter the intercostal space and not be
+deterred by the rib. The silence all about them deepened, the spectators
+felt the homicidal desire that animated the two men, and were seized
+with apprehension, their hearts sinking at the thought that doubtless
+they would have to carry away a dead or dying man. The sun, veiled by
+fleecy cloudlets, shed a milky light over the scene, the trees rustled
+fitfully, the thrush sang on invisible.
+
+'Play!'
+
+Rutolo charged his adversary with a double derobe. Sperelli parried and
+returned, giving way a step. Rutolo followed up furiously with a rush of
+rapid thrusts, nearly all in the low line, without uttering the usual
+cries. Sperelli, nothing daunted by this onslaught, and wishing to avoid
+an actual hand-to-hand fight, parried vigorously, and returned with such
+directness that he might, had he so wished, have run his adversary
+through the body each time. Rutolo's leg was bleeding near the groin.
+
+'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita the moment he perceived it.
+
+But in the same instant Sperelli, parrying low quarte and not
+encountering his adversary's blade, received a thrust full in the
+breast. He fell back into Barbarisi's arms and fainted.
+
+'Wound penetrating the thorax through the fourth intercostal space on
+the right side with superficial wound of the lung,' pronounced the
+bull-necked surgeon, after his examination in the room to which they had
+conveyed the wounded man.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Convalescence is a purification, a new birth. Never is life so sweet as
+after the pangs of physical suffering, and never is the human soul so
+inclined towards purity and faith as after having had a glimpse into the
+abyss of death.
+
+After his terrible wound, after a long, slow, agonising struggle, Andrea
+Sperelli came back to life renewed in body and spirit--like another man,
+like a creature risen out of the icy waters of death, with a mind swept
+bare of all that has gone before. The past had receded into the dim
+perspective, the troubled waters had calmed, the mud sunk to the bottom;
+his soul was cleansed. He returned to the bosom of Mother Nature, and he
+felt her re-inforce him maternally with goodness and with strength.
+
+The guest of his cousin at her villa of Schifanoja, Andrea returned to
+life again in sight of the sea. The convalescent drew his breath in
+harmony with the deep, calm breath of the ocean; his mind was
+tranquillised by the serenity of the horizon. Little by little, in these
+hours of enforced idleness and retirement, his spirit expanded, bloomed
+out, erected itself slowly, like the grass trodden under foot on the
+pathway, and he returned to truth and simple faith, became natural and
+free of heart, open to the knowledge and disposed to the contemplation
+of pure things.
+
+August was drawing to a close. An ecstatic serenity reigned over the
+sea; the waters were so transparent that they repeated every image with
+absolute fidelity, and their ultimate line melted so imperceptibly into
+the sky that the two elements seemed as one, impalpable and
+supernatural. The wide amphitheatre of hills, clothed with olives,
+oranges and pines and all the noblest forms of Italian vegetation,
+embraced the silent sea, and seemed not a multiplicity of things, but a
+single vast object under the all-pervading sunshine.
+
+Lying on the grass, or sitting on a rock or under a tree, the young man
+felt the river of life flow within him; as in a trance, he seemed to
+feel the whole universe throb and palpitate in his breast; in a species
+of religious rapture, he felt that he possessed the infinite. That which
+he experienced was ineffable, divine. The vista before him opened out by
+degrees into a profound and long continued vision, the branches of the
+trees overhead supported the firmament, filling the blue, and shining
+like the garlands of immortal poets. And he gazed and listened and
+breathed with the sea and the earth, placid as a god.
+
+Where were now all his vanities and his cruelties, his schemes and his
+duplicities? What had become of all his loves and his illusions, his
+disappointments and his disgusts, and the implacable reaction after
+pleasure? He remembered none of them. His spirit had renounced them all,
+and with the absence of desire, he had found peace.
+
+Desire had abandoned its throne and intellect was free to follow its
+proper course, and reflect the objective world purely from the outside
+point of view; things appeared clearly and precisely under their true
+form, in their true colours, in all their real significance and beauty;
+every personal sentiment was in abeyance.
+
+'_Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht--Man freut sich ihrer Pracht._'
+
+One desires not the stars, but rejoices in their splendour--and for the
+first time in his life the young man really recognised the poetic
+harmony of summer skies at night.
+
+These were the last nights of August, and there was no moon. Innumerable
+in the deep starry vault, the constellations throbbed and palpitated
+with ardent life. The two Bears, Hercules, Cassiopeia, glittered with so
+rapid a palpitation that they seemed almost to approach the earth, to
+penetrate the terrestrial atmosphere. The Milky Way flowed wide like a
+regal aėrian river, a confluence of the waters of Paradise, over a bed
+of crystal between starry banks. Brilliant meteors cleft the motionless
+air from time to time, gliding lightly and silently as a drop of water
+over a sheet of glass. The slow and solemn respiration of the sea
+sufficed to measure the peace of the night without disturbing it, and
+the pauses were almost sweeter than the music.
+
+In every aspect of the things around him he beheld some analogy to his
+own inner life. The landscape became to him a symbol, an emblem, a sign
+to guide him through the labyrinthine passes of his own soul. He
+discovered secret affinities between the visible life around him and the
+intimate life of his desires and memories. 'To me, high mountains are a
+_feeling_'--and as the mountains were to Byron, so the sea was to him a
+_sentiment_.
+
+Oh, that limpid September sea! Calm and guileless as a sleeping child,
+it lay outstretched beneath the pearly sky--now green, the delicate and
+precious green of malachite, the little red sails upon it like
+flickering tongues of fire, now intensely--almost one might call it
+heraldically--blue, and veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, with
+pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it
+took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the
+greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate,
+and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the
+background of a Giotto picture.
+
+Forgotten sensations of early youth came back to him, that impression of
+freshness which the salt breath of the sea infuses into young blood, the
+indescribable effects produced by the changing lights and shadows, the
+tints, the smell of the salt water upon the unsullied soul. The sea was
+not only a delight to his eyes, but also an inexhaustible wellspring of
+peace, a magic fount of youth wherein his body regained health, and his
+spirit nobility. The ocean had for him the mysterious attraction of a
+mother country, and he abandoned himself to it with filial confidence,
+as a feeble child might sink into the arms of an omnipotent mother. And
+he received comfort and encouragement; for who ever confided his pain,
+his yearnings or his dreams to her in vain?
+
+For him the sea had ever a profound word, some sudden revelation, some
+unlocked for enlightenment, some unexpected significance. She revealed
+to him, in the secret recesses of his soul, a wound still gaping though
+quiescent, and she made it bleed again, but only to heal it with balm
+that was doubly sweet. She re-awakened the dragon that slumbered within
+him, till he felt once more the terrible grip of its claws, and then she
+slew it once for all and buried it deep in his heart never to rise
+again. No corner of his being but lay open to the great Consolatrix.
+
+But at times, under the continuous dominion of this influence, under the
+persistent tyranny of this fascination, the convalescent was conscious
+of a sort of bewilderment and fear, as if both the dominion and
+fascination were insupportable to his weak state. The incessant colloquy
+between him and the sea gave him a vague sense of prostration, as if the
+sublime language were beyond his restricted powers, so eager to grasp
+the meaning of the incomprehensible.
+
+But this period of visions, of abstractions, of pure contemplativeness
+was of short duration. By degrees, he began to resume his attitude of
+self-consciousness, to recover the sensation of his personality, to
+return to his original frame of mind. One day at the hour of high noon,
+the vast and terrible silence when all life seems suspended, a sudden
+glimpse into his own heart revealed shuddering abysses, inextinguishable
+desires, ineffaceable memories, accumulations of suffering and
+regret--all the wretchedness he had gone through, all the inevitable
+scars of his vices, all the results of his passions. He seemed to be
+witnessing the shipwreck of his whole life. A thousand voices cried to
+him for succour, imploring aid, cursing death--voices that he knew, that
+he had listened to in days gone by. But they cried and implored and
+cursed in vain, feeling that they were perishing, choked by the hungry
+waves; then the voices grew faint, broken, irrecognisable--and died away
+into silence.
+
+He was alone. Of all his youth, of all his boasted fulness of inner
+life, of all his ideality, not a vestige remained; within--a black and
+yawning abyss, around him--impassive nature, endless source of pain to
+solitary souls. Every hope was dead, every voice mute, every anchor
+gone--what use was life?
+
+Suddenly the image of Elena rose up before him, then that of other women
+whom he had known and loved. Each of them smiled a hostile smile, and
+each one, as she vanished, seemed to carry away something of him--what,
+he could not definitely say. An unspeakable distress weighed upon him,
+an icy breath of age swept over him, a tragic, warning voice rang
+through his heart--Too late! Too late!
+
+All his recent comfort and peace seemed now a vain delusion, a dream
+that had flown, a pleasure enjoyed by some other spirit. Every wound he
+had ruthlessly dealt to his soul's dignity bled afresh; every
+degradation he had inflicted upon his conscience started out and spread
+like a leprosy. Every violation he had committed upon his ideality
+roused an endless, despairing, terrible remorse in him. He had lied too
+flagrantly, had deceived, debased himself beyond all power of redress.
+He loathed himself and all his evil works--Shame! Shame! Nothing could
+wipe out those dishonouring stains, no balm could ever heal those
+wounds, he must for ever endure the torment of that
+self-loathing.--Shame!----
+
+His eyes filled with tears, and dropping his head upon his arms he
+abandoned himself to the weight of his misery, prostrate as a man who
+has no hope of salvation.
+
+With the new day, he awoke to new life, one of those awakenings, so
+fresh and limpid, that are only vouchsafed to adolescence in its
+triumphant springtide. It was a marvellous morning--only to breathe the
+air was pure delight. The whole earth rejoiced in the living light; the
+hills were wrapped about with a diaphanous silvery veil and seemed to
+quiver with life, the sea appeared to be traversed by rivulets of milk,
+by rivers of crystal and of emerald, by a thousand currents forming the
+rippling intricacies of a watery labyrinth. A sense of nuptial joy and
+religious grace emanated from the concord between earth and sky.
+
+And he breathed and gazed and listened, not a little surprised During
+his sleep the fever had left him. He had slumbered, lulled by the voice
+of the waters as if by the voice of a faithful friend--and he who sleeps
+to the sound of that lullaby enjoys a repose that is full of healing
+peace.
+
+He gazed and listened mutely, fondly, letting the flood of immortal life
+penetrate to his heart's core. Never had the sacred music of a great
+master--an Offertory of Haydn, a Te Deum of Mozart--produced in him the
+emotion caused now by the simple chimes of the distant village churches,
+as they greeted the rising of the sun into the heavens. His soul swelled
+and overflowed with unspeakable emotion. Some vision, vague but sublime,
+hovered over him like a rippling veil through which gleamed the
+splendour of the mysterious treasure of ultimate felicity. Up till now,
+he had always known exactly what he wished for, and had never found any
+pleasure in desiring vainly. Now, he could not have named his desire,
+but he had no doubts that the thing wished for was infinitely sweet,
+since the very act of wishing was bliss. The words of the Chimera in
+'The King of Cyprus'--old world, half-forgotten verses, recurred to him
+with all the force of a caressing appeal--
+
+                                   'Would'st thou fight?
+    Would'st kill? would'st thou behold rivers of blood?
+    Great heaps of gold? white herds of captive women?
+    Slaves? other, and far other spoils? Would'st thou
+    Bid marble breathe? Would'st thou set up a temple?
+    Would'st fashion an immortal hymn? Would'st (hearken,
+    Hearken, O youth, hearken!)--would'st thou divinely
+    Love?'
+
+He smiled faintly to himself. 'Whom should I love?--Art?--a woman?--what
+woman?' Elena seemed far removed from him, lost to him, a
+stranger--dead. The others--still further off, dead for evermore.
+Therefore he was free. But why renew a pursuit so useless and so
+perilous? Why stretch out his hand again towards the tree of knowledge?
+'The tree of knowledge has been plucked--all's known!' as Byron said in
+Don Juan. What he desired, at the bottom of his heart, was to give
+himself freely, gratefully to some higher and purer being. But where to
+find that being was the question.
+
+Truly his salvation in the future lay rather in the practice of caution,
+prudence, sagacity. His tone of mind seemed to him admirably expressed
+in a sonnet of a contemporary poet, whom, from a certain affinity of
+literary tastes and similar ęsthetic education, he particularly
+affected--
+
+    'I am as one who lays himself to rest
+    Under the shadow of a laden tree;
+    Above his head hangs the ripe fruit, and he
+    Is weary of drawing bow or arbalest.
+
+    He shakes not the fair bough that lowliest
+    Droops, neither lifts he hand, nor turns to see;
+    But lies, and gathers to him indolently
+    The fruits that drop into his very breast.
+
+    In that juiced sweetness, over-exquisite,
+    He bites not deep; he fears the bitterness;
+    Yet sets it to his lips, that he may smell,
+
+    Sucks it with pleasure, not with greediness,
+    And he is neither grieved nor glad at it.
+    This is the ending of the parable.'
+
+Art! Art! She was the only faithful mistress--forever young--immortal;
+there was the Fountain of all pure joys, closed to the multitude but
+freely open to the elect; that was the precious Food which makes a man
+like unto a god! How could he have quaffed from other cups after having
+pressed his lips to that one?--how have followed after other joys when
+he had tasted that supreme one?
+
+'But what if my intellect has become decadent?--if my hand has lost its
+cunning? What if I am no longer _worthy_?' He was seized with such panic
+at the thought, that he set himself wildly to find some immediate means
+of proving to himself the irrational nature of his fears. He would
+instantly compose some difficult verses, draw a figure, engrave a plate,
+solve some problem of form. Well--and what then? Might not the result be
+entirely fallacious? The slow decay of power may be imperceptible to the
+possessor--that is the terrible thing about it. The artist who loses his
+genius little by little is unaware of his progressive feebleness, for as
+he loses his power of production he also loses his critical faculty, his
+judgment. He no longer perceives the defects of his work--does not know
+that it is mediocre or bad. That is the horror of it! The artist who has
+fallen from his original high estate is no more conscious of his
+failings than the lunatic is aware of his mental aberration.
+
+Andrea was seized with terror. Better--far better be dead! Never, as at
+this moment, had he so fully grasped the divine nature of that _gift_,
+never had the _spark_ of genius appeared to him so sacred. His whole
+being was shaken to its foundations by the mere suggestion that that
+gift might be destroyed, that spark extinguished. Better to die!
+
+He lifted his head and shook off his inertia, then he went down to the
+park and walked slowly under the trees, unable to form a definite plan.
+A light breeze rippled through the tree tops, now and again the leaves
+rustled as if a band of squirrels were passing through them; patches of
+blue sky gleamed between the branches like eyes beneath their lids.
+Arrived at a favourite spot of his, a sort of tiny _lucus_ presided over
+by a four-fronted Hermes plunged in quadruple meditation, he stopped and
+seated himself on the grass, with his back against the pedestal of the
+statue and his face turned to the sea. Before him the tree-trunks,
+straight but of uneven height, like the pipes of the great god Pan,
+intercepted his view of the sea; all around him the acanthus spread the
+exquisite grace of its foliage, symmetrical as the capitals of
+Callimachus.
+
+He thought of the words of Salamis in the _Story of the Hermaphrodite_,
+
+    'Noble acanthus, in the woods of Earth
+    Tokens of peace, high-flowering coronals,
+    Of most pure form; O ye, the slender basket
+    That Silence weaves with light, untroubled hand
+    To gather up the flowers of woody dreams,
+    What virtue have ye poured on this fair youth
+    Out of those dusky and sweet-smelling leaves?
+    Naked he sleeps; his arm supports his head.'
+
+Other lines came back to him, and yet others--a riot of verse. His soul
+was filled with the music of rhymes and rhythmic measures. He was
+overjoyed; coming to him thus spontaneously and unexpectedly, this
+poetic agitation caused him inexpressible happiness. And he gave ear to
+the music, delighting himself in rich imagery, in rare epithets, in the
+luminous metaphors, the exquisite harmonies, the subtle refinements
+which distinguished his metrical style and the mysterious artifices of
+the endecasyllabic verse learned from the admirable poets of the
+fourteenth century, and more especially from Petrarch. Once more the
+magic spell of versification subjugated his soul, and he felt the full
+force of the sentiment of a contemporary poet--Verse is everything!
+
+A perfect line of verse is absolute, immutable, deathless. It encloses a
+thought as within a clearly marked circle which no force can break; it
+belongs no more to the poet, it belongs to all and yet to none, as do
+space, light, all things intransitory and perpetual. When the poet is
+about to bring forth one of these deathless lines he is warned by a
+divine torrent of joy which sweeps over his soul.
+
+Andrea half closed his eyes to prolong this delicious tremor which with
+him was ever the forerunner of inspiration, and more especially of
+poetic inspiration, and he determined in a moment upon the metrical form
+into which he would pour his thoughts, like wine into a cup--the sonnet.
+
+While composing Andrea studied himself curiously. It was long since he
+had made verses. Had this interval of idleness been harmful to his
+technical capacities? It seemed to him that the lines, rising one by one
+out of the depths of his brain, had a new grace. The consonance came of
+itself, and ideas were born of the rhymes. Then suddenly some obstacle
+would intercept the flow, a line would rebel and the whole verse would
+be displaced like a shaken puzzle; the syllables would struggle against
+the constraint of the measure; a musical and luminous word which had
+taken his fancy had to be excluded by the severity of the rhythm, do
+what he would to retain it, and the verse was like a medal which has
+turned out imperfect through the inexperience of the caster, who has not
+calculated the proper quantity of metal necessary for filling the mould.
+With ingenious patience he poured the metal back into the crucible and
+began all over again. Finally the verse came out full and clear, and the
+whole sonnet lived and breathed like a free and perfect creature.
+
+Thus he composed--now slow, now fast--with a delight never felt before.
+As the day grew, the sea cast luminous darts between the trees as
+between the columns of a jasper portico. Here Alma Tadema would have
+depicted a Sappho with hyacinthine locks, seated at the foot of the
+marble Hermes, singing to a seven-stringed lyre and surrounded by a
+chorus of maidens with locks of flame, all pallid and intent, drinking
+in the pure harmony of the verses.
+
+Having accomplished the four sonnets, he heaved a sigh and proceeded to
+recite them silently but with inward emphasis. Then he wrote them on the
+quadrangular pedestal of the Hermes, one on each surface in the
+following order--
+
+
+I
+
+    'Four-fronted Hermes, to thy four-fold sense
+    Have these my marvellous tidings been made known?
+    Suave spirits, singing on their way, have flown
+    Forth from my heart, light-hearted; and from thence
+
+    Have cast forth every foul intelligence,
+    And every foul stream dammed, and overthrown
+    The old unguarded bridges, stone by stone,
+    And quenched the flame of my impenitence.
+
+    Singing, the spirits ascend; I know the voice,
+    The hymn; and, inextinguishable and vast,
+    Delighting laughters from my heart arise.
+
+    Pale, but a king, I bid my soul rejoice
+    To hearken my heart's laughter, as at last
+    Low in the dust the conquered evil lies.
+
+
+II
+
+    The glad soul laughs, because its loves have fled,
+    Because the conquered evil bites the dust
+    Which into intertangled fires had thrust,
+    As into fiery thickets, feet now led
+
+    Into the circle human sorrows tread;
+    It leaves the treacherous labyrinths of lust,
+    Where the fair pagan monsters lure the just,
+    In hyacinth robes, a novice, garmented.
+
+    Now may no Sphinx with golden nails ensnare,
+    No Gorgon freeze it out of snaky folds,
+    No Siren lull it on a sleepy coast;
+
+    But, at the circle's summit, see, a fair
+    White woman, in the act of worship, holds
+    In her pure hands the sacrificial Host.
+
+
+III
+
+    Beyond all harm, all ambush, and all hate,
+    Tranquil of face, and strong at heart, she stands,
+    And knows till death, and scorns, and understands
+    All evil things that on her passage wait.
+
+    _Thou hast in ward and keeping every gate,
+    The winds breathe sweetness at thy sweet commands,
+    Might'st thou but take, when with these restless hands
+    I lay at thine untroubled feet my fate!_
+
+    _Even now there shines before me in thy meek
+    And holy hands the Host, like to a sun.
+    Have I attained, have I then paid the price?_
+
+    She, that is favourable to all that seek,
+    Lifting the Host, declares: _Now is begun
+    And ended the eternal sacrifice!_
+
+
+IV
+
+    _For I_, she saith, _am the unnatural Rose,
+    I am the Rose of Beauty. I instil
+    The drunkenness of ecstasy, I fill
+    The spirit with my rapture and repose_.
+
+    _Sowing with tears, sorrowful still are those
+    That with much singing gather harvest still.
+    After long sorrow, this my sweetness will
+    Be sweeter than all sweets thy spirit knows._
+
+    So be it, Madonna; and from my heart outburst
+    The blood of tears, flooding all mortal things,
+    And the immortal sorrow be yet whole;
+
+    Let the depths swallow me, let there as at first
+    Be darkness, so I see the glimmerings
+    Of light that rain on my unconquered soul!
+
+            Die XII. Septembris MDCCCLXXXVI.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Schifanoja was situated on the heights at that point where the chain of
+hills, after following the curving coast line, took a landward bend and
+sloped away towards the plain. Notwithstanding that it had been built in
+the latter half of the eighteenth century--by the Cardinal Alfonso
+Carafa d'Ateleta--the villa showed a certain purity of architectural
+design. It was a square building of two stories, with arched colonnades
+alternating with the apartments, which imparted to the whole edifice a
+look of lightness and grace. It was a real summer palace, open on all
+sides to the breath of the sea. At the side towards the sloping gardens,
+a wide hall opened on to a noble double flight of steps leading to a
+platform like a vast terrace, surrounded by a stone balustrade and
+adorned by two fountains. At either end of this terrace, other flights
+of steps interrupted by more terraces led by easy stages almost to the
+sea, affording a full view from the level ground of their seven-fold
+windings through superb verdure and masses of roses. The special glories
+of Schifanoja were its cypresses and its roses. Roses were there of
+every kind and for every season, enough '_pour en tirer neuf ou dix
+muytz d'eaue rose_' as the poet of the _Vergier d'honneur_ would have
+said. The cypresses, sharp-pointed and sombre, more hieratic than the
+Pyramids, more enigmatic than the obelisks, were in no respect inferior
+either to those of the Villa d'Este, or the Villa Mondragone or any of
+the giants growing round the glorious Roman villas.
+
+The Marchesa d'Ateleta was in the habit of spending the summer and part
+of the autumn at Schifanoja; for, though a thorough woman of the world,
+she was fond of the country and its freedom, and liked to keep open
+house there for her friends. She had lavished every care and attention
+upon Andrea during his illness; had been to him like an elder sister,
+almost a mother, and untiring in her devotion. She cherished a profound
+affection for her cousin, was ever ready to excuse or pardon, was a good
+and frank friend to him, capable of understanding many things, always at
+his beck and call, always cheerful, always bright and witty. Although
+she had overstepped the thirties by a year, she had lost nothing of her
+youth, vivacity and great personal charm, for she possessed the secret
+of Madame de Pompadour's fascination, that '_beauté sans traits_' which
+lights up with unexpected graces. Moreover, she possessed that rare gift
+commonly called tact. A fine feminine sense of the fitness of things was
+an infallible guide to her. In her relations with a host of
+acquaintances of either sex she always succeeded in steering her course
+discreetly; she never committed an error of taste, never weighed heavily
+on the lives of others, never arrived at an inopportune moment nor
+became importunate, no deed or word of hers but was entirely to the
+point. Her treatment of Andrea during the somewhat trying period of his
+convalescence was beyond all praise. She did her utmost to avoid
+disturbing or annoying him, and, what is more, managed that no one else
+should; she left him complete liberty, pretended not to notice his whims
+and melancholies; never worried him with indiscreet questions; made her
+company sit as lightly as possible on him at obligatory moments, and
+even went so far as to refrain from her usual witty remarks in his
+presence to save him the trouble of forcing a smile.
+
+Andrea recognised her delicacy and was profoundly grateful.
+
+Returning from the garden with unwonted lightness of heart on that
+September morning after writing his sonnets on the Hermes, he
+encountered Donna Francesca on the steps, and, kissing her hand, he
+exclaimed in laughing tones:
+
+'Cousin Francesca, I have found the Truth and the Way!
+
+'Alleluja!' she returned, lifting up her fair rounded arms,--'Alleluja!'
+
+And she continued on her way down to the garden while Andrea went on to
+his room with heart refreshed.
+
+A little while afterwards there came a gentle knock at the door and
+Francesca's voice asking--'May I come in?'
+
+She entered with the lap of her dress and both arms full of great
+clusters of dewy roses, white, yellow, crimson, russet brown. Some were
+wide and transparent like those of the Villa Pamfili, all fresh and
+glistening, others were densely petalled, and with that intensity of
+colouring which recalls the boasted magnificence of the dyes of Tyre and
+Sidon; others again were like little heaps of odorous snow, and gave one
+a strange desire to bite into them and eat them. The infinite gradations
+of red, from violent crimson to the faded pink of over-ripe
+strawberries, mingled with the most delicate and almost imperceptible
+variations of white, from the immaculate purity of freshly fallen snow
+to the indefinable shades of new milk, the sap of the reed, dull silver,
+alabaster and opal.
+
+'It is a _festa_ to-day,' she said, her laughing face appearing over the
+flowers that covered her whole bosom up to the throat.
+
+'Thanks! Thanks!' Andrea cried again and again as he helped her to empty
+the mass of bloom on to the table, all over the books and papers and
+portfolios--'_Rosa rosarum!_'
+
+Her hands once free, she proceeded to collect all the vases in the room
+and fill them with roses, arranging each cluster with rare artistic
+skill. While she did so, she talked of a thousand things with her usual
+blithe volubility, almost as if compensating herself for the parsimony
+of words and laughter she had exercised up till now, out of regard for
+Andrea's taciturn melancholy.
+
+Presently she remarked, 'On the 15th we expect a beautiful guest, Donna
+Maria Ferrčs y Capdevila, the wife of the Plenipotentiary for Guatemala.
+Do you know her?'
+
+'I think not,'
+
+'No, I do not suppose you could. She only returned to Italy a few months
+ago, but she will spend next winter in Rome because her husband has been
+appointed to that post. She is a very dear friend of mine--we knew each
+other as children, and were three years together at the Convent of the
+Annunciation in Florence. She is younger than I am.'
+
+'Is she an American?'
+
+'No, an Italian. She is from Sienna. She comes of the Bandinelli family,
+and was baptized with water from the "Fonte Gaja." For all that, she is
+rather melancholy by nature, but very sweet. The story of her marriage
+is not a very cheerful one. Ferrčs is a most unsympathetic person.
+However, they have a little girl--a perfect darling--you will see; a
+little white face with enormous eyes and masses of dark hair. She is
+very like her mother--Look, Andrea, is not that rose just like velvet?
+And this--I could eat it--look--it is like glorified cream. How
+delicious!'
+
+She went on picking out the different roses and chatting pleasantly. A
+wave of perfume, intoxicating as century-old wine, streamed from the
+massed flowers; some of the petals dropped and hung in the folds of
+Francesca's gown; beneath the window the dark shaft of a cypress pierced
+the golden sunshine, and through Andrea's memory ran persistently, like
+a phrase of music, a line from Petrarch:--
+
+_'Cosi partia le rose e le parole._'
+
+Two days afterwards he repaid his cousin by presenting her with a sonnet
+curiously fashioned on an antique model and inscribed on vellum with
+illuminated ornaments in the style of those that enliven the missals of
+Attavante and of Liberale of Verona.
+
+    'Ferrara, for its d'Estes glorious,
+    Where Cossa strove in triumphs to recall
+    Cosimo Tura's triumphs on the wall,
+    Saw never feast more fair and plenteous.
+
+    Monna Francesca plucked and bore to us
+    Such store of roses, and so shed on all,
+    That heaven had lacked for such a coronal
+    The little angels it engarlands thus.
+
+    She spoke, and shed the roses in such showers,
+    And such a loveliness was seen in her,
+    _This_ said I, _is some Grace the sun discloses._
+
+    I trembled at the sweetness of the flowers.
+    A verse of Petrarch mounted in the air:
+    _She scatters words and scatters with them roses_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+On the following Wednesday, the 15th of September, the new guest
+arrived.
+
+The Marchesa, accompanied by Andrea and her eldest son, Fernanindo,
+drove over to Rovigliano, the nearest station, to meet her. As they
+drove along the road shadowed by lofty poplars, the Marchesa spoke to
+Andrea of her friend with much affection.
+
+'I think you will like her,' she remarked in conclusion.
+
+Then she began to laugh as if at some sudden thought.
+
+'Why do you laugh?' asked Andrea.
+
+'I am making a comparison.'
+
+'What comparison?'
+
+'Guess.'
+
+'I can't.'
+
+'Well, I was thinking of another introduction I gave you about two years
+ago, which I accompanied by a delightful prophecy--you remember?'
+
+'Ah--ha--'
+
+'And I laughed because this time again there is an unknown lady in
+question and this time too I may play the part of--an involuntary
+providence.'
+
+'Oh--oh!'
+
+'But this case is very different, or rather the difference lies in the
+heroine of the possible drama.'
+
+'You mean--'
+
+'That Maria Ferrčs is a _turris eburnea_.'
+
+'And I am now a _vas spirituale_.'
+
+'Ah yes, I had forgotten that you had, at last, found the Truth and the
+Way--"'The glad soul laughs because its loves have fled--'"
+
+'What--you are quoting my verses?'
+
+'I know them by heart.'
+
+'How sweet of you!'
+
+'However, I confess, my dear cousin, that your "fair white woman"
+holding the Host in her pure hands seems to me a trifle suspicious. She
+has, to my mind, too much of the air of a hollow shape, a robe without a
+body inside it, at the mercy of whatever soul, be it angel or demon,
+that chooses to enter it and offer you the communion.
+
+'But this is sacrilege--rank sacrilege!'
+
+'Ah, you had better take care! Watch that figure and use plenty of
+exorcisms--But there, I am prophesying again! Really, it seems a
+weakness of mine.'
+
+'Here we are at the station.'
+
+They both laughed, and all three entered the little station to wait for
+the train, which was due in a few minutes. Fernandino a sickly-looking
+boy of twelve, was carrying a bouquet which he was to present to Donna
+Maria. Andrea, put in excellent spirits by his little conversation with
+his cousin, took a tea-rose from the bouquet and stuck it in his
+button-hole, then cast a rapid glance over his light summer clothes and
+noticed with complaisance that his hands had become whiter and thinner
+since his illness. But he did it all without reflection, simply from an
+instinct of harmless vanity which had suddenly awakened in him.
+
+'Here comes the train,' said Fernandino.
+
+The Marchesa hurried forward to greet her friend, who was already
+leaning out of the carriage window waving her hand and nodding. Her head
+was enveloped in a large gray gauze veil which half covered her large
+black hat.
+
+'Francesca! Francesca!' she cried with a little tremor of joy in her
+voice.
+
+The sound of that voice made a singular impression on Andrea--it
+reminded him vaguely of a voice he knew--but whose?
+
+Donna Maria left the carriage with a rapid and light step, and with a
+pretty grace raised her veil above her mouth to kiss her friend.
+Suddenly Andrea was struck by the profound charm of this slender,
+graceful, veiled woman of whose face he saw only the mouth and chin.
+
+'Maria, let me present my cousin to you--Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi
+d'Ugenta.'
+
+Andrea bowed. The lady's lips parted in a smile that was rendered
+mysterious from the rest of the face being concealed by the veil.
+
+The Marchesa then introduced Andrea to Don Manuel Ferrčs y Capdevila;
+then, stroking the hair of the little girl who was gazing at the young
+man with a pair of wide-open, astonished eyes, 'This is Delfina,' she
+said.
+
+In the carriage, Andrea sat opposite to Donna Maria and beside her
+husband. She kept her veil down still; Fernandino's bouquet lay in her
+lap and from time to time she raised it to her face to inhale the
+perfume while she answered the Marchesa's questions. Andrea was right;
+there were tones in her voice exactly like Elena's. He was seized with
+impatient curiosity to see her face--its expression and colouring.
+
+'Manuel,' she was saying, 'has to leave on Friday. He will come back for
+me later on.'
+
+'Much later, let us hope,' said Donna Francesca cordially. 'A month, at
+the very least, eh, Don Manuel? The best plan would be to wait and all
+go on the same day. We are at Schifanoja till the first of November.'
+
+'If my mother were not expecting me, nothing would delight me more than
+to stay with you. But I have promised faithfully to be in Sienna for the
+17th of October--Delfina's birthday.'
+
+'What a pity! on the 20th there is the Festival of the Donations at
+Rovigliano--so very beautiful and peculiar.'
+
+'What is to be done? If I do not keep my promise, my mother will be
+dreadfully disappointed. She adores Delfina.'
+
+The husband took no part whatever in the conversation, he seemed a very
+taciturn man. He was of middle height, inclined to be stout and bald,
+and his skin of a most peculiar hue--something between green and violet,
+in which the whites of the eyes gleamed as they moved like the enamel
+eyes of certain antique bronze heads. His moustache, which was harsh and
+black and cut evenly like the bristles of a brush, shadowed a coarse and
+sardonic mouth. He appeared to be about forty, or rather more. In his
+whole appearance there was something disagreeably hybrid and morose,
+that indefinable air of viciousness which belongs to the later
+generations of bastard races brought up in the midst of moral disorder.
+
+'Look, Delfina--orange trees, all in flower!' exclaimed Donna Maria,
+stretching out her hand to pluck a spray as they passed.
+
+Near Schifanoja, the road lay between orange groves, the trees being so
+high that they afforded a pleasant shade, through which the sea-breeze
+sighed and fluttered, so laden with perfume that one might almost have
+quaffed it like a draught of cool water.
+
+Delfina was kneeling on the carriage seat and leaned out to catch at the
+branches. Her mother wound an arm about her to keep her from falling
+out.
+
+'Take care! Take care! You will tumble--wait a moment till I untie my
+veil. Would you mind helping me, Francesca?'
+
+She bent her head towards her friend to let her unfasten the veil from
+her hat, and in doing so the bouquet of roses fell at her feet. Andrea
+promptly picked them up, and as he rose from his stooping position, he
+at last saw her whole face uncovered.
+
+It was an oval face, perhaps the least trifle too long, but hardly worth
+mentioning--that aristocratic oval which the most graceful portrait
+painters of the fifteenth century were rather fond of exaggerating. The
+refined features had that subtle expression of suffering and lassitude
+which lends the human charm to the Virgins of the Florentine _tondi_ of
+the time of Cosimo. A soft and tender shadow, the fusion of two
+diaphanous tints--violet and blue, lay under her eyes, which had the
+leonine irises of the brown-haired angels. Her hair lay on her forehead
+and temples like a heavy crown, and was gathered into a massive coil on
+her neck. The shorter locks in front were thick and waving as those that
+cover the head of the Farnese Antinous. Nothing could exceed the charm
+of that delicate head, which seemed to droop under its burden as under
+some divine chastisement.
+
+'Dio mio!' she sighed, endeavouring to lighten with her hands the weight
+of tresses gathered up and compressed under her hat. 'My head aches as
+if I had been hanging by the hair for an hour. I cannot keep it fastened
+up for long together, it tires me so. It is a perfect slavery.'
+
+'Do you remember at school,' broke in Francesca, 'how we were all wild
+to comb your hair? It led to furious quarrels every day. Fancy,
+Andrea--at last it came to bloodshed! Oh, I shall never forget the scene
+between Carlotta Fiordelise and Gabriella Vanni. It got to be sheer
+monomania. To comb Maria Bandinelli's hair was the one ambition in life
+of every school-girl there--big or little. The epidemic spread through
+the whole school, and resulted in scoldings, punishments, and finally
+threats to have your hair cut off. Do you remember, Maria? Our very
+souls were enthralled by the magnificent black plait that hung like a
+rope to your heels!'
+
+Donna Maria smiled a mournful, dreamy smile. Her lips were slightly
+parted, the upper one projecting the least little bit beyond the under
+one; the corners of her mouth drooped plaintively, the soft curve losing
+itself in shadow which gave her an expression both sad and kind, but
+with a dash of that pride which reveals the moral elevation of those who
+have suffered much and been strong.
+
+To Andrea the story of these girls enamoured of a plait of hair,
+enflamed with passion and jealousy, wild to pass a comb or their fingers
+through the living treasure, seemed a charming and poetic episode of
+convent life, and in his imagination, this woman with the sumptuous hair
+became vaguely illumined like the heroine of some Christian legend of
+the childhood of a saint destined for martyrdom and future canonisation.
+At the same time, it struck him what rich and varied lines might be
+afforded to the design of a female figure by the undulating masses of
+that black hair.
+
+Not that it was really black, as Andrea perceived next day at dinner,
+when a ray of sunshine touched the lady's head, bringing out sombre
+violet lights, reflections as of tempered steel or burnished silver.
+Notwithstanding its density too, it was perfectly light, each hair
+seeming to stand apart as if permeated by and breathing the air. Her
+conversation revealed keen intelligence and a delicate mind, much
+refinement of taste and pleasure in the ęsthetic. She possessed abundant
+and varied culture, a vivid imagination, and the rich, descriptive
+language of one who has seen many lands, lived under widely different
+climes, known many people. To Andrea, she seemed to exhale some exotic
+charm, some strange fascination, some spell born of the phantoms of the
+far off things she had looked upon, the scenes she still preserved
+before her mind's eye, the memories that filled her soul; as if she
+still bore about her some traces of the sunshine she had basked in, the
+perfumes she had inhaled, the strange dialects she had heard--all the
+magic of these countries of the Sun.
+
+That evening, in the great room opening off the hall, she went over to
+the piano, and opening it, she said: 'Do you still play, Francesca?'
+
+'Oh, no,' replied the Marchesa, 'I have not practised for years. I feel
+that listening to others is decidedly preferable. However, I affect to
+be a patroness of Art, and during the winter I gladly preside at the
+execution of a little good music. Is that not so, Andrea?'
+
+'My cousin is too modest, Donna Maria; she does something more than
+merely patronise--she is a reviver of good taste. Only last February,
+thanks to her, we were made acquainted with a quintett, a quartett, and
+a trio of Boccherini, and besides that with a quartett of
+Cherubini--music that was well-nigh forgotten, but admirable and always
+new. Boccherini's adagios and minuets are deliciously fresh; only the
+finales seem to me a trifle antiquated. I am sure you must know
+something of his.'
+
+'I remember having heard one of his quintetts four of five years ago at
+the Conservatoire in Brussels, and I thought it magnificent--in the very
+newest style and full of unexpected episodes. I remember perfectly that
+in certain passages the quintett was reduced to a duet by employing the
+unison, but the effects produced by the difference in the tone of the
+instruments was something marvellous! I cannot recall anything the least
+like it in other instrumental compositions.'
+
+She discussed music with all the subtlety of a true connoisseur, and in
+describing the sentiments aroused in her by some particular composition,
+or the entire work of a master, she expressed herself most felicitously.
+
+'I have played and heard a great deal of music,' she said, 'and of every
+symphony, every sonata, every nocturne I have a separate and distinct
+picture, an impression of shape and colour, of a figure, a group, a
+landscape, so that each of my favourite compositions has a name
+corresponding to the picture;--for instance, the Sonata of the Forty
+Daughters-in-law of Priam; the Nocturne of the Sleeping Beauty in the
+Wood, the Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies, the Gigue of the Mill, the
+Prelude of the Drops of Water, and so on.'
+
+She laughed softly, a laugh which surprised one with its ineffable grace
+on that plaintive mouth.
+
+'You remember, Francesca, the multitude of notes with which we afflicted
+the margins of our favourite pieces at school. One day, after a most
+serious consultation, we changed the title of every piece of Schumann's
+we possessed, and each title had a long explanatory note. I have the
+papers still. Now, when I play the _Myrthen_ or the _Albumblätter_, all
+these mysterious annotations are quite incomprehensible to me; my
+emotions and my point of view have changed completely, but there is a
+delicate pleasure in comparing the sentiments of the present with those
+of the past, the new picture and the old. It is a pleasure very similar
+to that of re-reading one's diary, only perhaps rather more mournful and
+intense. A diary is generally the description of real events, a
+chronicle of days happy or otherwise, the gray or rosy traces left by
+time in its flight; the notes written in youth on the margin of a piece
+of music are, on the contrary, fragments of the secret poems of a soul
+that is just breaking into bloom, the lyric effusions of our ideality as
+yet untouched, the story of our dreams. What language? What a flow of
+words! You remember, Francesca?'
+
+She talked with perfect freedom, even with a touch of spiritual
+exaltation, like a person long condemned to intercourse with inferiors,
+who has the irresistible desire to open her mind and heart to a breath
+of the higher life. Andrea listened to her and was conscious of a
+pleasing sense of gratitude towards her. It seemed to him that in
+speaking of these things in his presence, she offered him a kindly proof
+of friendship, and permitted him to draw nearer to her. He thereby
+caught a glimpse of her inner world, less through the actual words she
+uttered than by the modulations of her voice. And again he recognised
+the accents of _the other_.
+
+It was an ambiguous voice, a voice with double chords in it, so to
+speak. The more virile tones, deep and slightly veiled, would soften,
+brighten, become feminine, as it were, by a transition so harmonious
+that the ear of the listener was at once surprised, delighted, and
+perplexed by it. The phenomenon was so singular that it sufficed by
+itself to occupy the mind of the listener independently of the sense of
+the words, so that after a few minutes the mind yielded to the
+mysterious charm and remained suspended between expectation and desire
+to hear the sweet cadence, as if waiting for a melody played upon an
+instrument. It was the feminine note in this voice which recalled _the
+other_.
+
+'You sing?' asked Andrea half shyly.
+
+'A little,' she replied.
+
+'Then please sing a little,' entreated Donna Francesca.
+
+'Very well, but I can only give you a sort of idea of the music, for,
+during the last year, I have almost lost my voice.'
+
+In the adjoining room, Don Manuel was silently playing cards with the
+Marchese d'Ateleta. In the drawing-room the light of the lamps shone
+softly red through a great Japanese shade. The sea-breeze, entering
+through the pillars of the hall, shook the high Karamanieh curtains and
+wafted the perfume of the garden on its wings. Beyond the pillars was a
+vista of tall cypresses, massive and black as ebony against a diaphanous
+sky throbbing with stars.
+
+'As we are on the subject of old music,' said Donna Maria seating
+herself at the piano, 'I will give you an air of Paisiello's out of
+_Nina Pazza_, an exquisite thing.'
+
+She accompanied herself as she sang. In the fervour of the song, the two
+tones of her voice blended into one another like two precious metals
+combining to make a single one--sonorous, warm, caressing, vibrating.
+Paisiello's melody--simple, pure and spontaneous, full of delicious
+languor and winged sadness, with a delicately light
+accompaniment--issued from that plaintive mouth and rose with such a
+flame of passion that the convalescent was moved to the depths of his
+being, and felt the notes drop one by one through his veins, as if all
+the blood in his body had stopped in its course to listen. A cold shiver
+stirred the roots of his hair, shadows, thick and rapid, passed before
+his eyes, he held his breath with excitement. In the weak state of his
+nerves his sensations were so poignant that it was all he could do to
+keep back his tears.
+
+'Oh, dearest Maria!' exclaimed Donna Francesca, kissing her fondly on
+the hair when she stopped.
+
+Andrea could not utter a word; he remained seated where he was, with his
+back to the light and his face in shadow.
+
+'Please go on,' said Francesca.
+
+She sang an Arietta by Antonio Salieri, then she played a Toccata by
+Leonardo Leo, a Gavotte by Rameau, a Gigue by Sebastian Bach. Under her
+magic fingers the music of the eighteenth century lived again--so
+melancholy in its dance airs, that sound as if they were intended to be
+danced to in a languid afternoon of a Saint Martin's summer, in a
+deserted park, amid silent fountains and statueless pedestals, on a
+carpet of dead roses by pairs of lovers on the point of ceasing to love
+one another.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+'Let down a rope of your hair to me that I may climb up,' Andrea called
+laughingly from the terrace below to Donna Maria, where she stood
+between two pillars of the loggia opening out of her rooms.
+
+It was morning, and she had come out into the sun to dry her wet hair,
+which hung round her like a heavy mantle, and accentuated the soft
+pallor of her face. The black border of the vivid orange-coloured awning
+hung above her head like a frieze, such as one sees round the antique
+Greek vases of the Campagna. Had she had a garland of narcissus on her
+brows and at her side a great nine-stringed lyre with bas-reliefs of
+Apollo and a greyhound, she might have been taken for a pupil of the
+school of Mytilene, or a Lesbian musician in repose as imagined by a
+Pre-Raphaelite.
+
+'You send me up a madrigal,' she answered in the same playful tone, but
+drawing back a little from view.
+
+'Very well, I will go and write one in your honour on the marble
+balustrade of the lowest terrace. Come down and read it when you are
+ready.'
+
+Andrea proceeded slowly to descend the steps leading to the lower level.
+In that September morning his soul seemed to dilate with every breath he
+drew. A certain sanctity seemed to pervade the air; the sea shone with a
+splendour of its own, as if the sources of magic rays lay in its depths;
+the whole landscape was steeped in sunshine.
+
+He stood still from time to time. The thought that Donna Maria was
+perhaps watching him from the loggia disturbed him curiously, made his
+heart beat fast and flutter timidly, as if he were a boy in love for
+the first time. It was unspeakable bliss merely to breathe the same warm
+and limpid air that she did. An immense wave of tenderness flooded his
+heart and communicated itself to the trees, the rocks, the sea, as if to
+beings who were his friends and confidants. He was filled with a desire
+to worship humbly and purely; to bend his knee and clasp his hands and
+offer up to some one this vague mute adoration which he would have been
+at a loss to explain. He felt as if the goodness of all created things
+was being poured out upon him and mingling with all he possessed of
+goodness into one jubilant stream.
+
+'Can it be that I love her?' he asked himself. But he dared not look
+closely into his soul, lest the delicate enchantment should disperse and
+vanish like a dream at break of day.
+
+'Do I love her? And what does she think? And if she comes alone, shall I
+tell her that I love her?' He took pleasure in thus asking himself
+questions which he did not answer, intercepting the reply of his heart
+by another question, prolonging his uncertainty--at once so tormenting
+and so sweet. 'No, no--I shall not tell her that I love her. She is far
+above all the others.'
+
+Arrived at the lowest terrace, he turned round and looked up, and there
+in the loggia, in the full blaze of the sun, he could just make out the
+indistinct outline of a woman's form. Had she followed him with her eyes
+and her thoughts down the long flights of steps? A childish impulse made
+him suddenly pronounce her name aloud on the deserted terrace. 'Maria!
+Maria!' he repeated, listening to his own voice. No word, no name had
+ever seemed to him so sweet, so melodious so caressing. How happy he
+would be if she would only allow him to call her Maria, like a sister.
+
+This woman--so spiritual, so soulful--inspired him with the highest
+sentiment of devotion and humility. If he had been asked what he
+considered the sweetest possible task, he would have answered in all
+sincerity--'To obey her.' Nothing in the world would have mortified him
+so much as to be accounted by her a commonplace man. By no other woman
+had he so ardently desired to be praised, admired, understood,
+appreciated in his tastes, his cultivation, his artistic aspirations,
+his ideals, his dreams, all the noblest parts of his spirit and his
+life. And his highest ambition was to fill her heart.
+
+She had now been ten days at Schifanoja, and in those ten days how
+entirely she had subjugated him! They had conversed sometimes for hours
+seated on the terrace or on one of the numerous marble benches scattered
+about the grounds or in the long rose-bordered avenues, while Delfina
+sped like a little gazelle through the winding paths of the orange
+groves. In her conversation she displayed a charming flow of language,
+many gems of delicate yet keen observation, occasionally affording
+glimpses of her inner self with a candour that was full of grace; and
+when speaking of her travels, she would often, by a single picturesque
+phrase, call up before Andrea's eyes wide vistas of distant lands and
+seas. On his part, he did his utmost to show himself to the best
+advantage, to impress upon her the wide range of his culture, the
+refinement of his taste, the exquisite keenness of his susceptibilities,
+and his heart swelled with pride when she said in tones of unfeigned
+sincerity after reading his _Story of the Hermaphrodite_--
+
+'No music has ever carried me away like this poem, nor has any statue
+ever given me such an impression of harmonious beauty. Certain lines
+haunt me persistently, and will continue to do so for long, I am
+sure--they are so intense.'
+
+As he sat now on the marble balustrade, he was thinking of these words
+of hers. Donna Maria was no longer in the loggia, the awning concealed
+the whole space between the pillars. Perhaps she would soon be
+down--should he write the madrigal he had promised her? But even the
+slight effort necessary for writing the lines thus in hot haste seemed
+intolerable to him here in the wide and opulent garden, blossoming under
+the September sunshine in a sort of magical Spring. Why disturb these
+rare and delicious emotions by a hurried search after rhymes? why
+reduce this far reaching sentiment to a brief metrical sigh?
+
+He resolved to break his promise and remained as he was, idly watching
+the sails on the distant horizon, like fiery torches outshining the sun.
+
+But as time went on, he grew restless and nervous, turning round every
+minute to see if a feminine form had not appeared between the columns of
+the vestibule which gave access to the steps--'Was this then a love
+tryst? Did he expect her to join him here for some secret interview? Had
+she any idea of his agitation?'
+
+His heart gave a great throb--it was she!
+
+She was alone. Slowly she descended the steps, and when she reached the
+first terrace she stopped beside the fountain. Andrea followed her
+intently with his eyes; her every movement, every attitude sent a
+delicious thrill through him, as if each one of them had some special
+significance, were a form of individual expression. Thus she passed down
+the succession of steps and terraces, appearing and disappearing, now
+completely hidden by the rose-bushes, now only her head or her rounded
+bust visible above them. Sometimes the thickly interlaced boughs hid her
+for several minutes, then, where the bushes were thinner, the colour of
+her dress would show through them and the pale straw of her hat would
+catch the sunlight. The nearer she came the more slowly she walked,
+loitering among the verdant shrubs, stopping to gaze at the cypresses,
+stooping to gather a handful of fallen leaves. From the last terrace but
+one, she waved her hand to Andrea standing waiting for her at the foot
+of the steps, and threw down to him the leaves she had gathered, which
+first rose fluttering in the air like a cloud of butterflies and then
+floated down--now fast, now slow,--noiseless as snowflakes on the
+stones.
+
+'Well?' she asked, leaning over the balustrade, 'what have you got for
+me?'
+
+Andrea bent his knee to the step and lifted his clasped hands.
+
+'Nothing!' he was obliged to confess. 'I implore you to forgive me;
+but, this morning, you and the sun together filled the whole world for
+me with sweetness and light. _Adoremus!_
+
+The confession was perfectly sincere, as was the adoration also, though
+both were uttered in a tone of banter. Donna Maria evidently felt the
+sincerity, for she coloured slightly as she said with peculiar
+earnestness--
+
+'No--don't--please don't kneel.'
+
+He rose, and she offered him her hand, adding, 'I will forgive you this
+time because you are an invalid.'
+
+She wore a dress of a curious indefinable dull rusty red, one of those
+so-called ęsthetic colours one meets with in the pictures of the Early
+Masters or of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was arranged in a multitude of
+straight regular folds beginning immediately under the arms, and was
+confined at the waist by a wide blue-green ribbon, of the pale tinge of
+a faded turquoise, that fell in a great knot at her side. The sleeves
+were very full and soft, and were gathered in closely at the wrist.
+Another ribbon of the same shade, but much narrower, encircled her neck
+and was tied at the left side in a small bow, and a similar ribbon
+fastened the end of the prodigious plait which fell from under her straw
+hat, round which was twined a wreath of hyacinths like that of Alma
+Tadema's Pandora. A great Persian turquoise, her sole ornament, shaped
+like a scarabeus and engraved with talismanic characters, fastened her
+dress at the throat.
+
+'Let us wait for Delfina,' she said, 'and then, what do you say to our
+going as far as the gate of the Cybele? Would that suit you?'
+
+She was full of delicate consideration for the convalescent Andrea was
+still very pale and thin, which made his eyes look extraordinarily
+large, the somewhat sensual expression of his mouth forming a singular
+and not unattractive contrast to the upper part of his face.
+
+'Yes,' he replied, 'and I am deeply grateful to you.' Then, after a
+moment's hesitation--'Do you mind if I am rather silent this morning?'
+
+'Why do you ask me that?'
+
+'Because I feel as if I had lost my tongue and could find nothing to
+say; and yet silence becomes burdensome and annoying if it is prolonged.
+That is why I ask if, during our walk, you will allow me to be silent
+and only listen to you.'
+
+'Why, then, we will be silent together,' she said with a little smile.
+
+She looked up towards the villa with evident impatience--'What a long
+time Delfina is!'
+
+'Was Francesca up when you came out?' asked Andrea.
+
+'Oh no, she is incredibly lazy--ah, there is Delfina, do you see her?'
+
+The little girl came hurrying down, followed by her governess. Though
+not visible on the flight of steps, she appeared upon the terraces which
+she traversed at a run, her hair floating over her shoulders in the
+breeze from under a broad-brimmed straw hat wreathed with poppies. On
+the last step she opened her arms wide to her mother and covered her
+face with kisses. After this she said--'Good morning, Andrea,' and
+presented her forehead to his kiss with childlike and adorable grace.
+
+She was a fragile creature, highly strung and vibrating as an instrument
+fashioned of sentient material, her flesh so delicately transparent as
+to seem incapable of concealing or even veiling the radiance of the
+spirit that dwelt within it like a flame in a precious lamp.
+
+'Heart's dearest!' murmured her mother, gazing at her with a look in
+which was concentrated all the tenderness of a soul wholly occupied by
+this one absorbing affection. But at those words, that look, that
+caress, Andrea felt a sudden stab of jealousy, something like a rebuff,
+as if her heart were turning away from him, eluding him, becoming
+inaccessible.
+
+The governess asked permission to return to the villa, and the three
+turned into a path bordered by orange-trees. Delfina ran on in front
+with her hoop, her straight slender little legs in their long black
+stockings, moving with rhythmic grace.
+
+'You seem a little out of spirits now,' said Donna Maria to her
+companion, 'and only a little while ago, when you came down, you seemed
+so bright. Is something troubling you?--do you not feel so well?'
+
+She put these questions in an almost sisterly manner soberly and kindly,
+inviting his confidence. A timid desire, a vague temptation assailed the
+invalid to slip his arm through hers, and let her lead him in silence
+through the flickering shadows and the perfumes, over the flower-strewn
+ground, down the pathways measured off at intervals by ancient
+moss-grown statues. He seemed, all at once, to have returned to the
+first days of his illness, those never-to-be-forgotten days of happy
+languor and semi-unconsciousness, and felt as if he had great need of a
+friendly support, an affectionate, a familiar arm. The desire grew so
+intense that the words which would give it voice rushed to his lips.
+However he merely replied--
+
+'No, Donna Maria, thank you, I feel quite well. It is only that the
+September weather rather affects me.'
+
+She looked at him as if she rather doubted the sincerity of his reply;
+but, to avoid an awkward silence after his evasive remark, she asked--
+
+'Which of the neutral months do you like best--April or September?'
+
+'Oh, September. It is more feminine, more discreet, more
+mysterious--like a Spring seen in a dream. Then all the plants slowly
+lose their vital forces, and, at the same time, some of their reality.
+Look at the sea over there--has it not more the appearance of an
+atmosphere than of a solid mass of water? And never, to my mind, does
+the union of sea and sky seem so mystical, so profound as in September.'
+
+They had very nearly reached the end of the path. Why should Andrea be
+suddenly seized with a tremor of nervous fear on approaching the spot
+where, a fortnight ago, he had written the sonnets on his deliverance?
+Why this struggle between hope and anxiety lest she should discover them
+and read them? Why did some of the lines keep running in his mind to
+the exclusion of others, as if they expressed his actual sentiments at
+that moment, his aspirations, the new dream he carried in his heart?
+
+'I lay at thine untroubled feet my fate!'
+
+It was true! It was true! He loved her, he laid his whole life at her
+feet--was conscious of but one desire--humble and absorbing--to be the
+earth between her footsteps.
+
+'How beautiful it is here!' exclaimed Donna Maria, as she entered the
+demesne of the four-fronted Hermes, into the paradise of the acanthus.
+'But what a strange scent!'
+
+The whole air was full of the odour of musk, as from the unseen presence
+of some musk-breathing insect or animal. The shadows were deep and
+mysterious, the rays of light which pierced the foliage, already touched
+by the finger of autumn, seemed like shafts of moonlight shining through
+the storied windows of a cathedral. A mixed sentiment, partly Pagan,
+partly Christian, seemed to emanate from this sylvan retreat, as from a
+mythological picture painted by an early Christian artist.
+
+'Oh look, look, Delfina!' her mother exclaimed in the excited tones of
+one who suddenly comes upon a thing of beauty.
+
+Delfina had skilfully woven little sprays of orange blossom into a
+garland, and now, with the fancifulness of childhood, she was eager that
+it should encircle the head of the marble deity. She could not reach it,
+but did her best to accomplish her object by standing on tip-toe and
+stretching her arm to its utmost extent; her slender, elegant and
+vivacious little figure offering a striking contrast to the rigid,
+square and solemn form of the statue, like a lily-stem against an oak.
+All her efforts were, however, fruitless.
+
+Smilingly, her mother came to her aid. Taking the wreath from the
+child's hand, she placed it on the pensive brows of the god. As she did
+so, her eyes fell involuntarily upon the inscriptions.
+
+'Who has been writing verses here.--You?' she asked, turning to Andrea
+in surprise and pleasure. 'Yes--I recognise your hand.'
+
+Forthwith, she knelt upon the grass to read with eager curiosity. While
+Donna Maria read the words in a low voice, Delfina leaned upon her
+mother's shoulder, one arm about her neck, cheek pressed to cheek. The
+two figures thus bending over the pedestal of the tall flower-wreathed
+statue, in the uncertain light, surrounded by the emblematical acanthus,
+formed a group so harmonious in line and colouring that the poet stood a
+moment lost in pure ęsthetic pleasure and admiration.
+
+But the next moment the old obscure sense of jealousy was upon him once
+more. The fragile little creature clinging to the mother, indissolubly
+connected with her mother's very being, seemed to him an enemy, an
+insurmountable obstacle rising up against his love, his desires, his
+hopes. He was not jealous of the husband, but he was of the daughter. It
+was not the body but the soul of this woman that he longed to possess,
+and to possess it wholly, undivided, with all its tenderness, all its
+joys, its hopes, its fears, its pain, its dreams--in short the sum total
+of her spiritual being, and be able to say--'I am the life of her life.'
+
+But instead, it was the daughter who possessed all this incontestably,
+absolutely, continuously. When her idol left her side, even for a short
+time, the mother seemed to miss some essential element of her existence.
+Her face was instantaneously and visibly transfigured when, after a
+brief absence, that childish voice fell upon her ear once more. At
+times, unconsciously and as if by some occult correspondence, some law
+of common vital accordance, she would repeat a gesture of the child's, a
+smile, an attitude, a pose of the head. Again, when the child was in
+repose or asleep, she had moments of contemplation so intense that she
+seemed to have lost all sense of her surroundings and to have absorbed
+herself into the creature she was contemplating. When she spoke to her
+darling, every word was a caress, and the plaintive lines vanished from
+her mouth. Under the child's kisses, her lips quivered and her eyes
+filled with ineffable happiness like the eyes of an ecstatic at a
+beatific vision. If she happened to be conversing with other people or
+listening to their talk, she would appear to have sudden lapses of
+attention, momentary absence of mind, and this was for her daughter--for
+her--always for her.
+
+Who could ever break that chain? Could any one ever succeed in
+conquering a part--even the very smallest atom of that heart? Andrea
+suffered as under an irreparable loss, some forced renunciation, some
+shattered hope. At this moment, this very moment, was not the child
+stealing something from him?
+
+For Delfina was playfully constraining her mother to remain upon her
+knees. She hung with all her weight round Donna Maria's neck, crying
+through her laughter--
+
+'No--no--no--you shall not get up!'
+
+And whenever her mother opened her mouth to speak, she clapped her
+little hands over it to prevent her, made her laugh, bandaged her eyes
+with the long plait--played a hundred pranks.
+
+Watching her, Andrea felt, that by all this playful commotion, she was
+dispelling from her mother all that his verses had possibly instilled
+into her mind.
+
+When, at last, Donna Maria succeeded in freeing herself from her darling
+tyrant, she saw his annoyance in his face, and hastened to say--'Forgive
+me, Andrea, Delfina is sometimes taken with these fits of wildness.'
+
+With a deft hand she re-arranged the disordered folds of her dress.
+There was a faint flush under her eyes and her breath came quickly.
+
+'And forgive her too,' she continued with a smile to which the unwonted
+animation of colour lent a singular light, 'out of consideration for her
+unconscious homage, for it was she who had the happy inspiration to
+place a nuptial wreath over your verses which sing of nuptial communion.
+That sets a seal upon the alliance.'
+
+'My thanks both to you and to Delfina,' answered Andrea. It was the
+first time she had called him by his Christian name, and the unexpected
+familiarity, combined with her gentle words, restored his confidence.
+Delfina had run off down one of the paths.
+
+'These verses are a spiritual record, are they not?' Donna Maria
+resumed. 'Will you give them to me that I may not forget them?'
+
+His natural impulse was to answer--'They are yours by right to-day, for
+they speak of you and to you----' But he only said--
+
+'You shall have them.'
+
+They continued their way towards the Cybele, but as they were leaving
+the little enclosure, Donna Maria suddenly turned round towards the
+Hermes as if some one had called her; her brow seemed heavy with
+thought.
+
+'What are you thinking about?' Andrea asked her almost timidly.
+
+'I was thinking about you,' she replied.
+
+'What were you thinking about me?'
+
+'I was thinking of your past life, of which I know nothing whatever. You
+have suffered greatly?'
+
+'I have greatly sinned.'
+
+'And loved much?'
+
+'I do not know. Perhaps it was not love that I felt. Perhaps I have yet
+to learn what love is--really I cannot say.'
+
+She did not answer. They walked on in silence for a little way. To their
+right, the path was bordered by high laurels, alternating at regular
+intervals with cypress trees, and in the background, through the
+fluttering leaves, the sea rippled and laughed, blue as the flower of
+the flax. On their left ran a kind of parapet like the back of a long
+stone bench, ornamented throughout its whole length with the Ateleta
+shield and arms and a griffin alternately, under each of which again was
+a sculptured mask through whose mouth a slender stream of water fell
+into a basin below, shaped like a sarcophagus and ornamented with
+mythological subjects in low relief. There must have been a hundred of
+these mouths, for the walk was called the avenue of the Hundred
+Fountains, but many of them were stopped up by time and had ceased to
+spout, while others did very little. Many of the shields were broken and
+moss had obliterated the coats of arms; many of the griffins were
+headless and the figures on the sarcophagi appeared through a veil of
+moss like fragments of silver work through an old and ragged velvet
+cover. On the water in the basins--more green and limpid than
+emerald--maiden-hair waved and quivered, or rose leaves, fallen from the
+bushes overhead, floated slowly while the surviving waterpipes sent
+forth a sweet and gurgling music that played over the murmur of the sea
+like the accompaniment to a melody.
+
+'Do you hear that?' said Donna Maria, standing still to listen,
+attracted by the charm of the sound. 'That is the music of salt and of
+sweet waters!'
+
+She stood in the middle of the path, finger on lip, leaning a little
+towards the fountains, in the attitude of one who listens and fears to
+be disturbed. Andrea, who was next the parapet, turned and saw her thus
+against a background of delicate and feathery verdure such as an Umbrian
+painter would have given to an Annunciation or a Nativity.
+
+'Maria!' he murmured, his heart filling with fond adoration,
+'Maria!--Maria--!'
+
+It afforded him untold pleasure to mingle the soft accents of her name
+with the music of the waters. She did not look at him, but she laid her
+finger on her lips as a sign to him to be silent.
+
+'Forgive me,' he said, unable to control his emotion--'but I cannot help
+myself--it is my soul that calls to you.'
+
+A strange nervous exaltation had taken possession of him, all the
+hill-tops of his soul had caught the lyric glow and flamed up
+irresistibly; the hour, the place, the sunshine, everything about them
+suggested love--from the extreme limits of the sea to the humble little
+ferns of the fountains--all seemed to him part of the same magic circle
+whose central point was this woman.
+
+'You can never know,' he went on in a subdued voice as if fearful of
+offending her--'You can never know how absolutely my soul is yours.'
+
+She grew suddenly very pale, as if all the blood in her veins had rushed
+to her heart. She did not speak, she did not look at him.
+
+'Delfina!' she cried, with a tremor of agitation in her voice.
+
+There was no answer; the little girl had wandered off among the trees at
+the end of the long avenue.
+
+'Delfina,' she repeated, louder than before, in a sort of terror.
+
+In the pause that followed her cry the songs of the two waters seemed to
+make the silence deeper.
+
+'Delfina!'
+
+There was a rustling in the leaves as if from the passage of a little
+kid, and the child came bounding through the laurel thicket, carrying in
+her hands her straw hat heaped to the brim with little red berries she
+had gathered. Her exertions and the running had brought a deep flush to
+her cheeks, broken twigs were sticking in her frock, and some leaves
+hung trembling in the meshes of her ruffled hair.
+
+'Oh mamma, come quick--do come with me!'
+
+She began dragging her mother away--'There is a perfect forest over
+there--heaps and heaps of berries! Come with me, mamma, do come--'
+
+'No, darling, I would rather not--it is getting late.'
+
+'Oh, do come!'
+
+'But it is late.'
+
+'Come! Come!'
+
+Donna Maria was obliged to give in and let herself be dragged along by
+the hand.
+
+'There is a way of reaching the arbutus wood without going through the
+thicket,' said Andrea.
+
+'Do you hear, Delfina? There is a better way.'
+
+'No, mamma, I want you to come with me.'
+
+Delfina pulled her mother along towards the sea through the laurel
+thicket, and Andrea followed, content to be able to gaze without
+restraint at the beloved figure in front of him, to devour her with his
+eyes, to study her every movement and her rhythmic walk, interrupted
+every moment by the irregularities of the path, the obstacles presented
+by the trees and their interlaced branches. But while his eyes feasted
+on these things, his mind was chiefly occupied in recalling the one
+attitude, the one look--oh, that pallor, that sudden pallor just now
+when he had proffered those few low words! And the indefinable tone of
+her voice when she called Delfina.
+
+'Is it far now?' asked Donna Maria.
+
+'No, no, mamma, we are just there--here it is!'
+
+As they neared the spot a sort of shyness came over Andrea. Since those
+words of his he had not met Maria's eye. What did she think? What were
+her feelings? What would her eyes say when, at last, she looked at him?
+
+'Here it is!' cried the little girl.
+
+The laurels had grown thinner, affording a freer view of the sea, and
+the next moment the mass of arbutus flushed rosy-red before them like a
+forest of coral with large tassels of blossom at the end of their
+branches.
+
+'What a glory!' murmured Maria.
+
+The marvellous wilderness bloomed and bore fruit in a deep and sunny
+space curved like an amphitheatre, in which all the delicious sweetness
+of that aromatic shore seemed gathered up and concentrated. The stems,
+tall and slender, crimson for the most part, but here and there yellow,
+bore great shining green leaves, all motionless in the calm air.
+Innumerable tassels of blossom, like sprays of lily-of-the-valley, white
+and dewy, hung from the young boughs, while the maturer ones were loaded
+with red or orange-yellow fruit. And all this wondrous pomp of blossom
+and fruit, of green leaves and rosy stems displayed against the
+brilliant blue of the sea, like a garden in a fairy tale, intense and
+fantastic as a dream.
+
+'What a marvel!'
+
+Donna Maria advanced slowly, no longer led by Delfina, who, wild with
+delight, rushed about with no thought but for stripping the whole wood.
+
+Andrea plucked up his courage.
+
+'Can you forgive me?' he asked anxiously. 'I did not mean to offend you.
+Indeed, seeing you so far above me, so pure, so unapproachable, I
+thought that never in this world could I reveal my secret to you, never
+ask anything of you, never put myself in your way. Since ever I saw you,
+I have thought of you night and day, but without hope, without any
+definite end in view. I know that you do not love me, that you never can
+love me. And yet, believe me, I would renounce every promise that life
+may have in store for me, just for the hope of living in a little corner
+of your heart----'
+
+She continued to advance slowly under the sun-flecked trees, while the
+delicate tassels of pink and white blossom swayed gently above her head.
+
+'Believe me, Maria--only believe me! If I were bidden at this moment to
+give up every desire and every ambition, the dearest memories of the
+past and the most flattering promises of the future, and to live solely
+in the thought of and for you--without a to-morrow, without a yesterday,
+without other ties or attachments, far from the world, lost to
+everything but you, till death--to all eternity--I would not hesitate
+for one instant. You have looked at me and talked to me, have smiled and
+answered; you have sat at my side pensive and silent; side by side with
+me you have lived your own inner life, that inscrutable and inaccessible
+existence of which I know nothing--can never know anything--- and your
+soul has taken full and absolute possession of mine to its deepest
+depths, but without ever a thought, without being aware of it, as the
+ocean swallows up a river.--What is my love to you? What is any one's
+love to you? The word has too often been profaned, and the sentiment too
+often a make-believe.--I do not offer you love. But surely you will not
+refuse the humble tribute of devotion that my spirit offers up to a
+being nobler and higher than itself.'
+
+She walked on at the same slow pace, her head bent, her face bloodless,
+towards a seat at the further end of the wood and facing the sea.
+
+It was a wide semicircle of white marble with a back running round the
+entire length and, for sole ornamentation, a lion's paw at each end as a
+support. It recalled those antique seats on which, in some island of the
+Archipelago or in Greece or Pompeii, ladies reclined and listened to a
+reading from the poets, under the shade of the oleanders, within sight
+of the sea. Here the arbutus cast the shadow of its blossom and its
+fruit, and in contrast to the marble, the coral of the stems seemed more
+vivid than elsewhere.
+
+'I care for everything that interests you; you possess all those things
+after which I am seeking. Pity from you would be more precious to me
+than passionate love from any other woman. Your hand upon my heart--I
+know--would cause a second youth to spring up in me far purer than the
+first and stronger. The ceaseless vacillation which makes up the sum of
+my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and
+restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and
+repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven
+of refuge against the doubts which contaminate every ideal, and weaken
+the will. There are men more unfortunate, but I doubt if in the whole
+wide world there was ever one less happy than I.'
+
+He was making use of Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of
+sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his
+melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own
+voice--with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it--served to augment
+his emotions.
+
+'I do not venture to tell you all my thoughts. At your side, during the
+few days since I first met you, I have had moments of oblivion so
+complete as almost to make me feel that I was back in the first days of
+my convalescence, when the sense of another world was still present with
+me. The past, the future were obliterated--as if the former had never
+been, and the latter never would be. The whole world was without form
+and void. Then, something like a dream, dim but stupendous, rose upon my
+soul--a fluttering veil, now impenetrable, now transparent, and yielding
+intermittent glimpses of a splendid but unattainable treasure. What did
+you know or care about me in such moments? Doubtless your spirit was far
+away from me. And yet, your mere bodily presence was sufficient to
+intoxicate me--I felt it flowing through my veins like blood, taking
+hold upon my soul with superhuman force----'
+
+She sat silent and motionless, gazing straight before her, her figure
+erect, her hands rigidly clasped in her lap, in the attitude of one who
+makes a supreme effort to brace himself against his own weakness. Only
+her mouth--the expression of the lips she vainly strove to keep
+firm--betrayed a sort of anguished rapture.
+
+'I dare not tell you all I feel.--Maria, Maria, can you forgive me?--say
+that you forgive me.'
+
+Two little hands came suddenly from behind the seat and clasped
+themselves over the mother's eyes, and a voice panting with fun and
+mischief cried--
+
+'Guess who it is--guess who it is!'
+
+She smiled, and allowed herself to be drawn backwards by Delfina's
+clinging fingers, and instantly, with preternatural clearness, Andrea
+saw that smile wipe away all the obscure, delicious pain from her lips,
+efface every sign that might be construed into an avowal, put to flight
+the least lingering shadow of uncertainty that he might possibly have
+converted into a gleam of hope. He sat there like a man who has expected
+to drink from an overflowing cup and suddenly finds it has nothing but
+the empty air to offer to his thirsty lips.
+
+'Guess!'
+
+The little girl covered her mother's head with loud, quick kisses, in a
+kind of frenzy, even hurting her a little.
+
+'I know who it is--I know who it is,' cried Donna Maria--'Let me go!'
+
+'What will you give me if I do?'
+
+'Anything you like.'
+
+'Well, I want a pony to carry back my berries to the house. Come and see
+what a heap I have collected.'
+
+She ran round the seat and pulled her mother by the hand. Donna Maria
+rose rather wearily, and as she stood up she closed her eyes for a
+moment as if overcome by sudden giddiness. Andrea rose too, and both
+followed in Delfina's wake.
+
+The mischievous child had stripped half the wood of fruit. The lower
+branches had not a single berry left. With the aid of a stick, picked up
+goodness knows where, she had reaped a prodigious harvest and then piled
+up the fruit into one great heap, so intense in colouring against the
+dark soil, that it looked like a heap of glowing embers. The flowers had
+apparently not attracted her; there they hung, white and pink and yellow
+and translucent, more delicate than the flowering locks of the acacia,
+more graceful than the lily-of-the-valley, all bathed in dim golden
+light.
+
+'Oh Delfina! Delfina!' exclaimed Donna Maria, looking round upon the
+devastation, 'what have you done!'
+
+The child laughed and clapped her hands with glee in front of the
+crimson pyramid.
+
+'You will have to leave it all here.'
+
+'No--no--'
+
+At first she refused, but she thought for a moment, and then said, half
+to herself with beaming eyes: 'The doe will come and eat them.'
+
+She had probably noticed the beautiful creature moving about in the
+park, and the thought of having collected so much food for it pleased
+her and fired her imagination, already full of stories in which deer are
+beneficent and powerful fairies who repose on silken cushions and drink
+from jewelled cups. She remained silent and absorbed, picturing to
+herself the beautiful tawny animal browsing on the fruit under the
+flowering trees.'
+
+'Come,' said Donna Maria, 'it is getting late.'
+
+Holding Delfina by the hand, she walked on till they came to the edge of
+the wood. Here she stopped to look at the sea, which, catching the
+reflection of the clouds, was like a vast undulating, glittering sheet
+of silk.
+
+Without a word, Andrea plucked a spray of blossom, so full that the twig
+it hung from bent beneath its weight, and offered it to Donna Maria. As
+she took it from his hand she looked at him, but she did not open her
+lips.
+
+They passed on down the avenue, Delfina talking, talking incessantly;
+repeating the same things over and over again, infatuated about the doe,
+inventing long monotonous tales in which she ran one fairy story into
+another, losing herself in labyrinths of her own creation, as if the
+sparkling freshness of the morning air had gone to her head. And round
+about the doe she grouped the children of the king, Cinderellas, fairy
+queens, magicians, monsters--all the familiar personages of those
+imaginary realms, crowding them in tumultuously with the kaleidoscopic
+rapidity of a dream. Her prattle sounded like the warbling of a bird;
+full of sweet modulations, with now and then a rapid succession of
+melodious notes that were not words,--a continuation of the wave of
+music already set in motion, like the vibrations of a string during a
+pause--when in the childish mind, the connection between the idea and
+its verbal expression met with a momentary interruption.
+
+The other two neither spoke nor listened. To them the little girl's
+bird-like twittering covered the murmur of their own thoughts, and if
+Delfina stopped for a moment's breathing space, they felt as strangely
+perturbed and apprehensive as if the silence might disclose or lay bare
+their souls.
+
+The avenue of the Hundred Fountains stretched away before them in
+diminishing perspective; a peacock, perched upon one of the shields,
+took flight at their approach, scattering the rose leaves into a
+fountain below. A few steps further on, Andrea recognised the one beside
+which Donna Maria had stood, and listened to the music of the waters.
+
+In the retreat of the Hermes the smell of musk had evaporated. The
+statue, all pensive under its garland, was flecked with patches of
+sunshine which filtered through the surrounding foliage. Blackbirds
+piped and answered one another.
+
+Taken with a sudden fancy, Delfina exclaimed, 'Mamma, I want the wreath
+again.'
+
+'No, leave it there--why should you take it away?'
+
+'I want it for Muriella.'
+
+'But Muriella will spoil it.'
+
+'Do, please, give it me.'
+
+Donna Maria looked at Andrea. He slowly went up to the statue, lifted
+the wreath and handed it to Delfina. In the exaltation of their spirits,
+this simple little episode had all the mysterious significance of an
+allegory--was in some way symbolical. One of his own lines ran
+persistently in Andrea's head--
+
+'Have I attained, have I then paid the price?'
+
+The nearer they approached the end of the pathway, the fiercer grew the
+pain at his heart; he would have given half his life for a word from the
+woman he loved. A dozen times she seemed on the point of speaking, but
+she did not.
+
+'Look, mamma, there are Fernandino and Muriella and Ricardo,' cried
+Delfina, catching sight of Francesca's children; and she started off
+running towards them and waving her wreath.
+
+'Muriella! Muriella! Muriella!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Maria Ferrčs had always remained faithful to her girlhood's habit of
+setting down daily in her journal the passing thoughts, the joys, the
+sorrows, the fancies, the doubts, the aspirations, the regrets and the
+hopes--all the events of her spiritual life as well as the various
+incidents of her outward existence, compiling thereby a sort of
+Itinerary of the Soul which she liked occasionally to study, both for
+guidance on the path still to be pursued and also to follow the traces
+of things long dead and forgotten.
+
+Perpetually denied, by force of circumstances, the relief of
+self-expansion, enclosed within the magic circle of her purity as in a
+tower of ivory for ever incorruptible and inaccessible, she found solace
+and refreshment in the daily outpourings she confided to the white pages
+of her private book. Therein she was free to make her moan, to abandon
+herself to her griefs, to seek to decipher the enigma of her own heart,
+to interrogate her conscience; here she gained courage in prayer,
+tranquillised herself by meditation, laid her troubled spirit once more
+in the hands of the Heavenly Father. And from every page shone the same
+pure light--the light of Truth.
+
+'_September 15th_ (Schifanoja).--How tired I feel! The journey was
+rather fatiguing and the unaccustomed sea air makes my head ache at
+first. I need rest, and I already seem to have a foretaste of the
+sweetness of sleep and the happiness of awaking in the morning in the
+house of a friend and to the pleasures of Francesca's cordial
+hospitality at Schifanoja with its lovely roses and its tall cypress
+trees. I shall wake up to the knowledge that I have some weeks of peace
+before me--twenty days, perhaps even more, of congenial intellectual
+companionship. I am very grateful to Francesca for her invitation. To
+see her again was like meeting a sister. How much and how profoundly I
+have changed since the dear old days in Florence!
+
+'Speaking to-day of my hair, Francesca began recalling stories of our
+absurd childish passions and melancholies in those days; of Carlotta
+Fiordelise and Gabriella Vanni and various incidents of that distant
+school life which seems to me now as though I had never lived it, but
+only read it of it in some old forgotten book or seen it in a dream. My
+hair has not fallen, but for every hair of my head there has been a
+thorn in my destiny.
+
+'But why let my sad thoughts get the upper hand over me again? And why
+let memory cause me pain? It is useless to lament over a grave which
+never gives back its dead. Would to Heaven I could remember that, once
+for all!
+
+'Francesca is still young, and has retained the frank and charming
+gaiety which, in our school days, exercised such a strange fascination
+over my somewhat gloomy temperament. She has one great and rare virtue:
+though she is light-hearted herself, she can enter into the troubles of
+others and knows how to lighten them by her kindly sympathy and pity.
+She is above all things a woman of high intelligence and refined tastes,
+a perfect hostess and a friend who never palls upon one. She is perhaps
+a trifle too fond of witty _mots_ and sparkling epigrams, but her darts
+are always tipped with gold, and she aims them with inimitable grace.
+Among all the women of the great world I have ever known there is
+certainly not one to compare with her, and of all my friends, she is the
+one I care for most.
+
+'Her children are not like her, they are not handsome. But the youngest,
+Muriella, is a dear little thing, with the sweet laugh and the eyes of
+her mother. She did the honours of the house to Delfina with all the air
+of a little lady; she has certainly inherited her mother's perfect
+manner.
+
+'Delfina seems to be happy. She has already explored the greater part of
+the grounds, as far as the sea, and has run down all the flights of
+steps. She came to tell me about all the wonderful things she had
+seen--panting, swallowing half the words, her eyes looking almost
+dazzled. She spoke continually of her new friend Muriella--a pretty name
+that sounds still prettier from her lips.
+
+'She is fast asleep. When her eyes are closed, her lashes cast a long,
+long shadow on her cheeks. Francesca's cousin was struck by their length
+this evening and quoted a beautiful line from Shakespeare's Tempest on
+Miranda's eyelashes.
+
+'The scent of the flowers is too strong in this room. Delfina was
+anxious to keep the bouquet of roses by her bedside, but now that she is
+asleep I shall take them away and put them out into the loggia in the
+fresh air.
+
+'I am tired, and yet I have written four pages; I am sleepy, and yet I
+would gladly prolong this languor of soul, lulled by I know not what
+unwonted sense of tenderness diffused around me. It is so long--so
+long--since I have felt myself surrounded by a little kindness!
+
+'I have just carried the vase of roses into the loggia and stayed there
+a few moments to listen to the voices of the night, moved by the regret
+of losing in the blindness of sleep the hours that pass under so
+beautiful a sky. How strange is the harmony between the song of the
+fountains and the murmur of the sea! The cypresses seemed to be the
+pillars of the firmament; the stars shining just above them tipped their
+summits with fire.
+
+'_September 16th._--A delightful afternoon, spent almost entirely in
+conversation with Francesca in the loggia, on the terraces, in the
+avenues, at the various points of outlook of this villa, which looks as
+if it had been built by a princely poet to drown a grief. The name of
+the Palace at Ferrara suits it admirably.
+
+'Francesca gave me a sonnet of Count Sperelli's to read--a trifle, but
+of rare literary charm, and inscribed on vellum. Sperelli has a mind of
+a very high order, and is most intense. To-day at dinner, he said
+several very beautiful things. He is recovering from a terrible wound
+received in a duel in Rome last May. In all his actions, his looks, his
+words, there is that affectionate and charming licence which is the
+prerogative of the convalescent, of those who have newly escaped the
+clutches of death. He must be very young, but he has gone through much
+and lived fast. He bears the evidences of it.... A charming evening of
+conversation and music all by ourselves after dinner. I talked too much,
+or, at any rate, with two much eagerness. But Francesca listened and
+encouraged me, and so did Count Sperelli. That is just the delightful
+part of a conversation not on common subjects--to feel the same degree
+of warmth animating the minds of all present. Only then do one's words
+have the true ring of sincerity and give real pleasure, both to the
+speaker and the hearer.
+
+'Francesca's cousin is a most cultivated judge of music. He greatly
+admires the masters of the eighteenth century, Domenico Scarlatti being
+his special favourite. But his most ardent devotion is reserved for
+Sebastian Bach. He does not care much for Chopin, and Beethoven affects
+him too profoundly and perturbs his spirit.
+
+'He listened to me with a singular expression, almost as if dazed or
+distressed. I nearly always addressed myself to Francesca, but I felt
+his eyes upon me with an insistence which embarrassed but did not offend
+me. He must still be weak and ill and a prey to his nerves. Finally he
+asked me--"Do you sing?" in the same tone in which he would have
+said--"Do you love me?"
+
+'I sang an air of Paisiello's and another by Salieri, and I played a
+little eighteenth century music. I was in good voice and my touch on the
+piano happy.
+
+'He gave me no word of thanks or praise, but remained perfectly silent.
+I wonder why?
+
+'Delfina was in bed by that time. When I went upstairs afterwards to see
+her, I found her asleep, but with her eyelashes wet as if with tears.
+Poor darling! Dorothy told me that my voice could be heard distinctly up
+here, and that Delfina had wakened from her first sleep and begun to
+sob, and wanted to come down.
+
+'She is asleep again now, but from time to time her little bosom heaves
+with a suppressed sob which sends a vague distress into my own heart,
+and a desire to respond to that involuntary sob, to this grief which
+sleep cannot assuage. Poor darling!
+
+'Who is playing the piano downstairs, I wonder? With the soft pedal
+down, some one is trying over that gavotte of Rameau's, so full of
+bewitching melancholy, that I was playing just now. Who can it be?
+Francesca came up with me--it is late.
+
+'I went out and leaned over the loggia. The room opening into the
+vestibule is dark, but there is light in the room next to it, where
+Manuel and the Marchese are still playing cards.
+
+'The gavotte has stopped, some one is going down the steps into the
+garden.
+
+'Why should I be so alert, so watchful, so curious? Why should every
+sound startle me to-night?
+
+'Delfina has wakened and is calling me.
+
+'_September 17th._--Manuel left this morning. We accompanied him to the
+station at Rovigliano. He will return about the 10th of October to fetch
+me, and we all go on to Sienna, to my mother. Delfina and I will
+probably stay at Sienna till after the New Year. I shall see the Loggia
+of the Pope and the Fonte Gaja, and my beautiful black and white
+Cathedral once more--that beloved dwelling-place of the Blessed Virgin,
+where a part of my soul has ever remained to pray in a spot that my
+knees know well.
+
+'I always have a vision of that spot clearly before me, and when I go
+back I shall kneel on the exact stone where I always used to. I know it
+as well as if my knees had left a deep hollow there. And there too I
+shall find that portion of my soul which still lingers there in prayer
+beneath the starry blue vault above, which is mirrored in the marble
+floor like a midnight sky in a placid lake.
+
+'Assuredly nothing there is changed. In the costly chapel, full of
+palpitating shadow and mysterious gloom, alive with the glint of
+precious marble, the lamps burned softly, all their light seemingly
+gathered into the little globe of oil that fed the flame as into some
+limpid topaz. Little by little, under my intent gaze, the sculptured
+stone grew less coldly white, took on warm ivory tints, became gradually
+penetrated by the pallid life of the celestial beings, and over the
+marble forms crept the faint transparency of angelic flesh.
+
+'Ah, how fervent and spontaneous were my prayers then! When I absorbed
+myself in meditation, I seemed to be walking through the secret paths of
+my soul as in a garden of delight, where nightingales sang in the
+blossoming trees and turtle-doves cooed beside the running waters of
+Grace divine.
+
+'_September 18th._--A day of nameless torture. Something seems to be
+forcing me to gather up, to re-adjust, to join together the fragments of
+a dream, half of which is being confusedly realised outside of me, and
+the other half going on equally confusedly in my own heart. And try as I
+will, I cannot succeed in piecing it completely together.
+
+'_September 19th._--Continued torture. Long ago, some one sang to me but
+never finished the song. Now some one is taking up the strain at the
+point where it broke off, but meanwhile, I have forgotten the beginning.
+And my spirit loses itself in vain gropings after the old melody, nor
+can it find any pleasure in the new.
+
+'_September 20th._--To-day, after lunch, Andrea Sperelli invited me and
+Francesca to come to his room and look at some drawings that had arrived
+for him yesterday from Rome.
+
+'It would not be too much to say that an entire Art has passed before
+our eyes to-day--an art studied and analysed by the hand of a master
+draughtsman. I have never experienced a more intense pleasure.
+
+'The drawings are Sperelli's own work--studies, sketches, notes,
+mementos of every gallery in Europe; they are, so to speak, his
+breviary, a wonderful breviary in which each of the Old Masters has his
+special page, affording a condensed example of his manner, bringing out
+the most lofty and original beauties of his work, the _punctum saliens_
+of his entire productions. In going through the large collection, not
+only have I received a distinct impression of the various schools, the
+movements, the influences which have combined to develop the art of
+painting in various countries, but I feel that I have had a glimpse into
+the spirit, the essential meaning of the art of each individual painter.
+I am as if intoxicated with art, my brain is full of lines and figures,
+but in the midst of the apparent confusion there stand out clearly
+before me the women of the early masters, those never-to-be-forgotten
+heads of Saints and Virgins which smiled down upon my childish piety in
+old Sienna from the frescoes of Taddeo and Simone.
+
+'No masterpiece of art, however advanced and brilliant, leaves upon the
+mind so strong and enduring an impression. All these slender forms,
+delicate and drooping as lily-buds, these grave and noble attitudes for
+receiving a flower offered by an angel, placing the fingers on an open
+book, bending over the Holy Infant, or supporting the body of Christ; in
+the act of blessing, of agonising, of ascending into Heaven--all these
+things, so pure, so sincere, so profoundly touching, affect the soul to
+its depths and imprint themselves for ever on the memory.
+
+'Thus, one by one, the women of the Early Masters passed in review
+before us. Francesca and I were seated on a low couch with a great stand
+before us, on which lay the portfolio containing the drawings which the
+artist, seated opposite, slowly turned over, commenting on each in
+succession. I watched his hand as he took up a sheet and placed it with
+peculiar care on the other side of the portfolio, and each time I felt a
+sort of thrill, as if that hand were going to touch me--Why?--
+
+'Presently, his position doubtless becoming uncomfortable, he knelt on
+the floor, and in that attitude continued turning over the drawings. In
+speaking, he nearly always addressed himself to me, not at all with the
+air of imparting instruction, but as if discussing the pictures with a
+person as familiar with the subject as he was himself; and, at the
+bottom of my heart, I was conscious of a sense of complacency mingled
+with gratitude. Whenever I exclaimed in admiration, he looked at me with
+a smile which I can still see, but cannot define. Two or three times,
+Francesca rested her arm on his shoulder in unconscious familiarity.
+Looking at the head of the first-born of Moses, copied from Botticelli's
+fresco in the Sistine Chapel, she said--"It has a look of you when you
+are in one of your melancholy moods."--And when we came to the head of
+the Archangel Michael from Perugino's Madonna of Pavia, she
+remarked---"It is a little like Giulia Moceto, is it not?" He did not
+answer, but only turned the page over rather sooner than usual. Upon
+which she added with a laugh--"Away with the pictures of sin!"
+
+'This Giulia Moceto is, I suppose, some one he was once in love with.
+The page once turned, I had a wild, unreasoning desire to look at the
+Michael again and examine the face more closely. Was it merely artistic
+curiosity?
+
+'I cannot say, I dare not pry into my heart, I prefer to temporise, to
+deceive myself; I have not the courage to face the battle, I am a
+coward.
+
+'And yet the present is so sweet. My imagination is as excited as if I
+had drunk strong tea. I have no desire to go to bed. The night is soft
+and warm as if it were August, the sky is cloudless but dimly veiled,
+the breathing of the sea comes slow and deep, but the fountains fill up
+the pauses. The loggia attracts me--shall we go out and dream a little,
+my heart and I?--dream of what?
+
+'The eyes of the Virgins and the Saints pursue me--deep-set, long and
+narrow, with meekly downcast lids, from under which they gaze at one
+with that charmed look--innocent as the dove, and yet a little side-long
+like the serpent. "Be ye harmless as doves and wise as serpents," said
+Our Lord--
+
+'Yes, be wise--go, say your prayers, and then, to bed and sleep----
+
+'_September 21st._--Alas, must the heavy task ever painfully begin again
+from the beginning, the steep path be climbed, the battle that was won
+fought over again!
+
+'_September 22nd._--He has given me one of his poems, _The Story of the
+Hermaphrodite_, the twenty-first of the twenty-five copies, printed on
+vellum and with two proof engravings of the frontispiece.
+
+'It is a remarkable work, enclosing a mystic and profound idea, although
+the musical element predominates, entrancing the soul by the unfamiliar
+magic of its melody, which envelopes the thoughts that shine out like a
+glister of gold and diamonds through a limpid stream. Certain lines
+pursue me incessantly and will continue to do so for long, no
+doubt--they are so intense.... Every day and every hour he subjugates me
+more and more, mind and soul--against my will, despite my resistance.
+His every word and look, his slightest action sinks into my heart.
+
+'_September 23rd._--When we converse with one another, I sometimes feel
+as if his voice were an echo of my soul. At times, a sudden wild frenzy
+comes over me, a blind desire, an unreasoning impulse to make some
+remark, utter some word that would betray my secret weakness. I only
+save myself from it by a miracle, and then there falls an interval of
+silence, during which I am shaken with inward terror. Then, when I do
+speak again, it is to say something trivial in the lightest tone I can
+command, but I feel as if a flame were rushing over my face--that I am
+going to blush. If he were to seize this moment to look me boldly in the
+eyes, I should be lost!
+
+'I played a good deal this evening, chiefly Bach and Schumann. As on the
+first evening, he sat in a low chair to the right but a little behind
+me. From time to time, at the end of each piece, he rose and leaned over
+me, turning the pages to point out another Fugue or Intermezzo. Then he
+would sit down again and listen, motionless, profoundly absorbed, his
+eyes fixed on me, forcing me to _feel_ his presence.
+
+'Did he understand, I wonder, how much of myself, of my thoughts and
+griefs found voice in the music of others?
+
+'It is a threatening night. A hot moist wind blows over the garden and
+its dull moaning dies away in the darkness only to begin again more
+loudly. The tops of the cypresses wave to and fro under an almost inky
+sky in which the stars burn with feeble ray. A band of clouds spans the
+heavens from side to side, ragged, contorted, blacker than the sky, like
+the tragic locks of a Medusa. The sea is invisible through the darkness,
+but it sobs as if in measureless and uncontrollable grief--forsaken and
+alone.
+
+'Why this unreasoning terror? The night seems to warn me of approaching
+disaster, a warning that finds its echo in a dim remorse within my
+heart.
+
+'But I always take comfort from my daughter, she heals my fever like
+some blessed balm.
+
+'She is asleep now, shaded from the lamp which shines with the soft
+radiance of the moon. Her face--white with dewy freshness of a white
+rose, seems half buried in the masses of her dark hair. One would think
+the eyelids were too delicately transparent to veil the splendour of her
+eyes. As I lean over her and gaze at her, all the sinister voices of the
+night are silenced for me, and the silence is measured only by her
+gentle respiration.
+
+'She feels the vicinity of her mother. The longer I contemplate her, the
+more does she assume in my eyes the aspect of some ethereal creature, of
+a being formed of "such stuff as dreams are made of."
+
+'She shall grow up nourished and enwrapped by the flame of my love--of
+my great, my _only_ love----
+
+'_September 24th._--I can form no resolve--I can decide upon no plan of
+action. I am simply abandoning myself a little to this new sentiment,
+shutting my eyes to the distant peril, and my ears to the warning voice
+of conscience, with the shuddering temerity of one who, in gathering
+violets, ventures too near the edge of a precipice at the foot of which
+roars a hungry torrent.
+
+'He shall never know anything from my lips, I shall never know anything
+from his. Our two souls will mount together, for a brief space, to the
+mountain-tops of the Ideal, will drink side by side at the perennial
+fountains, and then each go on its separate way, encouraged and
+refreshed.
+
+'How still the air is this afternoon! The sea has the faint milky-blue
+tints of the opal, of Murano glass, with here and there a patch like a
+mirror dimmed by a breath.
+
+'I am reading Shelley, a favourite poet with him, that divine Ariel
+feeding upon light and speaking with the tongues of angels. It is
+night----
+
+'_September 25th._--_Mio Dio! Mio Dio!_ His voice when he spoke my
+name--the tremor in it--oh, I thought my heart was breaking in my bosom,
+and that I must inevitably lose consciousness.--"You will never know,"
+he said--"never know how utterly my soul is yours."
+
+'We were in the avenue of the fountains--I was listening to the sound of
+the water; but from that moment, I heard nothing more. Everything around
+me seemed to flee away, carrying my life with it, and the earth to open
+beneath my feet. I made a superhuman effort to control myself. Delfina's
+name rose to my lips and I was seized with a wild impulse to fly to her
+for protection, for safety. Three times I cried that name, but in the
+intervals my heart ceased to beat and the breath died away upon my lips.
+
+'_September 26th._--Was it true? Was it not merely some illusion of my
+overwrought and distracted spirit? Why should that hour yesterday seem
+to me so far away, so _unreal_?
+
+'He spoke a second time, at greater length, close to my side while I
+walked on under the trees as in a dream.--Under the trees was it? It
+seemed to me rather that I was walking through the hidden pathways of my
+soul, among flowers born of my imagination, listening to the words of an
+invisible spirit that yet was part of myself.
+
+'I can still hear the sweet and dreadful words--"I would renounce all
+that the future may hold for me to live in a small corner of your
+heart--Far from the world, wholly lost in the thought of you--until
+death, to all eternity"--And again--"Pity from you would be far dearer
+to me than love from any other woman. Your mere presence suffices to
+intoxicate me--I feel it flowing into my veins like my life's blood and
+filling my soul with rapture beyond all telling."
+
+'_September 27th._--When he gathered the spray of blossom at the
+entrance to the wood and offered it to me, did I not, in my heart, call
+him--_Life of my life_?
+
+'When, in the avenue, we passed again by the fountain where he first
+spoke to me, did I not call him _Life of my life_?
+
+'When he took the wreath from off the Hermes and gave it back to my
+child, did he not give me to understand that the woman exalted in these
+verses had fallen from her high estate, and that I, I alone, was all his
+hope? And once more I called him _Life of my life_.
+
+'_September 28th._--How long I have been in finding peace!
+
+'From that moment onwards, what hours of struggle and travail I have
+had, how painfully I have striven to penetrate the real state of my
+mind, to see things in their true light, bring a calm and fair judgment
+to bear upon what has happened, to recognise and determine upon my duty!
+But I continually evaded myself, my mind became confused, my will was
+but a broken reed on which to lean, every effort was vain. By a sort of
+instinct, I have avoided being alone with him, kept close to Francesca
+or my child, or stayed here in my room as in a haven of refuge. When my
+eyes did meet his, I seemed to read in them a profound and imploring
+sadness. Does he not know how deeply, deeply, deeply I love him?
+
+'He does not know it, nor ever will. That is my firm resolve--that is my
+duty. Courage!
+
+'Help me, oh my God!
+
+'_September 29th._--Why did he speak? Why did he break the enchanted
+silence in which I let my soul be steeped, almost without regret or
+fear? Why tear away the veil of uncertainty and put me face to face with
+his unveiled love? Now I have no further excuse for temporising, for
+deluding myself. The danger is there--certain, undeniable, manifest--it
+attracts me to its dizzy edge like a precipice. One moment of weakness,
+of languor, and I am lost.
+
+'I ask myself--am I sincere in my pain and regret at this unexpected
+revelation? How is it that I think perpetually of those words? And why,
+when I repeat them to myself, does a wave of ineffable rapture sweep
+over my soul? Why do I thrill to the heart's core at the imagined
+prospect of hearing more--more such words?
+
+'Night. The agitation of my soul takes the forms of questions,
+riddles--I ask myself endless questions to which I never have an answer.
+I have not had the courage to look myself through and through--to form a
+really bold and honest resolution. I am pusillanimous, I am a coward. I
+shrink from pain, I want to suffer as little as possible, I prefer to
+temporise, to hang back, to resort to subterfuges, to wilfully blind
+myself instead of courageously facing the risks of a decisive battle.
+
+'The fact of the matter is this--that I am _afraid_ of being alone with
+him, of having a serious conversation with him, and so my life is
+reduced to a series of petty schemes and manoeuvrings and pretexts for
+avoiding his company. Such devices are unworthy of me. Either I must
+renounce this love altogether, and he shall hear my sad but firm
+resolve, or I shall accept it, in so far as it is pure, and he will
+receive my spiritual consent.
+
+'And now I ask myself--What do I really want? Which of the two paths am
+I to choose? Must I renounce--shall I accept?
+
+'My God! my God! answer Thou for me--light up the path before me!
+
+'To renounce is like tearing out a piece of my heart with my own hands.
+The agony would be supreme, the wrench would exceed the limits of the
+endurable. But, by God's grace, such heroism would be crowned by
+resignation, would be rewarded by that sweet and holy calm which follows
+upon every high moral impulse, every victory of the soul over the dread
+of suffering.
+
+'I shall renounce--my daughter shall keep possession of my whole life,
+of my whole soul. That is the path of duty, and I will walk in it.
+
+'Sow in tears, oh mourning souls, that ye may reap with songs of
+gladness!
+
+'_September 30th._--I feel somewhat calmer in writing these pages. I
+regain, at least for the moment, some slight balance of mind. I can look
+my misfortune more clearly in the face, and my heart seems relieved as
+if after confession.
+
+'Oh, if I could but go to confession!--could implore counsel and help of
+my old friend and comforter, Dom Luigi!
+
+'What sustains me most of all in my tribulation, is the thought that in
+a short time I shall see him again and be able to pour out all my griefs
+and fears to him, show him all my wounds, ask of him a balm for all my
+ills, as I used to in the days when his benign and solemn words would
+call up tears of tenderness to my eyes, that knew not then the
+bitterness of other tears or--more terrible by far--the burning pain of
+dry-eyed misery.
+
+'Will he understand me still? Can he fathom the deep anguish of the
+woman as he understood the vague and fitful melancholy of the girl?
+Shall I ever again see him lean towards me in pity and consolation, that
+gentle brow, crowned with silvery locks, illumined with purity and
+holiness, and sanctified by the hand of the Lord?
+
+'In the chapel, after mass, I played on the organ music of Bach and of
+Cherubini. I played the same prelude as the other evening.
+
+'A soul weeps and moans, weighed down with anguish, weeps and moans and
+cries to God, asking His pardon, imploring His aid, with a prayer that
+rises to heaven like a tongue of fire. It cries and it is heard--its
+prayer is answered; it receives light from above, utters songs of
+gladness reaches at length the haven of Peace and Truth and rests in the
+Lord----
+
+'The organ is not large nor is the chapel, but, nevertheless, my soul
+expanded as in a basilica, soared up as under some vast dome, and
+touched the pinnacle of high Heaven where blazes the Sign of Signs in
+the azure of Paradise, in the sublime ether.
+
+'Night. Alas: nothing is of any avail--nothing gives me one hour, one
+minute, one second's respite. Nothing can ever cure me, no dream of my
+mind can ever efface the dream of my heart.--All has been in vain; this
+anguish is killing me. I feel that my hurt is mortal, my heart pains me
+as if some one were actually crushing it, were tearing it to pieces. My
+agony of mind is so great that it has become a physical
+torment--atrocious, unbearable. I know perfectly well that I am
+overwrought, nervous--the victim of a sort of madness; but I cannot get
+the upper hand over myself, cannot pull myself together, cannot regain
+control of my reason. I cannot--I simply cannot!
+
+'So this, then, is love!
+
+'He went off somewhere this morning on horseback accompanied by a
+servant before I saw him, and I spent the whole morning in the chapel.
+When lunch time came he had not returned. His absence caused me such
+misery that I myself was astonished at the violence of my pain. I came
+up to my room afterwards, and to ease my heart I wrote a page of my
+journal, a devotional page, seeking to revive my fainting spirit at the
+glowing memory of my girlhood's faith. Then I read a few pieces, here
+and there, of Shelley's _Epipsychidion_, after which I went down into
+the park looking for Delfina. But no matter what I did, the thought of
+him was ever present with me, held me captive and tortured me
+relentlessly.
+
+'When, at last, I heard his voice again, I was on the first terrace. He
+was speaking to Francesca in the vestibule. She came out and called to
+me to come up.
+
+'I felt my knees giving way beneath me at each step. He held out his
+hand to me and he must have noticed the trembling of mine, for I saw a
+sudden gleam flash into his eyes. We all three sat down on low cane
+lounges in the vestibule, facing the sea. He complained of feeling very
+tired, and smoked while he told us of his ride. He had gone as far as
+Vicomile, where he had made a halt.
+
+'Vicomile, he said, possesses three wonderful treasures--a pine wood, a
+tower, and a fifteenth-century monstrance. Imagine a pine wood, between
+the sea and the hill, interspersed by a number of pools that multiply
+the trees indefinitely; a campanile in the old rugged Lombardy style
+that goes back to the eleventh century--a tree-trunk of stone, as it
+were, covered with sculptured sirens and peacocks, serpents and griffins
+and dragons--a thousand and one monsters and flowers; and a silver-gilt
+monstrance all enamelled, engraved and chased--Gothico-Byzantine in
+style and form with a foretaste of Renaissance, the work of Gallucci, an
+almost unknown artist, but who was the great forerunner of Benvenuto
+Cellini----
+
+'He addressed himself all the time to me. Strange how exactly I remember
+every word he says! I could set down any conversation of his, word for
+word, from beginning to end; if there were any means of doing so, I
+could reproduce every modulation of his voice.
+
+'He showed us two or three little sketches he had made, and then began
+again describing the wonders of Vicomile with that warmth with which he
+always speaks of beautiful things and that enthusiasm for art which is
+one of his most potent attractions.
+
+'"I promised the Canonico to come back to-morrow. We will all go, will
+we not, Francesca? Donna Maria ought to see Vicomile!"
+
+'Oh, my name on his lips! If it were possible, I could reproduce the
+very movements of his lips in uttering each syllable of those two
+words--Donna Maria----But what I never could express is my own emotion
+on hearing it; could never explain the unknown, undreamed-of sensation
+awakened in me by the presence of this man.
+
+'We sat there till dinner-time. Contrary to her usual habit, Francesca
+seemed a little pensive and out of spirits. There were moments when
+heavy silence fell upon us. But between him and me there then occurred
+one of those _silent colloquies_ in which the soul exhales the Ineffable
+and hears the murmur of its thoughts. He said things to me then that
+made me sink back against the cushions of my chair faint with
+rapture--things that his lips will never repeat to me, that my ears will
+never hear.
+
+'In front of us, the cypresses, tipped with fire by the setting sun,
+stood up tall and motionless like votive candles. The sea was the colour
+of aloe leaves, dashed here and there with liquid turquoise; there was
+an indescribable delicacy of varying pallor--a diffusion of angelic
+light, in which each sail looked like an angel's wing upon the waters.
+And the harmony of faint and mingled perfumes seemed like the soul of
+the declining day.
+
+'Oh sweet and tranquil death of September!
+
+'Another month ended, lost, dropped away into the abyss of
+Time--Farewell!
+
+'I have lived more in this last fortnight than in fourteen years; and
+not one of my long weeks of unhappiness has ever equalled in sharpness
+of torture this one short week of passion. My heart aches, my head
+swims; in the depths of my being, I feel a something obscure and
+burning--a something that has suddenly awakened in me like a latent
+disease, and now begins to creep through my blood and into my soul in
+spite of myself, baffling every remedy--desire.
+
+'It fills me with shame and horror as at some dishonour, some sacrilege
+or outrage; it fills me with wild and desperate terror as at some
+treacherous enemy who will make use of secret paths to enter the citadel
+which are unknown to myself.
+
+'And here I sit in the night watches, and while I write these pages,
+with all the feverish ardour that lovers put into their love-letters, I
+cease to listen to the gentle breathing of my child. She sleeps in
+peace; she little knows how far away from her her mother's spirit is!
+
+'_October 1st._--I see much in him that I did not observe before. When
+he speaks, I cannot take my eyes off his mouth--the play of his lips and
+their colouring occupies my attention more than the sound or the sense
+of his words.
+
+'_October 2nd._--To-day is Saturday--just a week since the
+never-to-be-forgotten day, the 25th of September.
+
+'By some strange chance, although I no longer avoid being alone with
+him--for I am anxious now for the dread and heroical moment--by some
+strange chance, that moment has not yet occurred.
+
+'Francesca has always been with me the whole day long. This morning we
+had a ride along the road to Rovigliano, and we spent the best part of
+the afternoon at the piano. She made me play some sixteenth-century
+dance music, and then Clementi's famous Toccata and two or three
+Caprices of Scarlatti's, and, after that, I had to sing certain songs
+from Schumann's _Frauenliebe_--what contrasts!
+
+'Francesca has lost much of her old gaiety, she is not as she used to be
+in the first days of my stay here. She is often silent and preoccupied,
+and when she does laugh or make fun, her gaiety seems to me very forced.
+I said to her once. "Is something worrying you?"
+
+'"Why?" she answered with assumed surprise.
+
+'"Because you seem to me a little out of spirits lately."
+
+'"Out of spirits? oh, no, you are quite mistaken," she answered, and she
+laughed, but with an involuntary note of bitterness. This troubles me
+and causes me a vague sense of uneasiness.
+
+'We are going to Vicomile to-morrow afternoon.
+
+'He asked me--"Would it tire you too much to come on horseback? In that
+way we could cut right through the pine wood!"
+
+'So we are going to ride and Francesca will join us. The others,
+including Delfina, will come in the mail-coach.
+
+'What a strange state of mind I am in this evening! I feel a kind of
+dull and angry bitterness at the bottom of my heart, without knowing
+why--am impatient with myself, my life, the whole world--my nervous
+irritation rises, at times, to such a pitch, that I am seized with an
+insane desire to scream aloud, to dig my nails into my flesh, to bruise
+my fingers against the wall--any physical suffering would be better than
+this intolerable mental discomfort, this unbearable wretchedness. I feel
+as if I had a burning knot in my bosom, that my throat were closed by a
+sob I dared not give vent to--I am icy cold and burning hot by turns
+and, from time to time, a sudden pang darts through me, an irrational
+terror that I can neither shake off nor control. Thoughts and images
+flash suddenly across my brain, coming from I know not what ignoble
+depths of my soul.
+
+'_October 3rd._--How weak and miserable is the human soul, how utterly
+defenceless against the attacks of all that is least noble and least
+pure in us, and that slumbers in the obscurity of our unconscious life,
+in those unexplored abysses where dark dreams are born of hidden
+sensations!
+
+'A dream can poison a whole soul, a single involuntary thought is
+sufficient to corrupt and break down the force of will.
+
+'We are just starting for Vicomile. Delfina is in raptures.
+
+'It is the festival of Our Lady of the Rosary. Courage, my heart!
+
+'_October 4th._--I found no courage.
+
+'Yesterday was so full of trifling incidents and great emotions, so
+joyful and so sad, so strangely agitating that I am almost at a loss
+when I try to remember it all. And yet all--all other recollections pale
+and vanish before the one.
+
+'After having visited the tower and admired the monstrance, we prepared
+to return home at about half-past five. Francesca was tired and
+preferred going back in the coach to getting on horseback again. We
+followed them for a while, riding behind or beside them, while Delfina
+and Muriella waved long flowering bulrushes at us, laughing and
+threatening us with their splendid spears.
+
+'The evening was calm, not a breath of wind stirred. The sun was sinking
+behind the hill at Rovigliano in a sky all rosy-red, like a sunset in
+the Far East.
+
+'When we came in sight of the pine-wood, he suddenly said to me: "Shall
+we ride through it?"
+
+'The high road skirted the wood, describing a wide curve, at one part of
+which it almost touched the sea-shore. The wood was already growing dark
+and was full of deep-green twilight, but under the trees the pools
+gleamed with a pure and intense light, like fragments of a sky far
+fairer than the one above our heads.
+
+'Without giving me time to answer, he said to Francesca, "We are going
+to ride through the wood and shall join you at the other side, on the
+high road, by the bridge"--and he reined in his horse.
+
+'Why did I consent--why did I follow him? There was a sort of dazzle
+before my eyes. I felt as if I were under the influence of some nameless
+fascination, as if the landscape, the light, this incident, the whole
+combination of circumstances were not new to me, but things that had all
+happened to me before, in another existence, and were now only being
+repeated. The impression is quite indescribable. My will seemed
+paralysed. It was as when some incident of one's life reappears in a
+dream, but with added details that differ from the real circumstances. I
+shall never be able to adequately describe even a part of this strange
+phenomenon.
+
+'We rode in silence at a foot's pace; the cawing of the rooks, the dull
+beat of the horses' hoofs and their noisy breathing in no way disturbed
+the all-pervading peace that seemed to grow every minute deeper and more
+magical.
+
+'Ah, why did he break the spell we ourselves had woven?
+
+'He began to speak; he poured out upon me a flood of burning
+words--words which, in the silence of the wood, frightened me because
+they carried with them an impression of something preternatural,
+something indefinably weird and compelling. He was no longer the humble
+suppliant of that morning in the park, spoke no more of his diffident
+hopes, his half-mystical aspirations, his incurable sense of sorrow.
+This time he did not beg and entreat. It was the voice of passion, full
+of audacity and virile power, a voice I did not know in him.
+
+'"You love me, you love me--you cannot help but love me--tell me that
+you love me!"
+
+'His horse was close beside mine. I felt him brush me; I almost felt the
+breath of his burning words upon my cheek, and I thought I must swoon
+with anguish and fall into his arms.
+
+'"Tell me that you love me," he repeated obstinately, relentlessly.
+"Tell me that you love me!"
+
+'Under the terrible strain of his insistent voice, I believe I answered
+wildly--whether with a cry or a sob, I do not know--
+
+'"I love you, I love you, I love you!" and I set my horse at a gallop
+down the narrow rugged path between the crowded tree-trunks, unconscious
+of what I was doing.
+
+'He followed me crying--"Maria, Maria, stop--you will hurt yourself."
+
+'But I fled blindly on. I do not know how my horse managed to keep clear
+of the trees, I do not know why I was not thrown; I am incapable of
+retracing my impressions in that mad flight through the dark wood, past
+the gleaming patches of water. When at last I came out upon the road,
+near the bridge, I seemed to have come out of some hallucination.
+
+'"Do you want to kill yourself?" he said almost fiercely. We heard the
+sound of the approaching carriage and turned to meet it. He was going to
+speak to me again.
+
+'"Hush, for pity's sake," I entreated, for I felt I was at the end of my
+forces.
+
+'He was silent. Then, with an assurance that stupefied me, he said to
+Francesca--"Such a pity you did not come! It was perfectly enchanting."
+
+'And he went on talking as quietly and unconcernedly as if nothing had
+happened, even with a certain amount of gaiety. I was only too thankful
+for his dissimulation which screened me, for if I had been obliged to
+speak, I should inevitably have betrayed myself, and for both of us to
+have been silent would doubtless have aroused Francesca's suspicions.
+
+'A little further on, the road wound up the hill towards Schifanoja. Oh,
+the boundless melancholy of the evening! A new moon shone in the
+faintly-tinted, pale-green sky, where my eyes, and perhaps mine alone,
+detected a lingering rosy tinge--that same rosy light that gleamed upon
+the pools down in the pine wood.
+
+'_October 5th._--He knows now that I love him, and knows it from my own
+lips. Nothing is left for me but flight--this is what I have come to!
+
+'When he looks at me now, there is a strange gleam in the depths of his
+eyes that was not there before. To-day, while Francesca was absent for a
+moment, he took my hand and made as if he would kiss it. I managed to
+draw it away, but I saw his lips tremble; I caught, as it were, the
+reflection of the kiss that never left his lips, and the image of that
+kiss haunts me now--it haunts me--haunts me----
+
+'_October 6th._--On the 25th of September, on the marble seat in the
+arbutus wood, he said to me--"I know you do not love me and that you
+never will love me!" And on the 3rd of October--"You love me--you love
+me--you cannot help but love me----"
+
+'In Francesca's presence, he asked if I would allow him to make a study
+of my hands, and I consented. He will begin to-day.
+
+'I am nervous and frightened, as if I were going to expose my hands to
+some nameless ordeal.
+
+'Night. It has begun, the slow, sweet, unspeakable torture.
+
+'He drew with red and black chalk. My right hand lay on a piece of
+velvet; near me on the table stood a Corean vase, yellow and spotted
+like the skin of a python, and in the vase was a group of orchids,
+those grotesque flowers for which Francesca has so curious a
+predilection.
+
+'When I felt that I could no longer bear the ordeal, I looked at the
+flowers to distract my thoughts, and their strange, distorted shapes
+carried me to the distant countries of their birth, giving me a moment's
+respite from my haunting grief. He went on drawing in silence; his eyes
+passing continually from the paper to my hand. Two or three times he
+looked at the vase; at last, rising from his chair, he said--"Excuse
+me"--and lifting the vase, he carried it away and placed it on another
+table. I do not know why.
+
+'After that, he resumed his drawing with much greater freedom, as if
+relieved of an annoyance.
+
+'I cannot describe the sensation produced in me by his eyes. I felt as
+if not my hand, but a part of my soul were laid bare to his scrutinising
+gaze, that his eyes pierced to its very depths, exploring its most
+secret recesses. Never had my hand felt so alive, so expressive, so
+responsive to my heart, revealing so much that I would fain have kept
+secret. Under his gaze I felt it quiver imperceptibly but continuously,
+and the tremor spread to my innermost veins. When his gaze grew too
+intense, I was seized with an instinctive desire to withdraw my hand
+altogether, arising from a sense of shame.
+
+'Now and then, he would stop drawing and sit for quite an appreciable
+time with his eyes fixed, and then I had the impression that he was
+absorbing something of me through his pupils, or that he was caressing
+me with a touch that was softer than the velvet beneath my hand. At
+other times, while he bent over the drawing, transferring maybe into the
+lines what he had taken from me, a faint smile played round his mouth,
+so faint that I only just caught it. I do not know why, but that smile
+sent a pang of delight thrilling through my heart. Once or twice, I saw
+the image of a kiss appear again upon his lips.
+
+'At last, curiosity got the better of me and I said--"Well--what is
+it?"
+
+'Francesca was at the piano with her back turned to us, her fingers
+wandering over the keys, trying to remember Rameau's Gavotte _of the
+Yellow Ladies_ that I have played so often, and which will always be
+connected in my mind with my stay at Schifanoja. She muffled the notes
+with the soft pedal and broke off frequently. These interruptions and
+gaps in the melody which was so familiar to me and which my ear filled
+up each time, in advance, added immeasurably to my distress. All at
+once, she struck one note hard several times in succession as if under
+the spur of some nervous irritation; then she started up and came and
+bent over the drawing.
+
+'I looked at her--I understood it all.
+
+'This last drop was wanting in my cup of bitterness. God had still this
+last and cruelest trial of all reserved for me.--His will be done!
+
+'_October 7th._--I have now but one thought, one desire--to fly from
+here--to escape.
+
+'I have come to the end of my strength. This love is crushing me, is
+killing me, and the unexpected discovery I have made increases my
+wretchedness a thousand-fold. What are her feelings towards me? What
+does she think? So she loves him too?--and since when? Does he know it?
+Or has he no suspicion of the fact?
+
+'_Mio Dio! Mio Dio!_ I believe I am going out of my mind--all my
+strength of will is forsaking me. At long intervals there comes a pause
+in my torment, as when the wild elements of the tempest hold their
+breath for a moment, only to break forth again with redoubled fury. I
+sit then in a kind of stupor, with heavy head and my limbs feeling as
+bruised and tired as if I had been beaten, and while my pain gathers
+itself up for a fresh onslaught, I do not succeed in collecting
+sufficient strength to resist it.
+
+'What does she think of me? What does she think? How much does she know?
+
+'Oh, to be misjudged by her--my best, my dearest friend--the one to
+whom I have always been able to open my heart! This is my crowning
+grief, my bitterest trial--
+
+'I must speak to her before I go. She must know all from me, I must know
+all from her--that is only right and just.
+
+'Night. About five o'clock she proposed a drive along the Rovigliano
+road. We two went alone in the open carriage. I was trembling with
+agitation as I said to myself--"Here is my opportunity for speaking to
+her." But my nervousness deprived me of every vestige of courage. Did
+she expect me to confide in her? I cannot tell.
+
+'We sat silent for a long while, listening to the steady trot of the
+horses, looking at the trees and the meadows by the side of the road.
+From time to time, by a brief remark or a sign, she drew my attention to
+some detail of the autumnal landscape.
+
+'All the witchery of the Autumn concentrated itself into this hour. The
+slanting rays of the evening sun lit up the rich and sombre harmonies of
+the dying foliage. Gold, amber, saffron, violet, purple,
+sea-green--tints the most faded and the most violent mingled in one deep
+strain, not to be surpassed by any melody of Spring, however sweet.
+
+'"Look," she said, pointing to the acacias, "would you not say they were
+in flower?"
+
+'At last, after an interval of silence, to make a beginning I said:
+"Manuel is sure to be here by Saturday. I expect a telegram from him
+to-morrow, and we shall leave by the early train on Sunday. You have
+been very good to me while I have been with you--I am deeply grateful to
+you."
+
+'My voice broke, a flood of tenderness swelled my heart. She took my
+hand and clasped it tight without speaking or looking at me. We remained
+silent for a long time, holding one another by the hand.
+
+'Presently she asked--"How long will you be with your mother?"
+
+'"Till the end of the year, I hope--perhaps longer."
+
+'"As long as that?"
+
+'We fell silent again. By this time, I felt I should never have the
+courage to face an explanation; besides which, I felt that it was less
+necessary now. Francesca seemed to have come back to me, to understand
+me, to be once more the sweet kind sister of old. My sorrow drew out her
+sadness as the moon attracts the waters of the ocean.
+
+'"Listen!" she said.
+
+'The sound of women's voices, singing, floated over to us from the
+fields, a slow song, full and solemn as a Gregorian chant. Further on,
+we came in sight of the singers. They were coming away from a field of
+dried sunflowers; walking in single file like a religious procession,
+and the sunflowers on their long leafless stalks, their great discs
+stripped of their halo of petals and their wealth of seed, were like
+liturgic emblems or monstrances of pale gold.
+
+'My emotion waxed greater. The song spread wide through the evening air.
+We passed through Rovigliano, where the lamps were beginning to twinkle,
+and came out again upon the high road. The church bells rang softly
+behind us. A moist breeze rustled in the trees that cast a faint blue
+shadow on the white road, and in the air a shadow as liquid as water.
+
+'"Are you not cold?" she asked me, and she ordered the footman to spread
+a rug over us, and told the coachman to turn homewards.
+
+'In the belfry at Rovigliano, a bell tolled with deep slow strokes as
+for some solemn rite, and the wave of sound seemed to send a wave of
+cold through the air. With a simultaneous movement, we drew closer to
+one another, settling the rug more warmly over our knees, and a shiver
+ran through us both. The carriage entered the town at a walk.
+
+'"What can that bell be ringing for?" she murmured in a voice that
+hardly seemed like her own.
+
+'I answered--"I fancy it must be for the Viaticum."
+
+'And in fact, a little further on we saw the priest just entering a door
+while a clerk held the canopy over him, and two others stood upon the
+threshold, straight as candelabra, holding up lighted lanterns. A
+single window of the house was lighted up, the one behind which the
+dying Christian was awaiting Extreme Unction. Faint shadows flitted
+across the brightness of that pale yellow square on which was outlined
+the whole mysterious drama of Death.
+
+'The footman bent down from the box and asked in a low voice--"Who is
+it?"
+
+'The person addressed answered in dialect and mentioned a woman's name.
+
+'I would have liked to muffle the sound of the carriage wheels upon the
+stones, to have made our passage a silent one past the spot where a soul
+was about to take flight. Francesca, I am sure, shared my feeling.
+
+'The carriage turned into the road to Schifanoja and the horses set off
+at a brisk trot. The moon, ringed by a halo, shone like an opal in the
+milk-white sky. A train of cloud rose out of the sea and stretched away
+by degrees in spiral form, like a trail of smoke. The somewhat stormy
+sea drowned all other sounds with its roar. Never, I think, did a
+heavier sadness weigh upon two spirits.
+
+'I felt something wet upon my cold cheek, and turning to Francesca to
+see if she noticed that I was crying, I met her eyes--they were full of
+tears. And so we sat, side by side, with mute, convulsively closed lips,
+clasping one another's hand, the tears rolling silently drop by drop
+over our cheeks, both knowing that they were for him.
+
+'As we neared Schifanoja I dried my eyes, and she did the same, each
+striving to hide her own weakness.
+
+'He was standing in the hall with Delfina and Muriella looking out for
+us. Why did I feel a sudden vague distrust of him, as if some instinct
+warned me of hidden danger? What troubles are in store for me in the
+future? Shall I be able to escape from the passion that attracts and
+blinds me?
+
+'And yet, those few tears have given me much relief! I feel less broken,
+less scorched, more self-confident; and it affords me an indescribable
+fond pleasure to retrace again, for myself alone, that last drive, while
+Delfina sleeps, made happy by the storm of kisses I rained upon her
+face, and while the moon that so lately saw me weep smiles sadly through
+the window panes.
+
+'_October 8th._--Did I sleep last night--did I wake? I could not say.
+Through my brain, like thick dark shadows, flitted terrifying thoughts,
+insupportable images of torment; and my heart gave sudden throbs and
+bounds, and I would find myself staring wide-eyed into the darkness, not
+knowing whether I had just awakened from a dream or whether I had never
+been asleep at all. And this state of semi-consciousness--infinitely
+more unbearable than real sleeplessness--continued throughout the night.
+
+'Nevertheless, when I heard my little girl's morning call, I did not
+answer, but pretended to be sound asleep, so that I need not rise, so
+that I might remain a few minutes longer in bed and thus retard for a
+while the inexorable certainty of the realities of life. The torments of
+thought and imagination seemed to me less cruel than those, so
+impossible to foresee, which awaited me in these last two days.
+
+'A little while later, Delfina came in on tip-toe, holding her breath.
+She looked at me and then whispered to Dorothy, with a little fond
+tremor in her voice--
+
+'"She is fast asleep! We will not wake her!"
+
+'Night. I do not believe I have a spark of life left in me. As I came
+upstairs I felt, at each step, as if every drop of blood had left my
+veins. I am as weak as one at the point of death.
+
+'Courage! courage!--only a few hours more. Manuel will be here to-morrow
+morning. We shall leave on Sunday, and on Monday I shall be with my
+mother.
+
+'Just now, I returned him two or three books he had lent me. In the
+volume of Shelley I underlined with my nail the last two lines of a
+certain verse and put a mark in the page--
+
+    "And forget me, for I _can never_--
+    Be thine!"
+
+'_October 9th._--Night. All day long he has sought an opportunity for
+speaking to me. His distress is evident. And all day long I have done my
+utmost to avoid him, so that he might not sow fresh seeds of pain, of
+desire, of regret and remorse in my heart. And I have triumphed--I was
+strong and brave--My God, I thank Thee!
+
+'This night is the last. To-morrow we leave--all will be over.
+
+'All will be over? A voice out of the depths cries unto me--I do not
+understand its words, but I know that it tells me of coming disaster,
+unknown but inevitable, mysterious and inexorable as death. The future
+is lugubrious as a cemetery full of open graves, ready to receive the
+dead, with here and there a flicker of pale torches which I can scarce
+distinguish, and I know not if they are there to lure me on to
+destruction or to show me to a path of safety.
+
+'I have re-read my Journal slowly, carefully, from the 15th of
+September, the day of my arrival. What a difference between the first
+entry and the last!
+
+'I wrote:--I shall wake up in the house of a friend, to the enjoyment of
+Francesca's cordial hospitality, in Schifanoja, where the roses are so
+fair and the cypresses so tall and grand. I shall wake with the prospect
+of some weeks of peace before me--twenty days or more of congenial
+intellectual companionship--Alas! where is that promised peace? But the
+roses, the beautiful roses, were they, too, faithless to their promise?
+Did I perhaps, on that first night in the loggia, open my heart too wide
+to their seductive fragrance while Delfina slept? And now the October
+moon floods the sky with its cold radiance, and through the closed
+windows I see the sharp points of the cypresses, all sombre and
+motionless, and on that night they seemed to touch the stars.
+
+'Of that prelude there is but one phrase which finds a place in this sad
+finale: So many hairs on my head, so many thorns in my woeful destiny!
+
+'I am going, and what will he do when I am far away? What will Francesca
+do?
+
+'The change in Francesca still remains incomprehensible,
+inexplicable--an enigma that torments and bewilders me. She loves
+him--but since when?--and does he know it? Confess, oh, my soul, to this
+fresh misery. A new poison is added to that already infecting me--I am
+jealous!
+
+'But I am prepared for any suffering, even the most horrible; I know
+well the martyrdom that awaits me; I know that the anguish of these days
+is as nought compared to that which I must face presently, the terrible
+cross on which my soul must hang. I am ready. All I ask, oh my God, is a
+respite, a short respite for the hours that remain to me here. To-morrow
+I shall have need of all my strength.
+
+'How strangely sometimes the incidents of one's life repeat themselves!
+This evening in the drawing-room, I seemed to have gone back to the 16th
+of September, when I first played and sang and my thoughts began to
+occupy themselves with him. This evening again I was seated at the
+piano, and the same subdued light illumined the room, and next door
+Manuel and the Marchese were at the card-table. I played the Gavotte _of
+the Yellow Ladies_, of which Francesca is so fond and which I heard some
+one trying to play on the 16th of September while I sat up in my room
+and began my nightly vigils of unrest.
+
+'He, I am sure, is not asleep. When I came upstairs, he went in and took
+the Marchese's place opposite to my husband. Are they playing still?
+Doubtless he is thinking and his heart aches while he plays. What are
+his thoughts?--what are his sufferings?
+
+'I cannot sleep. I shall go out into the loggia. I want to see if they
+are still playing, or if he has gone to his room. His windows are at the
+corner, in the second story.
+
+'It is a clear, mild night. There are lights still in the card-room. I
+stayed a long time in the loggia looking down at the light shining out
+against the cypresses and mingling with the silvery whiteness of the
+moon. I am trembling from head to foot. I cannot describe the almost
+tragic effect of those lighted windows behind which the two men are
+playing, opposite to one another, in the deep silence of the night,
+scarcely broken by the dull sob of the sea. And they will perhaps play
+on till morning, if he will pander so far to my husband's terrible
+failing. So we shall all three wake till the dawn and take no rest, each
+a prey to his own passion.
+
+'But what is he really thinking of? Of what nature is his pain? What
+would I not give, at this moment, to see him, to be able to gaze at him
+till the day breaks, even if it were only through the window, in the
+night dews, trembling, as I do now, from head to foot. The maddest,
+wildest thoughts rush through my brain like flashes of lightning,
+dazzling and confusing me. I feel the prompting of some evil spirit to
+do some rash and irreparable thing, I feel as if I were treading on the
+edge of perdition. It would, I feel, lift the great weight from my
+heart, would take this suffocating knot from my throat if, at this
+moment, I could cry aloud, into the silence of the night, with all the
+strength of my soul--"I love him! I love him! I love him!"'
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Two or three days after the departure of the Ferrčs, Sperelli and his
+cousins returned to Rome, Donna Francesca, contrary to her custom,
+wishing to shorten her stay at Schifanoja.
+
+After a brief stay at Naples, Andrea reached Rome on the 24th of
+October, a Sunday, in the first heavy morning rain of the Autumn season.
+He experienced an extraordinary pleasure in returning to his apartments
+in the Casa Zuccari, his tasteful and charming _buen retiro_. There he
+seemed to find again some portion of himself, something he had missed.
+Nothing was altered; everything about him retained, in his eyes, that
+indescribable look of life which material objects assume, amongst which
+one has lived and loved and suffered. His old servants, Jenny and
+Terenzio, had taken the utmost care of everything, and Stephen had
+attended to every detail likely to conduce to his master's comfort.
+
+It was raining. Andrea went to the window and stood for some time
+looking out upon his beloved Rome. The piazza of the Trinitą de' Monti
+was solitary and deserted, left to the guardianship of its obelisk. The
+trees along the wall that joins the church to the Villa Medici, already
+half stripped of their leaves, rustled mournfully in the wind and the
+rain. The Pincio alone still shone green, like an island in a lake of
+mist.
+
+And as he gazed, one sentiment dominated all the others in his heart;
+the sudden and lively re-awakening of his old love for Rome--fairest
+Rome--that city of cities, immense, imperial, unique--like the sea, for
+ever young, for ever new, for ever mysterious.
+
+'What time is it?' Andrea asked of Stephen.
+
+It was about nine o'clock. Feeling somewhat tired, he determined to have
+a sleep: also, that he would see no one that day and spend the evening
+quietly at home. Seeing that he was about to re-enter the life of the
+great world of Rome, he wished, before taking up the old round of
+activity, to indulge in a little meditation, a slight preparation; to
+lay down certain rules, to discuss with himself his future line of
+conduct.
+
+'If any one calls,' he said to Stephen, 'say that I have not yet
+returned; and let the porter know it too. Tell James I shall not want
+him to-day, but he can come round for orders this evening. Bring me
+lunch at three--something very light--and dinner at nine. That is all.
+
+He fell asleep almost immediately. The servant woke him at two and
+informed him that, just before twelve o'clock, the Duke of Grimiti had
+called, having heard from the Marchesa d'Ateleta that he had returned to
+town.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Il Signor Duca left word that he would call again in the afternoon.'
+
+'Is it still raining? Open the shutters wide.'
+
+The rain had stopped, the sky was lighter. A band of pale sunshine
+streamed into the room and spread over the tapestry representing _The
+Virgin with the Holy Child and Stefano Sperelli_, a work of art brought
+by Giusto Sperelli from Flanders in 1508. Andrea's eyes wandered slowly
+over the walls, rejoicing in the beautiful hangings, the harmonious
+tints; and all these things so familiar and so dear to him seemed to
+offer him a welcome. The sight of them afforded him intense pleasure,
+and then the image of Maria Ferrčs rose up before him.
+
+He raised himself a little on the pillows, lit a cigarette and abandoned
+himself luxuriously to his meditations. An unwonted sense of comfort and
+well-being filled his body, while his mind was in its happiest vein. His
+thoughts mingled with the rings of smoke in the subdued light in which
+all forms and colours assume a pleasing vagueness.
+
+Instead of reverting to the days that were past, his thoughts carried
+him forward into the future.--He would see Donna Maria again in two or
+three months--perhaps much sooner; there was no saying. Then he would
+resume the broken thread of that love which held for him so many obscure
+promises, so many secret attractions. To a man of culture, Donna Maria
+Ferrčs was the Ideal Woman, Baudelaire's _Amie avec des hanches_, the
+perfect _Consolatrix_, the friend who can hold out both comfort and
+pardon. Though she had marked those sorrowful lines in the volume of
+Shelley, she had, most assuredly, said very different words in her
+heart. 'I can never be thine!' Why _never_? Ah, there had been too much
+passionate intensity for that in the voice in which she answered him
+that day in the wood at Vicomile--'I love you! I love you! I love you!'
+
+He could hear her voice now, that never-to-be-forgotten voice!
+
+Stephen knocked at the door. 'May I remind the Signor Conte that it is
+three o'clock?'
+
+Andrea rose and passed into the octagonal room to dress. The sun shone
+through the lace window screens and sparkled on the Hispano-Mauresque
+tiles, the innumerable toilet articles of crystal and silver, the
+bas-reliefs on the antique sarcophagus; its dancing reflections
+imparting a delightful sense of movement to the air. He felt in the best
+of spirits, completely cured, full of the joy and the vivacity of life.
+He was inexpressibly happy to be back in his home once more. All that
+was most frivolous, most capricious, most worldly in him awoke with a
+bound. It was as if the surrounding objects had the power to evoke in
+him the man of former days. His sensual curiosity, his elasticity, his
+ubiquity of mind reappeared. He already began to feel the necessity of
+expansion, of mixing in the world of pleasure and with his friends.
+
+He discovered that he was very hungry, and ordered the servant to bring
+the lunch at once. He rarely dined at home, but for special
+occasions--some _recherché_ lunch or private little supper--he had a
+dining-room decorated with eighteenth century Neapolitan tapestries
+which Carlo Sperelli had ordered of Pietro Dinanti in 1766 from designs
+by Storace. The seven wall panels represented episodes of Bacchic love,
+the portičres and the draperies above the doors and windows having
+groups of fruit and flowers. Shades of gold--pale or
+tawny--predominated, and mingling with the warm, pearly flesh-tints and
+sombre blues, formed a harmony of colour that was both delicate and
+sumptuous.
+
+'When the Duke of Grimiti comes back, show him up,' he said to the
+servant.
+
+Into this room too, the sun, sinking towards the Monte Mario, shot his
+dazzling rays. You could hear the rumble of the carriages in the piazza
+of the Trinitą de' Monti. The rain over, it looked as if all the
+luminous gold of the Roman October were spread out over the city.
+
+'Open the window,' he said to the servant.
+
+The noise of the carriage wheels was louder now, a soft damp breeze
+stirred the curtains lightly.
+
+'Divine Rome!' he thought as he looked at the sky between the wide
+curtains.
+
+An irresistible curiosity drew him to the open window.
+
+Rome appeared, all pearly gray, spread out before him, its lines a
+little blurred like a faded picture, under a Claude Lorrain sky,
+sprinkled with ethereal clouds, their noble grouping lending to the
+clear spaces between an indescribable delicacy, as flowers lend a new
+grace to the verdure which surrounds them. On the distant heights the
+gray deepened gradually to amethyst. Long trailing vapours slid through
+the cypresses of the Monte Mario like waving locks through a comb of
+bronze. Close by, the pines of the Monte Pincio spread their sun-gilded
+canopies. Below, on the piazza, the obelisk of Pius VI. looked like a
+pillar of agate. Under this rich autumnal light everything took on a
+sumptuous air.
+
+Divine Rome!
+
+He feasted his eyes on the prospect before him. Looking down, he saw a
+group of red-robed clerics pass along by the church; then the black
+coach of a prelate with its two black, long-tailed horses; then other
+open carriages containing ladies and children. He recognised the
+Princess of Ferentino with Barbarella Viti, followed by the Countess of
+Lucoli driving a pair of ponies and accompanied by her great Danish
+hound. A perturbing breath of the old life passed over his spirit,
+awakening indeterminate desires in his heart.
+
+He left the window and returned to his lunch. The sun shone on the wall
+and lit up a dance of satyrs round a Silenus.
+
+'The Duke of Grimiti and two other gentlemen,' announced the servant.
+
+The Duke entered with Ludovico Barbarisi and Giulio Musellaro. Andrea
+hastened forward to meet them and they greeted him warmly.
+
+'You, Giulio!' exclaimed Sperelli, who had not seen his friend for more
+than two years. How long have you been in Rome?'
+
+'Only a week. I was going to write to you to Schifanoja, but thought I
+would rather wait till you came back. And how are you? You are looking a
+little thin, but very well. It was only when I got back to Rome that I
+heard of your affair; otherwise, I would certainly have come from India
+to offer you my services. At the beginning of May, I was at Padmavati in
+the Bahara. What a heap of things I have to tell you!'
+
+'And so have I!'
+
+They shook hands heartily a second time. Sperelli seemed overjoyed. None
+of his friends were so dear to him as Musellaro, for his noble
+character, his keen and penetrating mind and rare culture.
+
+'Ruggiero--Ludovico--sit down. Giulio, will you sit here?'
+
+He offered them tea, cigarettes, liqueurs. The conversation grew very
+lively. Grimiti and Barbarisi gave the news of Rome, especially the more
+spicy items of society gossip. The aroma of the tea mingled with that of
+the tobacco.
+
+'I have brought you a chest of tea,' said Musellaro to Sperelli, 'and
+much better tea too than your famous Kien Loung used to drink.'
+
+'Ah, do you remember, in London, how he used to make tea after the
+poetical method of the Great Emperor?'
+
+'I say,' said Grimiti, 'do you know that the fair Clara Green is in
+Rome? I saw her on Sunday at the Villa Borghese. She recognised me and
+stopped her carriage to speak to me. She is as lovely as ever. You
+remember her passion for you, and how she went on when she thought you
+were in love with Constance Landbrooke? She instantly asked for news of
+you.'
+
+'I should be very pleased to see her again. Does she still dress in
+green and wear sunflowers in her hat?
+
+'Oh no. She has apparently abandoned the ęsthetic for good and all. She
+goes in for feathers now. On Sunday, she was wearing an enormous hat ą
+la Montpensier with a perfectly fabulous feather in it.'
+
+'The season is in full swing, I suppose?'
+
+'Earlier than usual this year, both as to saints and sinners.'
+
+'Which of the saints are already in Rome?'
+
+'Almost all--Giulia Moceto, Barbarella Viti, the Princess of Micigliano,
+Laura Miano, the Marchesa Massa d'Alba, the Countess Lucoli----'
+
+'I saw her just now from the window, driving. And I saw your cousin too
+with Barbarella Viti.'
+
+'My cousin is only here till to-morrow, then she goes back to Frascati.
+On Wednesday, she gives a kind of garden party at the villa in the style
+of the Princess of Sagan. Costume is not absolutely _de rigueur_, but
+the ladies will all wear Louis XV. or Directoire hats. We are going.'
+
+'You are not leaving Rome again so soon, I hope?' Grimiti asked of
+Sperelli.
+
+'I shall stay till the beginning of November. Then I am going to France
+for a fortnight to see about some horses. I shall be back in Rome about
+the end of the month.'
+
+'Talking of horses,' said Ludovico, 'Leonetto Lanza wants to sell
+_Campomorto_. You know it--a magnificent animal, a first-rate jumper.
+That would be something for you.'
+
+'How much does he want for it?'
+
+'Fifteen thousand lire, I think.'
+
+'Well, we might see----'
+
+'Leonetto is going to be married directly. He got engaged this summer at
+Aix-les-Bains.'
+
+'I forgot to tell you,' said Musellaro, 'that Galeazzo Secinaro sends
+you his remembrances. We travelled back from India together. If you only
+knew of all Galeazzo's doughty deeds on the journey! He is at Palermo
+now, but he will be in Rome in January.'
+
+'And Gino Bomminaco begs to be remembered to you,' added Barbarisi.
+
+'Ah, ha!' exclaimed the duke with a burst of laughter, 'you should get
+Gino to tell you the story of his adventure with Donna Giulia Moceto.
+You are, I fancy, in a position to give us some details on the subject
+of Donna Giulia.'
+
+Ludovico, too, began to laugh.
+
+'Oh, I know,' broke in Musellaro, 'you have made the most tremendous
+conquests in Rome. _Gratulator tibi_!'
+
+'But tell me--do tell me about this adventure,' asked Andrea with
+impatient curiosity.
+
+These subjects excited him. Encouraged by his friends, he launched forth
+into a discourse on female beauty, displaying the profound knowledge and
+fervour of a connoisseur, taking a pleasure in using the most
+highly-coloured expressions, with the subtle distinctions of an artist
+and a libertine. Indeed, had any one taken the trouble to write down the
+conversation of the four young men within these walls, hung with the
+voluptuous scenes of the Bacchic tapestries, it might well have formed
+the _Breviarium arcanum_ of upper-class corruption at the end of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+The shades of evening were falling, but the air was still permeated with
+light as a sponge absorbs the water. Through the windows, one caught a
+glimpse of the horizon and a band of orange against which the cypresses
+of the Monte Mario stood out sharply like the teeth of a great ebony
+rake. Ever and anon, came the cawing of the rooks, assembling in groups
+on the roof of the Villa Medici before descending on the Villa Borghese
+and into the narrow Valley of Sleep.
+
+'What are you going to do this evening?' Barbarisi asked Andrea.
+
+'I really don't know.'
+
+'Well, then, come with us--dinner at eight, at Doney's, to inaugurate
+his new restaurant at the Teatro Nazionale.'
+
+'Yes, come with us, do come with us!' entreated Giulio Musellaro.
+
+'Besides the three of us,' continued the duke, 'there will be Giulia
+Arici, Bébé Silva and Maria Fortuna--That reminds me--capital idea!--you
+bring Clara Green.'
+
+'A capital idea!' echoed Ludovico Barbarisi.
+
+'And where shall I find Clara Green?'
+
+'At the Hotel de l'Europe, close by, in the Piazza di Spagna. A note
+from you would put her in the seventh heaven. She is certain to give up
+any other engagement she may have.'
+
+Andrea was quite agreeable to the plan.
+
+'But it would be better if I called on her,' he said. 'She is pretty
+sure to be in now. Don't you think so, Ruggiero?'
+
+'Well, dress quick and come out with us now.'
+
+Clara Green had just come in. She received Andrea with childish delight.
+No doubt she would have preferred to dine alone with him, but she
+accepted the invitation without hesitating, wrote a note to excuse
+herself from a previous engagement, and sent the key of her box at the
+theatre to a lady friend. She seemed overjoyed. She told him a string of
+sentimental stories and vowed that she had never been able to forget
+him; holding Andrea's hands in hers while she talked.
+
+I love you more than words can say, Andrew:
+
+She was still young. With her pure and regular profile, her pale gold
+hair parted and knotted very low on her neck, she looked like a beauty
+in a Keepsake. A certain affectation of ęstheticism clung to her since
+her liaison with the poet-painter Adolphus Jeckyll, a disciple in poetry
+of Keats, in painting of Holman Hunt; a composer of obscure sonnets, a
+painter of subjects from the _Vita Nuova_. She had sat to him for a
+_Sibylla Palmifera_ and a _Madonna with the Lily_. She had also sat to
+Andrea for a study of the head of Isabella in Boccaccio's story. Art
+therefore had conferred upon her the stamp of nobility. But, at bottom,
+she possessed no spiritual qualities whatsoever; she even became
+tiresome in the long-run by reason of that sentimental romanticism so
+often affected by English _demi-mondaines_ which contrasts so strangely
+with the depravity of their licentiousness.
+
+'Who would have thought that we should ever be together again, Andrew?'
+
+An hour later, Andrea left her and returned to the Palazzo Zuccari by
+the little flight of steps leading from the Piazza Mignanelli to the
+Trinitą. The murmur of the city floated up the solitary little stairway
+through the mild air of the October evening. The stars twinkled in a
+cool pure sky. Down below, at the Palazzo Casteldelfina, the shrubs
+inside the little gate cast vague uncertain shadows in the mysterious
+light, like marine plants waving at the bottom of an aquarium. From the
+palace, through a lighted window with red curtains, came the tinkle of a
+piano. The church bells were ringing. Andrea felt his heart suddenly
+grow heavy. The recollection of Donna Maria came back to him with a
+rush, filling him with a dim sense of regret, almost of remorse. What
+was she doing at this moment? Thinking? Suffering? Deep sadness fell
+upon him. He felt as if something in the depths of his heart had taken
+flight--he could not define what it was, but it affected him as some
+irreparable loss.
+
+He thought of his plan of the morning--an evening of solitude in the
+rooms to which some day perhaps she might come, an evening, sad yet
+sweet, in company with remembrances and dreams, in company with her
+spirit, an evening of meditation and self-communings. In truth, he had
+kept well to his promises! He was on his way to a dinner with friends
+and _demi-mondaines_ and, doubtless, would go home with Clara Green
+afterwards.
+
+His regret was so poignant, so intolerable, that he dressed with
+unwonted rapidity, jumped into his brougham and arrived at the hotel
+before the appointed time. He found Clara ready and waiting, and offered
+her a drive round the streets of Rome to pass the time till eight
+o'clock.
+
+They drove through the Via del Babuino, round the obelisk in the Piazza
+del Popolo, along the Corso and to the right down the Via della
+Fontanella di Borghese, returning by the Montecitorio to the Corso which
+they followed as far as the Piazza di Venezia and so to the Teatro
+Nazionale. Clara kept up an incessant chatter, bending, every other
+minute, towards her companion to press a kiss on the corner of his
+mouth, screening the furtive caress behind a fan of white feathers which
+gave out a delicate odour of 'white rose.' But Andrea appeared not to
+hear her, and even her caress only drew from him a slight smile.
+
+'_Che pensi?_' she asked, pronouncing the Italian words with a certain
+hesitation which was very taking.
+
+'Nothing,' returned Andrea, taking up one of her ungloved hands and
+examining the rings.
+
+_'Chi lo sa!_' she sighed, throwing a vast amount of expression into
+these three words, which foreign women pick up at once, because they
+imagine that they contain all the pensive melancholy of Italian love.
+'_Chi lo sa!_'
+
+With a sudden change of humour, Andrea kissed her on the ear, slipped an
+arm round her waist and proceeded to say a host of foolish things to
+her. The Corso was very lively, the shop windows resplendent,
+newspaper-vendors yelled, public and private vehicles crossed the path
+of their carriage; all the stir and animation of Roman evening life was
+in full swing from the Piazza Colonna to the Piazza di Venezia.
+
+It was ten minutes past eight by the time they reached Doney's. The
+other guests were already there. Andrea Sperelli greeted the assembled
+company, and taking Clara Green by the hand--
+
+'This,' he said, 'is Miss Clara Green, _ancilla Domini, Sibylla
+palmifera, candida puella_.'
+
+'_Ora pro nobis!_' replied Musellaro, Barbarisi, and Grimiti in chorus.
+
+The women laughed though they did not understand. Clara smiled, and
+slipping out of her cloak appeared in a white dress, quite simple and
+short, with a V-shaped opening back and front, a knot of sea-green
+ribbon on her left shoulder, and emeralds in her ears, perfectly
+unabashed by the triple scrutiny of Giulia Arici, Bébé Silva and Maria
+Fortuna.
+
+Musellaro and Grimiti were old acquaintances; Barbarisi was introduced.
+
+Andrea proceeded--'Mercedes Silva, surnamed Bébé--_chica pero qualsa_.
+
+'Maria Fortuna, a veritable _Fortuna publica_ for our Rome which has the
+good fortune to possess her.'
+
+Then, turning to Barbarisi--'Do us the honour to present us to this lady
+who is, if I am not mistaken, the divine Giulia Farnese.'
+
+'No--Arici,' Giulia broke in.
+
+'Oh, I beg your pardon, but really, to believe that, I should have to
+call upon all my powers of credulity and to consult Pinturicchio in the
+Fifth Room.'
+
+He uttered these absurdities with a grave smile, amusing himself by
+bewildering and teasing these pretty fools. In the _demi-monde_ he
+adopted a manner and style entirely his own, using grotesque phrases,
+launching the most ridiculous paradoxes or atrocious impertinences under
+cover of the ambiguity of his words; and all this in most original
+language, rich in a thousand different flavours, like a Rabelaisian
+_olla podrida_ full of strong spices and succulent morsels.
+
+'Pinturicchio,' asked Giulia turning to Barbarisi; 'who's that?'
+
+'Pinturicchio,' exclaimed Andrea, 'oh, a sort of feeble house-painter
+who once took it into his head to paint your picture on a door in the
+Pope's apartments. Never mind him--he is dead.'
+
+'Dead? How?'
+
+'In a most appalling manner! His wife's lover was a soldier from Perugia
+in garrison at Sienna--ask Ludovico--he knows all about it, but has
+never liked to tell you, for fear of hurting your feelings. Allow me to
+inform you, Bébé, that the Prince of Wales does not begin to smoke till
+between the second and third courses--never sooner. You are
+anticipating.'
+
+Bébé Silva had lighted a cigarette and was eating oysters, while she let
+the smoke curl through her nostrils. She was like a restless schoolboy,
+a little depraved hermaphrodite; pale and thin, the brightness of her
+eyes heightened by fever and kohl, with lips that were too red, and
+short and rather woolly hair that covered her head like an astrachan
+cap. Fixed tightly in her left eye was a single eye-glass; she wore a
+high stiff collar, a white necktie, an open waistcoat, a little black
+coat of masculine cut and a gardenia in her button-hole. She affected
+the manners of a dandy and spoke in a deep husky voice. And just therein
+lay the secret of her attraction--in this imprint of vice, of depravity,
+of abnormity in her appearance, her attitudes and her words. _Sal y
+pimienta_.
+
+Maria Fortuna, on the contrary, was of somewhat bovine type, a Madame de
+Parabčre with a tendency to stoutness.
+
+Like the fair mistress of the Regent, she possessed a very white skin,
+one of those opaque white complexions which seem only to flourish and
+improve on sensual pleasure. Her liquid violet eyes swam in a faint blue
+shadow; and her lips, always a little parted, disclosed a vague gleam of
+pearl behind their soft rosy line, like a half-opened shell.
+
+Giulia Arici took Andrea's fancy very much on account of her
+golden-brown tints and her great velvety eyes of that soft deep
+chestnut that sometimes shows tawny gleams. The somewhat fleshy nose,
+and the full, dewy scarlet, very firm lips gave the lower part of her
+face a frankly animal look. Her eye-teeth, which were too prominent,
+raised her upper lip a little and she continually ran the point of her
+tongue along the edge to moisten it, like the thick petal of a rose
+running over a row of little white almonds.
+
+'Giulia,' said Andrea with his eyes on her mouth, 'Saint Bernard uses,
+in one of his sermons, an epithet which would suit you marvellously. And
+I'll be bound you don't know this either.'
+
+Giulia laughed her sonorous rather vacant laugh, exhaling, in the
+excitement of her hilarity, a more poignant perfume, like a scented
+shrub when it is shaken.
+
+'What will you give me,' continued Andrea, 'if I extract from the holy
+sermon a voluptuous motto to fit you?'
+
+'I don't know,' she replied laughing, holding a glass of Chablis in her
+long slender fingers. 'Anything you like.'
+
+'The substantive of the adjective.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'We will come back to that presently. The word is: _linguatica_--Messer
+Ludovico, you can add this clause to your litanies--'_Rosa linguatica,
+glube nos_.'
+
+'What a pity,' said Musellaro, 'that you are not at the table of a
+sixteenth-century prince, sitting between a Violante and an Imperia with
+Pietro Aretino, Giulio Romano, and Marc' Antonio!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The year was dying gracefully. A late wintry sun filled the sky over
+Rome with a soft, mild, golden light that made the air feel almost
+spring-like. The streets were full as on a Sunday in May. A stream of
+carriages passed and repassed rapidly through the Piazza Barberini and
+the Piazza di Spagna, and from thence a vague and continuous rumble
+mounted to the Trinitą de' Monti and the Via Sistina and even faintly
+reached the apartments of the Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+The rooms began slowly to fill with the scent exhaled from numberless
+vases of flowers. Full-blown roses hung their heavy heads over crystal
+vases that opened like diamond lilies on a golden stem, similar to those
+standing behind the Virgin in the _tondo_ of Botticelli in the Borghese
+Gallery. No other shape of vase is to be compared with this for
+elegance; in that diaphanous prison, the flowers seemed to etherealise
+and had more the air of a religious than an amatory offering.
+
+For Andrea Sperelli was expecting Elena Muti.
+
+He had met her only yesterday morning in the Via Condotti, where she was
+looking at the shops. She had returned to Rome a day or two before,
+after her long and mysterious absence. They had both been considerably
+agitated by the unexpected encounter, but the publicity of the street
+compelled them to treat one another with ceremonious, almost cold
+politeness. However, he had said with a grave, half-mournful air,
+looking her full in the eyes--'I have much to say to you, Elena; will
+you come to my rooms to-morrow? Everything is just as it used to
+be--nothing is changed.' To which she replied quite simply--'Very well,
+I will come. You may expect me about four o'clock. I too have something
+to say to you--but leave me now.'
+
+That she should have accepted the invitation so promptly, without demur,
+without imposing any conditions or seemingly attaching the smallest
+importance to the matter, roused a certain vague suspicion in Andrea's
+mind. Was she coming as friend or lover?--to renew old ties or to
+destroy all hope of such a thing for ever? What vicissitudes had not
+occurred in this woman's soul during the last two years? Of that he was
+necessarily ignorant, but he had carried away with him the thrill of
+emotion called up in him by Elena's glance when they suddenly met in the
+street and he bent his head in greeting before her. It was the same look
+as of old--so tender, so deep, so infinitely seductive from under the
+long lashes.
+
+Everything in the arrangement of the rooms showed evidences of special
+loving care. Logs of juniper wood burned brightly on the hearth; the
+little tea-table stood ready with its cups and saucers of Castel-Durante
+majolica, of antique shape and inimitable grace, whereon were depicted
+mythological subjects by Luzio Dolci, with lines from Ovid underneath in
+black characters and a running hand. The light from the windows was
+tempered by heavy curtains of red brocade embroidered all over with
+silver pomegranates, trailing leaves and mottos. The declining sun, as
+it caught the window-panes, cast the shadow of the lace blinds on the
+carpet.
+
+The clock of the Trinitą struck half-past three. He had half an hour
+still to wait. Andrea rose from the sofa where he had been lying and
+opened one of the windows; he wandered aimlessly about the room, took up
+a book, read a few lines and threw it down again; looked about him
+undecidedly as if searching for something. The suspense was so trying
+that he felt the necessity of rousing himself, of counteracting his
+mental disquietude by physical means. He went over to the fireplace,
+stirred up the logs and put on a fresh one. The glowing mass collapsed,
+sending up a shower of sparks, and part of it rolled out as far as the
+fender. The flames broke into a quantity of little tongues of blue fire,
+springing up and disappearing fitfully, while the broken ends of the log
+smoked.
+
+The sight brought back certain memories to him. In days gone by Elena
+had been fond of lingering over this fireside. She expended much art and
+ingenuity in piling the wood high on the fire-dogs, grasping the heavy
+tongs in both hands and leaning her head slightly back to avoid the
+sparks. Her hands were small and very supple, with that tendril-like
+flexibility, so to speak, of a Daphne at the very first onset of the
+fabled metamorphose.
+
+Scarcely were these matters arranged to her satisfaction than the logs
+would catch and send forth a sudden blaze, and the warm ruddy light
+would struggle for a moment with the icy gray shades of evening
+filtering through the windows. The sharp fumes of the burning wood
+seemed to rise to her head, and facing the glowing mass Elena would be
+seized with fits of childish glee. She had a rather cruel habit of
+pulling all the flowers to pieces and scattering them over the carpet at
+the end of each of her visits and then stand ready to go, fastening a
+glove or a bracelet, and smile in the midst of the devastation she had
+wrought.
+
+Nothing was changed since then. A host of memories were associated with
+these things which Elena had touched, on which her eyes had rested, and
+scenes of that time rose up vividly and tumultuously before him. After
+nearly two years' absence, Elena was going to cross his threshold once
+more. In half an hour, she would be seated in that chair--a little out
+of breath at first, as of yore--would have removed her veil--be
+speaking. All these familiar objects would hear the sound of her voice
+again--perhaps even her laugh--after two long years.
+
+'How shall I receive her--what shall I say?'
+
+He was quite sincere in his anxiety and nervousness, for he had really
+begun to love this woman once more, but the expression of his
+sentiments, whether verbal or otherwise, was ever with him such an
+artificial matter, so far removed from truth and simplicity, that he had
+recourse to these preparations from pure habit even when, as was the
+case now, he was sincerely and deeply moved.
+
+He tried to imagine the scene beforehand, to compose some phrases; he
+looked about him in the room, considering where would be the most
+appropriate spot for the interview. Then he went over to a looking-glass
+to see if his face were as pale as befitted the occasion, and his gaze
+rested complacently on his forehead, just where the hair began at the
+temples and where, in the old days, Elena was often wont to press a
+delicate kiss. In matters of love, his vitiated and effeminate vanity
+seized upon every advantage of personal grace or of dress to heighten
+the charm of his appearance, and he knew how to extract the greatest
+amount of pleasure therefrom. The chief reason of his unfailing success
+lay in the fact that, in the game of love, he shrank from no artifice,
+no duplicity, no falsehood that might further his cause. A great portion
+of his strength lay in his capacity for deception.
+
+'What shall I do--what shall I say when she comes?'
+
+His mind was all undecided and yet the minutes were flying. Besides, he
+had no idea in what frame of mind Elena might arrive.
+
+It wanted but two or three minutes now to the hour. His excitement was
+so great that he felt half suffocated. He returned to the window and
+looked out at the steps of the Trinitą. She used always to come up those
+steps, and when she reached the top, would halt for a moment before
+rapidly crossing the square in front of the Casa Casteldelfina. Through
+the silence, he often heard the tapping of her light footsteps on the
+pavement below.
+
+The clock struck four. The rumble of carriage wheels came up from the
+Piazza di Spagna and the Pincio. A great many people were strolling
+under the trees in front of the Villa Medici. Two women seated on a
+stone bench beside the church were keeping watch over some children
+playing round the obelisk, which shone rosy red under the sunset, and
+cast a long, slanting, blue-gray shadow.
+
+The air freshened as the sun sank lower. Farther off, the city stood out
+golden against the colourless clear sky, which made the cypresses on the
+Monte Mario look jet black.
+
+Andrea started. A shadow stole up the little flight of steps beside the
+Casa Casteldelfina leading up from the Piazzetta Mignanelli. It was not
+Elena; it was some other lady, who slowly turned the corner into the Via
+Gregoriana.
+
+'What if she did not come at all?' he said to himself as he left the
+window. Coming away from the colder outside air he felt the warmth of
+the room all the more cosy, the scent of the burning wood and the roses
+more piercing sweet, the shadow of the curtains and portičres more
+delightfully mysterious. At that moment the whole room seemed on the
+alert for the arrival of the woman he loved. He imagined Elena's
+sensations on entering. It was hardly possible that she should be able
+to resist the influence of these surroundings, so full of tender
+memories for her; she would suddenly lose all sense of time and reality,
+would fancy herself back at one of the old rendezvous, the Elena of
+those happy days. Since nothing was altered in the _mise-en-scčne_ of
+their love, why should their love itself be changed? She must of
+necessity feel the profound charm of all these things which once upon a
+time had been so dear to her.
+
+And now the anguish of hope deferred created a fresh torture for him.
+Minds that have the habit of imaginative contemplation and poetic
+dreaming attribute to inanimate objects a soul, sensitive and variable
+as their own, and recognise in all things--be it form or colour, sound
+or perfume--a transparent symbol, an emblem of some emotion or thought;
+in every phenomenon and every group of phenomena they claim to discover
+a psychical condition, a moral significance. At times the vision is so
+lucid as to produce actual pain in such minds, they feel themselves
+overwhelmed by the plenitude of life revealed to them and are terrified
+by the phantom of their own creation.
+
+Thus Andrea saw his own dire distress reflected in the aspect of the
+objects surrounding him, and as his own fond desires seemed wasting
+fruitlessly in this protracted expectation, so the erotic essence, so to
+speak, of the room appeared to be evaporating and exhaling uselessly. In
+his eyes these apartments in which he had loved and also suffered so
+much had acquired something of his own sensibility--had not only been
+witness of his loves, his pleasures, his sorrows, but had taken part in
+it all. In his memories, every outline, every tint harmonised with some
+feminine image, was a note in a chord of beauty, an element in an
+ecstasy of passion. The very nature of his tastes led him to seek for a
+diversity of enjoyment in his love, and seeing that he set out upon that
+quest as an accomplished artist and ęsthetic it was only natural that he
+should derive a great part of his delight from the world of external
+objects. To this fastidious actor the comedy of love was nothing without
+the scenery.
+
+From that point of view his stage was certainly quite perfect, and he
+himself a most adroit actor-manager; for he almost always entered heart
+and soul into his own artifice, he forgot himself so completely that he
+was deceived by his own deception, fell into the trap of his own laying,
+and wounded himself with his own weapons--a magician enclosed in the
+spells of his own weaving.
+
+The roses in the tall Florentine vases, they too were waiting and
+breathing out their sweetness. On the divan cover and on the walls
+inscriptions on silver scrolls singing the praises of woman and of wine
+gleamed in the rays of the setting sun, and harmonised admirably with
+the faded colours of the sixteenth century Persian carpet. Elsewhere the
+shadow was deeply transparent and as if animated by that indefinable
+luminous tremor felt in hidden sanctuaries where some mystic treasure
+lies enshrined. The fire crackled on the hearth, each flame, as Shelley
+puts it, like a separate jewel dissolved in ever moving light. To Andrea
+it seemed that at that moment every shape, every colour, every perfume
+gave forth the essential and delicate spirit of its being. And yet _she_
+came not, _she_ came not!
+
+For the first time, the thought of her husband presented itself to him.
+
+Elena was no longer free. Some months after her abrupt departure from
+Rome, she had renounced the agreeable liberty of widowhood to marry an
+English nobleman, Lord Humphrey Heathfield. Andrea had seen the
+announcement of the marriage in a society paper in the October following
+and had heard a world of comment on the new Lady Humphrey in every
+country house he stayed in during the autumn. He remembered also having
+met Lord Humphrey some half a score of times during the preceding winter
+at the Saturdays of the Princess Giustiniani-Bandini, or in the public
+sale-rooms. He was a man of about forty, with colourless fair hair, bald
+at the temples, an excessively pale face, a pair of piercing light eyes
+and a prominent forehead, on which a network of veins stood out. He had
+his name of Heathfield from that lieutenant-general who was the hero of
+the defence of Gibraltar and afterwards immortalised by the brush of Sir
+Joshua Reynolds.
+
+What part had this man in Elena's life? What ties, beyond the convention
+of marriage, bound her to him? What transformations had the physical and
+moral contact of this husband brought to pass in her?
+
+These enigmas rose tumultuously before him, making his pain so
+intolerable, that he started up with the instinctive bound of a man who
+has been stabbed unawares. He crossed the room to the ante-chamber and
+listened at the door which he had left ajar. It was on the stroke of a
+quarter to five.
+
+The next moment he heard footsteps on the stair, the rustle of skirts
+and a quick panting breath. A woman was coming up hurriedly. His heart
+beat with such vehemence that--his nerves all unstrung by his long
+suspense--he felt hardly able to stand on his feet. The steps drew
+nearer, there was a long-drawn sigh--a step upon the landing--at the
+door--Elena entered.
+
+'O Elena--at last!'
+
+There was in that cry such a profound accent of agony endured, that it
+brought to Elena's lips an indescribable smile, mingled of pleasure and
+pity. He took her by her ungloved right hand and drew her into the room.
+She was still a little out of breath, and under her black veil a faint
+flush diffused itself over her whole face.
+
+'Forgive me, Andrea! I could not get away any sooner--there is so much
+to do--so many calls to return--such tiring days! I hardly know where to
+turn. How warm it is in here! What a delicious smell!'
+
+She was standing in the middle of the room--a little undecided and ill
+at ease in spite of her rapid and lightly spoken words. A velvet coat
+with Empire sleeves, very full at the shoulders and buttoned closely at
+the wrists and with an immense collar of blue fox for sole trimming,
+covered her from head to foot, but without disguising the grace of her
+figure. She looked at Andrea with eyes in which a curious tremulous
+smile softened the flash and sparkle.
+
+'You have changed somehow,' she said; 'I don't quite know what it
+is--but round your mouth, for instance, there are bitter lines that used
+not to be there.'
+
+She spoke in a tone of affectionate familiarity. The sound of her voice
+once more in this room caused him such exquisite delight that he
+exclaimed--'Speak again, Elena--go on speaking!'
+
+She laughed. 'Why?' she asked.
+
+'You know why,' he answered, taking her hand again.
+
+She drew her hand away and looked the young man deep in the eyes. 'I
+know nothing any more.'
+
+'Then you have changed very much.'
+
+'Yes--very much indeed.'
+
+They had both dropped their bantering tone. Elena's answer threw a
+sudden search-light upon much that was problematical before. Andrea
+understood, and with that rapid and precise intuition so often found in
+minds practised in psychological analysis, he instantly divined the
+moral attitude of his visitor, and foresaw the further development of
+the coming scene. Moreover, he was already under the spell of this
+woman's fascination as in the former days, besides being greatly piqued
+by curiosity.
+
+'Will you not sit down?' he asked.
+
+'Yes--for a moment.'
+
+'Here--in this arm-chair.'
+
+'Ah--_my_ arm-chair!' she was on the point of exclaiming, for she
+recognised an old friend, but she stopped herself in time.
+
+The chair was deep and roomy, and covered with antique leather on which
+pale dragons ramped in relief, after the style of the wall decorations
+of one of the rooms in the Chigi palace. The leather had taken on that
+warm and sumptuous tone which recalls the background of certain Venetian
+portraits, or a fine bronze still retaining traces of former gilding, or
+a piece of tortoise-shell with gleams of gold here and there. A great
+cushion covered with a piece of a dalmatic of faded colouring--of that
+peculiar shade which the Florentine silk merchants used to call 'rosa di
+gruogo,' saffron red, contributed to its inviting easiness.
+
+Elena seated herself in it, placing on the tea-table beside her her
+right hand glove and her card-case, a fragile toy in polished silver
+with a device and motto engraven on it. She then proceeded to remove her
+veil, raising her arms high to unfasten the knot, her graceful attitude
+throwing gleams of changeful light on the velvet of her coat, along the
+sleeves and over the contour of her bust. The heat of the fire was very
+strong, and with her bare hand, which shone transparent like rosy
+alabaster, she screened her face from it. The rings on her fingers
+glittered in the firelight.
+
+'Please screen the fire,' she said, 'it is really too fierce.'
+
+'What--have you lost your fondness for the flames?--and you used to be a
+perfect salamander. This hearth is full of memories----'
+
+'Let memory sleep,--do not stir the embers,' she interrupted him.
+'Screen the fire and let us have some light. I will make the tea.'
+
+'Won't you take off your coat?'
+
+'No, I must go directly--it is late.'
+
+'But you will be melted.'
+
+She rose with a little gesture of impatience. 'Very well then--help me,
+please.'
+
+As he helped her off with the mantle, Andrea noticed that the scent was
+not the same as the familiar one of old. However, it was so delicious
+that it thrilled his every sense.
+
+'You have a new scent,' he said with peculiar emphasis.
+
+'Yes,' she answered simply, 'do you like it?'
+
+Andrea still held the mantle in his hands. He buried his face in the fur
+collar which had been next her throat and her hair--'What is it called?'
+he inquired.
+
+'It has no name.'
+
+She re-seated herself in the arm-chair within the circle of the
+firelight. Her dress was of black lace, on which sparkled a mass of tiny
+jet and steel beads.
+
+The day was fading from the windows. Andrea lit candles of twisted
+orange-coloured wax in wrought-iron candlesticks, after which he drew a
+screen before the fire.
+
+During this pause, both felt a certain perplexing uneasiness; Elena was
+no longer exactly conscious of the moment, nor was she quite mistress of
+herself. In spite of all her efforts she was unable to recall with
+precision her motives for coming here, to follow out her
+intentions--even to regain her force of will. In the presence of this
+man to whom, once upon a time, she had been bound by such passionate
+ties, and in this spot where she lived the most ardent moments of her
+life, she felt her reserve melting, her mind wavering and growing
+feeble. She was at that dangerously delicious point of sentiment at
+which the soul receives its every impulse, its attitudes, its form from
+its external surroundings as an aėrial vapour from the mutations of the
+atmosphere. But she checked herself before wholly giving way to it.
+
+'Is that right now?' asked Andrea in a low, almost humble voice.
+
+She smiled without replying. His words had given her inexpressibly keen
+delight.
+
+She began her delicate manipulations--lit the spirit-lamp under the
+kettle, opened the lacquer tea-caddy and put the necessary quantity of
+aromatic leaves into the tea-pot, and finally prepared two cups. Her
+movements were slow and a little hesitating, as happens when the mind is
+busied with other things than the occupation of the moment; her
+exquisite white hands hovered over the cups with the airiness of
+butterflies, and from her whole lithe form there emanated an indefinable
+charm which enveloped her lover like a caress.
+
+Seated quite close to her, gazing at her from under his half-closed
+lids, Andrea drank in the subtle fascination of her presence. Neither of
+them spoke. Elena, leaning back in the cushions, waited for the water to
+boil, with her eyes fixed on the blue flame while she absently slipped
+her rings up and down her fingers, lost in a dream apparently. But it
+was no dream; it was rather a vague reminiscence, faint, confused and
+evanescent. All the recollections of the love that was past rose up in
+her mind, but dimly and uncertain, leaving an indistinct impression, she
+hardly knew whether of pleasure or of pain. It was like the indefinable
+perfume of a faded bouquet, in which each separate flower has lost the
+vivacity proper to its colour and its fragrance, but from which emanates
+a common perfume wherein all the diverse component elements are
+indistinguishably blended. She seemed to carry in her heart the last
+breath of memories already faded, the last trace of joys departed for
+ever, the last tremor of a happiness that was dead--something akin to a
+mist from out of which images emerge fitfully without shape or name. She
+knew not, was it pleasure or pain, but by degrees this mysterious
+agitation, this nameless disquiet waxed greater and filled her soul with
+joy and bitterness.
+
+She was silent--withdrawn within herself--for though her heart was full
+to overflowing, her emotion was pleasurably increased by that silence.
+Speech would have broken the charm.
+
+The kettle began its low song.
+
+Andrea on a low seat, with his elbow on his knee and his chin in his
+hand, sat watching the fair woman so intently that Elena, without
+turning, felt that persistent gaze upon her with a sense of physical
+discomfort. And while he gazed upon her he thought to himself that she
+seemed altogether a new woman to him--one who had never been his, whom
+he had never clasped to his heart.
+
+And in truth, she was even more desirable than in the former days, the
+plastic enigma of her beauty more obscure and more enthralling. Her head
+with the low broad forehead straight nose and arched eyebrows--so pure
+and firm in outline, so classically antique in the modelling--might have
+come from some Syracusan coin. The expression of the eyes and that of
+the mouth were in singular contrast, giving her that passionate,
+ambiguous, almost preternatural look that only one or two master-hands,
+deeply imbued in all the profoundest corruption of art, have been able
+to infuse into such immortal types of woman as the Mona Lisa and Nelly
+O'Brien.
+
+The steam began to escape through the hole in the lid of the kettle, and
+Elena turned her attention once more to the tea-table. She poured a
+little water on the leaves; put two lumps of sugar in one of the cups,
+then poured some more water into the tea-pot and extinguished the lamp;
+doing it all with a certain fond care, but never once looking in
+Andrea's direction. By this time her inward agitation had resolved
+itself into such melting tenderness, that there was a lump in her throat
+and her eyes filled involuntarily; all her contradictory thoughts, all
+her trouble and agitation of heart, concentrated themselves in those
+tears.
+
+A movement of her arm knocked the little silver card-case off the table.
+Andrea picked it up and examined the device: two true lovers' knots each
+bearing an inscription in English--_From Dreamland_, and _A Stranger
+here_.
+
+When he raised his head, Elena offered him the fragrant beverage with a
+mist of tears before her eyes.
+
+He saw that mist, and, filled with love and gratitude at such an
+unlooked-for sign of melting, he put down the cup, sank on his knees
+before her, and seizing her hand pressed his lips passionately to it.
+
+'Elena! Elena!' he murmured, his face close to hers as if he would drink
+the breath from her lips. His emotion was quite sincere, though some of
+the things he said were not. He loved her--had always loved her--had
+never, never, never been able to forget her. On meeting her again, he
+had felt his passion rekindle with such vehemence that it had given him
+a kind of shock of terror--as if in one lightning flash he had witnessed
+the upheaval, the convulsion of his whole life.
+
+'Hush--hush----' said Elena with a look of pain, and turning very pale.
+
+But Andrea went on, still on his knees, fanning the flames of his
+passion by the images he himself evoked. When she had left him so
+abruptly, he had felt that the greater and better part of him went with
+her. Afterwards----never, never could he tell her all the misery of
+those days, the agony of regret, the ceaseless, implacable, devouring
+torture of mind and body. His wretchedness grew and increased daily till
+it burst all bounds and overwhelmed him utterly. Despair lay in wait for
+him at every turn. The mere flight of time became an intolerable burden.
+His regrets were less for the happy days gone by than for those that
+were passing all profitless for love. Those, at least, had left him a
+memory, these nothing but profoundest regret--nay, almost remorse. His
+life was preying upon itself, consumed in secret by the inextinguishable
+flame of one desire, by the unconquerable distaste to any other form of
+pleasure. Of all the fiery ardour of his youth nothing now remained to
+him but a handful of ashes. Sometimes, like a dream that vanishes at
+dawn, all the past, all the present would fade and fall away from his
+inner consciousness--like a tale that is told, a useless garment. Then
+he would remember the past no more, as a man newly risen from a long
+illness, a convalescent still overcome with stupor. At last he could
+forget--his tortured soul was sinking gently down to death.----But
+suddenly, out of the depths of this lethal tranquillity his pain had
+sprung up afresh, and the fallen idol was re-established higher than
+ever. She and she alone held every fibre of his heart captive beneath
+her spells, crushing out his intelligence, keeping the doors of his soul
+against any other passion, any sorrow, any dream to the end of all
+time----
+
+He was lying of course, but his words were so fervid, his voice so
+thrilling, the clasp of his hands so fondly caressing that Elena was
+profoundly touched.
+
+'Hush,' she said, 'I must not, dare not listen to you--I am yours no
+longer, I never can be yours again--never. Do not say these things----'
+
+'No--listen----'
+
+'I will not--good-bye--I must go now. Good-bye, Andrea,--it is late--let
+me go.'
+
+She drew her hands out of the young man's clasp, and, successfully
+throwing off the dangerous languor that was creeping over her, she
+prepared to rise.
+
+'Then why did you come?' he asked almost roughly, and preventing her
+from doing so.
+
+Slight as was the force he used, she frowned. She paused before
+answering.
+
+'I came,' she said in measured accents and looking her lover full in the
+eyes--'I came because you asked me. For the sake of the love that was
+once between us, for the manner in which that love was broken and for
+the long and unexplained silence of my absence I had not the heart to
+refuse your invitation. Besides, I wanted to say what I have said: that
+I am no longer yours--that I never can be again--never. That is what I
+wanted to tell you, honestly and frankly, to save you and myself all
+painful disillusionment, all danger or bitterness in the future.--Do you
+understand?'
+
+Andrea bowed his head almost to her knee in silence. She stroked his
+hair with a familiar gesture of old.
+
+'And then,' she went on in a voice that thrilled him to the heart's
+core--'and then--I wanted to tell you--that I love you--love you as much
+as ever: that you are still the heart of my heart and that I will be the
+fondest of sisters to you, the best of friends--do you understand?'
+
+Andrea made no reply. She took his head between her hands and raised it,
+forcing him to look her in the face.
+
+'Do you understand?' she repeated in a still lower, sweeter tone. Her
+eyes under the shadow of the long lashes were suffused with a pure and
+tender light, her lips were slightly open and trembling.
+
+'No; you never loved me, and you do not love me now!' Andrea burst out
+at last, pulling Elena's hands from his temples and drawing away from
+her, for he was sensible of the fire that was kindling in his veins
+under the mere gaze of those eyes, and his regret at having lost
+possession of this fairest of women grew more bitter and poignant than
+before. 'No, you never loved me. You had the heart to strike your love
+dead at a blow--treacherously almost--just when it had reached its
+supremest height. You ran away, you deserted me, left me alone in my
+bewilderment, my misery, while I was still blinded by your promises. You
+never loved me--neither then nor now. And now, after such a long
+absence, so full of mystery, so silent and inexorable, after I have
+wasted the bloom of my life in cherishing a wound that was dear to me
+because your hand had dealt it--after so much joy and so much pain, you
+return to this room, in which every object is replete for us with living
+memories, and you say to me calmly--"I am yours no
+longer--good-bye."--Oh no--you do not love me.'
+
+'Oh, you are ungrateful!' she cried, deeply wounded by the young man's
+incensed tone. 'What do you know of all that has occurred, or of what I
+have had to go through?--What do you know?'
+
+'I know nothing, and what is more, I do not want to,' Andrea retorted
+stubbornly, enveloping her in a darkling look in which burned the fever
+of his desire. 'All I know is that you were mine once--wholly and
+without reserve, and I know that body and soul I shall never forget
+it----'
+
+'Be silent!'
+
+'What do I care for your sisterly affection? In spite of yourself you
+offer it with your eyes full of quite another kind of love, and you
+cannot touch me without your hands trembling. I have seen that look in
+your eyes too often, you have too often felt me tremble with passion
+beneath your hands--I love you!'
+
+Carried away by his own words he grasped her wrists tightly and drew so
+close to her that she felt his hot breath on her cheek. 'I love you, I
+tell you--more than ever before,' he went on, slipping an arm about her
+waist to draw her to his kiss--'Have you forgotten--have you forgotten?'
+
+She pushed him forcibly from her and rose to her feet, trembling in
+every limb.
+
+'I will not--do you hear?'
+
+But he would not hear. He came towards her with arms outstretched, very
+pale and determined.
+
+'Could you bear,' she cried turning at bay at last, indignant at his
+violence, 'could you bear to share me with another?'
+
+She flung the cruel question at him point-blank, without reflection, and
+now stood looking at her lover with wide open frightened eyes, like one
+who in self-defence has dealt a blow without measuring his strength, and
+fears to have struck too deep.
+
+Andrea's frenzy dropped on the instant, and his face expressed such
+overwhelming pain that Elena was stricken to the heart.
+
+After a moment's silence--'Good-bye!' he said, but that one word
+contained all the bitterness of the words he refrained from saying.
+
+'Good-bye,' she answered gently, 'forgive me.'
+
+They both felt the necessity of putting an end, at least for that
+evening, to this perilous conversation. Andrea affected an almost
+over-strained courtesy. Elena became even gentler, almost humble. A
+nervous tremor shook her continually.
+
+She took her cloak from the chair and Andrea hastened to assist her. As
+she did not succeed in finding the armholes, Andrea guided her hand to
+it but scarcely touched her. He then offered her her hat and veil.
+'There is a looking-glass in the next room if you would like----'
+
+'No, thank you.' She went over beside the fireplace, where on the wall
+hung a quaint little old mirror in a frame surrounded by little figures,
+carved in so airy and vivacious a style that they seemed rather to be of
+malleable gold than of wood. It was a charming thing, the work doubtless
+of some delicate artist of the fifteenth century and designed to reflect
+the charms of some Mona Amorrosisca or some Laldomine. Many a time in
+the old happy days Elena had put on her veil in front of this dim, lack
+lustre mirror. She remembered it again now.
+
+On seeing her reflection rise out of its misty depths she was stirred by
+a singular emotion. A rush of profound sadness came over her. She did
+not speak.
+
+All this time Andrea was watching her intently.
+
+Her preparations concluded, she said, 'It must be very late.'
+
+'Not very--about six o'clock, I think.'
+
+'I sent away my carriage. I would be very grateful if you could send for
+a closed cab for me.'
+
+'Will you excuse me then if I leave you alone for a moment? My servant
+is out.'
+
+She assented. 'And please tell the man yourself where to go to--the
+Hotel Quirinal.'
+
+He went out and shut the door behind him. She was alone.
+
+She cast a rapid glance around her, embracing the whole room with an
+indefinable look that lingered on the vases of flowers. The room seemed
+to her larger, the ceiling higher than she remembered. She began to feel
+a little giddy. She did not notice the scent of the flowers any longer,
+but the atmosphere of the room was close and heavy as in a hot-house.
+Andrea's image appeared to her in a sort of intermittent flashes--a
+vague echo of his voice rang in her ears. Was she going to faint?--Oh,
+the delight of it if she might close her eyes and abandon herself to
+this languor!
+
+She gave herself a little shake and went over to one of the windows,
+which she opened, and let the breeze blow in her face. Somewhat revived
+by this she turned back into the room. The pale flame of the candles
+sent flickering shadows over the walls. The fire burned low but sufficed
+to light up in part the pious figures on the screen made of stained
+glass from a church window. The cup of tea stood where Andrea had laid
+it down on the table, cold and untouched. The chair cushion retained the
+impress of the form that had leaned against it. All the objects
+surrounding her breathed an ineffable melancholy, which condensed itself
+in a heavy weight upon Elena's heart, till it sank beneath the well nigh
+insupportable burden.
+
+_'Mio Dio! mio Dio!'_
+
+She wished she could make her escape unseen. A puff of wind inflated the
+curtains, made the candles flicker, raised a general rustle through the
+room. She shivered, and almost without knowing what she did, she
+called--
+
+'Andrea!'
+
+Her own voice--that name in the silence startled her strangely, as if
+neither voice nor name had come from her lips. Why was Andrea so long in
+returning? She listened.----There was no sound but the dull deep
+inarticulate murmur of the city. Not a carriage passed across the piazza
+of the Trinitą de' Monti. As the wind came in strong gusts from time to
+time, she closed the window, catching a glimpse as she did so of the
+point of the obelisk, black against the starry sky.
+
+Possibly Andrea had not found a conveyance at once on the Piazza
+Barberini. She sat herself down to wait on the sofa and tried to calm
+her foolish agitation, avoiding all heartsearchings and endeavouring to
+fix her attention on external objects. Her eyes wandered to the figures
+on the fire-screen, faintly visible by the light of the dying logs. On
+the mantelpiece a great white rose in one of the vases was dropping its
+petals softly, languidly, one by one, giving an impression of something
+subtly feminine and sensuous. The cup-like petals rested delicately on
+the marble, like flakes of snow.
+
+Ah, how sweet that fragrant snow had been _then_! she thought.
+Rose-leaves strewed the carpets, the divan, the chairs, and she was
+laughing, happy in the midst of the devastation, and her happy lover was
+at her feet----
+
+A carriage stopped down in the street. She rose and shook her aching
+head to banish the dull weight that seemed to paralyse her. The next
+moment, Andrea entered out of breath.
+
+'Forgive me,' he said, 'for keeping you so long, but I could not find
+the porter, so I went down to the Piazza di Spagna. The carriage is
+waiting for you.'
+
+'Thanks,' answered Elena with a timid glance at him through her black
+veil.
+
+He was grave and pale but quite calm.
+
+'I expect my husband to-morrow,' she went on in a low faint voice. 'I
+will send you a line to let you know when I can see you again.'
+
+'Thank you,' answered Andrea.
+
+'Good-bye then,' she said, holding out her hand.
+
+'Shall I see you down to the street? There is no one there.'
+
+'Yes--come down with me.'
+
+She looked about her a little hesitatingly.
+
+'Have you forgotten anything?' asked Andrea.
+
+She was looking at the flowers, but she answered, 'Ah--yes--my
+card-case.'
+
+Andrea sprang to fetch it from the table. '_A stranger here_?' he read
+as he handed it to her.
+
+'_No, my dear, a friend_----'
+
+Her answer was quick, her voice eager. Then suddenly with a smile
+peculiarly her own, half imploring, half seductive, a mixture of
+timidity and tenderness, she said: '_Give me a rose._'
+
+Andrea went from vase to vase gathering all the roses into one great
+bunch which he could scarcely hold in his hands--some of them shed their
+petals.
+
+'They were for you--all of them,' he said without looking at her.
+
+Elena hung her head and turned to go in silence followed by Andrea. They
+descended the stairs still in silence. He could see the nape of her neck
+so fair and delicate where the little dark curls mingled with the
+gray-blue fur.
+
+'Elena!' he cried her name in a low voice, incapable any longer of
+fighting against the passion that filled his heart to bursting.
+
+She turned round to him with a finger on her lips--a gesture of agonised
+entreaty--but her eyes burned through the shadow. She hastened her
+steps, flung herself into the carriage and felt rather than saw him lay
+the roses in her lap.
+
+'Good-bye! Good-bye!'
+
+And when the carriage turned away she threw herself back exhausted and
+burst into a passion of sobs, tearing the roses to pieces with her poor
+frenzied hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+So she had come, she had come! She had re-entered the rooms in which
+every piece of furniture, every object must retain some memory for her,
+and she had said--'I am yours no more, can never be yours again, never!'
+and--'Could you suffer to share me with another?'--Yes, she had dared to
+fling those words in his face, in that room, in sight of all these
+things!
+
+A rush of pain--atrocious, immeasurable, made up of a thousand wounds,
+each distinct from the other and one more piercing than the other, came
+over him and goaded him to desperation. Passion enveloped him once more
+in a thousand tongues of fire, re-kindling in him an inextinguishable
+desire for this woman who belonged to him no more, re-awakening in his
+memory every smallest detail of past caresses and all the sweet mad
+doings of those days. And yet through it all, there persisted the
+strange difficulty in identifying that Elena with the Elena of to-day,
+who seemed to him altogether another woman, one whom he had never known,
+never held in his arms. The torture of his senses was such that he
+thought he must die of it. Impurity crept through his blood like a
+corroding poison.
+
+The impurity which _then_ the winged flame of the soul had covered with
+a sacred veil, had surrounded with a mystery that was half divine,
+appeared _now_ without the veil and without the mystery as a mere carnal
+lust, a piece of gross sensuality. He knew that the ardour he had felt
+to-day in her presence was not Love--had nothing in common with
+Love--for when she had cried--'Could you suffer to share me with
+another?'--Why, yes, he could suffer it perfectly.
+
+Nothing therefore--nothing in him had remained intact. Even the memory
+of his grand passion was now corrupted, sullied, debased. The last spark
+of hope was extinct. He had reached his lowest level, never to rise
+again.
+
+He was seized by a terrible and frenzied desire to overthrow the idol
+that still persistently rose up lofty and enigmatic before his
+imagination, do what he would to abase it. With cynical cruelty, he set
+himself to insult, to undermine, to mutilate it. The destructive
+analysis he had already employed upon himself, he now turned upon Elena.
+To those dubious problems which, at one time, he had resolutely put away
+from him, he now sought the answer; of all the suspicions which had
+formerly presented themselves to him only to disappear without leaving a
+trace, he now studied the origin, found them justified and obtained
+their confirmation. But whereas he thought to find relief in this
+furious work of demolition, he only increased his sufferings, aggravated
+his malady and deepened his wounds.
+
+What had been the true cause of Elena's departure two years before?
+There were many conflicting rumours at the time, and again when she
+married Humphrey Heathfield; but the actual truth of the matter was what
+he heard, quite by chance, among other scraps of society gossip, from
+Giulio Musellaro one evening as they left the theatre together, nor did
+Andrea doubt it for a moment. Donna Elena had been obliged to leave Rome
+for pecuniary reasons, to work some 'operation' which should extricate
+her from the serious embarrassments into which her outrageous
+extravagance had plunged her. The marriage with Humphrey Heathfield, who
+was Marquis of Mount Saint Michael and Earl of Broadford, and besides
+possessing a considerable fortune was related to the highest nobility of
+Great Britain, had saved her from ruin. Donna Elena had managed matters
+with the utmost adroitness and succeeded marvellously in steering clear
+of the threatening peril. It was not to be denied that the interval of
+her three years of widowhood had been none too chaste a prelude to a
+second marriage--neither chaste nor prudent--nevertheless, there was
+also no denying that Elena Muti was a great lady----
+
+'Ah, my boy, a grand creature!' said Musellaro, 'as you very well know.'
+
+Andrea said nothing.
+
+'But take my advice,' his friend went on, throwing away the cigarette
+which had gone out while he talked, 'do not resume your relations with
+her. It is the same with love as with tobacco--once out, it will not
+bear relighting. Let us go and get a cup of tea from Donna Giulia
+Moceto. They tell me one may go to her house after the theatre--it is
+never too late.'
+
+They were close by the Palazzo Borghese.
+
+'You can,' answered Andrea, 'I am going home to bed. I am rather tired
+after to-day's run with the hounds. My regards to Donna Giulia--my
+blessing go with you!'
+
+Musellaro went up the steps of the palace and Andrea continued on his
+way past the Borghese fountain towards the Trinitą.
+
+It was one of those wonderful January nights, cold and serene, which
+turn Rome into a city of silver set in a ring of diamonds. The full
+moon, hanging in mid-sky, shed a triple purity of light, of frost, and
+of silence.
+
+He walked along in the moonlight like a somnambulist, conscious of
+nothing but his pain. The last blow had been struck, the idol was
+shattered, nothing remained standing above the ruins--this was the end!
+
+So it was true--she had never really loved him. She had not scrupled to
+break with him in order to contract a marriage of convenience. And now
+she put on the airs of a martyr before him, wrapped herself round with a
+mantle of conjugal inviolability! A bitter laugh rose to his lips, and
+then a rush of sullen blind rage against the woman came over him. The
+memory of his passion went for nothing--all the past was one long fraud,
+one stupendous, hideous lie; and this man, who throughout his whole life
+had made a practice of dissimulation and duplicity, was now incensed at
+the deception of another, was as indignant at it as at some unpardonable
+backsliding, some inexcusable and inexplicable perfidy. He was quite
+unable to understand how Elena could have committed such a crime; he
+denied her all possibility of justification, and rejected the hypothesis
+of some secret and dire necessity having driven her to sudden flight. He
+could see nothing but the bare brutal fact, its baseness, its
+vulgarity--above all its vulgarity, gross, manifest, odious, without one
+extenuating circumstance. In short, the whole matter reduced itself to
+this: a passion which was apparently sincere, which they had vowed was
+profound and inextinguishable, had been broken off for a question of
+money, for material interests, for a commercial transaction.
+
+'Oh, you are ungrateful! What do you know of all that has happened, of
+all I have suffered!'
+
+Elena's words recurred to him with everything else she had said, from
+beginning to end of their interview--her words of fondness, her offer of
+sisterly affection, all her sentimental phrases. And he remembered, too,
+the tears that had dimmed her eyes, her changes of countenance, her
+tremors, her choking voice when she said good-bye, and he laid the roses
+in her lap. 'But why had she ever consented to come? Why play this part,
+call up all these emotions, arrange this comedy? Why?
+
+By this time he had reached the top of the steps, and found himself in
+the deserted piazza. Suddenly the beauty of the night filled him with a
+vague but desperate yearning towards some unknown good. The image of
+Maria Ferrčs flashed across his mind; his heart beat fast, he thought of
+what it would be to hold her hands in his, to lean his head upon her
+breast, to feel that she was consoling him without words, by her pity
+alone. This longing for pity, for a refuge, was like the last struggle
+of a soul that will not be content to perish. He bent his head and
+entered the house without turning again to look at the night.
+
+Terenzio was waiting up for him and followed him to the bedroom, where
+there was a fire.
+
+'Will the Signor Conte go to bed at once?' he asked.
+
+'No, Terenzio, bring me some tea,' replied his master, sitting down
+before the fire and stretching out his hands to the blaze.
+
+He was shivering all over with a little nervous tremor.
+
+'The Signor Conte is cold?' asked Terenzio, hastening with affectionate
+interest to stir up the fire and put on fresh logs.
+
+He was an old servant of the house of Sperelli, having served Andrea's
+father for many years, and his devotion for the son reached the pitch of
+idolatry. No human being seemed to him so handsome, so noble, so worthy
+of devotion. He belonged to that ideal race which furnished faithful
+retainers to the romance writers of old, but differed from the servants
+of romance in that he spoke little, never offered advice, and concerned
+himself with no other business than that of carrying out his master's
+orders.
+
+'That will do very nicely,' said Andrea, trying to repress the
+convulsive trembling of his limbs and crouching closer over the fire.
+
+The presence of the old man in this hour of misery and distress moved
+him singularly. It was an emotion somewhat similar to that which, in the
+presence of some very kind and sympathetic person, affects a man
+determined upon suicide. Never before had the old man brought back to
+him so strongly the recollection of his father, the memory of the
+beloved dead, his grief for the loss of a great and good friend. Never
+so much as now had he felt the want of that comforting voice, that
+paternal hand. What would his father say could he see his son thus
+crushed under the weight of a nameless distress? How would he have
+sought to relieve him--what would he have done?
+
+His thoughts turned to the dead father with boundless yearning and
+regret. And he had not the shadow of a suspicion that in the very
+teachings of that father lay the primary cause of his wretchedness.
+
+Terenzio brought the tea. He then proceeded slowly to arrange the bed
+with a care and solicitude that were almost womanly, forgetting nothing,
+as if he wished to ensure to his master refreshing and unbroken slumbers
+till the morrow.
+
+Andrea watched him with growing emotion. 'Go to bed now, Terenzio,' he
+said. 'I shall not want anything more.'
+
+The old man retired and left him alone before the fire--alone with his
+heart, alone with his misery. Tortured by his inward agitation, he rose
+and began to pace the room. He was haunted by a vision of Elena, and
+each time he came as far as the window and turned, he fancied he saw her
+and started violently. His nerves were in such an overstrung condition
+that they only increased the disorder of his imagination. The
+hallucination grew more distinct. He stood still and covered his face
+with his hands for a moment to control his excitement, and then returned
+to his seat by the fire.
+
+This time another image rose before him--that of Elena's husband.
+
+He knew him better now. That very evening in a box at the theatre, Elena
+had introduced them to one another, and he had seized that opportunity
+to examine him attentively in detail with the keenest curiosity, as
+though he hoped to obtain some revelation, to draw some secret from him.
+He could still hear the man's voice--a voice of very peculiar tone,
+somewhat harsh and strident, with an interrogative inflection at the end
+of each sentence. Again he saw those pale, pale eyes under the great
+prominent forehead, eyes that at times assumed a hideous, glassy, dead
+look, and at others lit up with an indefinable gleam that savoured of
+madness. Those hands too, he saw--white and smooth and thickly covered
+with sandy yellow down, and with something obscene in their every
+movement; their way of raising the opera-glass, of unfolding a
+handkerchief, of reclining on the cushion in front of the box or turning
+over the pages of the libretto--hands instinct with vice.
+
+Oh, horror! he saw those hands touching Elena, profaning her with their
+odious caresses.
+
+The torture became insupportable. He rose once more, went to the
+window, opened it, shivered under the biting breeze and shook himself.
+The Trinitą de' Monti glittered in the deep blue sky, sharply outlined
+as if sculptured in faintly tinted marble. Rome, spread out beneath him,
+had a sheen as of crystal, like a city cut in a glacier.
+
+The calm and sparkling cold brought his mind back to the realities of
+life and enabled him to recognise the true condition of his mind. He
+closed the window and sat down again. Once more the enigmatical aspect
+of Elena's character occupied him, questions crowded in upon him
+tumultuously, persistently. But he had the strength of mind to
+co-ordinate them, to attack them one by one, with singular lucidity. The
+deeper he went in his analysis the more lucid became his mental vision,
+and he worked out his psychological revenge with cruel relish. At last
+he felt that he had laid bare a soul, penetrated a mystery. It seemed to
+him, that thus he made Elena infinitely more his own than in the days of
+their passion.
+
+What, after all, was this woman?--An unbalanced mind in a sensually
+inclined body. As with all who are greedy of pleasure, the foundation of
+her moral being was overweening egotism. Her dominant faculty, her
+intellectual axis, so to speak, was imagination--an imagination
+nourished upon a wide range of literature, connected with her sex and
+perpetually stimulated by neurotic excitement. Possessed of a certain
+degree of intellectual capacity, brought up in all the luxury of a
+princely Roman house--that papal luxury which is made up of art and
+history--she had received a thin coating of ęsthetic varnish, had
+acquired a graceful taste, and, having thoroughly grasped the character
+of her beauty, sought by skilful simulation and a sapient use of her
+marked histrionic talents to enhance its spirituality by surrounding it
+with a delusive halo of ideality.
+
+Into the comedy of human life she thus brought some highly perilous
+elements, and was thereby the occasion of more ruin and disaster than if
+she had been a _demi-mondaine_ by profession.
+
+Under the glamour of her imagination, every caprice assumed an
+appearance of pathos. She was the woman of fulminating passions, of
+suddenly blazing desire. She covered the lusts of the flesh with a
+mantle of ethereal flame, and could transform into a noble sentiment
+what was merely a base appetite.
+
+Such was the scathing judgment brought by Andrea against the woman he
+had once adored. At the root of every action, every expression of
+Elena's love he now discovered studied artifice, an admirable natural
+gift for carrying out a pre-arranged scheme, for playing a dramatic part
+or organising a striking scene. He did not spare their most memorable
+episodes--neither the first meeting at the Ateletas' dinner, nor the
+Cardinal Immenraet's sale, nor the ball at the French Embassy, nor the
+sudden offer of her love in the red room at the Barberini palace, nor
+their farewells out in the country in the biting March blast. The magic
+draught which had intoxicated him then now seemed but an insidious
+poison.
+
+Yet, in spite of it all, certain points perplexed him, as if in
+penetrating Elena's soul he had penetrated his own, and in the woman's
+perfidy had seen a reflection of his own. There was much affinity
+between their two natures. Therefore he _understood_, and little by
+little, his contempt changed to ironical indulgence. He was so
+thoroughly conversant with his own mode of procedure.
+
+Then with cold lucidity, he mapped out his plan of campaign. He reviewed
+every detail of the interview that had taken place on New Year's
+Eve--more than a week ago--and it pleased him to re-construct the scene,
+but without the slightest indignation or excitement, only smiling
+cynically both at Elena and himself. Why had she come?--Simply because
+this impromptu _tźte-ą-tźte_ with a former lover, in the well-known
+place, after a lapse of two years, had tempted a spirit always on the
+look-out for fresh emotions, had inflamed her imagination and her
+curiosity. She thirsted to see into what new situations, new intrigues
+the dangerous game would lead her. She was perhaps attracted by the
+novelty of a platonic affection with a person who had already been the
+object of her sensual passion. As ever, she had thrown herself into the
+new part with a certain imaginative fervour. Also it was quite possible
+that, for the moment, she believed what she said, and that this illusory
+sincerity had furnished her with that deep tenderness of accent, those
+despairing attitudes, those tears. How well he knew it all! She had a
+sentimental hallucination as other people have a physical one. She
+forgot that she was acting a lie, was no longer conscious whether she
+were living in a world of truth or falsehood, of fiction or reality.
+
+Now this was precisely the moral phenomenon which so constantly took
+place in himself. Therefore he could not reproach her without injustice.
+But the discovery very naturally deprived him of the hope of deriving
+any pleasure from her other than sensual ones. In any case, mistrust
+would poison all the sweetness of abandon, all soulful rapture. To
+deceive a confiding and faithful heart, dominate a soul by artifice,
+possess it wholly and make it vibrate like an instrument--_habere non
+haberi_--all this, doubtless, gives intense pleasure; but to deceive,
+and know that one is being deceived in return, is a stupid and fruitless
+labour, a tiresome and aimless pursuit.
+
+He must therefore work upon Elena to renounce the sisterly scheme and to
+return to his arms once more. He must regain possession of this
+beautiful woman, extract the utmost possible pleasure from her beauty
+and free himself for ever of this passion by reaching the point of
+satiety. But it was a task demanding prudence and patience. In that
+first interview, his ardour had availed him nothing. Obviously, she had
+founded her plan of impeccability on the grand phrase--'Could you endure
+to share me with another?' The mainspring of the great platonic business
+was a virtuous horror of divided possession. For the rest, it was just
+within the bounds of possibility that this horror was not feigned. Most
+women addicted to the practice of free love, if they do eventually
+marry, affect, during the early days of their marriage, a savage
+virtue, and make professions of conjugal fidelity with the most honest
+determination. Perhaps, therefore, Elena had been affected by this
+common scruple, in which case, nothing would be more ill-advised than to
+show his hand too boldly and offend against her new-found virtue. The
+better plan would be to second her spiritual aspirations, accept her as
+'the fondest of sisters, the truest of friends,' intoxicate her with the
+ideal, be skilfully platonic and then make her glide imperceptibly from
+frank sisterly relations to a more passionate friendship, and from
+thence to the complete surrender of her person. In all probability these
+transitions would occur very rapidly. It all depended upon a wise
+adjustment of circumstances----
+
+Thus Andrea Sperelli reasoned, sitting in front of the fire which had
+glowed upon Elena, laughing among the scattered rose leaves. A boundless
+lassitude weighed upon him, a lassitude which did not invite sleep, a
+sense of weariness, so empty, so disconsolate as to be almost a longing
+for death; while the fire died out on the hearth and the tea grew cold
+in the cup.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+He waited in vain during the days that followed for the promised note to
+tell him when he might see Elena again----So she did intend to make
+another appointment with him; the question was--where? At the Casa
+Zuccari again? Would she risk such an imprudence a second time? This
+uncertainty kept him on the rack. He passed whole hours in searching for
+some way of meeting her, of seeing her again. He went several times to
+the Hotel Quirinal in the hope of being received, but never once did he
+find her at home. One evening, he saw her again in the theatre with
+'Mumps,' as she called her husband. Though only saying the usual things
+about the music, the singers, the ladies, he infused a supplicating
+melancholy into his gaze. She seemed greatly taken up by the arrangement
+of their house. They were going back to the Palazzo Barberini, her old
+quarters, but were having them much enlarged, and she was for ever
+occupied with upholsterers and decorators, giving orders and
+superintending the placing of the furniture.
+
+'Are you going to stay long in Rome?' asked Andrea.
+
+'Yes,' she answered--'Rome will be our winter residence.' Then, after a
+moment's pause--'You could give us some very good advice about the
+furniture. Come to the palace one of these days. I am always there from
+ten to twelve.'
+
+He took advantage of a moment when Lord Heathfield was talking to Giulio
+Musellaro, who had just entered the box, to say to her, looking her full
+in the eyes.
+
+'To-morrow?'
+
+'By all means,' she replied with perfect simplicity, as if she had not
+noticed the tone of his question.
+
+The next morning, about eleven, he set off on foot to the Palazzo
+Barberini through the Via Sistina. It was a road he had often traversed
+before--and, for a moment, the impressions of those days seemed to come
+back to him, and his heart swelled. The fountain of Bernini shone
+curiously luminous in the sunshine, as if the dolphins and the Triton
+with his conch-shell had, by some interrupted metamorphose transformed
+themselves into a more diaphanous material--not stone, nor yet quite
+crystal. The noise of the building of new Rome filled all the piazza and
+the adjoining streets; country children ran in and out between the carts
+and horses offering violets for sale.
+
+As he passed through the gate and entered the garden, he felt that he
+was beginning to tremble. 'Then I _do_ love her still?' he thought to
+himself--'Is she still the woman of _my dreams_?'
+
+He looked at the great palace, radiant under the morning sun, and his
+spirit flew back to the days when, in certain chill and misty dawns,
+this same palace had assumed for him a look of enchantment. That was in
+the early times of his happiness, when he came away warm from her kisses
+and full of his new-found bliss; the bells of Trinitą de' Monti, of San
+Isidoro and the Cappuccini rang out the Angelus into the dawning day,
+with a muffled peal as if out of the far distance--at the corner of the
+street, fires glowed red round cauldrons of boiling asphalt--a little
+herd of goats stood against the white wall of the slumbering house----
+
+These forgotten sensations rose up once more out of the depths of his
+consciousness, and, for an instant, a wave of the old love swept over
+his soul, for one moment he tried to imagine that Elena was still the
+Elena of those days, that his happiness had endured till now, that none
+of these miserable things were true. As he crossed the threshold of the
+palace, all this illusory ferment died away on the instant, for Lord
+Heathfield came forward to greet him with his habitual and somewhat
+ambiguous smile.
+
+With that his torture began.
+
+Elena appeared, and shaking hands cordially with him in her husband's
+presence, she said--'Bravo, Andrea! Come and help us, come and help us!'
+
+She talked and gesticulated with much vivacity and looked very girlish
+in a close-fitting jacket of dark-blue cloth, trimmed round the high
+collar and the cuffs with black astrachan and fine black braiding. She
+kept one hand in her pocket in a graceful attitude, and with the other
+pointed out the various wall-hangings, the pictures, the furniture,
+asking his advice as to their most advantageous disposal.
+
+'Where would you put these two chests? Look--Mumps picked them up at
+Lucca. These pictures are your beloved Botticelli's.--Where would you
+hang these tapestries?'
+
+Andrea recognised the four pieces of tapestry from the Immenraet sale
+representing the Story of Narcissus. He looked at Elena, but could not
+catch her eye. A profound sense of irritation against her, against her
+husband, against all these things took possession of him. He would have
+liked to go away, but politeness demanded that he should place his good
+taste at the service of the Heathfields; it also obliged him to submit
+to the archęological erudition of 'Mumps,' who was an ardent collector
+and was anxious to show him some of his finds. In one cabinet Andrea
+caught sight of the Pollajuolo helmet, and in another of the
+rock-crystal goblet which had belonged to Niccolo Niccoli. The presence
+of that particular goblet in this particular place moved him strangely
+and sent a flash of mad suspicion through his mind.
+
+So it had fallen into the hands of Lord Heathfield! The famous
+competition between the Countesses having come to nothing, nobody
+troubled themselves further about the fate of the goblet, and none of
+the party had returned to the sale after that day. Their ephemeral zeal
+had languished and finally died out and passed away, like everything
+else in the world of fashion, and the goblet had been abandoned to the
+competition of other collectors. The thing was perfectly natural, but
+at that moment it appeared to Andrea most extraordinary.
+
+He purposely stopped before the cabinet and gazed long at the precious
+goblet on which the story of Venus and Anchises glittered as if cut in a
+pure diamond.
+
+'Niccolo Niccoli!' said Elena, pronouncing the name with an indefinable
+accent in which the young man seemed to catch a note of sadness.
+
+The husband had just gone into another room to open a cabinet.
+
+'Remember--remember!' murmured Andrea, turning towards her.
+
+'I do remember.'
+
+'Then when may I see you?'
+
+'Ah, when?'
+
+'But you promised me----'
+
+Lord Heathfield returned. They passed on into an adjoining room, making
+the tour of the apartments. Everywhere they met workmen hanging papers,
+draping curtains, carrying furniture. Each time Elena asked his opinion,
+Andrea had to make an effort before answering her, in order to disguise
+his ill-humour and his impatience. At last, he managed to seize a moment
+when her husband was occupied with one of the men to say to her in a low
+voice, unable any longer to conceal his chagrin--
+
+'Why inflict this torture upon me? I expected to find you alone.'
+
+Passing through one of the doors, Elena's hat caught in the portičre and
+was dragged out of place. She laughed and called to Mumps to come and
+unfasten her veil. And Andrea was forced to look on while those odious
+hands touched the hair of the woman he desired, ruffling the little
+curls at the back of her neck, those curls which under his caresses had
+seemed to breathe out a mysterious perfume, unlike any other, and
+sweeter and more intoxicating than all the rest.
+
+He hurriedly took his leave under pretext of being due at lunch with
+some one else.
+
+'We shall move in here on the 1st of February,' Elena said to him, 'and
+then I hope you will be one of our _habitués_.'
+
+Andrea bowed.
+
+He would have given worlds not to be obliged to touch Lord Heathfield's
+hand. He went away filled with rancour, jealousy and disgust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+At a late hour that same evening, happening to look in at the Club,
+where he had not been for a long time, whom should he see at one of the
+card-tables but Don Manuel Ferrčs y Capdevila. Andrea greeted him with
+effusion and inquired after Donna Maria and Delfina--whether they were
+still at Sienna--when they were coming to Rome.
+
+Don Manuel, who remembered to have won several thousand lire from the
+young Count during the last evening at Schifanoja, and had recognised in
+Andrea Sperelli a player of the best form and perfect style, responded
+with the utmost courtesy and cordiality.
+
+'They have been here some days already; they arrived on Monday,' he
+answered. 'Maria was much disappointed not to find the Marchesa
+d'Ateleta in town. I am sure it would give her the greatest pleasure if
+you would call on her. We are in the Via Nazionale. Here is the exact
+address.'
+
+He handed one of his cards to Andrea and then returned to the game.
+
+The Duke di Beffi, who was standing with a knot of gentlemen, called
+Andrea over to them.
+
+'Why did you not come to Cento Celli this morning?' asked the duke.
+
+'I had another appointment,' Andrea replied without reflecting.
+
+'At the Palazzo Barberini perhaps?' said the duke with a shy laugh, in
+which he was joined by the others.
+
+'Perhaps.'
+
+'Perhaps, indeed?--why, Ludovico saw you go in.'
+
+'And where were you, may I ask?' said Andrea turning to Barbarisi.
+
+'Over the way, at my Aunt Saviano's.'
+
+'Ah!'
+
+'I don't know if you had better luck than we had,' Beffi went on, 'but
+we had a run of forty-two minutes and got two foxes. The next meet is on
+Thursday at the Three Fountains.'
+
+'You understand--at the _Three_ Fountains, not at the _Four_,' Gino
+Bomminaco admonished him with comic gravity.
+
+The others burst into a roar of laughter which Andrea could not help
+joining. He was by no means displeased at their gibes; on the contrary,
+now that there was no truth in their suspicions, it flattered him for
+his friends to think he had renewed his relations with Elena. He turned
+away to speak to Giulio Musellaro, who had just come in. From a few
+strays words that reached his ear, he found that the group behind him
+were discussing Lord Heathfield.
+
+'I knew him in London six or seven years ago,' Beffi was saying. 'He was
+Gentleman of the Bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales as far as I
+remember----'
+
+The duke lowered his voice, he was evidently retailing the most
+appalling things. Andrea caught scraps here and there of a highly-spiced
+nature and, once or twice, the name of a newspaper famous in the annals
+of London scandal. He longed to hear more; a terrible curiosity took
+possession of him. His imagination conjured up Lord Heathfield's hands
+before him--so white, so significant, so expressive, so impossible to
+forget. Musellaro was still talking, and now said--
+
+'Let us go--I want to tell you----'
+
+On the stairs they encountered Albonico, who was coming up. He was in
+deep mourning for Donna Ippolita, and Andrea stopped to ask for details
+of the sad event. He had heard of her death when he was in Paris in
+November from Guido Montelatici, a cousin of Donna Ippolita.
+
+'Was it really typhus?'
+
+The wan and pale-eyed widower grasped at an occasion for pouring out his
+griefs, for he made a display of his bereavement as, at one time, he had
+made a display of his wife's beauty. He stammered and grew lachrymose
+and his colourless eyes seemed bulging from his head.
+
+Seeing that the widower's elegy threatened to be somewhat long drawn
+out, Musellaro said to Andrea--
+
+'If we don't take care, we shall be late.'
+
+Andrea accordingly took leave of Albonico, promising to hear the rest of
+the funeral oration very shortly, and went away with Musellaro.
+
+The meeting with Albonico had re-awakened the singular emotion--partly
+regret, partly a certain peculiar satisfaction--which he had experienced
+for several days after hearing the news of this death. The image of
+Donna Ippolita, half obliterated by his illness and convalescence, by
+his love for Maria Ferrčs, by a variety of incidents, had reappeared to
+him then as in the dim distance, but invested with a nameless ideality.
+He had received a promise from her which, though it was never fulfilled,
+had procured to him the greatest happiness that can befall a man: the
+victory over a rival, a brilliant victory in the presence of the woman
+he desired. Later on, between desire and regret another sentiment grew
+up--the poetic sentiment for beauty idealised by death. It pleased him
+that the adventure should end thus for ever. This woman who had never
+been his, but to gain whom he had nearly lost his life, now rose up
+noble and unsullied before his imagination in all the sublime ideality
+of death. _Tibi, Hippolyta, semper!_
+
+'But where are we going to?' asked Musellaro, stopping short in the
+middle of the Piazza de Venezia.
+
+At the bottom of all Andrea's perturbation and all his varying thoughts,
+was the excitement called up in him by his meeting with Don Manuel
+Ferrčs and the consequent thought of Donna Maria; and now, in the midst
+of these conflicting emotions, a sort of nervous longing drew him to her
+house.
+
+'I am going home,' he answered; 'we can go through the Via Nazionale.
+Come along with me.'
+
+He paid no heed to what his friend was saying. The thought of Maria
+Ferrčs occupied him exclusively. Arrived in front of the theatre, he
+hesitated a moment, undecided which side of the street he had better
+take. He would find out the direction of the house by seeing which way
+the numbers ran.
+
+'What is the matter?' asked Musellaro.
+
+'Nothing--go on,--I am listening.'
+
+He looked at one number and calculated that the house must be on the
+left hand side, somewhere about the Villa Aldobrandini. The tall pines
+round the villa looked feathery light against the starry sky. The night
+was icy but serene; the Torre delle Milizie lifted up its massive bulk,
+square and sombre among the twinkling stars; the laurels on the wall of
+Servius slumbered motionless in the gleam of the street lamps.
+
+A few numbers more and they would reach the one mentioned on Don
+Manuel's card. Andrea trembled as if he expected Donna Maria to appear
+upon the threshold. He passed so close to the great door that he brushed
+against it; he could not refrain from looking up at the windows.
+
+'What are you looking at?' asked Musellaro.
+
+'Nothing--give me a cigarette and let us walk a little faster; it is
+awfully cold.'
+
+They followed the Via Nazionale as far as the Four Fountains in silence.
+Andrea's preoccupation was patent.
+
+'You must decidedly have something serious on your mind,' said his
+friend.
+
+Andrea's heart beat so fast that he was on the point of pouring his
+confidences into his friend's ear, but he restrained himself. Memories
+of Schifanoja passed across his spirit like an exhilarating perfume, and
+in the midst of them beamed the figure of Maria Ferrčs with a radiance
+that almost dazzled him. But most distinctly and more luminously than
+all the rest, he saw that moment in the wood at Vicomile, when she had
+flung those burning words at him. Would he ever hear such words from her
+lips again? What had she been doing--what had been her thoughts--how had
+she spent the days since they parted? His agitation increased with every
+step. Fragments of scenes passed rapidly before him like the
+phantasmagoria of a dream--a bit of country, a glimpse of the sea, a
+flight of steps among the roses, the interior of a room, all the places
+in which some sentiment had had its birth, round which she had diffused
+some sweetness, where she had breathed the charm of her person. And he
+thrilled with profound emotion at the idea that perchance she still
+carried in her heart that living passion, had perhaps suffered and wept,
+had dreamed and hoped.
+
+'Well?' said Musellaro, 'and how is your affair with Donna Elena
+progressing?'
+
+They happened to be just in front of the Palazzo Barberini. Behind the
+railings and the great stone pillars of the gates stretched the garden,
+dimly visible through the gloom, animated by the low murmur of the
+fountains and dominated by the massive white palace where in the portico
+alone was light.
+
+'What did you say?' asked Andrea.
+
+'I asked how you were getting on with Donna Elena.'
+
+Andrea glanced up at the palace. At that moment he seemed to feel a
+blank indifference in his heart, the absolute death of desire--the final
+renunciation.
+
+'I am following your advice. I have not tried to relight the cigarette.'
+
+'And yet, do you know, in this one instance, I believe it would be worth
+while. Have you noticed her particularly? It seems to me that she has
+become more beautiful. I cannot help thinking there is something--how
+shall I express it?--something new, something indescribable about her.
+No, _new_ is not the word. She has gained intensity without losing
+anything of the peculiar character of her beauty; in short, she is _more
+Elena_ than the Elena of two years ago--the quintessence of herself. It
+is, most likely, the effect of her second spring, for I should fancy
+she must be hard on thirty. Don't you think so?'
+
+As he listened, Andrea felt the dull ashes of his love stir and kindle.
+Nothing revives and excites a man's desire so much as hearing from
+another the praises of a woman he has loved too long or wooed in vain. A
+love in its death-throes may thus be prolonged as the result of the envy
+or the admiration of another; for the disgusted or wearied lover
+hesitates to abandon what he possesses or is struggling to possess in
+favour of a possible successor.
+
+'Don't you think so?' Musellaro repeated. 'And, besides, to make a
+Menelaus of that Heathfield would in itself be an unspeakable
+satisfaction.'
+
+'So I think,' answered Andrea, forcing himself to adopt his friend's
+light tone. 'Well, we shall see.'
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+'Maria, grant me this one moment of unalloyed sweetness! Let me tell you
+all that is in my heart.'
+
+She rose. 'Forgive, me,' she said gently, without anger or bitterness
+and with an audible quiver of emotion in her voice. 'Forgive me but I
+cannot listen to you. You pain me very much.'
+
+'Well, I will not say anything--only stay--I implore you.'
+
+She seated herself once more. It was like the days of Schifanoja come
+back again. The same matchless grace of the delicate head drooping under
+the masses of hair as under some divine chastisement, the same deep and
+tender shadow, a fusion of diaphanous violet and soft blue, surrounding
+the tawny brown eyes.
+
+'I only wanted,' Andrea went on humbly, 'I only wanted to remind you of
+the words I spoke, the words you listened to that morning in the park
+under the shadow of the trees, in an hour that will always remain sacred
+in my memory.'
+
+'I have not forgotten them.'
+
+'Since that day my unhappiness has become ever deeper, darker, more
+poignant. I can never tell you all I have suffered, all the abject
+misery of that time: can never tell you how often in spirit I have
+called upon you as if my last hour had come, nor describe to you the
+thrill of joy, the upward bound of my whole soul towards the light of
+hope, if, for one moment, I dared to think that the remembrance of me
+still lived in your heart.'
+
+He spoke in the accents of that morning long ago; he seemed to have
+regained the same passionate rapture: all his vaguely felt happiness
+rose to his lips. And she sat motionless, listening with drooping head,
+almost in the same attitude as on that day; and round her lips, those
+lips which she vainly sought to keep firm, there played the same
+expression of dolorous rapture.
+
+'Do you remember Vicomile? Do you remember our ride through the wood on
+that evening in October?'
+
+Donna Maria bent her head slightly in sign of assent.
+
+'And the words you said to me?' the young man went on in a lower voice,
+but in a tone of suppressed passion and bending down to look into the
+eyes she kept steadfastly fixed upon the ground.
+
+She raised them now to his--those sweet, patient, pathetic eyes.
+
+'I have forgotten nothing,' she replied, 'nothing, nothing! Why should I
+hide my heart from you? You are good and noble-minded, and I have
+absolute trust in your generosity. Why should I act towards you like an
+ordinary foolish woman? I told you that evening that I loved you. Your
+question implies another one, I see that very well--you want to ask me
+if I love you still.'
+
+She faltered for a moment and her lips quivered. 'I love you.'
+
+'Maria!'
+
+'But you must give up all claim upon my love, you must keep away from
+me. Be noble, be generous, and spare me the struggle which frightens me.
+I have suffered much, Andrea, I have borne much; but the thought of
+having to struggle with you, to defend myself against you, fills me with
+a nameless terror. You do not know at the cost of what sacrifices I have
+at last gained peace of heart; you do not know what lofty and cherished
+ideals I have been obliged to bid farewell to--poor ideals! I am a
+changed woman because I could not help it; I have had to place myself on
+a lower level.'
+
+There was a note of grave, sweet sadness in her voice.
+
+'In those first days after I met you, I abandoned myself to the alluring
+sweetness, let myself drift with eyes closed to the distant peril. I
+thought--he shall never know anything from me, I shall never know
+anything from him. I had nothing to regret and therefore I felt no fear.
+But you spoke--you said things to me that no one had ever said before,
+and then you forced my avowal from me. The danger suddenly appeared
+before me, unmistakable, imminent. And then I abandoned myself to a
+fresh dream. Your mental distress touched me to the heart, caused me
+profound pain. "Impurity has sullied his soul," I thought to myself.
+"Oh, that I had the power to purify it again! What happiness to offer
+myself up as a sacrifice for his regeneration!" Your unhappiness
+attracted mine. I thought I might scarcely be able to console you, but I
+hoped at least you might find relief in having another soul to answer
+eternally _Amen_ to all your plaints.'
+
+She uttered the last words with a face so suffused with spiritual
+exaltation that Andrea felt a wave of half-religious joy sweep over him,
+and his one desire, at that moment, was to take those dear and spotless
+hands in his and breathe upon them the ineffable rapture of his soul.
+
+'But it cannot--it may not be.' she went on, shaking her head in sad
+regret. 'We must renounce that hope for ever. Life is inexorable.
+Without intending it, you would destroy a whole existence--and more than
+one perhaps----'
+
+'Maria, Maria! do not say such things!' the young man broke in, leaning
+over her once more and taking one of her hands with a sort of timid
+entreaty, as if looking for some sign of permission before venturing on
+the liberty. 'I will do anything you tell me; I will be humble and
+obedient, my one thought shall be to carry out your wishes, my one
+desire, to die with your name upon my lips. In renouncing you, I
+renounce my salvation, I fall back into irremediable ruin and disaster.
+I have no words to express my love for you. I have need of you. You
+alone are _true_--you are Truth itself, for which my soul is ever
+seeking. All else is vanity--all else is nought. To give you up is like
+signing my death-warrant. But if this immolation is necessary to your
+peace of mind, it shall be done--I owe it to you. Do not fear, Maria, I
+will never do anything to hurt you.'
+
+He held her hand, but he did not press it. His voice had none of the old
+passionate ardour, it was submissive, disconsolate, heart-broken, full
+of infinite weariness. And Maria was so blinded by her compassion that
+she did not draw away her hand, but let it lie in his, abandoning
+herself for a moment to the unutterable rapture of that light contact--a
+rapture so subtle as hardly to have any physical origin--as if some
+magnetic fluid, issuing from her heart, diffused itself through her arm
+to her fingers and there flowed forth in a wave of ineffable sweetness.
+When Andrea ceased speaking, certain words of his, uttered on that
+memorable morning in the park and revived by the recent sound of his
+voice, returned to her memory--'Your mere presence suffices to
+intoxicate me--I feel it flowing through my veins like blood, flooding
+my soul with nameless emotion----'
+
+There was an interval of silence. From time to time, a gust of wind
+shook the window-panes and bore fitfully with it the distant roar of the
+city and the rumbling of carriage wheels. The light was cold and limpid
+as spring water; shadows were gathering thickly in the corners of the
+room and in the folds of the Oriental curtains; from pieces of
+furniture, here and there, came gleams of ivory and mother-of-pearl; a
+great gilded Buddha shone out of the background under a tall palm.
+Something of the exotic mystery of these things was diffused over the
+drawing-room.
+
+'And what do you suppose is going to become of me now?' asked Andrea.
+
+She seemed lost in perplexing thought. There was a look of irresolution
+on her face as if she were listening to two contending voices.
+
+'I cannot describe to you,' she answered, passing her hand over her eyes
+with a rapid gesture, 'I cannot describe to you the strange foreboding
+that has weighed upon me for a long time past. I do not know what it is,
+but I am _afraid_.'
+
+Then, after a pause--'Oh, to think that you may be suffering, sick at
+heart,--my poor darling--and that I can do nothing to ease your pain,
+may not be with you in your hour of anguish--may not even know that you
+have called me--_Mio Dio!_'
+
+There was a quiver of tears in her breaking voice. Andrea hung his head
+but did not speak.
+
+'To think that my spirit will follow you always, always, and yet that it
+may never, never mingle with yours, will never, never be understood by
+you!--Alas, poor love!'
+
+Her voice was full of tears and her mouth was drawn with pain.
+
+Ah, do not desert me--do not desert me!' cried the young man, seizing
+her two hands and half-kneeling at her feet, a prey to overwhelming
+excitement--'I will never ask anything of you--I want nothing but your
+pity. A little pity from you is more--far more--to me than passionate
+love from any other woman--you know it. Your hand alone can heal me, can
+bring me back to life, can raise me out of the slough into which I have
+sunk, give me back my faith and free me from the bondage of those
+shameful things that corrupt me and fill me with horror.
+Dear--dear--hands!'
+
+He bent over them and pressed his lips to them in a long kiss,
+abandoning himself with half-closed eyes to the utter sweetness of it.
+
+'I can feel you tremble,' he murmured in an indefinable tone.
+
+She rose abruptly, trembling from head to foot, giddy, paler still than
+on the morning when they walked together beneath the flower-laden trees.
+The wind still shook the panes; there was a dull clamour in the distance
+as of a riotous crowd. The shrill cries borne on the wind from the
+Quirinal increased her agitation.
+
+'Go, Andrea--please go--you must not stay here any longer. You shall see
+me some other time--whenever you like, but go now, I entreat you----'
+
+'Where shall I see you again?'
+
+'At the concert to-morrow--good-bye.'
+
+She was as perturbed and agitated as if she had been guilty of some
+grave fault. She accompanied him to the door of the room. When she found
+herself alone, she hesitated, not knowing what to do next, still under
+the sway of her terror. Her temples throbbed, her cheeks and her eyes
+burned with fierce intensity, while cold shivers ran through her limbs.
+But on her hands she still felt the pressure of that beloved mouth, a
+sensation so surpassingly sweet that she wished it might remain there
+for ever indelible like some divine impress.
+
+She looked about her. The light was fading, things looked shapeless in
+the shadows, the great Buddha gleamed with a weird pale light. The cries
+came up from the street fitfully. She went over to a window, opened it
+and leaned out. An icy wind blew through the street; in the direction of
+the Piazza dei Termini, they were already lighting the lamps. Across the
+way, at the Villa Aldobrandini, the trees swayed to and fro, their tops
+touched with a faint red glow. A huge crimson cloud hung solitary in the
+sky over the Torre delle Milizie.
+
+The evening struck her as strangely lugubrious. She withdrew from the
+window and seated herself again where she had just had her conversation
+with Andrea. Why had Delfina not returned yet? She earnestly desired to
+escape from her thoughts, and yet she weakly allowed herself to linger
+in the place where, only a few minutes ago, Andrea had breathed and
+spoken, had sighed out his love and his unhappiness. The struggles, the
+resolutions, the contrition, the prayers, the penances of four months
+had been wiped out, made utterly unavailing in one second of time, and
+she sank down more weary and vanquished than ever, without the will or
+the power to fight against the foes that beset her in her own heart,
+against the feelings that were upheaving her whole moral foundations.
+And while she gave way to the anguish and despair of a conscience which
+feels all its courage oozing from it, she still had the feeling that
+something of _him_ lingered in the shadows of the room and enveloped her
+with all the sweetness of a passionate caress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The next day, she arrived at the Palazzo dei Sabini, her heart beating
+fast under a bunch of violets.
+
+Andrea was looking out for her at the door of the concert-hall.
+
+'Thanks,' he said, and pressed her hand.
+
+He conducted her to a seat and sat down beside her.
+
+'I thought the anxiety of waiting for you would have killed me,' he
+murmured. 'I was so afraid you would not come. How grateful I am to you!
+Late last night,' he went on, 'I passed your house. There was a light in
+one window--the third looking towards the Quirinal--I would have given
+much to know if you were up there. Who gave you those violets?' he asked
+abruptly.
+
+'Delfina,' she answered.
+
+'Did Delfina tell you of our meeting this morning in the Piazza di
+Spagna?'
+
+'Yes--all.'
+
+The concert began with a Quartett by Mendelssohn. The hall was already
+nearly full, the audience consisting, for the most part, of foreign
+ladies--fair-haired women very quietly and simply dressed, grave of
+attitude, religiously silent, as in some sacred spot. The wave of music
+passing over these motionless heads spread out into the golden light, a
+light that filtered from above through faded yellow curtains and was
+reflected from the bare white walls. It was the old hall of the
+Philharmonic concerts. The whiteness of the walls was unbroken by any
+ornament, with only here and there a trace of former frescoes and its
+meagre blue portičres threatening to come down at any moment. It had
+all the air of a place that had been closed for a century and opened
+again that day for the first time. But just this faded look of age, the
+air of poverty, the nakedness of the walls lent a curious additional
+flavour to the exquisite enjoyment of the audience, making their delight
+seem more absorbing, loftier, purer by contrast. It was the 2nd of
+February; at Montecitorio the Parliament was disputing over the massacre
+of Dogali; the neighbouring streets and squares swarmed with the
+populace and with soldiers.
+
+Musical memories of Schifanoja came back to the lovers, a reflected
+gleam from those fair autumn days illumined their thoughts.
+Mendelssohn's Minuet called up before them a vision of the villa by the
+sea, of rooms filled with the perfume of the terraced garden, of
+cypresses lifting their dark heads into the soft sky, of flaming sails
+upon a glassy sea.
+
+Bending towards his companion, Andrea whispered softly: 'What are you
+thinking about?'
+
+With a smile so faint that he hardly caught it, she answered:
+
+'Do you remember the 22nd of September?'
+
+Andrea had no very clear recollection of this date, but he nodded his
+head.
+
+The Andante, calm, broad and solemn, dominated by a wonderful and
+pathetic melody, had ended in a sudden outburst of grief. The Finale
+lingered in a certain rhythmic monotony full of plaintive weariness.
+
+'Now comes your favourite Bach,' said Donna Maria.
+
+And when the music commenced they both felt an instinctive desire to
+draw closer to each other. Their shoulders touched; at the end of each
+part Andrea leant over her to read the programme which she held open in
+her hands, and in so doing pressed against her arm, inhaling the perfume
+of her violets, and sending a wild thrill of ecstasy through her. The
+Adagio rose with so exultant a song, soared with so jubilant a strain to
+the topmost summits of rapture, and flowed wide into the Infinite, that
+it seemed like the voice of some celestial being pouring out the joy of
+a deathless victory. The spirits of the audience were borne along on
+that irresistible torrent of sound. When the music ceased, the tremor of
+the instruments continued for a moment in the hearers. A murmur ran from
+one end of the hall to the other. A moment later and the applause broke
+forth vehemently.
+
+The lovers turned simultaneously and looked at one another with swimming
+eyes.
+
+The music continued; the light began to fade; a gentle warmth pervaded
+the air, and Donna Maria's violets breathed a fuller fragrance. Seeing
+nobody near him whom he knew, Andrea almost felt as if he were alone
+with her.
+
+But he was mistaken. Turning round in one of the pauses, he caught sight
+of Elena standing at the back of the hall with the Princess of
+Ferentino. Instantly their eyes met. As he bowed to her, he seemed to
+catch a singular smile on Elena's lips.
+
+'To whom are you bowing?' asked Donna Maria, turning round too, 'who are
+those ladies?'
+
+'Lady Heathfield and the Princess of Ferentino.'
+
+She noticed a tremor of annoyance in his voice.
+
+'Which of them is the Princess of Ferentino?'
+
+'The fair one.'
+
+'The other is very beautiful.'
+
+Andrea said nothing.
+
+'But is she English?' she asked again.
+
+'No, she is a Roman. She was the widow of the Duke of Scerni, and now
+married again to Lord Heathfield.'
+
+'She is very lovely.'
+
+'What is coming next?' Andrea asked hurriedly.
+
+'The Brahms Quartett in C minor.'
+
+'Do you know it?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'The second movement is marvellous.'
+
+He went on speaking to hide his embarrassment.
+
+'When shall I see you again?' he asked.
+
+'I do not know.'
+
+'To-morrow?'
+
+She hesitated. A cloud seemed to have come over her face.
+
+'To-morrow,' she answered, 'if it is fine I shall take Delfina to the
+Piazza di Spagna about twelve o'clock.'
+
+'And if it is not fine?'
+
+'On Saturday evening I shall be at the Countess Starnina's----'
+
+The music began once more. The first movement expressed a sombre and
+virile struggle, the Romance a memory full of passionate but sad desire,
+followed by a slow uplifting, faltering and tentative, towards the
+distant dawn. Out of this a clear and melodious phrase developed itself
+with splendid modulations. The sentiment was very different from that
+which animated Bach's Adagio; it was more human, more earthly, more
+elegiacal. A breath of Beethoven ran through this music.
+
+Andrea's nervous perturbation was so great that he feared every moment
+to betray himself. All his pleasure was embittered. He could not exactly
+analyse his discomfort; he could neither gather himself together and
+overcome it, nor put it away from him; he was swayed in turn by the
+charm of the music and the fascination exercised over him by each of
+these women without being really dominated by any of the three. He had a
+vague sensation as of some empty space, in which heavy blows perpetually
+resounded followed by dolorous echoes. His thoughts seemed to break up
+and crumble away into a thousand fragments, and the images of the two
+women to melt into and destroy one another without his being able to
+disconnect them or to separate his feeling for the one from his feeling
+for the other. And above all this mental disturbance was the anxiety
+occasioned by the immediate circumstances, by the necessity for adopting
+some practical line of action. Donna Maria's slight change of attitude
+had not escaped him, and he seemed to feel Elena's gaze riveted upon
+him. What course should he pursue? He could not make up his mind whether
+to accompany Donna Maria when she left the concert, or to approach
+Elena, nor could he determine where this incident would be favourable to
+him or otherwise with either of the ladies.
+
+'I am going,' said Donna Maria, rising at the end of the movement.
+
+'You will not wait till the end?'
+
+'No, I must be home by five o'clock.'
+
+'Do not forget--to-morrow morning----'
+
+She held out her hand. It was perhaps the air of the close room that
+sent a flush to her pale cheek. A velvet mantle of a dull leaden shade,
+with a deep border of chinchilla, covered her to her feet, and amid the
+soft gray fur the violets were dying exquisitely. As she passed out, she
+moved with such a queenly grace that many of the ladies turned to follow
+her with their eyes. It was the first time that in this spiritual
+creature, the pure Siennese Madonna, Andrea also beheld the elegant
+woman of the world.
+
+The third movement of the Quartett began. The daylight had diminished so
+much that the yellow curtains had to be drawn back. Several other ladies
+left. A low hum of conversation was audible here and there. The fatigue
+and inattention which invariably marks the end of a concert began to
+make itself apparent in the audience. By one of those strange and abrupt
+manifestations of moral elasticity, Andrea experienced a sudden sense of
+relief, not to say gaiety. In a moment, he had forgotten his sentimental
+and passionate pre-occupations, and all that now appealed to him--to his
+vanity, to his corrupt senses--was the licentious aspect of the affair.
+He thought to himself that in granting him these little innocent
+rendezvous, Donna Maria had already set her foot on the gentle downward
+slope of the path at the bottom of which lies sin, inevitable even to
+the most vigilant soul; he also argued that doubtless a little touch of
+jealousy would do much towards bringing Elena back to his arms and that
+thus the one intrigue would help on the other--was it not a vague fear,
+a jealous foreboding that had made Donna Maria consent so quickly to
+their next meeting? He saw himself, therefore, well on the way to a
+two-fold conquest, and he could not repress a smile as he reflected that
+in both adventures the chief difficulty presented itself under the same
+guise: both women professed a wish to play the part of sister to him; it
+was for him to transform these sisters in something closer. He remarked
+upon other resemblances between the two--That voice! How curiously like
+Elena's were some tones in Donna Maria's voice! A mad thought flashed
+through his brain. That voice might furnish him with the elements of a
+study of imagination--by virtue of that affinity, he might resolve the
+two fair women into one, and thus possess a third, imaginary, mistress,
+more complex, more perfect, more _true_ because she would be ideal----
+
+The third movement, executed in faultless style, finished in a burst of
+applause. Andrea rose and approached Elena--
+
+'Oh, there you are, Ugenta! Where have you been all this time?'
+exclaimed the Princess--'In the "pays du Tendre?"'
+
+'And your incognita?' asked Elena lightly as she pulled a bunch of
+violets out of her muff and sniffed them.
+
+'She is a great friend of my cousin Francesca's, Donna Maria Ferrčs y
+Capdevila, the wife of the new minister for Guatemala,' Andrea replied
+without turning a hair--'a beautiful creature and very cultivated--she
+was at Schifanoja with Francesca last September.'
+
+'And what of Francesca?' Elena broke in--'do you know when she is coming
+back?'
+
+'I had the latest news from her a day or two ago--from San Remo.
+Fernandino is better, but I am afraid she will have to stay on there
+another month at least, perhaps longer.'
+
+'What a pity!'
+
+The last movement, a very short one, began. Elena and the Princess
+occupied two chairs at the end of the room, against the wall under a dim
+mirror in which the melancholy hall was reflected. Elena listened with
+bent head, slowly drawing through her fingers the long ends of her boa.
+
+The concert over, she said to Sperelli: 'Will you see us to the
+carriage?'
+
+As she entered her carriage after the Princess, she turned to him
+again--'Won't you come too? We will drop Eva at the Palazzo Fiano, and I
+can put you down wherever you like.'
+
+'Thanks,' answered Andrea, nothing loath. On the Corso they were obliged
+to proceed very slowly, the whole roadway being taken up by a seething,
+tumultuous crowd. From the Piazza di Montecitorio and the Piazza Colonna
+came a perfect uproar that swelled and rose and fell and rose again,
+mingled with shrill trumpet-blasts. The tumult increased as the gray
+cold twilight deepened. Horror at the tragedy enacted in a far-off land
+made the populace howl with rage; men broke through the dense crowd
+running and waving great bundles of newspapers. Through all the clamour,
+the one word Africa rang distinctly.
+
+'And all this for four hundred brutes who had died the death of brutes!'
+murmured Andrea, withdrawing his head from the carriage window.
+
+'What are you saying!' cried the Princess.
+
+At the corner of the Chigi palace the commotion assumed the aspect of a
+riot. The carriage had to stop. Elena leaned forward to look out, and
+her face emerging from the shadows and lighted up by the glare of the
+gas and the reflection of the sunset seemed of a ghastly whiteness, an
+almost icy pallor, reminding Andrea of some head he had seen before, he
+could not say where or when--in some gallery or chapel.
+
+'Here we are,' said the Princess, as the carriage drew up at last at the
+Palazzo Fiano. 'Good-bye--we shall meet again at the Angelieris' this
+evening. Ugenta will come and lunch with us to-morrow? You will find
+Elena and Barbarella Viti and my cousin there----'
+
+'At what time?'
+
+'Half-past twelve.'
+
+'Thanks, I will.'
+
+The Princess got out. The footman stood at the carriage door awaiting
+further orders.
+
+'Where shall I take you?' Elena asked Sperelli, who had promptly taken
+the place of the Princess beside her.
+
+'Far, far away----'
+
+'Nonsense--tell me now,--home?' And without waiting for his answer she
+said--'To the Palazzo Zuccari, Trinitą de' Monti.'
+
+The footman closed the carriage door and they drove off down the Via
+Frattina leaving all the turmoil of the crowd behind them.
+
+'Oh, Elena--after so long----' Andrea burst out, leaning down to gaze
+at the woman he so passionately desired and who had shrunk away from him
+into the shadow as if to avoid his contact.
+
+The brilliant lights of the shop windows pierced the gloom in the
+carriage as they passed, and he saw on Elena's white face a slow
+alluring smile.
+
+Still smiling thus, with a rapid movement she unwound the boa from her
+neck and cast it over Andrea's head like a lasso, and with that soft
+loop, all fragrant with the same perfume he had noticed in the blue fox
+of her coat, she drew the young man towards her and silently held up her
+lips to his.
+
+Well did those two pairs of lips remember the rapture of by-gone days,
+those terrible and yet deliriously sweet meetings prolonged to anguish.
+They held their breath to taste the sweetness of that kiss to the full.
+
+Passing through the Via due Macelli the carriage drove up the Via dei
+Tritone, turned into the Via Sistina and stopped at the door of the
+Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+Elena instantly released her captive, saying rather huskily--
+
+'Go now, good-bye.'
+
+'When will you come?'
+
+'_Chi sa!_'
+
+The footman opened the door and Andrea got out. The carriage turned back
+to the Via Sistina and Andrea, still vibrating with passion, a veil of
+mist before his eyes, stood watching to see if Elena's face would not
+appear at the window; but he saw nothing. The carriage drove rapidly
+away.
+
+As he ascended the stairs to his apartment, he said to himself--'So she
+has come round at last!' The intoxication of her presence was still upon
+him, on his lips he still felt the pressure of her kiss, and in his eyes
+was the flash of the smile with which she had thrown that sort of smooth
+and perfumed snake about his neck. And Donna Maria?--Most assuredly it
+was to her he owed these unexpected favours. There was no doubt that at
+the bottom of Elena's strange and fantastic behaviour lay a decided
+touch of jealousy. Fearing perhaps that he was escaping her she sought
+thus to lure him back and rekindle his passion. 'Does she love me, or
+does she not?' But what did it matter to him one way or another? What
+good would it do him to know? The spell was broken irremediably. No
+miracle that ever was wrought could revive the least little atom of the
+love that was dead. The only thing that need occupy him now was the
+carnal body, and that was divine as ever.
+
+He indulged long in pleasurable meditation on this episode. What
+particularly took his fancy was the arch and graceful touch Elena had
+given to her caprice. The thought of the boa evoked the image of Donna
+Maria's coils, and so, confusedly, all the amorous fancies he had woven
+round that virginal mass of hair by which, once on a time, the very
+school-girls of the Florentine convent had been enthralled. And again he
+let his two loves melt into one and form the third--the Ideal.
+
+The musing mood still upon him while he dressed for dinner, he thought
+to himself--'Yesterday, a grand scene of passion almost ending in tears;
+to-day, a little episode of mute sensuality--and I seemed to myself as
+sincere in my sentiment yesterday as I was in my sensations to-day.
+Added to which, scarcely an hour before Elena's kiss, I had a moment of
+lofty lyrical emotion at Donna Maria's side. Of all this not one vestige
+remains. To-morrow, most assuredly I shall begin the same game over
+again. I am unstable as water; incoherent, inconsistent, a very
+chameleon! All my efforts towards unity of purpose are for ever vain. I
+must resign myself to my fate. The law of my being is comprised in the
+one word--_Nunc_--the will of the Law be done!'
+
+He laughed at himself, and from that moment began a new phase of his
+moral degradation.
+
+Without mercy, without remorse, without restraint, he set all his
+faculties to work to compass the realisation of his impure imaginings.
+To vanquish Maria Ferrčs he had recourse to the most subtle artifices,
+the most delicate machinations; taking care to deceive her in matters of
+the soul, of the spiritual, the ideal, the inmost life of the heart. In
+carrying on the two campaigns--the conquest of the new and the
+re-conquest of the old love--with equal adroitness, and in turning to
+the best advantage the chance circumstances of each enterprise, he was
+led into an infinity of annoying, embarrassing, and ridiculous
+situations, to extricate himself from which he was obliged to descend to
+a series of lies and deceptions, of paltry evasions, ignoble subterfuges
+and equivocal expedients. All Donna Maria's goodness and faith and
+single mindedness were powerless to disarm him. As the foundation of his
+work of seduction with her he had taken a verse from one of the
+Psalms:--_Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor--lavabis me et super nirem
+dealbabor_. And she, poor, hapless, devoted creature, imagined that she
+was saving a soul alive, redeeming an intellect, washing away by her own
+purity the stains that sin had left on him. She still believed
+implicitly in the ever-remembered words he had spoken to her in the
+park, on that Epiphany of Love, within sight of the sea; and it was just
+in this belief that she found comfort and support in the midst of the
+religious conflict that rent her conscience; this belief that blinded
+her to all suspicion and filled her with a soil of mystic intoxication
+wherein she opened the secret floodgates of her heart and let loose all
+her pent-up tenderness, and let the sweetest flowers of her womanhood
+blossom out resplendently.
+
+For the first time in his life, Andrea Sperelli found himself face to
+face with a _real_ passion--one of those rare and supreme manifestations
+of woman's capacity for love which occasionally flash their superb and
+terrible lightnings across the shifting gray sky of earthly loves. But
+he did not care a jot, and went on with the pitiless work which was to
+destroy both himself and his victim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The next day, according to their agreement at the concert, Andrea found
+Donna Maria in the Piazza di Spagna with Delfina, looking at the antique
+jewellery in a shop window. At the first sound of his voice she turned,
+and a bright flush stained the pallor of her cheek. Together they then
+examined the eighteenth-century jewels, the paste buckles and hair
+ornaments, the enamelled watches, the gold and ivory tortoise-shell
+snuff-boxes, all these pretty trifles of a by-gone day which afforded an
+impression of harmonious richness under the clear morning sun.
+Everywhere about them, the flower-sellers were offering yellow and white
+jonquils, double violets, and long branches of flowering almond. There
+was a breath of Spring in the air. The column of the Immaculate
+Conception rose lightly into the sunshine, like a flower stem with the
+_Rosa mystica_ on its summit; the Barcaccia glistened in a shower of
+diamonds, the stairway of the Trinitą opened its arms gaily towards the
+church of Charles VIII., the two towers of which stood out boldly
+against the blue cloud-flecked sky.
+
+'How exquisite!' exclaimed Donna Maria. 'No wonder you are so deeply
+enamoured of Rome!'
+
+'Oh, you don't know it yet,' Andrea replied, 'I wish I might be your
+guide'--she smiled--'and undertake a pilgrimage of sentiment with you
+this spring.'
+
+She smiled again, and her whole person assumed a less grave and
+chastened air. Her dress, this morning, had a quiet elegance about it,
+but revealed the refined taste of an expert in style and in the delicate
+combinations of colour. Her jacket, of a shade of gray inclining to
+green, was of cloth trimmed round the edge with beaver and opening over
+a vest of the same fur, the blending of the two tones--indefinable gray
+and tawny gold--forming a harmony that was a delight to the eye.
+
+'What did you do yesterday evening?' she asked.
+
+'I left the concert-hall a few minutes after you and went home; and I
+stayed there because I seemed to feel your spirit near me. I thought
+much. Did you not _feel_ my thought?'
+
+'No, I cannot say I did. I passed a very cheerless evening. I do not
+know why. I felt so dreadfully alone!'
+
+The Contessa di Lucoli passed in her dog-cart, driving a big roan.
+Giulia Moceto, accompanied by Musellaro, passed on foot, and then Donna
+Isotta Cellesi.
+
+Andrea bowed to each. Donna Maria asked him the names of the ladies.
+That of Giulia Moceto was not new to her. She recalled the day on which
+she heard Francesca mention it while looking at Perugino's Archangel
+Michael, when they were turning over Andrea's drawings at Schifanoja.
+She followed her curiously with her eyes, seized with a sudden vague
+fear. Everything connecting Andrea with his former life was distasteful
+to her. She wished that that life, of which she knew next to nothing,
+could be entirely wiped out of the memory of this man who had flung
+himself into it with such avidity and dragged himself out with so much
+weariness, so many losses, so many wounds--'To live solely in you and
+for you, with no to-morrow and no yesterday--without other bond or
+preference--far from the world----' Were not those his words to her?
+What a dream!
+
+Matters of very different import were troubling Andrea. It was fast
+approaching the Princess of Ferentino's lunch hour.
+
+'Where are you bound for?' he asked of his companion.
+
+'Wishing to make the most of the sunshine, Delfina and I had tea and
+sandwiches at Nazzari's and thought of going up to the Pincio and
+visiting the Villa Medici. If you would care to come with us----'
+
+He had a moment of painful hesitation. The Pincio, the Villa Medici, on
+a February afternoon--with her! But he could not well get out of the
+lunch; besides, he was desperately anxious to meet Elena again after
+yesterday's episode, for though he had gone to the Angelieris', she did
+not put in an appearance.
+
+He therefore answered with an inconsolable air--'How wretchedly
+unfortunate! I am obliged to be at a lunch in a quarter of an hour. I
+accepted the invitation a week ago, but if I had known, I would have
+found some way of getting out of it--What a nuisance!'
+
+'Oh, then you must go without losing a moment--you will be late.'
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+'I can walk a little further with you.'
+
+'Mamma, do let us go up the steps,' begged Delfina. 'I went up yesterday
+with Miss Dorothy. You should see it!'
+
+They turned back and crossed the square. A child followed them
+persistently, offering a great branch of flowering almond, which Andrea
+bought and presented to Delfina. Blonde ladies issued from the hotels
+armed with red Będekers; clumsy hackney coaches with two horses jogged
+past with a glint of brass on their oldfashioned harness; the
+flower-sellers thrust their overflowing baskets in front of the
+strangers, vociferating at the pitch of their voices.
+
+'Will you promise me,' Andrea said to Donna Maria, as they began to
+ascend the steps--'will you promise me not to go to the Villa Medici
+without me? Give it up for to-day--please do.'
+
+For a moment she seemed preoccupied by sad thoughts, then she answered:
+'Very well, I will give it up.'
+
+'Thanks!'
+
+Before them the great stairway rose triumphantly, its sun-warmed steps
+giving out a gentle heat, the stone itself having the polished gleam of
+old silver like that of the fountains at Schifanoja. Delfina ran on in
+front with her almond-branch and, caught by the breeze of her movement,
+some of its faint pink petals fluttered away like butterflies.
+
+A poignant regret pierced the young man's heart. He pictured to himself
+the delights of a sentimental walk through the quiet glades of the Villa
+Medici in the early hours of the sunny afternoon.
+
+'With whom do you lunch?' asked Donna Maria, after an interval of
+silence.
+
+'With the old Princess Alberoni,' he replied.
+
+He lied to her once more, for some instinct warned him that the name
+Ferentino might arouse some suspicion in Donna Maria's mind.
+
+'Good-bye, then,' she said, and held out her hand.
+
+'No--I will come up to the Piazza. My carriage is waiting for me there.
+Look--that is where I live,' and he pointed to the Palazzo Zuccari, all
+flooded with sunshine.
+
+Donna Maria's eyes lingered upon it.
+
+'Now there you have seen it, will you come there sometimes--in spirit?'
+
+'In spirit always.'
+
+'And shall I not see you before Saturday evening?'
+
+'I hardly think so.'
+
+They parted--she turning with Delfina into the avenue, Andrea jumping
+into his brougham and driving off down the Via Gregoriana.
+
+He arrived at the Ferentinos' a few minutes late. He made his apologies.
+Elena was already there with her husband.
+
+Lunch was served in a dining room gay with tapestries representing
+scenes after the manner of Peter Loar. In the midst of these beautiful
+seventeenth-century grotesques, a brisk fire of wit and sarcasm soon
+began to flash and scintillate. The three ladies were in high spirits
+and prompt at repartee. Barbare la Viti laughed her sonorous masculine
+laugh, throwing back her handsome boyish head and making free play with
+her sparkling black eyes. Elena was in a more than usually brilliant
+vein, and impressed Andrea as being so far removed from him, so
+unfamiliar, so unconcerned, that he almost doubted whether yesterday's
+scene had not been all a dream. Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of
+Ferentino aided and abetted the ladies; Lord Heathfield entertained his
+'young friend' by boring him to extinction with questions as to the
+coming sales and giving him minute details of a very rare edition of the
+_Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius--Roma, 1469--in folio, which he had acquired
+a day or two ago for fifteen hundred and twenty lire. He broke off every
+now and then to watch Barbarella, and then that gleam of dementia would
+flash into his eyes, and his repulsive hands trembled strangely.
+
+Andrea's irritation, disgust, and boredom at last reached such a pitch
+that he was unable to conceal his feelings.
+
+'You seem out of spirits, Ugenta,' said the princess.
+
+'Well, a little, perhaps--Miching Mallecho is ill.'
+
+Barbarisi at once overwhelmed him with importunate questions about the
+horse's ailments; and then Lord Heathfield recommenced the story of the
+_Metamorphoses_ from the beginning.
+
+The Princess turned to her cousin. 'What do you think, Ludovico,' she
+said with a laugh, 'yesterday, at the concert, we surprised him in a
+flirtation with an Incognita!'
+
+'So we did,' added Elena.
+
+'An Incognita?' exclaimed Ludovico.
+
+'Yes, but perhaps you can give us further information. She is the wife
+of the new Minister for Guatemala.'
+
+'Aha--I know.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'For the moment, I only know the Minister. I see him playing at the Club
+every night.'
+
+'Tell me, Ugenta, has she been received at court yet?'
+
+'I really do not know, Princess,' Andrea returned with some impatience.
+
+The whole business had become simply intolerable to him. Elena's gaiety
+jarred horribly on him, and her husband's presence was more odious than
+ever. But if he was out of temper, it was more with himself than with
+the rest of the company. At the root of his irritation lay a dim longing
+after the pleasure he had so lately rejected. Hurt and offended by
+Elena's indifference, his heart turned with poignant regret to the other
+woman, and he pictured her wandering pensive and alone through the
+silent avenues, more beautiful, more noble than ever before.
+
+The Princess rose and led the way into an adjoining room. Barbarella ran
+to the piano, which was entirely enveloped in an immense antique
+caparison of red velvet embroidered with dull gold, and began to sing
+Bizet's Tarantelle dedicated to Christine Nilsson. Elena and Eva leaned
+over her to read the music, while Ludovico stood behind them smoking a
+cigarette. The Prince had disappeared.
+
+But Lord Heathfield kept firm hold of Andrea. He had drawn him into a
+window and was discoursing to him on certain little Urbanese '_coppette
+amatorie_' which he had picked up at the Cavaliere Davila's sale, and
+the rasping voice with its aggravating interrogative inflections, the
+gestures with which he indicated the dimensions of the cups, and his
+glance--now dull and fishy, now keen as steel under the great prominent
+brow--in short, the whole man was so unendurably obnoxious to Andrea
+that he clenched his teeth convulsively like a patient under the
+surgeon's knife.
+
+His one absorbing thought was how to get away. His plan was to rush to
+the Pincio in the hope of finding Donna Maria and taking her, after all,
+to the Villa Medici. It was about two o'clock. He looked out of the
+window at the glorious sunshine; he turned back into the room, and saw
+the group of pretty women at the piano, bathed in the red glow struck
+out of the velvet cover by a strong golden ray. With this red glow the
+smoke of the cigarette mingled lightly as the talking and laughter
+mingled with the chords Barbarella Viti struck haphazard on the keys.
+Ludovico whispered a word or two in his cousin's ear, which the Princess
+forthwith communicated to her friends, for there was a renewed burst of
+laughter, ringing and deep, like a string of pearls dropping into a
+silver bowl. Then Barbarella took up Bizet's air again in a low voice--
+
+'Tra, la la--Le papillon s'est envolé--Tra, la la----'
+
+Andrea was anxiously on the watch for a favourable moment at which to
+interrupt Lord Heathfield's harangue and make his escape. But the
+collector had entered upon a series of rounded periods, each intimately
+connected with the other, without one break, without one pause for
+breath. A single stop would have saved the persecuted listener, but it
+never came, and the victim's torments grew more unbearable every minute.
+
+'Oui! Le papillon s'est envolé--Oui! Ah! ah! ah! ah!'
+
+Andrea looked at his watch.
+
+'Two o'clock already! Excuse me, Marquis, but I must go.'
+
+He left the window and went over to the ladies.
+
+'Will you excuse me, Princess, I have a consultation at two with the
+veterinary surgeons at my stables?'
+
+He took leave in a great hurry. Elena gave him the tips of her fingers,
+Barbarella presented him with _fondant_, saying--'Give it to poor
+Mallecho with my love.'
+
+Ludovico offered to accompany him.
+
+'No, no--stay where you are.'
+
+He bowed and left--flew down the stairs like lightning and jumped into
+his carriage, shouting to the coachman--
+
+'To the Pincio--quick!'
+
+He was filled with a frenzied longing to reach Maria Ferrčs' side, to
+enjoy the delights which he had refused before. The rapid pace of his
+horses was not quick enough for him. He looked out anxiously for the
+Trinitą de' Monti, the avenue--the gates.
+
+The carriage flashed through the gates. He ordered the coachman to
+moderate his pace and to drive through each of the avenues. His heart
+gave a bound every time the figure of a woman appeared in the distance
+through the trees. He got out and, on foot, explored the paths forbidden
+to vehicles. He searched every nook and corner--in vain.
+
+The Villa Borghese being open to the public, the Pincio lay deserted and
+silent under the languid smile of the February sun. Few carriages or
+foot-passengers disturbed the peaceful solitude of the place. The
+grayish-white trees, tinged here and there with violet, spread their
+leafless branches against a diaphanous sky, and the air was full of
+delicate spider-webs which the breeze shook and tore asunder. The pines
+and cypresses--all the evergreen trees--took on something of this
+colourless pallor, seemed to fade and melt into the all-prevailing
+monotone.
+
+Surely something of Donna Maria's sadness still lingered in the
+atmosphere. Andrea stood for several minutes leaning against the
+railings of the Villa Medici, crushed beneath a load of melancholy too
+heavy to be borne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In the days that followed, the double pursuit continued with the same
+tortures, or worse, and with the same odious mendacity. By a phenomenon
+which is of frequent occurrence in the moral degradation of men of keen
+intellect, he now had a terrible lucidity of conscience, a lucidity
+without interruptions, without a moment of dimness or eclipse. He knew
+what he was doing and criticised what he had done. With him self-scorn
+went hand in hand with feebleness of will.
+
+But his variable humour, his incertitude, his unaccountable silences and
+equally unaccountable effusions, in short, all the peculiarities of
+manner which such a condition of mind inevitably brings along with it,
+only increased and excited the passionate commiseration of Donna Maria.
+She saw him suffer, and it filled her with grief and tenderness. 'By
+slow degrees I shall cure him,' she thought. But slowly and surely,
+without being aware of it, she was losing her strength of purpose and
+was bending to the sick man's will.
+
+The downward slope was gentle.
+
+In the drawing-room of the Countess Starnina, an indefinable thrill ran
+through her when she felt Andrea's gaze upon her bare shoulders and
+arms. It was the first time he had seen her in evening dress. Her face
+and her hands were all he knew. This evening he saw how exquisite was
+the shape of her neck and shoulders and of her arms too, although they
+were a little thin.
+
+She was dressed in ivory-white brocade trimmed with sable. A narrow band
+of fur edged the low bodice and imparted an indescribable delicacy to
+the tints of the skin. The line of the shoulders, from the neck to the
+top of the arms, had that gracious slope which is such a sure mark of
+physical aristocracy and so rare nowadays. In her magnificent hair,
+arranged in the manner affected by Verocchio for his busts, there was
+not one jewel, not one flower.
+
+At two or three propitious moments, Andrea murmured words of passionate
+admiration in her ear.
+
+'This is the first time we have met in society,' he said to her. 'Give
+me a glove as a souvenir.'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Why not, Maria?'
+
+'No, no. Be quiet.'
+
+'Oh, those hands of yours! Do you remember when I copied them at
+Schifanoja? I feel as if I had a right to them; as if you ought to grant
+them to me; of your whole person they are the part that is most
+intimately connected with your soul, the most spiritualised, almost, one
+might say, the purest--Oh, hands of kindness--hands of pardon. How
+dearly I should love to possess at least a semblance of their form, some
+token to which their delicate perfume still clings. You will give me a
+glove before you leave?'
+
+She did not answer. The conversation dropped. A short time afterwards,
+on being asked to play, she consented, and drawing off her gloves laid
+them on the music-stand in front of her. Her fingers, tapering and
+glittering with rings, looked very white as she drew off their delicate
+covering. On the ring finger of her left hand blazed a great opal.
+
+She played the two Sonata-Fantasias of Beethoven (Op. 27). The one,
+dedicated to Giulietta Guicciardi, expressed a hopeless renunciation,
+told of an awakening after a dream that had lasted too long. The other,
+from the first bars of the _Andante_, described by its full smooth
+rhythm the calm that comes after the storm; then, passing through the
+disquietude of the second movement, opened out into an _Adagio_ of
+luminous serenity, and ended in an _Allegro Vivace_ in which there was a
+rising note of courage, almost of fervour.
+
+Though surrounded by an attentive audience, Andrea felt that she was
+playing for him alone. From time to time, his eyes wandering from the
+fingers of the pianist to the long gloves hanging from the music stand,
+which still retained the form of those hands, still preserved an
+inexpressible charm in the small opening at the wrist where, but a short
+time ago, a tiny morsel of her soft flesh had been visible.
+
+Maria rose amidst a round of applause. She left the piano, but she did
+not take away her gloves. Andrea was tempted to steal them.--Had she not
+perhaps left them for him?--But he only wanted one. As a connoisseur in
+amatory matters has said, a pair of gloves is a totally different thing
+from a single one.
+
+Led back to the piano by the insistence of the Countess Starnina, Maria
+removed her gloves from the desk and placed them in a corner of the
+keyboard, in the shadow. She then played Rameau's Gavotte--_the Gavotte
+of the Yellow Ladies_--the never-to-be-forgotten dance of Indifference
+and Love.
+
+Andrea regarded her fixedly with a little trepidation. When she rose,
+she took up one of her gloves. The other she left in the shadowy corner
+of the piano--for him.
+
+Three days afterwards, when astonished Rome had awakened to find itself
+under a covering of snow, Andrea received a note to the following
+effect--
+
+'_Tuesday, 2 p. m._--To-night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, you
+will wait for me in a carriage in front of the Palazzo Barberini,
+outside the gates. If by midnight I am not there, you can go away
+again.--_A stranger_.'
+
+The tone of the note was mysterious and romantic. Was it in remembrance
+of the 25th of March two years ago? Lady Heathfield seemed particularly
+fond of the use of carriages in her love affairs. Had she the intention
+of taking up the adventure at the point where it broke off? And why--_A
+stranger_? Andrea could not repress a smile. He had just come back from
+a visit to Maria--a very pleasing visit--and his heart inclined, for the
+moment, more to the Siennese than to the other. His ear still retained
+the sound of her sweet and gentle words as they stood together at the
+window and watched the snow falling soft as peach or apple blossom on
+the trees of the Villa Aldobrandini, already touched with the
+presentiment of the coming Spring. However, before going out to dinner,
+he gave very particular orders to Stephen.
+
+Eleven o'clock found him in front of the palace, devoured by impatience
+and curiosity. The novelty of the situation, the spectacle of the snowy
+night, the mystery and uncertainty of it all, inflamed his imagination
+and transported him beyond the realities of life.
+
+Over Rome, on that memorable February night, there shone a full moon of
+fabulous size and unheard of splendour. In that immense radiance, the
+surrounding objects seemed to exist only as in a dream, impalpable,
+meteoric, and visible at a great distance by virtue of some fantastic
+irradiation of their own. The snow covered the railings of the gateway,
+concealing the iron and transforming it into a piece of open-work, more
+frail and airy than filigree; while the white-robed Colossi supported it
+as oaks support a spider's web. The garden looked like a motionless
+forest of enormous and mis-shapen lilies all of ice; a garden under some
+lunar enchantment, a lifeless paradise of Selene. Mute, solemn and
+massive the Palazzo Barberini reared its great bulk into the sky, its
+most salient points standing out dazzlingly white and casting a pale
+blue shadow as transparent as light.
+
+He waited, leaning forward on the watch; and under the fascination of
+that marvellous spectacle, he felt the spirits that wait on love awake
+in him, that the lyric summits of his sentiment began to gleam and
+glitter like the frozen shafts of the gateway under the moon. But he
+could not make up his mind which of the two women he would prefer as the
+centre of this fantastic scenery: Elena Heathfield robed in imperial
+purple, or Maria Ferrčs robed in ermine. And as he lingered pleasurably
+over this uncertainty of choice, he ended by mingling and confounding
+his two anxieties--the real one for Elena and the imaginary one for
+Maria.
+
+A clock near by struck in the silence with a clear vibrating sound, and
+each stroke seemed to break something crystalline in the air. The clock
+of the Trinitą de' Monti responded to the call, and after that the clock
+of the Quirinal--then others faintly out of the distance. It was a
+quarter past eleven.
+
+Andrea strained his eyes towards the portico. Would she dare to traverse
+the garden on foot? He pictured the figure of Elena in the midst of all
+this dazzling whiteness, then, in an instant, that of Donna Maria
+appeared to him, obliterating the other, triumphant over the whiteness,
+_Candida super nivem_. This night of moonlight and snow then was under
+the dominance of Maria Ferrčs as under some invincible actual influence.
+The image of the pure creature grew symbolically out of the sovereign
+purity of the surrounding aspect of things. The symbol re-acted forcibly
+on the spirit of the poet.
+
+While still watching to see if the other one would come, he gave himself
+up to a vision suggested by the scene before him.
+
+It was a poetic, almost a mystic dream. He was waiting for Donna
+Maria--she had chosen this night of supernatural purity on which to
+sacrifice her own purity to her lover's desire. All the white things
+about her, cognisant of the great sacrifice about to be accomplished,
+were waiting to cry _Ave_ and _Amen_ at the passage of their sister. The
+silence was alive.
+
+And behold, she comes! _Incedit per lilia et super nivem._ She comes,
+robed in ermine; her tresses bound about with a fillet; her steps
+lighter than a shadow; the moon and the snow are less pale than
+she--_Ave_!
+
+A shadow, azure as the light that tints the sapphire, accompanies her.
+The great mis-shapen lilies bend not as she passes; the frost has
+congealed them, has made them like the asphodels that illumine the paths
+of Hades. And yet, like those of the Christian paradise, they have a
+voice and say with one accord--_Amen_.
+
+So be it--the Beloved glides on to the sacrifice. Already she nears the
+watcher sitting mute and icy, but whose eyes are burning and eloquent.
+And on her hands, the dear hands that close his wounds and open the
+doors of dreams, he presses his kiss.--So be it.
+
+Then on her lips, the dear lips that know no word of falseness, he lays
+his kiss. Released from the fillet, her hair spreads like a glorious
+flood in which all the shadows of the night put to flight by the moon
+and the snow seem to have taken refuge. _Comis suis obumbrabit tibi, et
+sub comis peccavit. Amen._
+
+And still the other did not come! Through the silence, through the
+poetry, the hours of men sounded again from the towers and belfries of
+Rome. A carriage or two rolled noiselessly past the Four Fountains
+towards the Piazza or crawled slowly up towards Santa Maria Maggiore;
+and each street-lamp shone yellow as a topaz in the light. It seemed as
+if the night, reaching its highest point, had grown more luminously
+radiant. The filigree of the gateway twinkled and flashed as if its
+silver embroideries were studded with jewels. In the palace, great
+circles of dazzling light shone on the windows like diamond florins.
+
+'What if she does not come?' thought Andrea to himself.
+
+The flood of lyric fervour that had passed over his soul at Maria's name
+had submerged the anxiety of his vigil, had appeased his desire and
+calmed his impatience. For a moment, the thought that she would not come
+only made him smile. But the next, the anguish of uncertainty began
+again worse than ever, and he was tortured by the vision of the joys
+that might have been his, here in the warm carriage where the roses
+breathed so sweet an atmosphere. Besides which, his sufferings were
+further increased, as on New Year's Eve, by a sharp touch of wounded
+vanity; it annoyed him particularly that his delicate preparations for a
+love scene should thus be wasted and useless.
+
+In the carriage, the cold was tempered by the pleasant warmth diffused
+by a metal foot-warmer, full of hot water. A bunch of white roses,
+snowy, moonlike, lay on the bracket in front of the seat. A white
+bear-skin covered his knees. Everything pointed to an intentional
+arrangement of a sort of _Symphonie en blanc-majeur_.
+
+The clocks struck for the third time. It was a quarter to twelve. The
+vigil had lasted too long--Andrea was growing tired and cross. In
+Elena's apartments, in the left wing of the palace, there was no light
+but that which came from outside. Was she coming? And if so, in what
+manner? Secretly? Under what pretext? Lord Heathfield was certainly in
+Rome--how would she explain her nocturnal absence? Once more the soul of
+the former lover was torn with curiosity; once more jealousy gnawed at
+his heart and carnal passion inflamed him. He thought of Musellaro's
+derisive suggestion about the husband, and he determined to have Elena
+again at all costs, both for pleasure and for revenge. Oh, if only she
+would come!
+
+A carriage drove through the gates and into the garden. He leaned
+forward to look at it. He recognised Elena's horses and caught a glimpse
+inside of the figure of a woman. The carriage disappeared into the
+portico. He remained perplexed. She had been out then? She had returned
+alone? He fixed a scrutinising gaze upon the portico. The carriage came
+out, passed through the garden and drove away towards the Via Rasella;
+it was empty.
+
+It wanted but two or three minutes to midnight and she had not come!
+
+It struck the hour. A bitter pang smote the heart of the deluded
+watcher. She was not coming.
+
+Unable to see any cause for her having missed the appointment he turned
+upon her in sudden anger; he even had a suspicion that she might have
+wished to inflict a humiliation, a punishment upon him, or else that she
+had merely indulged in a whim in order to inflame his desire afresh. The
+next moment he called to the coachman--
+
+'Piazza del Quirinale.'
+
+He yielded to the attraction of Maria Ferrčs; he abandoned himself once
+more to the vaguely tender sentiment which, ever since his visit in the
+afternoon, had left, as it were, a perfume in his soul and suggested to
+him thoughts and images of poetic beauty. The recent disappointment,
+proving, as he considered, Elena's malice and indifference, urged him
+more strongly than ever towards the love and goodness of the other. His
+regret for the loss of so beautiful a night increased, under the
+influence of the vision he had dreamed just now. And, truth to tell, it
+was one of the most enchanting nights Rome had ever known; one of those
+spectacles that oppress the human soul with deep sadness, because they
+transcend all power of admiration, all possibility of human expression.
+
+The Piazza del Quirinale, magnified by the all-pervading whiteness, lay
+spread out solitary and dazzling, like an Olympian acropolis above the
+silent city. The edifices surrounding it reared their stately
+proportions into the deep sky; Bernini's great portal to the royal
+palace surmounted by the loggia offered an optical delusion by seeming
+to detach itself from the building and stand out all alone in all its
+unwieldy magnificence, like some mausoleum sculptured out of a meteoric
+block of stone. The rich architraves to the Palazzo della Consulta were
+curiously transformed by the accumulated masses of snow. Sublime amidst
+the uniform whiteness, the colossal statues seemed to dominate all
+things. The grouping of the Dioscuri and the horses looked bolder and
+larger in that light; the broad backs of the steeds glittered under
+jewelled trappings, there was a sparkle as of diamonds on the shoulders
+and the uplifted arm of each demi-god.
+
+An august solemnity flowed from the monument. Rome lay plunged in a
+death-like silence, motionless, empty--a city under a spell. The houses,
+the churches, the spires and turrets, all the confusion and
+intermingling of Christian and Pagan architecture, resolved itself into
+one unbroken forest between the heights of the Janiculum and the Monte
+Mario, drowned in a silvery vapour, far off, infinitely immaterial,
+reminding one a little of a lunar landscape, calling up visions of some
+half extinct planet peopled by shades. The dome of St. Peter's, shining
+with a peculiar metallic lustre in the blue atmosphere looked gigantic
+and so close that one might have thought to touch it. And the two
+youthful Heroes, sons of the Swan, radiant with beauty in the vast
+expanse of whiteness as in the apotheosis of their origin, seemed to be
+the immortal Genii of Rome guarding the slumbers of the sacred city.
+
+The carriage stopped in front of the palace and remained there for a
+long time. The poet was once more absorbed in his impossible dream. And
+Maria Ferrčs was quite near, was perhaps watching and dreaming also,
+perhaps she too felt the grandeur of the night weighing upon her heart
+and crushing it in vain.
+
+Slowly the carriage passed her closed door, while the windows reflected
+the full moon gazing at the hanging gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini
+where the trees looked like aėrial miracles. And as he passed, the poet
+threw the bunch of roses on to the snow before Donna Maria's door in
+token of homage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+'I saw--I guessed--I had been at the window for a long time, unable to
+tear myself away from the fascination of all that whiteness. I saw the
+carriage pass slowly in the snow. I felt that it was you, before I saw
+you throw the roses. No words can describe to you the tenderness of my
+tears. I wept for you from love and for the roses out of pity. Poor
+roses! It seemed to me that they were alive and must suffer and die in
+the snow. I seemed to hear them call to me and lament like human
+creatures that have been deserted. As soon as your carriage had
+disappeared, I leaned out of the window to look at them. I was on the
+point of going down into the street to pick them up. But a servant was
+still in the hall waiting up for some one. I thought of a thousand plans
+but could find none that was practicable. I was in despair--You smile?
+Truly, I hardly know what madness had come over me. I watched the
+passers-by anxiously, my eyes full of tears. If any one of them had
+trodden on the roses, he would have trampled upon my heart. And yet in
+all this torment I was happy, happy in your love, in the delicacy of
+your passionate homage, in your gentleness, your kindness.--When, at
+last I fell asleep, I was sad and happy together; the roses must have
+been nearly dead by that time. After an hour or two of sleep, the sound
+of spades upon the pavement woke me up. They were shovelling away the
+snow just in front of my door. I listened; the noise and the voices
+continued till after daylight and filled me with unutterable
+sadness!--Poor roses! But they will always live and bloom in my heart.
+There are certain memories that can perfume a soul for ever--Do you
+love me very much, Andrea?'
+
+She hesitated for a moment, and then--'Do you love only me? Have you
+forgotten all the rest? Do all your thoughts belong to me?'
+
+Her breath came fast and she was trembling.
+
+'I suffer--at the thought of your former life,--the past of which I know
+nothing--of your memories, of all the marks left upon your soul, of that
+in you which I shall never understand never possess. Oh, if I could but
+wipe it all out for you! Incessantly, Andrea, I hear your first, your
+very first words. I believe I shall hear them at the moment of my
+death----'
+
+She panted and trembled, shaken by the force of all-conquering passion.
+
+'Every day I love you more, every day more!'
+
+He intoxicated her with words of honied sweetness; he was more fervent
+than herself; he told her of his visions in the night of snow and of his
+despairing desire and some plausible story of the roses and a thousand
+other lyric fancies. He judged her to be on the point of yielding--he
+saw her eyes swim in melting languor, and on her plaintive mouth that
+nameless contraction which seems like an instinctive dissimulation of
+the physical desire to kiss; he looked at her hands, so delicate and yet
+so strong, the hands of an archangel, and saw them trembling like the
+strings of an instrument expressing all the anguish of her soul. 'If,
+to-day, I could succeed in stealing even the most fleeting kiss from
+her,' he thought, 'I should find myself considerably nearer the goal of
+my desires.'
+
+But, conscious of her peril, she rose hastily with an apology and,
+ringing the bell, ordered tea and sent to ask Miss Dorothy to bring
+Delfina to the drawing-room.
+
+'It is better so,' she said, turning to Andrea with the traces of her
+agitation still visible in her face; 'forgive me!'
+
+And from that day she avoided receiving him except on Tuesday and
+Saturday when she was at home to every one.
+
+Nevertheless, she allowed Andrea to conduct her on long peregrinations
+through the Rome of the Emperors and the Rome of the Popes, through the
+villas, the museums, the churches, the ruins. Where Elena Muti had
+passed, there Maria Ferrčs passed also. Often enough, the sights they
+visited suggested to the poet the same eloquent effusions which Elena
+had once heard. Often enough, some recollection carried him away
+suddenly from the present and disturbed him strangely.
+
+'What are you thinking of at this moment?' Donna Maria would ask him,
+looking him deep in the eyes with a shade of suspicion.
+
+'Of you--always of you!' he answered. 'I am sometimes seized with
+curiosity to look into my own soul to see if there remains one tiny
+particle that does not belong to you, one smallest corner still closed
+to your light It is an exploration made for you, as you cannot make it
+for yourself. I may say with truth, Maria, that I have nothing more to
+give you. You have absolute dominion over me. Never, I think, in spirit
+has one human being possessed another so entirely. If my lips were to
+meet yours my whole life would be absorbed in yours--I believe I should
+die of it.'
+
+She had full faith in his words, for his voice lent them the fire of
+truth.
+
+One day, they were in the Belvedere of the Villa Medici and were
+watching the gold of the sun fade slowly from the sky while the Villa
+Borghese, still bare and leafless, sank gently into a violet mist.
+Touched with sudden melancholy she said:
+
+'Who knows how many times you have come here to feel yourself beloved?'
+
+'I do not know,' he answered, like a man lost in a dream, 'I do not
+remember. What are you saying?'
+
+She was silent. Then she rose to read the inscriptions written on the
+pillars of the little temple. They were, for the most part, written by
+lovers, by newly-married couples, by solitary dreamers. All expressed
+some sentiment of love, grave or gay; they sang the praises of a beauty
+or mourned a lost delight; they told of some burning kiss or ecstasy of
+languor; they thanked the ancient wooded glades that had sheltered their
+love, pointed out some secret nook to the happy visitor of the morrow,
+described the lingering charms of a sunset they had watched. All of
+them, whether lovers or married, under the fascination of the eternal
+feminine had been seized with lyric fervour in this little lonely
+Belvedere to which they ascended by a flight of steps carpeted with moss
+as thick as velvet. The very walls spoke. An indefinable melancholy
+emanated from these unknown voices of vanished lovers, a sadness that
+seemed almost sepulchral, as if they had been epitaphs in a chapel.
+
+Suddenly Maria turned to Andrea. 'You have been here too,' she said.
+
+'I do not know,' he answered again, looking at her in the same dreamy
+way as before, 'I do not remember. I remember nothing. I love you.'
+
+She read, written in Andrea's hand, an epigram of Goethe's, a distich,
+the one beginning--_Sage, wie lebst du?_ Say, how livest thou? _Ich
+lebe!_ I live! 'And were it mine to live a hundred, hundred years, my
+only wish would be that to-morrow should be as to-day.' Underneath this
+there was a date: _Die ultima februarii_ 1885, and a name: _Helena
+Amyclę_.
+
+'Let us go,' she said.
+
+The canopy of branches cast deep shadows over the little moss-carpeted
+stairway.
+
+'Will you take my arm?' he asked.
+
+'No, thank you,' she replied.
+
+They went on in silence. The heart of each was heavy.
+
+Presently she said--'You were very happy two years ago.'
+
+And he, persisting in his tone of reverie--'I do not know--I do not
+remember.'
+
+In the green twilight, the path was mysterious. The trunks and branches
+of the trees were coiled and interlaced like serpents; here and there a
+leaf gleamed through the shade like an emerald green eye.
+
+After an interval of silence, she began again--'Who was that Elena?'
+
+'I do not know, I have forgotten. I remember nothing but that I love
+you. I love none but you. I think only of you. I live for you alone. I
+know nothing, I wish for nothing but your love. Every fetter that binds
+me to my former life is broken. Now I am far from the world, utterly
+lost in you. I live in your heart and in your soul; I _feel myself_ in
+every throb of your pulse; I do not touch you, and yet I am as close to
+you as if I held you in my arms, pressed to my lips, to my heart. I love
+you and you love me; and that has been for ages and will last for ages,
+to all eternity. At your side, thinking of you, living in you, I am
+conscious of the infinite--the eternal--I love you and you love me. I
+know nothing else--I remember nothing else.'
+
+On all her sadness, all her suspicions, he poured out a flood of warm
+fond eloquence. And she listened, standing straight and slender in front
+of the balustrade that runs round the wide terrace.
+
+'Is it true? is it true?' she repeated, in a faint voice like the echo
+of a moan out of the depth of her soul--'is that true?'
+
+'Yes, it is true--and that alone is true. All the rest is a dream. I
+love you and you love me. I am yours as you are mine. I know you to be
+so absolutely mine that I ask for no caress; I ask for no proof of your
+love. I can wait. My dearest delight is to obey you. I ask for no
+caresses, but I can feel them in your voice, in your eyes, your
+attitudes, your slightest movement. All that comes to me from you
+intoxicates me like a kiss, and when I touch your hand I know not which
+is greater, the rapture of my senses or the exaltation of my soul.'
+
+He lightly laid his hand on hers. She trembled, drawn by a wild desire
+to throw herself upon his breast to offer him, at last, her lips, her
+kiss, herself. It seemed to her--for she believed blindly in Andrea's
+words--that by so doing, she would bind him to her finally with an
+indissoluble bond. She felt that she was going to swoon, to die. It was
+as if the tumults of passion from which she had already suffered swelled
+her heart and increased the present storm; as if, into this one moment
+of time were gathered all the varying emotions she had experienced since
+she first knew this man. The roses of Schifanoja bloomed again among the
+shrubs and laurels of the Villa Medici.
+
+'I shall wait, Maria. I shall be true to my promises. I ask nothing of
+you. I wait and look forward to the supreme moment. That moment will
+come, I know it, for the power of love is invincible. And all your
+fears, all your terrors will vanish; and the communion of the body will
+seem to you as pure as the communion of the soul; for all flames are
+alike in purity.'
+
+He clasped Maria's ungloved hand in his. The gardens seemed deserted.
+From the palace of the Accademia came not a sound, not a voice. Clear
+through the silence, they heard the lisp of the fountain in the middle
+of the esplanade; the avenues stretched away towards the Pincio,
+straight and rigid as if enclosed between two walls of bronze, upon
+which the gilding of the sunset still lingered; the absolute immobility
+of all things suggested the idea of a petrified labyrinth; the reeds
+round the basin of the fountain were not less motionless than the
+statues.
+
+'I feel,' said Donna Maria, half-closing her eyes, 'as if I were on one
+of the terraces at Schifanoja--far, far away from Rome--alone--with you.
+When I shut my eyes, I see the sea.'
+
+Born of her love and of the silence, she saw a vision rise up before her
+and spread wide under the setting sun. Andrea's gaze was upon her; she
+said no more, but she smiled faintly. As she uttered the two
+words--'with you'--she closed her eyes, but her mouth seemed suddenly to
+grow luminous as if on it were concentrated all the splendour veiled by
+her quivering lids and her eyelashes.
+
+'I feel as if none of these things existed outside of my consciousness,
+but that you had created them in my soul, for my delight. I am
+profoundly affected with this illusion each time I stand before some
+spectacle of beauty and you are at my side.'
+
+The words came slowly, with pauses in between, as if her voice were the
+halting echo of some other voice imperceptible to the senses, imparting
+to her words a singular accent, a tone of mystery, revealing that they
+proceeded from the innermost depths of her heart; they were no longer
+the ordinary imperfect symbols of thoughts, they were transformed into a
+more intense means of expression, transcendant, quivering with life, of
+infinitely ampler signification.
+
+    'And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
+      Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
+    Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops
+      Of planetary music heard in trance.'
+
+Andrea thought of Shelley's lines. He repeated them to Maria, feeling
+the contagion of her emotion, penetrated by the charm of the hour and
+the scene.
+
+'Never, in my hours of loftiest spiritual flights, have I attained to
+such heights. You lift yourself above my sublimest dream, shine
+resplendent above my most radiant thoughts; you illumine me with a ray
+that is almost brighter than I can bear.'
+
+She stood up straight and slender against the balustrade, her hands
+clasping the stone, her head high, her face more pallid than on the
+memorable morning when they walked beneath the flowering trees. Tears
+filled her half-closed eyes and glittered upon her lashes, and as she
+gazed before her, she saw the sky all rosy-red through the mist of her
+tears.
+
+The sky seemed to rain roses as on that evening in October when the sun,
+sinking behind the hill at Rovigliano, lit up the deep pools in the
+pine-wood. The Villa Medici, eternally green and flowerless, received
+upon the tops of its rigid arboreal walls this gentle rain of
+innumerable petals showered down from the celestial gardens.
+
+She turned to go down. Andrea followed her. They walked in silence
+towards the stairway; they looked at the wood that stretched between the
+terrace and the Belvedere. The light seemed to stop short at the
+entrance to it, where stood the two guardian statues, unable to pierce
+the further gloom; and the trees looked as if they spread their branches
+in a different atmosphere, or rather in some dark waters at the bottom
+of the sea, like giant marine plants.
+
+She was seized with sudden terror. Hastening towards the steps, she ran
+down five or six and then stopped, dazed and panting. Through the
+silence, she heard the beating of her heart like the roll of distant
+thunder. The Villa Medici was no longer in sight; the stairway was
+enclosed between two walls, damp and gray and with grass growing in the
+cracks, gloomy as a subterranean dungeon. She saw Andrea lean down
+swiftly to kiss her on the lips.
+
+'No, no, Andrea--no!'
+
+He stretched out his hands to draw her to him, to hold her fast.
+
+'No!'
+
+Wildly she seized one of his hands and carried it to her lips; she
+kissed it twice--thrice, with frenzied passion. Then she fled down the
+steps to the gate like a mad creature.
+
+'Maria! Maria! Stop!'
+
+They stood together before the closed gate, pale, panting, shaken,
+trembling from head to foot, gazing at one another with wide distraught
+eyes, their ears filled with the throb of their mad pulses, a sense of
+choking in their throats. Then suddenly, with one impulse, they were in
+each other's arms, heart to heart, lips to lips.
+
+'Enough--you are killing me,' she murmured, leaning, half fainting,
+against the gateway, with a gesture of supreme entreaty.
+
+For a moment, they stood facing one another without touching. All the
+silence of the Villa seemed to weigh upon them in this narrow spot
+enclosed in its high walls like an open tomb. High above them sounded
+the hoarse cawing of the rooks gathering on the roofs of the palaces or
+crossing the sky. Once more, a strange fear possessed Maria's heart. She
+cast a terror-stricken glance up at the top of the walls. Then, with a
+visible effort she said quickly:
+
+'We can go now; will you open the gate!'
+
+And, in her uncontrollable haste to get away, her hand met Andrea's on
+the latch of the gate.
+
+As she passed between the two granite columns and under the jasmin,
+Andrea said--'Look, the jasmin is just going to blossom!'
+
+She did not turn but she smiled--a smile that was infinitely sad because
+of the shadow cast upon her heart by the sudden recollection of the name
+she had read in the Belvedere. And while she walked through the
+mysterious gloom of the avenue, and she felt his kiss flame in her
+blood, a ruthless torture graved deep into her heart, that name--oh,
+that name!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Lord Heathfield opened the great book-case containing his private
+collection, and turning to Sperelli--
+
+'You should design the clasps for this volume,' he said; 'it is in
+quarto and dated from Lampsacus, 1734. The engravings seem to me
+extremely fine. What do you think?'
+
+He handed Andrea the rare volume, which was illustrated with erotic
+vignettes.
+
+'Here is a very notable figure,' he continued, pointing to one of the
+vignettes--'something that was quite new to me. None of my erotic
+authors mention it.'
+
+He talked incessantly, discussing each detail and following the lines of
+the drawing with a flabby white finger, covered with hairs on the first
+joint and ending in a polished, pointed nail, a little livid like the
+nail of an ape. His voice grated hideously on Sperelli's ear.
+
+'This Dutch edition of Petronius is magnificent. And here is the
+_Erotopoegnion_ printed in Paris, 1798. Do you know the poem
+attributed to John Wilkes, _An Essay on Women_? This is an edition of
+1763.'
+
+The collection was very complete. It comprised all the most infamous,
+the most refinedly sensual works that the human mind has produced in the
+course of centuries to serve as a commentary to the ancient hymn in
+honour of the god of Lampsacus, _Salve! Sancte pater._
+
+The collector took the books down from their shelves and showed them in
+turn to his 'young friend,' never pausing in his discourse. His hands
+grew caressing as he touched each volume bound in priceless leather or
+material. A subtle smile played continually round his lips, and a gleam
+as of madness flashed from time to time into his eyes.
+
+'I also possess a first edition of the Epigrams of Martial--the Venice
+one, printed by Windelin of Speyer, in folio. This is it. The clasps are
+by a master hand.'
+
+Sperelli listened and looked in a sort of stupor that changed by degrees
+into horror and distress. His eyes were continually drawn to a portrait
+of Elena hanging on the wall against the red damask background.
+
+'That is Elena's portrait by Frederick Leighton. But now, look at this!
+The frontispiece, the headings, the initial letters, the marginal
+ornaments combine all that is most perfect in the matter of erotic
+iconography. Look at the clasps!'
+
+The binding was exquisite. Shark-skin, wrinkled and rough as that which
+surrounds the hilts of Japanese sabres covered the sides and back; the
+clasps and bosses, of richly silvered bronze, were chased with
+consummate elegance, and were worthy to rank with the best work of the
+sixteenth century.
+
+'The artist, Francis Redgrave, died in a lunatic asylum. He was a young
+genius of great promise. I have all his studies. I will show them to
+you.'
+
+The collector warmed to his subject. He went away to fetch the portfolio
+from the next room. His gait was somewhat jerky and uncertain, like that
+of a man who already carries in his system the germ of paralysis, the
+first touch of spinal disease; his body remained rigid without following
+the movement of his limbs, like the body of an automaton.
+
+Andrea Sperelli followed him with his eyes till he crossed the threshold
+of the room. The moment he was alone, unspeakable anguish rent his soul.
+This room, hung with dark-red damask, exactly like the one in which
+Elena had received him two years ago, seemed to him tragic and sinister.
+These were, perhaps, the very same hangings that had heard Elena say to
+him that day, 'I love you.' The book-case was open, and he could see the
+rows of obscene books, the bizarre bindings stamped with symbolic
+decorations. On the wall hung the portrait of Lady Heathfield side by
+side with a copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Nelly O'Brien. And the two
+women looked out of the canvas with the same, self-same piercing
+intensity, the same glow of passion, the same flame of sensual desire,
+the same marvellous eloquence; each had a mouth that was ambiguous,
+enigmatical, sibylline, the mouth of the insatiable absorber of souls;
+and each had a brow of marble whiteness, immaculately, radiantly pure.
+
+'Poor Redgrave!' said Lord Heathfield, returning with the portfolio of
+drawings. 'There was a genius for you. There never was an erotic
+imagination to equal his. Look! look! What style! What profound
+knowledge of the potentialities of the human figure for expression.'
+
+He left Andrea's side for a moment in order to close the door. Then he
+returned to the table in the window and began turning over the
+collection under Sperelli's eyes, talking without a pause, pointing out
+with that ape-like finger the peculiar characteristics of each figure.
+
+He spoke in his own language, beginning each sentence with an
+interrogative intonation and ending with a monotonous irritating drop of
+the voice. Certain words lacerated Andrea's ear like the sound of filing
+iron or the shriek of a steel knife over a pane of glass.
+
+And the drawings passed in review before him, appalling pictures which
+revealed the terrible fever that had taken hold upon the artist's hand,
+and the terrible madness that possessed his brain.
+
+'Now here,' said Lord Heathfield, 'is the work which inspired these
+masterpieces. A priceless book--rarest of the rare! You are not
+acquainted with Daniel Maclisius?'
+
+He handed Andrea the treatise: _De verberatione amatoria_. He had warmed
+more and more to his subject. His bald temples were flushed, and the
+veins stood out on his great forehead; every minute his mouth twitched a
+little convulsively and his hands, those detestable hands, were
+perpetually on the move, while his arms retailed their paralytic
+immobility. The unclean beast in him appeared in all its brazen
+ugliness and ferocity.
+
+'Mumps! Mumps! are you alone?'
+
+It was Elena's voice. She knocked softly at one of the doors.
+
+'Mumps!'
+
+Andrea started violently; the blood rushed to his head and drew a veil
+of mist before his eyes, and there was a roar in his ears as if he were
+going to be seized with vertigo. In the midst of the fever of excitement
+into which he had been thrown by these books, these pictures, the
+maddening discourses of his host, a furious instinct rose out of the
+blind depths of his being, the same brutal impetus which he had already
+experienced on the race-course after his victory over Rutolo amid the
+acrid exhalations of his steaming horse. The phantasm of a crime of love
+tempted and beckoned to him: to kill this man, take the woman by force,
+wreak his brutal will upon her, and then kill himself. But it passed
+rapidly as it had come.
+
+'No, I am not alone,' answered the husband, without opening the door.
+'In a few minutes I shall have the pleasure of bringing Count Sperelli
+to you--he is here with me.'
+
+He replaced the book in the book-case, closed the portfolio and carried
+it back into the next room.
+
+Andrea would have given all he possessed not to have to undergo the
+ordeal that awaited him, and yet it attracted him strangely. Once more,
+he raised his eyes to the crimson wall and the dark frame out of which
+Elena's pallid face looked forth, that face with the haunting eyes and
+the sibylline mouth. A penetrating and continuous fascination emanated
+from that imperious image. That strange pallor dominated tragically the
+whole crimson gloom of the apartment. And once again he felt that his
+miserable passion was incurable.
+
+'Will you come into the drawing-room?' asked the husband, reappearing in
+the doorway perfectly calm and composed. 'Then, you will design those
+clasps for me?'
+
+'I will try,' answered Andrea.
+
+He was quite unable to control his inward agitation. Elena looked at him
+with a provocative smile.
+
+'What were you doing in there?' she asked him, still smiling in the same
+manner.
+
+'Your husband was showing me some unique curiosities.'
+
+'Ah!'
+
+There was a sardonic sneer upon her lips, a manifest mocking scorn in
+her voice. She settled herself on a wide divan covered with a Bokhara
+carpet of faded amaranthine hues on which languished great cushions
+embroidered with spreading palms of dull gold. Here she leaned back in
+an easy, graceful attitude, and gazed at Andrea from under her drooping
+eyelids, while she spoke of trivial society matters in a voice that
+insinuated its tones into the young man's heart, and crept through his
+blood like an invisible fire.
+
+Two or three times, he surprised a look which Lord Heathfield fixed upon
+his wife--a look that seemed surcharged with all the infamies he had
+stirred up just now. Again that criminal thought sped through his mind.
+He trembled in every fibre of his being. He started to his feet, livid
+and convulsed.
+
+'Going already?' exclaimed Lord Heathfield. 'Why, what is the matter?'
+and he smiled a singular smile at his 'young friend.' He knew well the
+effect of his books.
+
+Sperelli bowed. Elena gave him her hand without rising. Her husband
+accompanied him to the door, where he repeated in a low voice--'You
+won't forget those clasps?'
+
+As Andrea stood in the portico, he saw a carriage coming up the drive. A
+man with a great golden beard nodded to him from the window. It was
+Galeazzo Secinaro.
+
+In a flash, the recollection of the May Bazaar came back to him, and the
+episode of Galeazzo offering Elena a sum of money if she would dry her
+beautiful hands, all wet with champagne, on his beard. He hurried
+through the garden and out into the street. He had a dull confused sense
+as of some deafening noise going on inside his head.
+
+It was an afternoon at the end of April, warm and moist.
+
+The sun appeared and disappeared again among the fleecy slow-sailing
+clouds. The languor of the sirocco lay over Rome.
+
+On the pavement in front of him in the Via Sistina, he perceived a lady
+walking slowly in the direction of the Trinitą. He recognised her as
+Donna Maria Ferrčs. He looked at his watch; it was on the stroke of
+five; only a minute or two before the accustomed hour of meeting. Maria
+was assuredly on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+He hastened forward to join her. When he reached her side, he called her
+by name.
+
+She started violently. 'What? You here? I was just going up to you. It
+is five o'clock.'
+
+'It wants a minute or two yet to the hour. I was hurrying on to receive
+you. Forgive me.'
+
+'But you seem quite upset and very pale. Where were you coming from?'
+
+She frowned slightly, regarding him fixedly through her veil.
+
+'From my stables,' Andrea replied, meeting her look unblushingly as
+though he had not a drop of blood left to send to his face. 'A horse
+that I thought a great deal of has been hurt in the knee--the fault of
+the jockey--and now it will not be able to run in the Derby on Sunday.
+It has annoyed and upset me very much. Please forgive me, I over-stayed
+the time without noticing it. But it is still a few minutes to five.'
+
+'It does not matter. Good-bye. I am going back.'
+
+They had reached the Piazza del Trinitą. She stopped and held out her
+hand. A furrow still lingered between her brows. With all her great
+sweetness of temper, she occasionally had moments of angry impatience
+and petulancy that seemed to transform her into another creature.
+
+'No, Maria--come, be kind! I am going up now to wait for you. Go on as
+far as the gates of the Pincio and then come back. Will you?'
+
+The clock of the Trinitą de' Monti begun to strike.
+
+'You hear that?' he added.
+
+She hesitated for a moment.
+
+'Very well, I will come.'
+
+'Thank you so much! I love you.'
+
+'And I love you.'
+
+They parted.
+
+Donna Maria went on across the piazza and into the avenue. Over her
+head, the languid breath of the sirocco sent a broken murmur through the
+green trees. Subtle waves of perfume rose and fell upon the warm, damp
+breeze. The clouds seemed lower; the swallows skimmed close to the
+ground; and in the languorous heaviness of the air there was something
+that melted the passionate heart of the Siennese.
+
+Ever since she had yielded to Andrea's persuasions, her heart had been
+filled with a happiness that was deeply fraught with fear. All her
+Christian blood was on fire with the hitherto undreamed-of raptures of
+her passion, and froze with terror at her sin. Her passion was
+all-conquering, supreme, immense, so despotic that for hours sometimes
+it obliterated all thought of her child. She went so far as to forget,
+to neglect Delfina! And afterwards, she would have a sudden access of
+remorse, of repentance, of tenderness, in which she covered the
+astonished little girl's face with tears and kisses, sobbing in horrible
+despair as over a corpse.
+
+Her whole being quickened at this flame, grew keener, more acute,
+acquired a marvellous sensibility, a sort of clairvoyance, a faculty of
+divination which caused her endless torture. Hardly a deception of
+Andrea's but seemed to send a shadow across her spirit; she felt an
+indefinite sense of disquietude which sometimes condensed itself into a
+suspicion. And this suspicion would gnaw at her heart, embittering
+kisses and caresses, till it was dissipated by the transports and ardent
+passion of her incomprehensible lover.
+
+She was jealous. Jealousy was her implacable tormentor; not jealousy of
+the present but of the past. With the cruelty that jealous people
+exercise against themselves, she would have wished to read the secrets
+of Andrea's memory, to find the traces left there by former mistresses,
+to know--to know--. The question that most often rose to her lips if
+Andrea seemed moody and silent was, 'What are you thinking about?' And
+yet, at the very moment of asking the question, a shadow would cross her
+eyes and her spirit, an inevitable rush of sadness would rise out of her
+heart.
+
+To-day again, when he turned up so unexpectedly in the street, had she
+not had an instinctive movement of suspicion? With a flash of lucidity,
+the idea had leapt into her mind that Andrea was coming from the Palazzo
+Barberini, from Lady Heathfield.
+
+She knew that Andrea had been this woman's lover; she knew that her name
+was Elena; she knew also that she was the Elena of the inscription--'Ich
+lebe!' Goethe's distich rang painfully in her heart. That lyric cry gave
+her the measure of Andrea's love for this most beautiful woman. He must
+have loved her boundlessly!
+
+Walking slowly under the trees, she recalled Elena's appearance in the
+concert-hall and the ill-disguised uneasiness of the old lover. She
+remembered her own terrible agitation one evening at the Austrian
+Embassy when the Countess Starnina said to her, seeing Elena pass
+by--'What do you think of Lady Heathfield? She was, and is still, I
+fancy, a great flame of our friend Sperelli's.'
+
+'Is still, I fancy.' What tortures in a single sentence! She followed
+her rival persistently with her eyes through the throng, and more than
+once her gaze met that of the other, sending a nameless shiver through
+her. Later on in the evening, when they were introduced to one another
+by the Baroness Bockhorst, in the middle of the crowd, they merely
+exchanged an inclination of the head. And that perfunctory salutation
+had been repeated on the rare occasions on which Maria Ferrčs had joined
+in any social function.
+
+Why should these doubts and suspicions, beaten down and stifled under
+the flood of her passion, rise up again now with so much vehemence? Why
+had she not the strength to repress them or put them away from her
+altogether? The least touch brought them up to the surface as lively as
+ever.
+
+Her distress and unhappiness increased with every moment. Her heart was
+not satisfied; the dream that had risen up within her on that mystical
+morning under the flowering trees in sight of the sea, had not come
+true. All that was purest and fairest in that love had remained down
+there in the sequestered glades in the symbolical forest that bloomed
+and bore fruit perpetually in contemplation of the Infinite.
+
+She stood and leaned against the parapet that looks towards San
+Sebastianello. The ancient oaks, their foliage so dark as almost to seem
+black, spread a sombre artificial roof over the fountain. There were
+great rents in their trunks filled up with bricks and mortar like the
+breaches in a wall. Oh, the young arbutus-trees all radiant and
+breathing in the light! The fountain, dripping from the higher into the
+lower basin, moaned at intervals, like a heart that fills with anguish
+and then overflows in a torrent of tears; oh, the melody of the Hundred
+Fountains in the laurel avenue! The city lay as dead, as if buried under
+the ashes of an invisible volcano, silent and funereal as a city ravaged
+by the plague, enormous, shapeless, dominated by the cupola that rose
+out of its bosom like a cloud. Oh, the sea, the tranquil sea!
+
+Her uneasiness increased. An obscure menace emanated from these things.
+She was seized with the feeling of terror she had already experienced on
+so many occasions. Across her pious spirit there flashed once more the
+thought of punishment.
+
+Nevertheless, the recollection that her lover awaited her, thrilled her
+to the heart's core; at the thought of his kisses, his caresses, his mad
+endearments, her blood was on fire and her soul grew faint. The thrill
+of passion triumphed over the fear of God. She turned her steps towards
+her lover's house with all the palpitating emotion of her first
+rendezvous.
+
+'At last!' cried Andrea, gathering her into his arms, and drinking the
+breath from her panting lips.
+
+He took one of her hands and held it against his breast.
+
+'Feel my heart. If you had stayed away a minute longer, it would have
+broken.'
+
+But instead of her hand, she laid her cheek upon it. He kissed the white
+nape of her neck.
+
+'Do you hear it beat?'
+
+'Yes, and it speaks to me.'
+
+'What does it tell you?'
+
+'That you do not love me.'
+
+'What does it tell you?' repeated the young man, biting her neck softly
+and preventing her from raising her head.
+
+She laughed.
+
+'That you love me.'
+
+She removed her cloak, her hat and her gloves, and then went to smell
+the bouquets of white lilac that filled the high Florentine vases like
+those of the _tondo_ in the Borghese Gallery. Her step on the carpet was
+extraordinarily light, and nothing could exceed her grace of attitude as
+she buried her face in the delicate tassels of bloom.
+
+She bit off the end of a spray, and holding it between her lips--
+
+'Take it,' she said.
+
+They exchanged a long, long kiss in among the perfume.
+
+He drew her closer and said with a tremor in his voice, 'Come.'
+
+'No, Andrea--no; let us stay here. I will make the tea for you.'
+
+She took her lover's hand and twined her fingers into his. 'I don't know
+what is the matter with me. My heart is so full of love that I could
+almost cry.'
+
+The words trembled on her lips; her eyes were full of tears.
+
+'Oh, if only I need not leave you, if I could stay here always!'
+
+Her heart was so full that it lent an indefinable sadness to her words.
+
+'When I think that you can never know the whole extent of my love! That
+I can never know yours! Do you love me? Tell me, say it a hundred, a
+thousand times--always--you love me?'
+
+'As if you did not know!'
+
+'No, I do not know.'
+
+She uttered the words in so low a tone that Andrea hardly caught them.
+
+'Maria!'
+
+She silently laid her head on Andrea's breast, waiting for him to speak,
+as if listening to his heart.
+
+He regarded that hapless head, weighed down by the burden of a sad
+foreboding; he felt the light pressure of that noble, mournful brow upon
+his breast, which was hardened by falsehood, encased in duplicity as in
+a cuirass of steel. He was stirred by genuine emotion; a sense of human
+pity for this most human suffering gripped him by the throat. And yet
+this agitation of soul resolved itself into lying words and lent a
+quiver of seeming sincerity to his voice.
+
+'You do not know!--Your voice was so low that it died away upon your
+lips; at the bottom of your heart something protested against your
+words; all, all the memories of our love rose up and protested against
+them. Oh! _you do not know_ that I love you!--'
+
+She remained leaning against him, listening, trembling, recognising or
+fancying that she recognised in his moving voice the accents of true
+passion, the accents that intoxicated her and that she supposed were
+inimitable. And he went on speaking, almost in her ear, in the silence
+of the room, with his hot breath on her cheek and with pauses that were
+almost sweeter than words. '--To have one sole thought, continually,
+every hour, every moment--not to be able to conceive of any happiness
+but the transcendent one that beams upon me from your mere presence--to
+live throughout the day in the anticipation--impatient, restless,
+fierce--of the moment when I shall see you again, and, after you have
+gone to caress and cherish your image in my heart,----to believe in you
+alone, to swear by you alone, in you alone to put my faith, my strength,
+my pride, my whole world, all that I dream and all that I hope----'
+
+She lifted her face all bathed in tears. He ceased to speak, and with
+his lips arrested the course of the warm drops that flowed over her
+cheeks. She wept and smiled, caressing his hair with trembling hands,
+shaken with irrepressible sobs.
+
+'My heart, my dearest heart!'
+
+He made her sit down and knelt before her without ceasing to kiss her
+lids. Suddenly he started. He had felt her long lashes tremble on his
+lips like the flutter of an airy wing. Time was, when Elena had
+laughingly given him that caress twenty times in succession. Maria had
+learned it from him, and at that caress he had often managed to conjure
+up the image of _the other_.
+
+His start made Maria smile; and as a tear still lingered on her
+lashes--'This one too,' she said.
+
+He kissed it away, and she laughed softly without a thought of
+suspicion.
+
+Her tears had ceased, and, reassured, she turned almost gay and full of
+charming graces.
+
+'I am going to make the tea now,' she said.
+
+'No, stay where you are.' The image of Elena had suddenly interposed
+between them.
+
+'No, let me get up,' begged Maria, disengaging herself from his
+constraining arms. 'I want you to taste my tea. The aroma will penetrate
+to your very soul.'
+
+She was alluding to some costly tea she had received from Calcutta which
+she had given to Andrea the day before.
+
+She rose and went over to the arm-chair with the dragons in which the
+melting shades of the _rosa di gruogo_ of the ancient dalmatic continued
+to languish exquisitely. The little cups of fine Castel-Durante Majolica
+still glittered on the tea-table.
+
+While preparing the tea, she said a thousand charming things, she let
+all the goodness and tenderness of her fond heart bloom out with entire
+freedom; she took an ingenuous delight in this dear and secret intimacy,
+the hushed calm of the room with all its accessories of refined luxury.
+Behind her, as behind the Virgin in Botticelli's _tondo_, rose the tall
+vases crowned with sprays of white lilac, and her archangelic hands
+moved about among the little mythological pictures of Luzio Dolci and
+the hexameters of Ovid beneath them.
+
+'What are you thinking about?' she asked Andrea, who was sitting on the
+floor beside her, leaning his head against the arm of her chair.
+
+'I am listening to you. Go on!'
+
+'I have nothing more to say.'
+
+'Yes, you have. Tell me a thousand, thousand things----'
+
+'What sort of things?'
+
+'The things that you alone know how to say.'
+
+He wanted Maria's voice to lull the anguish caused him by _the other_;
+to animate for him the image of _the other_.
+
+'Do you smell that?' she exclaimed, as she poured the boiling water on
+to the aromatic leaves.
+
+A delicious fragrance diffused itself through the air with the steam.
+
+'How I love that!' she cried.
+
+Andrea shivered. Were not those the very words--and spoken in her very
+tone--that Elena had used on the evening she offered him her love? He
+fixed his eyes on Maria's mouth.
+
+'Say that again.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'What you just said.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'The words sound so sweet when you pronounce them--you cannot understand
+it, of course. Say them again.'
+
+She smiled, divining nothing, and a little troubled, even a little shy,
+under her lover's strange gaze.
+
+'Well then--I love that!'
+
+'And me?'
+
+'What?'
+
+'And me?----you----'
+
+She looked down puzzled at her lover writhing at her feet, his face
+haggard and drawn, waiting for the words he was trying to draw out of
+her.
+
+'And me?----'
+
+'Ah! you----I love you----'
+
+'That is it! That is it!--Say it again--again----'
+
+She did so, quite unsuspecting. He felt a spasm of inexpressible
+pleasure.
+
+'Why do you shut your eyes?' she asked, not because of any suspicion in
+her mind, but to lead him on to explain his emotion.
+
+'So that I may die.'
+
+He laid his head on her knee and remained for some minutes in that
+attitude, silent and abstracted. She gently stroked his hair, his
+brow--that brow behind which his infamous imagination was working.
+Shadows began to fill the room, and the fragrance of the flowers and the
+aromatic beverage mingled in the air; the outlines of the surrounding
+objects melted into one vague form, harmonious, dim, unsubstantial.
+
+Presently she said: 'Get up, dearest, I must go. It is getting late.'
+
+'Stay a little longer with me,' he entreated.
+
+He drew her over to the divan where the gold on the cushions still
+gleamed through the shadows. There he suddenly clasped her head between
+his hands and covered her face with fierce hot kisses. He let himself
+imagine it was the other face he held, and he thought of it as sullied
+by the lips of her husband; and instead of disgust, was filled with
+still more savage desire of it. All the turbid sensations he had
+experienced in the presence of this man now rose to the surface of his
+consciousness, and with his kisses these vile things swept over the
+cheeks, the brow, the hair, the throat, the lips of Maria.
+
+'Let me go--let me go,' she cried, struggling out of his arms.
+
+She ran across to the tea-table to light the candles.
+
+'You must be good,' she said, panting a little still, and with an air of
+fond reproof.
+
+He did not move from the divan, but looked at her in silence.
+
+She went over to the side of the mantelpiece, where, on the wall, hung
+the little old mirror. She put on her hat and veil before its dim
+surface, that looked so like a pool of dull and stagnant water.
+
+'I am so loath to leave you this evening!' she murmured, oppressed by
+the melancholy of the twilight hour. 'This evening more than ever
+before.'
+
+The violet gleam of the sunset struggled with the light of the candles.
+The lilac in the crystal vases looked waxen white. The cushion in the
+arm-chair retained the impress of the form that had leaned against it.
+
+The clock of the Trinitą began to strike.
+
+'Heavens! how late! Help me to put on my cloak,' exclaimed the poor
+creature, turning to Andrea.
+
+He only clasped her once more in his arms, kissing her furiously,
+blindly, madly, with a devouring passion, stifling on her lips his own
+insane desire to cry aloud the name of Elena.
+
+At last she managed to gasp in an expiring voice--
+
+'You are drawing my life out of me.' But his passionate vehemence seemed
+to make her happy.
+
+'My love, my soul, all, all mine!' she said.
+
+And again, blissfully--'I can feel your heart beating--so fast, so
+fast.'
+
+At last, with a sigh, 'I must go now.'
+
+Andrea was as lividly pale and convulsed as if he had just committed a
+murder.
+
+'What ails you?' she asked with tender solicitude.
+
+He tried to smile. 'I never felt so profound an emotion,' he answered.
+
+'I thought I should have died.'
+
+He took the bouquet of flowers from one of the vases and handed it to
+her and went with her towards the door, almost hurrying her departure,
+for this woman's every look and gesture and word was a fresh
+sword-thrust in his heart.
+
+'Good-bye, dear heart!' said the hapless creature to him with
+unspeakable tenderness. 'Think of me.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+On the morning of the 20th of May, as Andrea Sperelli was walking along
+the Corso in the radiant sunshine, he heard his name called from the
+doorway of the Club.
+
+On the pavement in front of it was a group of gentlemen amusing
+themselves by watching the ladies pass and talking scandal. They were
+Giulio Musellaro, Ludovico Barbarisi, the Duke of Grimiti, Galeazzo
+Secinaro, Gino Bomminaco, and two or three others.
+
+'Have you heard what happened last night?' Barbarisi asked him.
+
+'No, what?'
+
+'Don Manuel Ferrčs, the Minister for Guatemala----'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Was caught red-handed cheating at cards.'
+
+Sperelli retained his self-command, although some of the men were
+looking at him with a certain malicious curiosity.
+
+'How was that?'
+
+'Galeazzo was there and was playing at the same table.'
+
+Secinaro proceeded to give him the details.
+
+Andrea did not affect indifference, he listened with a grave and
+attentive air. At the end of the story, he said, 'I am extremely sorry
+to hear it.'
+
+After remaining a minute or two longer with the group, he bowed and
+passed on.
+
+'Which way are you going?' asked Secinaro.
+
+'I am going home.'
+
+'I will go with you part of the way.'
+
+They went off together in the direction of the Via de' Condotti. The
+Corso was one glittering stream of sunshine from the Piazzo di Venezia
+to the Piazzo del Popolo. Ladies in light spring dress passed along by
+the brilliant shop-windows--the Princess of Ferentino with Barbarella
+Viti under one big lace parasol; Bianca Dolcebuono; Leonetto Lanza's
+young wife.
+
+'Do you know this man--this Ferrčs?' asked Galeazzo of Andrea, who had
+not spoken as yet.
+
+'Yes, I met him last year at Schifanoja, at my cousin Ateleta's. The
+wife is a great friend of Francesca's. That is why the affair annoys me
+so much. We must see that it is hushed up as much as possible. You will
+be doing me the greatest favour if you will help me about it.'
+
+Galeazzo promised his assistance with the most cordial alacrity.
+
+'I think,' said he, 'that the worst of the scandal might be avoided if
+the Minister sends in his resignation to his Government without a
+moment's delay. That is what the President of the Club advised, but
+Ferrčs refused last night. He blustered and did the insulted. And yet
+the proofs were there, as clear as daylight. He will have to be
+persuaded.'
+
+They continued on the subject as they walked along. Sperelli was
+grateful to Secinaro for his assistance, and the intimate tone of the
+conversation predisposed Secinaro to friendly confidences.
+
+At the corner of the Via de' Condotti, they caught sight of Lady
+Heathfield strolling along the left side of the street past the Japanese
+shop-windows, with her undulating, rhythmic, captivating walk.
+
+'Ah--Donna Elena,' said Galeazzo.
+
+Both the men watched her, and both felt the glamour of that rhythmic
+gait.
+
+When they came up to her, they both bowed but passed on. They no longer
+saw her, but she saw them; and for Andrea it was a form of torture to
+have to walk beside a rival under the gaze of the woman he desired, and
+feel that those piercing eyes were perhaps taking a delight in weighing
+the merits of both men. He compared himself with Secinaro.
+
+Galeazzo was of the bovine type, a Lucius Verus with golden hair and
+blue eyes; while amid the magnificent abundance of his golden beard
+shone a full red mouth, handsome, but without the slightest expression.
+He was tall, square-shouldered and strong, with an air of elegance that
+was not exactly refined, but easy and unaffected.
+
+'Well?' Sperelli asked, goaded on by a sort of madness. 'Are matters
+going on favourably?'
+
+He knew he might adopt this tone with a man of this sort.
+
+Galeazzo turned and looked at him half surprised, half suspicious. He
+certainly did not expect such a question from him, and still less the
+airy and perfectly calm tone in which the question was uttered.
+
+'Ah, the time that siege of mine has lasted!' groaned the bearded
+prince. 'Ages simply--I have tried every kind of manoeuvre but always
+without success. I always came too late, some other fellow had always
+been before me in storming the citadel. But I never lost heart. I was
+convinced that sooner or later my turn would come. _Attendre pour
+atteindre._ And sure enough----'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Lady Heathfield is kinder to me than the Duchess of Scerni. I shall
+have, I hope, the very enviable honour of being set down after you on
+the list.'
+
+He burst into a rather coarse laugh, showing his splendid teeth.
+
+'I fancy that my doughty deeds in India, which Giulio Musellaro spread
+abroad, have added to my beard several heroic strands of irresistible
+virtue.'
+
+'Ah, just in these days that beard of yours should fairly quiver with
+memories.'
+
+'What memories?'
+
+'Memories of a Bacchic nature.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+'What, have you forgotten the famous May Bazaar of 1884?'
+
+'Well, upon my word, now that you remind me of it, the third anniversary
+does fall on one of these next days. But you were not there--who told
+you?
+
+'You want to know more than is good for you, my dear boy.'
+
+'Do tell me!'
+
+'Bend your mind rather to making the most skilful use of this
+anniversary and give me news as soon as you have any.'
+
+'When shall I see you again?'
+
+'Whenever you like.'
+
+'Then dine with me to-night at the Club--about eight o'clock. That will
+give us an opportunity of seeing after the other affair too.'
+
+'All right. Good-bye, Goldbeard. Run!'
+
+They parted in the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the steps, and as
+Elena came across the square in the direction of the Via due Macelli to
+go up to the Quattro Fontane, Secinaro joined her and walked on with
+her.
+
+The strain of dissimulation once over, Andrea's heart sank within him
+like a leaden weight. He did not know how he was to drag himself up the
+steps. He was quite assured that, after this, Secinaro would tell him
+everything, and somehow this seemed to him a point to his advantage. By
+a sort of intoxication, a species of madness, resulting from the
+severity of his sufferings, he rushed blindly into new and ever more
+cruel and senseless torments; aggravating and complicating his miserable
+state in a thousand ways; passing from perversion to perversion, from
+aberration to aberration, without being able to hold back or to stop for
+one moment in his giddy descent. He seemed to be devoured by an
+inextinguishable fever, the heat of which made all the germs of human
+lust lying dormant in the hidden depths of his being flourish and grow
+big. His every thought, his every emotion showed the same stain.
+
+And yet, it was the very deception itself that bound him so strongly to
+the woman he deceived. His mind had adapted itself so thoroughly to the
+monstrous comedy that he was no longer capable of conceiving any other
+way of satisfying his passion. This incarnation of one woman in another
+was no longer a result of exasperated desire, but a deliberate habit of
+vice, and now finally an imperious necessity. From thenceforth, the
+unconscious instrument of his vicious imagination had become as
+necessary to him as the vice itself. By a process of sensual depravity,
+he had almost come to think that the real possession of Elena would not
+afford him such exquisite and violent delight as the imaginary. He was
+hardly able to separate the two women in his thoughts. And just as he
+felt that his pleasure would be diminished by the actual possession of
+the one, so his nerves received a shock if by some lassitude of the
+imagination he found himself in the presence of the other without the
+interposing image of her rival.
+
+Thus he felt crushed to the earth at the thought that Don Manuel's ruin
+meant for him the loss of Maria.
+
+When she came to him that evening, he saw at once that the poor thing
+was ignorant as yet of her misfortune. But the next day, she arrived,
+panting, convulsed, pale as death. She threw herself into his arms, and
+hid her face on his breast.
+
+'You know?' she gasped between her sobs.
+
+The news had spread. Disgrace and ruin were inevitable, irremediable.
+There followed days of hideous torture, during which Maria, left alone
+after the precipitate flight of the gamester, abandoned by the few
+friends she possessed, persecuted by the innumerable creditors of her
+husband, bewildered by the legal formalities of the seizure of their
+effects, by bailiffs, money-lenders and rogues of all sorts, gave
+evidences of a courage that was nothing less than heroic, but failed to
+avert the utter ruin that overwhelmed the family.
+
+From her lover she would receive no assistance of any kind; she told him
+nothing of the martyrdom she was enduring even when he reproached her
+for the brevity of her visits. She never complained; for him she always
+managed to call up a less mournful smile; still obeyed the dictates of
+her lover's capricious passion, and lavished upon her ruthless destroyer
+all the treasures of her fond heart.
+
+Her presentiments had not deceived her. Everything was falling in ruins
+around her. Punishment had overtaken her without a moment's warning.
+
+But she never regretted having yielded to her lover; never repented
+having given herself so utterly to him, never bewailed her lost purity.
+Her one sorrow--stronger than remorse, or fear, or any other trouble of
+mind--was the thought that she must go away, must be separated from this
+man who was the life of her life.
+
+'My darling, I shall die. I am going away to die far from
+you--alone--all alone--and you will not be there to close my eyes----'
+
+She smiled as she spoke with certainty and resignation. But Andrea
+endeavoured to kindle an illusive hope in her breast, to sow in her
+heart the seeds of a dream that could only lead to future suffering.
+
+'I will not let you die! You will be mine again and for a long time to
+come. We have many happy days of love before us yet!'
+
+He spoke of the immediate future.--He would go and establish himself in
+Florence; from there he could go over as often as he liked to Sienna
+under the pretext of study--could pass whole months there copying some
+Old Master or making researches in ancient chronicles. Their love should
+have its hidden nest in some deserted street, or beyond the city, in the
+country, in some villa decorated with rural ornaments and surrounded by
+a meadow. She would be able to spare an hour now and then for their
+love. Sometimes she would come and spend a whole week in Florence, a
+week of unbroken happiness. They would air their idyll on the hillside
+of Fiesole in a September as mild as April, and the cypresses of
+Montughi would not be less kind to them than the cypresses of
+Schifanoja.
+
+'Would it were true! Would it were true!' sighed Maria.
+
+'You don't believe me?'
+
+'Oh yes, I believe you; but my heart tells me that all these sweet
+things will remain a dream.'
+
+She made Andrea take her in his arms and hold her there for a long time;
+and she leaned upon his breast, silently crouching into his embrace as
+if to hide herself, with the shiver of a sick person or of one who seeks
+protection from some threatening danger. She asked of Andrea only the
+delicate caresses that in the language of affection she called 'kisses
+of the soul' and that melted her to tears sweeter than any more carnal
+delights. She could not understand how in these moments of supreme
+spirituality, in these last sad hours of passion and farewell her lover
+was not content to kiss her hands.
+
+'No--no, dear love,' she besought him, half repelled by Andrea's crude
+display of passion, 'I feel that you are nearer to me, closer to my
+heart, more entirely one with me, when you are sitting at my side, and
+take my hand in yours and look into my eyes and say the things to me
+that you alone know how to say. Those other caresses seem to put us far
+away from each other, to set some shadow between you and me----I don't
+know how to express my thought properly----And afterwards it leaves me
+so sad, so sad--I don't know what it is----I feel then so tired--but a
+tiredness that has something evil about it----!'
+
+She entreated him, humbly, submissively, fearing to make him angry. Then
+she fell to recalling memories of things recent and passed, down to the
+smallest details, the most trivial words, the most insignificant facts,
+which all had a vast amount of significance for her. But it was towards
+the first days of her stay at Schifanoja that her heart returned most
+fondly.
+
+'You remember? You remember?'
+
+And suddenly the tears filled her downcast eyes.
+
+One evening Andrea, thinking of her husband, asked her--'Since I knew
+you, have you always been _wholly_ mine?'
+
+'Always.'
+
+'I am not speaking of the soul----'
+
+'Hush!----yes, always wholly yours.'
+
+And he, who had never before believed one of his mistresses on this
+point, believed Maria without a shadow of doubt as to the truth of her
+assertion.
+
+He believed her even while he deceived and profaned her without remorse;
+he knew himself to be boundlessly loved by a lofty and noble spirit,
+that he was face to face with a grand and all-absorbing passion, and
+recognised fully both the grandeur of that passion and his own vileness.
+And yet under the lash of his base imaginings he would go so far as to
+hurt the mouth of the fond and patient creature, to prevent himself from
+crying aloud upon her lips the name that rose invincibly to his; and
+that loving and pathetic mouth would murmur, all unconscious, smiling
+though it bled--
+
+'Even thus you do not hurt me.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+It wanted but a few days now to their parting. Miss Dorothy had taken
+Delfina to Sienna, and then returned to help her mistress in the last
+and most trying arrangements and to accompany her on the journey. In the
+mother's house in Sienna the truth of the story was not known, and
+Delfina of course knew nothing. Maria had merely written that Don Manuel
+had been suddenly recalled by his government. And she made ready to
+go--to leave these rooms, so full of cherished things, to the hands of
+the public auctioneers who had already drawn up the inventory and fixed
+the date of the sale for the 20th of June, at ten in the morning.
+
+On the evening of the 9th, as she was leaving Andrea, she missed a
+glove. While looking for it she came upon a volume of Shelley, the one
+which Andrea had lent her in Schifanoja, the dear and affecting book in
+which, before the excursion to Vicomile, she had underlined the words
+
+    'And forget me, for I can _never_
+    Be thine.'
+
+She took up the book with visible emotion and turned over the pages till
+she came to the one which bore the mark of her underlining.
+
+'_Never!_' she murmured with a shake of the head. 'You remember? And
+hardly eight months have passed since.'
+
+She pensively turned over a few more leaves and read other verses.
+
+'He is our poet,' she went on. 'How often you promised to take me to the
+English Cemetery! You remember, we were to take flowers for his grave.
+Shall we go? You might take me before I leave. It will be our last walk
+together.'
+
+'Let us go to-morrow,' he answered.
+
+The next evening, when the sun was already declining, they went in a
+closed carriage; on her knees lay a bunch of roses. They drove along the
+foot of the leafy Aventino and caught a glimpse of the boats laden with
+Sicilian wine anchored in the port of Ripa Grande.
+
+In the neighbourhood of the cemetery they left the carriage and went the
+rest of the way to the gates on foot and in silence. At the bottom of
+her heart, Maria felt that not only was she here to lay flowers on the
+tomb of a poet, but that in this place of death she would weep for
+something of herself irreparably lost. A _Fragment_ of Shelley, read in
+the sleepless watches of the night echoed through her spirit as she
+gazed at the cypresses pointing to the sky on the other side of the
+white wall.
+
+    'Death is here, and Death is there,
+    Death is busy everywhere;
+    All around, within, beneath,
+    Above, is death--and we are death.
+
+    Death has set his mark and seal
+    On all we are and all we feel,
+    On all we know and all we fear--
+
+    First our pleasures die, and then
+    Our hopes, and then our fears: and when
+    These are dead, the debt is due,
+    Dust claims dust--and we die too.
+
+    All things that we love and cherish,
+    Like ourselves must fade and perish.
+    Such is our rude mortal lot:
+    Love itself would, did they not----'
+
+As she passed through the gateway she put her arm through Andrea's and
+shivered.
+
+The cemetery was solitary and deserted. A few gardeners were engaged in
+watering the plants along by the wall, swinging their watering-cans
+from side to side with an even and continuous motion and in silence.
+
+The funeral cypresses stood up straight and motionless in the air; only
+their tops, gilded by the sun, trembled lightly. Between the rigid,
+greenish-black trunks rose the white tombs--square slabs of stone,
+broken pillars, urns, sarcophagi. From the sombre mass of the cypresses
+fell a mysterious shadow, a religious peace, a sort of human kindness,
+as limpid and beneficent waters gush from the hard rock. The unchanging
+regularity of the trees and the chastened whiteness of the sepulchral
+monuments affected the spirit with a sense of solemn and sweet repose.
+But between the stiff ranks of the trees, standing in line like the deep
+pipes of an organ, and interspersed among the tombs, graceful oleanders
+swayed their tufts of pink blossom; roses dropped their petals at every
+light touch of the breeze, strewing the ground with their fragrant snow;
+the eucalyptus shook its pale tresses--now dark, now silvery white;
+willows wept over the crosses and crowns; and, here and there, the
+cactus displayed the glory of its white blooms like a swarm of sleeping
+butterflies or an aigrette of wonderful feathers. The silence was
+unbroken save by the cry, now and then, of some solitary bird.
+
+Andrea pointed to the top of the hill.
+
+'The poet's tomb is up there,' he said, 'near that ruin to the left,
+just below the last tower.'
+
+She dropped his arm and went on in front of him through the narrow paths
+bordered with low myrtle hedges. She walked as if fatigued, turning
+round every few minutes to smile back at her lover. She was dressed in
+black and wore a black veil that cast over her faint and trembling smile
+a shadow of mourning. Her oval chin was paler and purer than the roses
+she carried in her hand.
+
+Once, as she turned, one of the roses shed its petals on the path.
+Andrea stooped to pick them up. She looked at him and he fell on his
+knees before her.
+
+'_Adorata!_' he exclaimed.
+
+A scene rose up before her, vividly as a picture.
+
+'You remember,' she said, 'that morning at Schifanoja when I threw a
+handful of leaves down to you from the higher terrace? You bent your
+knee to me while I descended the steps. I do not know how it is, but
+that time seems to me so near and yet so far away! I feel as if it had
+happened yesterday, and then again, a century ago. But perhaps, after
+all it only happened in a dream.'
+
+Passing along between the low myrtle hedges, they at last reached the
+tower near which lies the tomb of the poet and of Trelawny. The jasmin
+climbing over the old ruin was in flower, but of the violets nothing was
+left but their thick carpet of leaves. The tops of the cypresses, which
+here just reached the line of vision, were vividly illumined by the last
+red gleams of the sun as it sank behind the black cross of the Monte
+Testaccio. A great purple cloud edged with burning gold sailed across
+the sky in the direction of the Aventino--
+
+    'These are two friends whose lives were undivided.
+    So let their memory be, now they have glided
+    Under their grave; let not their bones be parted
+    For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.'
+
+Maria repeated the last line. Then, moved by a delicate
+inspiration--'Please unfasten my veil,' she said to Andrea.
+
+She leaned her head back slightly so that he might untie the knot, and
+Andrea's fingers touched her hair--that magnificent hair, in the dense
+shadow of which he had so often tasted all the delights of his
+perfidious imagination, evoked the image of her rival.
+
+'Thank you,' she said.
+
+She then drew the veil from before her face and looked at Andrea with
+eyes that were a little dazed. She looked very beautiful. The shadows
+round her eyes were darker and deeper, but the eyes themselves burned
+with a more intense light. Her hair clung to her temples in heavy
+hyacinthine curls tinged with violet. The middle of her forehead, which
+was left free, gleamed, by contrast, in moonlike purity. Her features
+had fined down and lost something of their materiality through stress of
+love and sorrow.
+
+She wound the veil about the stems of the roses, tied the two ends
+together with much care, and then buried her face in the flowers,
+inhaling their perfume. Then she laid them on the simple stone that
+bears the poet's name engraved upon it. There was an indefinable
+expression in the gesture, which Andrea could not understand.
+
+As they moved away, he suddenly stopped short, and looking back towards
+the tower, 'How did you manage to get those roses?' he asked.
+
+She smiled, but her eyes were wet.
+
+'They are yours--those of that snowy night--they have bloomed again this
+evening. Do you not believe it?'
+
+The evening breeze was rising, and behind the hill the sky was
+overspread with gold, in the midst of which the purple cloud dissolved,
+as if consumed by fire. Against this field of light, the serried ranks
+of the cypresses looked more imposing and mysterious than before. The
+Psyche at the end of the middle avenue seemed to flush with pale tints
+as of flesh. A crescent moon rose over the pyramid of Cestius, in a deep
+and glassy sky, like the waters of a calm and sheltered bay.
+
+They went through the centre avenue to the gates. The gardeners were
+still watering the plants, and two other men held a velvet and silver
+pall by the two ends, and were beating it vigorously, while the dust
+rose high and glittered in the air.
+
+From the Aventine came the sound of bells.
+
+Maria clung to her lover's arm, unable to control her anguish, feeling
+the ground give way beneath her feet, her life ebb from her at every
+step. Once inside the carriage, she burst into a passion of tears,
+sobbing despairingly on her lover's shoulder.
+
+'I shall die!'
+
+But she did not die. Better a thousand times for her that she had!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Two days after this, Andrea was lunching with Galeazzo Secinaro at a
+table in the Caffé di Roma. It was a hot morning. The place was almost
+empty; the waiters nodded drowsily among the buzzing flies.
+
+'And so,' the bearded prince went on, 'knowing that she had a fancy for
+strange and out-of-the-way situations, I had the courage to----'
+
+He was relating in the crudest terms the extremely audacious means by
+which he had at last succeeded in overcoming Lady Heathfield's
+resistance. He exhibited neither reserve nor scruples, omitting no
+single detail, and praising the acquisition to the connoisseur. He only
+broke off, from time to time, to put his fork into a piece of juicy red
+meat, or to empty a glass of red wine. His whole bearing was expressive
+of robust health and strength.
+
+Andrea Sperelli lit a cigarette. In spite of all his efforts, he could
+not bring himself to swallow a mouthful of food, and with the wine
+Secinaro poured out for him, he seemed to be drinking poison.
+
+There came a moment at last, when the prince, in spite of his
+obtuseness, had a qualm of doubt, and he looked sharply at Elena's
+former lover. Except his want of appetite, Andrea gave no outward sign
+of inward agitation; with the utmost calm he puffed clouds of smoke into
+the air, and smiled his habitual, half-ironical smile, at his jocund
+companion.
+
+The prince continued: 'She is coming to see me to-day for the first
+time.'
+
+'To you--to-day?'
+
+'Yes, at three o'clock.'
+
+The two men looked at their watches.
+
+'Shall we go?' asked Andrea.
+
+'Let us,' assented Galeazzo rising. 'We can go up the Via de' Condotti
+together. I want to get some flowers. As you know all about it, tell
+me--what flowers does she like best?'
+
+Andrea laughed. An abominable answer was on the tip of his tongue, but
+he restrained himself and replied unmoved--
+
+'Roses, at one time.'
+
+In front of the Barcaccia they parted.
+
+At that hour the Piazza di Spagna had the deserted look of high summer.
+Some workmen were repairing a main water-pipe, and a heap of earth dried
+by the sun threw up clouds of dust in the hot breath of the wind. The
+stairway of the Trinitą gleamed white and deserted.
+
+Slowly, slowly, Andrea went up, standing still every two or three steps,
+as if he were dragging a terrible weight after him. He went into his
+rooms and threw himself on his bed, where he remained till a quarter to
+three. At a quarter to three he got up and went out. He turned into the
+Via Sistina, on through the Via Quattro Fontane, passed the Palazzo
+Barberini and stopped before a book-stall to wait for three o'clock. The
+bookseller, a little wrinkled, dried-up old man, like a decrepit
+tortoise, offered him books, taking down his choicest volumes one by
+one, and spreading them out under his eyes, speaking all the time in an
+insufferable nasal monotone. Three o'clock would strike directly; Andrea
+looked at the titles of the books, keeping an eye on the gates of the
+palace, while the voice of the bookseller mingled confusedly with the
+loud thumping of his heart.
+
+A lady passed through the gates, went down the street towards the
+piazza, got into a cab, and drove away through the Via del Tritone.
+
+Andrea went home. There he threw himself once more on his bed, and
+waited till Maria should come, keeping himself in a state of such
+complete immobility, that he seemed not to be suffering any more.
+
+At five Maria came.
+
+'Do you know,' she said, panting, 'I can stay with you the whole
+evening--till to-morrow. It will be our first and last night of love. I
+am going on Tuesday.'
+
+She sobbed despairingly, and clung to him, her lips pressed convulsively
+to his.
+
+'Don't let me see the light of another day--kill me!' she moaned.
+
+Then, catching sight of his discomposed face, 'You are suffering?' she
+exclaimed. 'You too--you think we shall never meet again?'
+
+He had almost insuperable difficulty in speaking, in answering her. His
+tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, the words failed him. He had an
+instinctive desire to hide his face from those observant eyes, to avoid
+her questions at all cost. He was neither capable of consoling her nor
+of practising fresh deceptions.
+
+'Hush!' he whispered in a choking, almost irrecognisable voice.
+
+Crouching at her feet, he laid his head in her lap and remained like
+that for a long time without speaking, while she laid her tender hands
+upon his temples and felt the wild, irregular beating of his arteries.
+She realised that he was suffering fiercely, and in his pain forgot all
+thought of her own, grieving now only for his grief--only for him.
+
+Presently he rose, and clasped her with such mad vehemence to him that
+she was frightened.
+
+'What has come to you! What is it?' she cried, trying to look in his
+eyes, to discover the reason of his sudden frenzy. But he only buried
+his face deeper in her bosom, her neck, her hair--anywhere out of sight.
+
+All at once, she struggled free of his embrace, her whole form convulsed
+with horror, her face ghastly and distraught as if she had at that
+moment torn herself from the arms of Death.
+
+That name! That name!--She had heard that name!
+
+A deep and awful silence fell upon her soul, and in it there suddenly
+opened one of those great gulfs into which the whole universe seems to
+be hurled at the touch of one thought. She heard nothing more. Andrea
+might writhe and supplicate and despair as he would--in vain.
+
+She heard nothing. Some instinct directed her actions. She found her
+things and put them on.
+
+Andrea lay upon the floor, sobbing, frenzied, mad.
+
+He was conscious that she was preparing to leave the room.
+
+'Maria! Maria!
+
+He listened.
+
+'Maria!'
+
+He only heard the sound of the door closing behind her--she was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+At ten o'clock in the morning of June 20th the sale began of the
+furniture and hangings belonging to His Excellency the Minister
+Plenipotentiary for Guatemala.
+
+It was a burning hot morning. Summer blazed already over Rome. Up and
+down the Via Nationale ran the tram-cars, drawn by horses with funny
+white caps over their heads to protect them against the sun. Long lines
+of heavily-laden carts encumbered the road, while the blare of trumpets
+mingled with the cracking of whips and the hoarse cries of the carters.
+
+Andrea could not make up his mind to cross the threshold of that house,
+but wandered about the street a long time, weighed down by a horrible
+sense of lassitude, a lassitude so overwhelming and desperate as to be
+almost a physical longing for death.
+
+At last, seeing a porter come out of the house with a piece of furniture
+on his shoulder, he decided to go in. He ran rapidly up the stairs. From
+the landing already he could hear the voice of the auctioneer.
+
+The sale was going on in the largest room of the suite--the one in which
+the Buddha had stood. The buyers were gathered round the auctioneer's
+table. They were, for the most part, shopkeepers, second-hand furniture
+dealers and the lower classes generally. There being little competition
+in summer when town was empty, the dealers rushed in, sure of obtaining
+costly articles for next to nothing. A vile odour permeated the hot air
+exhaled by the crowd of dirty and perspiring people.
+
+Andrea felt stifled. He wandered into the other rooms, where nothing had
+been left but the wall hangings, the curtains, and the portičres, the
+other things having been collected in the sale room. Although he was
+walking on a thick carpet, he heard his footsteps as distinctly as if
+the boards had been bare.
+
+He found himself presently in a semicircular room. The walls were deep
+red, with here and there a sparkle of gold, giving the impression of a
+temple or a tomb, a sad and mysterious sanctuary fit for praying in, or
+for dying. The crude, hard light blazing in through the open windows
+seemed like a violation.
+
+He returned to the auction room. Again he breathed the nauseating
+atmosphere. He turned round, and in a corner of the room perceived the
+Princess of Ferentino and Barbarella Viti. He bowed and went over to
+them.
+
+'Well, Ugenta, what have you bought?'
+
+'Nothing.'
+
+'Nothing? Why, I should have thought you would buy everything.'
+
+'Indeed, why?'
+
+'Oh, it was just an idea of mine--a romantic idea.'
+
+The princess laughed and Barbarella joined in.
+
+'We are going. It is impossible to stay any longer in this perfume.
+Good-bye, Ugenta--console yourself!'
+
+Andrea went to the auctioneer's table. The man recognised him.
+
+'Does the Signor Conte wish for anything in particular?'
+
+'I will see,' Andrea answered.
+
+The sale proceeded rapidly. He looked about him at the low faces of the
+dealers, felt their elbows pushing him, their feet touching his, their
+horrid breath upon him. Nausea gripped his throat.
+
+'Going--going--gone!'
+
+The stroke of the hammer rang like a knell through his heart and set his
+temples throbbing painfully.
+
+He bought the Buddha, a great carved cabinet, some china, some pieces
+of drapery. Presently he heard the sound of voices, and laughter, and
+the rustle of feminine skirts. He turned round to see Galeazzo Secinaro
+entering, accompanied by Lady Heathfield and followed by the Countess
+Lucoli, Gino Bomminaco and Giovanella Daddi. They were all laughing and
+talking noisily.
+
+He did his best to conceal himself from them in the crowd that besieged
+the auctioneer's table. He shuddered at the thought of being discovered.
+Their voices and laughter reached him over the heads of the perspiring
+people through the suffocating heat. Fortunately the gay party very soon
+afterwards took themselves off.
+
+He forced himself a passage through the closely packed bodies,
+repressing his disgust as well as he could, and making the most
+tremendous efforts to ward off the faintness that threatened to overcome
+him. There was a bitter and sickening taste in his mouth. He felt that
+from the contact of all these unclean people he was carrying away with
+him the germs of obscure and irremediable diseases. Physical torture
+mingled with his moral anguish.
+
+When he got down into the street in the full blaze of noon-day, he had a
+touch of giddiness. With an unsteady step, he set off in search of a
+cab. He found one in the Piazza del Quirinale and drove straight home.
+
+Towards evening, however, a wild desire came over him to revisit those
+dismantled rooms. He went upstairs and entered, on the pretext of asking
+if the furniture he had bought had been sent away yet.
+
+A man answered him: the things had just gone, the Signor Conte must have
+passed them on his way here.
+
+Hardly anything remained in the rooms. The crimson splendour of the
+setting sun gleamed through the curtainless windows and mingled with the
+noises of the street. Some men were taking down the hangings from the
+walls, disclosing a paper with great vulgar flowers, torn here and there
+and hanging in strips. Others were engaged in taking up and rolling the
+carpets, raising a cloud of dust that glittered in the sunlight. One of
+them sang scraps of a lewd song. Dust and tobacco-smoke mingled and rose
+to the ceiling.
+
+Andrea fled.
+
+In the Piazza del Quirinale a brass band was playing in front of the
+royal palace. Great waves of metallic music spread through the glowing
+air. The obelisk, the fountain, the statues looked enormous and seemed
+to glow as if impregnated with flame. Rome, immense and dominated by a
+battle of clouds, seemed to illumine the sky.
+
+Half-demented, Andrea fled; through the Via del Quirinale, past the
+Quattro Fontane and the gates of the Palazzo Barberini with its many
+flashing windows and, at last, reached the Cassa Zuccari.
+
+There the porters were just taking his purchases off a cart,
+vociferating loudly. Several of them were carrying the cabinet up the
+stairs with a good deal of difficulty.
+
+He went in. As the cabinet occupied the whole width of the staircase, he
+could not pass. So he had to follow it, slowly, slowly, step by step, up
+to his door.
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MODERN LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS
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+COMPLETE LIST OF TITLES IN
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+THE MODERN LIBRARY
+
+_For convenience in ordering please use number at right of title_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHOR                   TITLE AND NUMBER
+AIKEN, CONRAD          Modern American Poetry 127
+ANDERSON, SHERWOOD     Poor White 115
+ANDERSON, SHERWOOD     Winesburg, Ohio 104
+ANDREYEV, LEONID       The Seven That Were Hanged; and the Red Laugh 45
+
+BALZAC                 Short Stories 40
+BAUDELAIRE             Prose and Poetry 70
+BEARDSLEY, AUBREY      64 Reproductions 42
+BEEBE, WILLIAM         Jungle Peace 30
+BEERBOHM, MAX          Zuleika Dobson 116
+BIERCE, AMBROSE        In the Midst of Life 133
+BLAKE, WILLIAM         Poems 91
+BRONTE, EMILY          Wuthering Heights 106
+BROWN, GEORGE DOUGLAS  The House with the Green Shutters 129
+BUTLER, SAMUEL         Erewhon 136
+BUTLER, SAMUEL         The Way of All Flesh 13
+
+CABELL, JAMES BRANCH   Beyond Life 25
+CABELL, JAMES BRANCH   The Cream of the Jest 126
+CARPENTER, EDWARD      Love's Coming of Age 51
+CARROLL, LEWIS         Alice in Wonderland, etc. 79
+CELLINI, BENVENUTO     Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini 3
+CHEKHOV, ANTON         Rothschild's Fiddle, etc. 31
+CHESTERTON, G. K.      Man Who Was Thursday 35
+CRANE, STEPHEN         Men, Women and Boats 102
+
+D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE   Flame of Life 65
+D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE   The Child of Pleasure 98
+D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE   The Maidens of the Rocks 118
+D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE   The Triumph of Death 112
+DAUDET, ALPHONSE       Sapho 85
+DEFOE, DANIEL          Moll Flanders 122
+DOSTOYEVSKY            Poor People 10
+DOUGLAS, NORMAN        Old Calabria 141
+DOUGLAS, NORMAN        South Wind 5
+DOWSON, ERNEST         Poems and Prose 74
+DREISER, THEODORE      Free, and Other Stories 50
+DUMAS, ALEXANDRE       Camille 69
+DUNSANY, LORD          A Dreamer's Tales 34
+DUNSANY, LORD          Book of Wonder 43
+
+ELLIS, HAVELOCK        The New Spirit 95
+
+FABRE, JEAN HENRI      The Life of the Caterpillar 107
+FLAUBERT               Madame Bovary 28
+FLAUBERT               Temptation of St. Anthony 92
+FRANCE, ANATOLE        Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard 22
+FRANCE, ANATOLE        The Queen Pedauque 110
+FRANCE, ANATOLE        The Red Lily 7
+FRANCE, ANATOLE        Thais 67
+FRENSSEN, GUSTAV       Jorn Uhl 101
+
+GAUTIER, THEOPHILE     Mlle. De Maupin 53
+GEORGE, W. L.          A Bed of Roses 75
+GILBERT, W. S.         The Mikado, Iolanthe, etc, 26
+GILBERT, W. S.         Pinafore and Other Plays 113
+GISSING, GEORGE        New Grub Street 125
+GISSING, GEORGE        Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft 46
+GONCOURT, E. AND J. DE Renée Mauperin 76
+GORKY, MAXIM           Creatures That Once Were Men and Other Stories 48
+DE GOURMONT, REMY      A Night in the Luxembourg 120
+DE GOURMONT, REMY      A Virgin Heart 131
+
+HARDY, THOMAS          Jude the Obscure 135
+HARDY, THOMAS          The Mayor of Casterbridge 17
+HARDY, THOMAS          The Return of the Native 121
+HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL   The Scarlet Letter 93
+HEARN, LAFCADIO        Some Chinese Ghosts 130
+HECHT, BEN             Erik Dorn 29
+HUDSON, W. H.          Green Mansions 89
+HUDSON, W. H.          The Purple Land 24
+HUXLEY, ALDOUS         A Virgin Heart 131
+
+IBSEN, HENRIK          A Doll's House, Ghosts, etc. 6
+IBSEN, HENRIK          Hedda Gabler, Pillars of Society,
+                       The Master Builder 36
+IBSEN, HENRIK          The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm,
+                       The League of Youth 54
+
+JAMES, HENRY           Daisy Miller, etc. 63
+JAMES, WILLIAM         The Philosophy of William James 114
+JOYCE JAMES            Dubliners 124
+
+KIPLING, RUDYARD       Soldiers Three 71
+
+LATZKO, ANDREAS        Men in War 88
+LAWRENCE, D. H.        The Rainbow 128
+LAWRENCE, D. H.        Sons and Lovers 109
+LEWISOHN, LUDWIG       Upstream 123
+LOTI, PIERRE           Mme. Chrysantheme 94
+
+MACY, JOHN             The Spirit of American Literature 56
+MAETERLINCK, MAURICE   Pelleas and Melisande, etc. 11
+DE MAUPASSANT, GUY     Love and Other Stories 72
+DE MAUPASSANT, GUY     Mademoiselle Fifi, and Twelve Other Stories 8
+DE MAUPASSANT, GUY     Une Vie 57
+MELVILLE, HERMAN       Moby Dick 119
+MEREDITH, GEORGE       Diana of the Crossways 14
+MEREDITH, GEORGE       The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 134
+MEREJKOWSKI, DMITRI    The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci 132
+MISCELLANEOUS          A Modern Book of Criticism 81
+                       Best Ghost Stories 73
+                       Best American Humorous Short
+                       Stories 87
+                       Best Russian Short Stories 18
+                       Contemporary Science 99
+                       Evolution in Modern Thought 37
+                       Outline of Psychoanalysis 66
+                       The Woman Question 59
+MOLIERE                Plays 78
+MOORE, GEORGE          Confessions of a Young Man 16
+MORRISON, ARTHUR       Tales of Mean Streets 100
+
+NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH   Ecce Homo and the Birth of Tragedy 68
+NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH   Thus Spake Zarathustra 9
+NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH   Beyond Good and Evil 20
+NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH   Genealogy of Morals 62
+
+O'NEILL, EUGENE        Seven Plays of the Sea 111
+
+PATER, WALTER          The Renaissance 86
+PATER, WALTER          Marius the Epicurean 90
+PAINE, THOMAS          Writings 108
+PEPYS, SAMUEL          Samuel Pepys' Diary 103
+POE, EDGAR ALLEN       Best Tales 82
+PREVOST, ANTOINE       Manon Lescaut 85
+RENAN, ERNEST          The Life of Jesus 140
+RODIN                  64 Reproductions 41
+RUSSELL, BERTRAND      Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell 137
+
+SALTUS, EDGAR          The Imperial Orgy 139
+SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR     Anatol, Green Cockatoo, etc. 32
+SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR     Bertha Garlan 39
+SCHOPENHAUER           Studies in Pessimism 12
+SCHREINER, OLIVE       The Story of an African Farm 132
+SHAW, G. B.            An Unsocial Socialist 15
+SPINOZA                The Philosophy of Spinoza 60
+STEVENSON, ROBERT L.   Treasure Island 4
+STIRNER, MAX           The Ego and His Own 49
+STRINDBERG, AUGUST     Married 2
+STRINDBERG, AUGUST     Miss Julie, The Creditor, etc. 52
+SUDERMANN, HERMANN     Dame Care 33
+SWINBURNE, CHARLES     Poems 23
+
+THOMPSON, FRANCIS      Complete Poems 38
+TOLSTOY, LEO           Redemption and Other Plays 77
+TOLSTOY, LEO           The Death of Ivan Ilyitch and Four Other Stories 64
+TURGENEV, IVAN         Fathers and Sons 21
+TURGENEV, IVAN         Smoke 80
+
+VAN LOON, HENDRIK W.   Ancient Man 105
+VILLON FRANCOIS        Poems 58
+VOLTAIRE               Candide 47
+
+WELLS, H. G.           Ann Veronica 27
+WHITMAN, WALT          Poems 97
+WILDE, OSCAR           An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance 84
+WILDE, OSCAR           De Profundis 117
+WILDE, OSCAR           Dorian Gray 1
+WILDE, OSCAR           Poems 19
+WILDE, OSCAR           Fairy Tales, Poems in Prose 61
+WILDE, OSCAR           Pen, Pencil and Poison 96
+WILDE, OSCAR           Salome, The Importance of Being Ernest, etc 83
+WILSON, WOODROW        Selected Addresses and Papers 55
+
+YEATS, W. B.           Irish Fairy and Folk Tales 44
+
+ZOLA, EMILE            Nana 142
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Child of Pleasure, by Gabriele D'Annunzio
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Child Of Pleasure, by Gabriele D'annunzio.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Child of Pleasure, by Gabriele D'Annunzio
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Child of Pleasure
+
+Author: Gabriele D'Annunzio
+
+Commentator: Ernest Boyd
+
+Translator: Georgina Harding
+              Arthur Symons
+
+Release Date: December 4, 2006 [EBook #20015]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILD OF PLEASURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<table summary="note" border="1px" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #ffffff;">
+  <tr>
+    <td style="text-align: center;">Transcriber's note: although a number of obvious typographical errors
+in the printed work have been corrected, the original orthography of the
+book has been retained. This includes a number of compound words,
+normally hyphenated, which retain their hyphenlessness.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table summary="front" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border: double 6px black;">
+<tr><td>
+<table summary="title" class="title" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">
+<tr><td valign="middle" align="center" style="border: solid 2px black; font-size: 200%;"><b><i>The</i><br />
+CHILD OF PLEASURE</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" style="border: solid 2px black;"><br /><b>GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO</b><br /><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" style="border: solid 2px black;"><b>TRANSLATED BY<br />
+GEORGINA HARDING<br /><br/>
+VERSES TRANSLATED BY<br/>
+ARTHUR SYMONS</b><br/>
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" style="border: solid 2px black;">
+<br/>
+<b>INTRODUCTION BY<br />
+ERNEST BOYD</b><br/><br/></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" style="border: solid 2px black;">
+<div class="center"><br />
+<img src="images/001.png" alt="image" /></div>
+<br /><br /></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" style="border: solid 2px black;"><b>THE MODERN LIBRARY</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" style="border: solid 2px black;"><b>PUBLISHERS&nbsp;&nbsp; ::&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;::&nbsp;&nbsp; NEW YORK</b></td></tr>
+</table>
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr style="width: 5%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>Manufactured in the United States of America
+Bound for</i> <span class="smcap">the modern library</span> <i>by H. Wolff</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 5%;" />
+
+<h3><a name="toc" id="toc"></a>CONTENTS</h3>
+<table summary="toc" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td>
+<a href="#INTRODUCTION"><b>INTRODUCTION</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_I"><b>BOOK I</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;I</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;II</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;III</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;IV</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;V</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;VI</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;VII</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;VIII</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;IX</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;X</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_II"><b>BOOK II</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Ib">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;I</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIb">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;II</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIIb">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;III</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IVb">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;IV</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Vb">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;V</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_III"><b>BOOK III</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Ic">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;I</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIc">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;II</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIIc">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;III</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IVc">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;IV</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Vc">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;V</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_IV"><b>BOOK IV</b></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Id">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;I</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IId">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;II</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIId">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;III</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IVd">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;IV</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Vd">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;V</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VId">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;VI</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIId">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;VII</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIIId">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;VIII</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IXd">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;IX</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_Xd">&nbsp;<b>CHAPTER&nbsp;X</b></a>
+
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+
+<p>It is characteristic of the atmosphere of legend in which Gabriele
+d'Annunzio has lived that even the authenticity of his name has been
+disputed. It was said that his real name was Gaetano Rapagnetta, and the
+curious will find amongst the Letters of James Huneker the boast that he
+was the first person to reveal to America the fact that d'Annunzio's
+name was "Rapagnetto"&mdash;a purely personal contribution to the legend.
+Yet, the plain fact, as proven by his birth certificate, is that the
+author of "The Child of Pleasure" was born at Pescara, on the 12th of
+March, 1863, the son of Francesco Paolo d'Annunzio and Luisa de
+Benedictis. <i>Il Piacere</i>, to give this novel its Italian name, was
+published when d'Annunzio was only twenty-six years of age, and except
+for an unimportant and imitative volume of short stories, it was his
+first sustained prose work. It is the book which at once made the
+novelist famous in his own country and very soon afterwards in England
+and France, where it was the first of his works to be translated. In
+America d'Annunzio was already known as the author of a powerful
+realistic novelette, "Episcopo &amp; Co.," which was published in Chicago in
+1896, two years before "The Child of Pleasure" appeared in London. As
+has so often happened since, America led the way in introducing into the
+English language a writer who is one of the foremost figures in
+Continental European literature.</p>
+
+<p>In order to realize the sensation which Gabriele d'Annunzio created, it
+is necessary to glance back at the opinions of some of his early
+champions in foreign countries. Ouida claims, I think rightly, that her
+article in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, which was reprinted in her
+"Critical Studies," was the first account in English of the author and
+his work. In the main, although besprinkled with moral asides, it is,
+with one exception, as good an essay as any that has since been written
+on the subject. Ouida was sure that the wickedness of d'Annunzio was
+such that the only work of his which will become known to the English
+public in general will be the <i>Vergini delle Rocce</i>, because "(as far as
+it has gone) it is not indecent. The other works could not be reproduced
+in English." In proof of her contentions Ouida disclosed the fact that
+the French versions of the trilogy, "The Child of Pleasure," "The
+Victim," and "The Triumph of Death," were bowdlerized. At the same time
+she obligingly referred her readers to some of the choicer passages in
+the original, such as Chapter X of "The Child of Pleasure," where she
+claimed that "ingenuities of indecency" had been gratuitously
+introduced. For the guidance of those interested in such matters I may
+explain that, by a coincidence, the "ingenuity" in question is almost
+identical with that which was cited in the earlier part of <i>La Gar&ccedil;onne</i>
+as proof that Victor Margueritte was unworthy of the Legion of Honor.</p>
+
+<p>After Ouida in England came the venerable Vicomte Melchior de Vog&uuml;&eacute; in
+France, who is best known to readers in this country for his standard
+tome on the Russian novel. In the austere pages of the <i>Revue des Deux
+Mondes</i> he carefully explained to his readers that d'Annunzio's lewdness
+must not be confused with the obscenities of Zola, whereat Ouida
+protested that they were alike in their complacent preoccupation with
+mere filth. The Frenchman is the sounder critic, it must be said, for
+while d'Annunzio frequently parallels some of the most unclean&mdash;in the
+literal, not the moral sense&mdash;scenes and incidents in Zola, his attitude
+about sex is as unlike Zola's as that of the late W. D. Howells. Only in
+"Nana" did Zola describe the life and emotions of a woman whose whole
+life is given up to love, and then, as we know, he chose a singularly
+crude and professional person, using her career as a symbol of the
+Second Empire. D'Annunzio has never described women with any other
+reason for existence but love, yet none of his heroines has poor Nana's
+uninspiring motives. They are amateurs with a skill undreamed of in
+Nana's philosophy; they believe in love for art's sake. Consequently,
+the French critic was right in insisting that Zola and d'Annunzio are
+two very different persons, although confounded in an identical obloquy
+by the moralists. He is, however, not quite so subtle when he tries to
+argue from this that, in the conventional sense, d'Annunzio is more
+moral.</p>
+
+<p>At this point I will cite an unexpectedly intelligent witness, one of
+the early admirers of d'Annunzio in English, and the author of an essay
+on him which is assuredly the best which has appeared in that language.
+This is what Henry James has to say of "The Child of Pleasure" in his
+"Notes on Novelists": "Count Andrea Sperelli is a young man who pays,
+pays heavily, as we take it we are to understand, for an unbridled
+surrender to the life of the senses; whereby it is primarily a picture
+of that life that the story gives us. He is represented as inordinately,
+as quite monstrously, endowed for the career that from the first absorbs
+and that finally is to be held, we suppose to engulf him; and it is a
+tribute to the truth with which his endowment is presented that we
+should scarce know where else to look for so complete and convincing an
+account of such adventures. Casanova de Seingalt is of course infinitely
+more copious, but his autobiography is cheap loose journalism compared
+with the directed, finely-condensed iridescent epic of Count Andrea."</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult to find, couched in such euphemistically
+appreciative language, so accurate a summary of the intention and
+quality of this book. Casanova is pale, diffuse, and unconvincing,
+indeed, beside the d'Annunzio who so early gave his full measure as the
+supreme novelist of sensual pleasure in this book. As Arthur Symons so
+well says, "Gabriele d'Annunzio comes to remind us, very definitely, as
+only an Italian can, of the reality and the beauty of sensation, of the
+primary sensations; the sensations of pain and pleasure as these come to
+us from our actual physical conditions; the sensation of beauty as it
+comes to us from the sight of our eyes and the tasting of our several
+senses; the sensation of love, which, to the Italian, comes up from a
+root in Boccaccio, through the stem of Petrarch, to the very flower of
+Dante. And so he becomes the idealist of material things, while seeming
+to materialize spiritual things. He accepts, as no one else of our time
+does, the whole physical basis of life, the spirit which can be known
+only through the body."</p>
+
+<p>D'Annunzio has declared that the central male character in all three
+novels, Andrea Sperelli in "The Child of Pleasure," Tullio Hermil in
+"The Intruder" and Giorgio Aurispa in "The Triumph of Death," are
+projections of himself. They are as autobiographical as Stelio Effrena
+in "The Fire of Life," which is generally accepted as an elaboration of
+the poet's life with Eleonora Duse. His attitude, therefore, is clearly
+defined in the passage where he says: "In the tumult of contradictory
+impulses Sperelli had lost all sense of will power and all sense of
+morality. In abdicating, his will had surrendered the sceptre to his
+instincts; the &aelig;sthetic was substituted for the moral sense. This
+&aelig;sthetic sense, which was very subtle, very powerful and always active,
+maintained a certain equilibrium in the mind of Sperelli. Intellectuals
+such as he, brought up in the religion of Beauty, always preserve a
+certain kind of order, even in their worst depravities. The conception
+of Beauty is the axis of their inmost being: all their passions turn
+upon that axis." He is, in other words, the re-incarnation of Don Juan,
+pursuing in woman an elusive and impossible ideal.</p>
+
+<p>If d'Annunzio had not gone into the adventure of the war, with its
+sequel at Fiume, we might have continued to enjoy the spectacle of the
+adventures of this restless soul amongst feminine masterpieces. As a
+soldier and a statesman his prestige in the English-speaking world is
+low, and we are apt to forget while reading the political bombast of the
+years of the war and the period after the Armistice that it differs in
+no respect from all other patriotic claptrap, except that it is the work
+of the greatest living master of Italian prose. Of this fact his early
+novels are a needed reminder to a generation which is making its
+acquaintance with Italian writers of to-day through the intermediary of
+a converted anti-clerical, who cannot even retell the story of Christ
+without branding himself a vulgarian. In the prim days when young
+d'Annunzio first flaunted his carnal delights and sorrows before a world
+not yet released from Victorian stuffiness, the word "vulgar" was a
+polite English epithet for "fleshly," an adjective much beloved by
+indignant gentlemen who were permitting their wrath to triumph over
+their desire to be respectable. It is a word which we apply nowadays to
+the writings of a vulgarian like Papini, whose name is now as familiar
+to the general public as d'Annunzio's was when "The Child of Pleasure"
+was first translated. That is a measure of progress in this connection
+which justifies the hope that the "idealist of material things" will
+find again an audience which can understand and appreciate his quest.</p>
+
+<p>D'Annunzio has nothing to offer the sterile theorists of the new
+illiterate literature, who are as incapable of appreciating his refined
+and subtle perversities as they are of admiring the beautiful form in
+which his full-blooded and exuberant imagination clothes his
+conceptions. He is an &aelig;sthete, but his &aelig;stheticism has never expressed
+itself in barren theory, but has always turned to life itself. He
+realized at the outset of his career that life is a physical thing,
+which we must compel to surrender all that it can offer us, which the
+artist must bend and shape to his own creative purposes. It has been
+said that d'Annunzio had a philosophy and Nietzsche and Tolstoy were
+invoked as influences, but there is as little of Tolstoy's moralizing in
+"The Intruder" as of Nietzsche's pessimistic idealism in "The Child of
+Pleasure" or "The Triumph of Death." Whatever conclusions may be drawn
+from the problem of the Eternal Feminine as postulated in all his
+novels&mdash;and that is the only problem which he confronts&mdash;it is hardly to
+be dignified by the name of a philosophy. One gathers that men can be
+exalted and destroyed by the attraction of women, but the author
+remains to the end&mdash;as late certainly as 1910, when the last of the
+novels in the first mood, <i>Forse che si, forse che no</i>, appeared&mdash;of the
+opinion that they are the one legitimate preoccupation of the artist in
+living. Elena Muti in "The Child of Pleasure," Foscarina in "The Flame
+of Life," Ippolita in "The Triumph of Death" are superb incarnations of
+the one and ever varied problem which troubles the world in which
+d'Annunzio lives.</p>
+
+<p>An American critic, Mr. Henry Dwight Sedgwick, once demanded in tones of
+passionate scorn that d'Annunzio be tried before a jury of
+"English-speaking men," and he called the tale: "Colonel Newcome! Adam
+Bede! Bailie Jarvie! Tom Brown! Sam Weller!"&mdash;notes of exclamation
+included, from which one was to conclude that the creator of Sperelli,
+Hermil and Aurispa would slink away discomfited at the very sound of
+those names. Yet, on the other hand, can one imagine Andrea and Elena,
+Giorgio and Ippolita arguing with our advanced thinkers of the moment:
+Is Monogamy Feasible? or Can Men and Women be Friends? D'Annunzio is not
+to be approached either in a mood of radical earnestness or of
+evangelical fervor. He must be regarded as an artist of sensations, an
+Italian of the Renaissance set down in the middle of a drab century. He
+began his life by a quest for perfect physical pleasure through all the
+senses, and inaugurated its last phase with a gesture of military
+courage which was not only a retort to those who, like Croce, had called
+him a dilettante, but an earnest of his conviction that he was a great
+artist of the lineage which bred men who were simultaneously great men
+of action.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+Ernest Boyd.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_I" id="BOOK_I"></a>BOOK I</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER I</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Andrea Sperelli dined regularly every Wednesday with his cousin the
+Marchesa d'Ateleta.</p>
+
+<p>The salons of the Marchesa in the Palazzo Roccagiovine were much
+frequented. She attracted specially by her sparkling wit and gaiety and
+her inextinguishable good humour. Her charming and expressive face
+recalled certain feminine profiles of the younger Moreau and in the
+vignettes of Gravelot. There was something Pompadouresque in her manner,
+her tastes, her style of dress, which she no doubt heightened purposely,
+tempted by her really striking resemblance to the favourite of Louis <span class="smcap">xv</span>.</p>
+
+<p>One Tuesday evening, in a box at the Valle Theatre, she said laughingly
+to her cousin, 'Be sure, you come to-morrow, Andrea. Among the guests
+there will be an interesting, not to say <i>fatal</i>, personage. Forewarned
+is forearmed&mdash;Beware of her spells&mdash;you are in a very weak frame of mind
+just now.'</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. 'If you don't mind, I prefer to come unarmed,' he replied,
+'or rather in the guise of a victim. It is a character I have assumed
+for many an evening lately, but alas, without result so far.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, the sacrifice will soon be consummated, <i>cugino mio</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'The victim is ready!'</p>
+
+<p>The next evening, he arrived at the palace a few minutes earlier than
+usual, with a wonderful gardenia in his button-hole and a vague
+uneasiness in his mind. His <i>coup&eacute;</i> had to stop in front of the
+entrance, the portico being occupied by another carriage, from which a
+lady was alighting. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> liveries, the horses, the ceremonial which
+accompanied her arrival all proclaimed a great position. The Count
+caught a glimpse of a tall and graceful figure, a scintillation of
+diamonds in dark hair and a slender foot on the step. As he went
+upstairs he had a back view of the lady.</p>
+
+<p>She ascended in front of him with a slow and rhythmic movement; her
+cloak, lined with fur as white as swan's-down, was unclasped at the
+throat, and slipping back, revealed her shoulders, pale as polished
+ivory, the shoulder-blades disappearing into the lace of the corsage
+with an indescribably soft and fleeting curve as of wings. The neck rose
+slender and round, and the hair, twisted into a great knot on the crown
+of her head, was held in place by jewelled pins.</p>
+
+<p>The harmonious gait of this unknown lady gave Andrea such sincere
+pleasure that he stopped a moment on the first landing to watch her. Her
+long train swept rustling over the stairs; behind her came a servant,
+not immediately in the wake of his mistress on the red carpet, but at
+the side along the wall with irreproachable gravity. The absurd contrast
+between the magnificent creature and the automaton following her brought
+a smile to Andrea's lips.</p>
+
+<p>In the anteroom while the servant was relieving her of her cloak, the
+lady cast a rapid glance at the young man who entered.</p>
+
+<p>The servant announced&mdash;'Her Excellency the Duchess of Scerni!' and
+immediately afterwards&mdash;'Count Sperelli-Fieschi d'Ugenta!' It pleased
+Andrea that his name should be coupled so closely with that of the lady
+in question.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-room were already assembled the Marchese and Marchesa
+d'Ateleta, the Baron and Baroness d'Isola and Don Filippo del Monte. The
+fire burned cheerily on the hearth, and several low seats were
+invitingly disposed within range of its warmth, while large leaf plants
+spread their red-veined foliage over the low backs.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchesa, advanced to meet the two new arrivals with her delightful
+ready laugh.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Ah,' she said, 'a happy chance has forestalled me and made it
+unnecessary for me to tell you one another's names. Cousin Sperelli,
+make obeisance before the divine Elena.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea bowed profoundly. The Duchess held out her hand with a frank and
+graceful gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad to know you, Count,' she said, looking him full in the
+face. 'I heard so much about you last summer at Lucerne from one of your
+friends&mdash;Giulio Musellaro. I must confess I was rather curious&mdash;Besides,
+Musellaro lent me your exquisite "Story of the Hermaphrodite" and made
+me a present of your etching "Sleep"&mdash;a proof copy&mdash;a real gem. You have
+a most ardent admirer in me&mdash;please remember that.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with little pauses in between. Her voice was so warm and
+insinuating in tone that it almost had the effect of a caress, and her
+glance had that unconsciously voluptuous and disturbing expression which
+instantly kindles the desire of every man on whom it rests.</p>
+
+<p>'Cavaliere Sakumi!' announced the servant, as the eighth and last guest
+made his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>He was one of the secretaries to the Japanese Legation, very small and
+yellow, with prominent cheek-bones and long, slanting, bloodshot eyes
+over which the lids blinked incessantly. His body was disproportionately
+large for his spindle legs, and he turned his toes in as he walked. The
+skirts of his coat were too wide, there was a multitude of wrinkles in
+his trousers, his necktie bore visible evidence of an unpractised hand.
+It was as if a <i>daimio</i> had been taken out of one of those cuirasses of
+iron and lacquer, so like the shell of some monstrous crustacean, and
+thrust into the clothes of a European waiter. And yet, with all his
+ungainliness and apparent stupidity there was a glint of malice in his
+slits of eyes and a sort of ironical cunning about the corners of his
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived in the middle of the room, he bowed low. His gibus slipped from
+his hand and rolled over the floor.</p>
+
+<p>At this, the Baroness d'Isola, a tiny blonde with a cloud of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> fluffy
+curls all over her forehead, vivacious and grimacing as a young monkey,
+called to him in her piping voice:</p>
+
+<p>'Come over here, Sakumi&mdash;here, beside me.'</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese cavalier advanced with a succession of bows and smiles.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we see the Princess Iss&eacute; this evening?' asked Donna Francesca
+d'Ateleta, who had a mania for gathering in her drawing-rooms all the
+most grotesque specimens of the exotic colonies of Rome, out of pure
+love of variety and the picturesque.</p>
+
+<p>The Asiatic replied in a barbarous jargon, a scarcely intelligible
+compound of English, French, and Italian.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment everybody was speaking at once&mdash;a chorus through which now
+and then the fresh laughter of the Marchesa rang like silver bells.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure I have seen you before&mdash;I cannot remember when and I cannot
+remember where, but I am certain I have seen you,' Andrea Sperelli was
+saying to the duchess as he stood before her. 'When I saw you going
+upstairs in front of me, a vague recollection rose up in my mind,
+something that took shape from the rhythm of your movements as a picture
+grows out of a melody. I did not succeed in making the recollection
+clear, but when you turned round, I felt that your profile answered
+incontestably to that picture. It could not have been a divination,
+therefore it must have been some obscure phenomenon of memory. I must
+have seen you somewhere before&mdash;who knows&mdash;perhaps in a dream&mdash;perhaps
+in another world, a previous existence&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>As he pronounced this last decidedly hackneyed, not to say silly remark,
+Andrea laughed frankly as if to forestall the lady's smile, whether of
+incredulity or irony. But Elena remained perfectly serious. Was she
+listening, or was she thinking of something else? Did she accept that
+kind of speech, or was she, by her gravity, amusing herself at his
+expense? Did she intend assisting him in the scheme of seduction he had
+begun with so much care, or was she going to shut herself up in
+indifference and silence? In short, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> she or was she not the sort of
+woman to succumb to his attack? Perplexed, disconcerted, Andrea examined
+the mystery from all sides. Most men, especially those who adopt bold
+methods of warfare, are well acquainted with this perplexity which
+certain women excite by their silence.</p>
+
+<p>A servant threw open the great doors leading to the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchesa took the arm of Don Filippo del Monte and led the way.</p>
+
+<p>'Come,' said Elena, and it seemed to Andrea that she leaned upon his arm
+with a certain abandon&mdash;or was it merely an illusion of his
+desire?&mdash;perhaps. He continued in doubt and suspense, but every moment
+that passed drew him deeper within the sweet enchantment, and with every
+instant he became more desperately anxious to read the mystery of this
+woman's heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Here, cousin,' said Francesca, pointing him to a place at one end of
+the oval table, between the Baron d'Isola and the Duchess of Scerni with
+the Cavaliere Sakumi as his <i>vis-&agrave;-vis</i>. Sakumi sat between the Baroness
+d'Isola and Filippo del Monte. The Marchesa and her husband occupied the
+two ends of the table, which glittered with rare china, silver, crystal
+and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Very few women could compete with the Marchesa d'Ateleta in the art of
+dinner giving. She expended more care and forethought in the preparation
+of a menu than of a toilette. Her exquisite taste was patent in every
+detail, and her word was law in the matter of elegant conviviality. Her
+fantasies and her fashions were imitated on every table of the Roman
+upper ten. This winter, for instance, she had introduced the fashion of
+hanging garlands of flowers from one end of the table to the other, on
+the branches of great candelabras, and also that of placing in front of
+each guest, among the group of wine glasses, a slender opalescent Murano
+vase with a single orchid in it.</p>
+
+<p>'What a diabolical flower!' said Elena Muti, taking up the vase and
+examining the orchid which seemed all blood-stained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was of such rich full <i>timbre</i> that even her most trivial
+remarks acquired a new significance, a mysterious grace, like that King
+of Phrygia whose touch turned everything to gold.</p>
+
+<p>'A symbolical flower&mdash;in your hands,' murmured Andrea, gazing at his
+neighbour, whose beauty in that attitude was really amazing.</p>
+
+<p>She was dressed in some delicate tissue of palest blue, spangled with
+silver dots which glittered through antique Burano lace of an
+indefinable tint of white inclining to yellow. The flower, like
+something evil generated by a malignant spell, rose quivering on its
+slender stalk out of the fragile tube which might have been blown by
+some skilful artificer from a liquid gem.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I prefer roses,' observed Elena, replacing the orchid with a
+gesture of repulsion, very different from her former one of curiosity.
+She then joined in the general conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Donna Francesca was speaking of the last reception at the Austrian
+Embassy.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you see Madame de Cahen?' asked Elena. 'She had on a dress of
+yellow tulle covered with humming birds with ruby eyes&mdash;a gorgeous
+dancing bird-cage. And Lady Ouless&mdash;did you notice her?&mdash;in a white
+gauze skirt draped with sea-weed and little red fishes, and under the
+sea-weed and fish another skirt of sea-green gauze&mdash;Did you see it?&mdash;a
+most effective aquarium!' and she laughed merrily.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea was at a loss to understand this sudden volubility These
+frivolous and malicious things were uttered by the same voice which, but
+a few moments, ago had stirred his soul to its very depths; they came
+from the same lips which, in silence, had seemed to him like the mouth
+of the Medusa of Leonardo, that human flower of the soul rendered divine
+by the fire of passion and the anguish of death. What then was the true
+essence of this creature? Had she perception and consciousness of her
+manifold changes, or was she impenetrable to herself and shut from her
+own mystery? In her expression, her manifestation of herself, how much
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> artificial and how much spontaneous? The desire to fathom this
+secret pierced him even through the delight experienced by the proximity
+of the woman whom he was beginning to love. But his wretched habit of
+analysis for ever prevented him losing sight of himself, though every
+time he yielded to its temptation he was punished, like Psyche for her
+curiosity, by the swift withdrawal of love, the frowns of the beloved
+object and the cessation of all delights. Would it not be better to
+abandon oneself frankly to the first ineffable sweetness of new-born
+love? He saw Elena in the act of placing her lips to a glass of pale
+gold wine like liquid honey. He selected from among his own glasses the
+one the servant had filled with the same wine, and drank at the same
+moment that she did. They replaced their glasses on the table together.
+The similarity of the action made them turn to one another, and the
+glance they exchanged inflamed them far more than the wine.</p>
+
+<p>'You are very silent,' said Elena, affecting a lightness of tone which
+somewhat disguised her voice. 'You have the reputation of being a
+brilliant conversationalist&mdash;exert yourself therefore a little!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh cousin! cousin!' exclaimed Donna Francesca with a comical air of
+commiseration, while Filippo del Monte whispered something in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'Cavaliere Sakumi; we are the silent members of this party&mdash;we must wake
+up!'</p>
+
+<p>The long narrow eyes of the Asiatic&mdash;redder than ever now that the wine
+had kindled a deeper crimson on his high cheek-bones&mdash;glittered with
+malice. All this time he had done nothing but gaze at the Duchess of
+Scerni with the ecstatic look of a <i>bonze</i> in presence of the divinity.
+His broad flat face, which might have come straight out of a page of
+O-kou-sai, the great classical humorist, gleamed red among the chains of
+flowers like a harvest moon.</p>
+
+<p>'Sakumi is in love,' said Andrea in a low voice, and leaning over
+towards Elena.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'With whom?'</p>
+
+<p>'With you&mdash;have you not observed it yet?'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, look at him.'</p>
+
+<p>Elena looked across at him. The amorous gaze of the disguised <i>daimio</i>
+suddenly affected her with such ill-disguised mirth that the Japanese
+felt deeply hurt and humiliated.</p>
+
+<p>'See,' she said, and to console him she detached a white camellia and
+threw it across the table to the envoy of the Rising Sun,&mdash;'find some
+comparison in praise of me!'</p>
+
+<p>The Oriental carried the flower to his lips with a ludicrous air of
+devotion.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah&mdash;ah&mdash;Sakumi!' cried the little Baroness d'Isola, 'you are unfaithful
+to me!'</p>
+
+<p>He stammered a few words while his face flamed. Everybody laughed
+unrestrainedly, as if the foreigner had been invited solely to provide
+entertainment for the other guests. Andrea turned laughing towards
+Elena.</p>
+
+<p>Her head was raised and a little thrown back, and she was gazing
+furtively at the young man under her eyelashes with one of those
+indescribably feminine glances which seem to absorb&mdash;almost one would
+say drink in&mdash;all that is most desirable, most delectable in the man of
+their choice. The long lashes veiled the soft dark eyes which were
+looking at him a little side-long, and her lower lip had a scarcely
+perceptible tremor. The full ray of her glance seemed to rest upon his
+lips as the most attractive point about him.</p>
+
+<p>And in truth his mouth was very attractive. Pure and youthful in outline
+and rich in colouring, a little cruel when firmly closed, it reminded
+one irresistibly of that portrait of an unknown gentleman in the
+Borghese gallery, that profound and mysterious work of art in which the
+fascinated imagination has sought to recognise the features of the
+divine Cesare Borgia depicted by the divine Sanzio. As soon as the lips
+parted in a smile the resemblance vanished, and the square, even
+dazzlingly white teeth lit up a mouth as fresh and jocund as a child's.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The moment Andrea turned, Elena withdrew her eyes, though not so quickly
+but that the young man caught the flash. His delight was so poignant
+that it sent the blood flaming to his face.</p>
+
+<p>'She is attracted by me!' he thought to himself, inwardly exulting in
+the assurance of having found favour in the eyes of this rare creature.
+'This is a joy I have never experienced before!' he said to himself.</p>
+
+<p>There are certain glances from a woman's eye which a lover would not
+exchange for anything else she can offer him later. He who has not seen
+that first love-light kindle in a limpid eye has never touched the
+highest point of human bliss. No future moment can ever approach that
+one.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation around them grew more animated, and Elena asked
+him&mdash;'Are you staying the winter in Rome?'</p>
+
+<p>'The whole winter&mdash;and longer,' was Andrea's reply, to whom the simple
+question seemed to open up a promise.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, then you have set up a home here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, in the Casa Zuccari&mdash;<i>domus aurea</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'At the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti?&mdash;Lucky being!'</p>
+
+<p>'Why lucky?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because you live on a spot I have a great liking for.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are quite right I always think&mdash;don't you?&mdash;that there the most
+perfect essence of Rome is concentrated as in a cup.'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite true! I have hung up my heart&mdash;both Catholic and Pagan&mdash;as an
+<i>ex-voto</i> between the obelisk of the Trinit&agrave; and the column of the
+Conception.'</p>
+
+<p>She laughed as she spoke. A sonnet to this suspended heart rose
+instantly to his lips, but he did not give it utterance, for he was in
+no mood to continue their conversation in this light vein of false
+sentiment, which broke the sweet spell she had been weaving about him.
+He was silent therefore.</p>
+
+<p>She, too, remained a moment pensive, and then threw herself with renewed
+vivacity into the general conversation, prodigal of wit and laughter,
+flashing her teeth and her <i>bon mots</i> at all in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> turn. Francesca was
+retailing spicily a piece of gossip about the Princess di Ferentino on
+the subject of a recent, and somewhat risky, adventure of hers with
+Giovanella Daddi.</p>
+
+<p>'By the by&mdash;the Ferentino announces another charity bazaar for
+Epiphany,' said the Baroness d'Isola. 'Does anybody know anything about
+it yet?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am one of the patronesses,' said Elena Muti.</p>
+
+<p>'And you are a most valuable patroness,' broke in Don Filippo del Monte,
+a man of about forty, almost bald, a keen sharpener of epigrams, whose
+face seemed a sort of Socratic mask; the right eye was forever on the
+move, and flashed with a thousand changing expressions, while the left
+remained stationary and glazed behind the single eye-glass, as if he
+used the one for expressing himself and the other for seeing. 'At the
+May bazaar, you brought in a perfect shower of gold.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, the May bazaar&mdash;what a mad affair that was!' exclaimed the
+Marchesa.</p>
+
+<p>While the servants were filling the glasses with iced champagne, she
+added, 'Do you remember, Elena, our stalls were close together?'</p>
+
+<p>'Five louis d'or a drink&mdash;five louis d'or a bite!' Don Filippo called,
+in the voice of a street-hawker. Elena and the Marchesa burst out
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'Why yes, of course, Filippo, you cried the wares,' said Donna
+Francesca. 'Now what a pity you were not there, <i>cugino mio</i>! For five
+louis you might have eaten fruit out of which I had had the first bite,
+and have drunk champagne out of the hollow of Elena's hands for five
+more.'</p>
+
+<p>'How scandalous!' broke in the Baroness d'Isola, with a horrified
+grimace.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, Mary, I like that! And did you not sell cigarettes that you lighted
+up first yourself for a louis?' cried Francesca through her laughter.
+Then she became suddenly grave. 'Every deed, with a charitable object in
+view, is sacred,' she observed sententiously. 'By merely biting into
+fruit, I collected at least two hundred louis.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'And you?' Andrea Sperelli turned to Elena with as constrained
+smile&mdash;'With your human drinking-cup&mdash;how much did you get?'</p>
+
+<p>'I?&mdash;oh, two hundred and seventy louis.'</p>
+
+<p>Everybody was full of fun and laughter, excepting the Marchese
+d'Ateleta, who was old, and afflicted with incurable deafness; was
+padded and painted&mdash;in a word, artificial from head to foot. He was very
+like one of the figures one sees at a wax work show. From time to
+time&mdash;usually the wrong one&mdash;he would give vent to a little dry cackling
+laugh, like the rattle of some rusty mechanism inside him.</p>
+
+<p>'However,' Elena resumed, 'you must know, that after a certain point in
+the evening, the price rose to ten louis, and at last, that lunatic of a
+Galeazzo Secinaro came and offered me a five hundred lire note, if I
+would dry my hands on his great golden beard!'</p>
+
+<p>As was ever the case at the d'Ateletas', the dinner increased in
+splendour towards the end; for the true luxury of the table is shown in
+the dessert. A multitude of choice and exquisite things, delighting the
+eye no less than the palate, were disposed with consummate art in
+various crystal and silver-mounted dishes. Festoons of camellias and
+violets hung between the vine-wreathed eighteenth century candelabras,
+round which sported fairies and nymphs, and on the wall-hangings more
+fairies and nymphs, and all the charming figures of the pastoral
+mythology&mdash;the Corydons, the Phylises, the Rosalinds&mdash;animated with
+their sylvan loves one of those sunny Cytherean landscapes originated by
+the fanciful imagination of Antoine Watteau.</p>
+
+<p>The slightly erotic excitement, which is apt to take hold upon the
+spirits at the end of a dinner graced by fair women and flowers,
+betrayed itself in the tone of the conversations, and the reminiscences
+of this bazaar, at which the ladies&mdash;urged on by a noble spirit of
+emulation in collecting the largest sums&mdash;employed the most unheard of
+audacities to attract buyers.</p>
+
+<p>'And did you accept it?' asked Andrea of the Duchess.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I sacrificed my hands on the altar of Benevolence,' she replied.
+'Twenty-five louis more to my account!'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.</i>' He
+laughed as he quoted Lady Macbeth's words, but, in reality, his heart
+was sore with a confused, ill-defined pain, that bore a strong
+resemblance to jealousy. And suddenly he became aware of something
+excessive, almost&mdash;it might be&mdash;a touch of the courtesan, defacing the
+manners of the great lady. Certain inflections of her voice, certain
+tones of her laughter, here a gesture, there an attitude, certain
+glances, exhaled a charm that was perhaps a trifle too Aphrodisiac. She
+was, besides, somewhat over-lavish with the visible favours of her
+graces, and the air she breathed was continually surcharged with the
+desire she herself excited.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea's heart swelled with bitterness; he could not take his eyes off
+Elena's hands. Out of those hands, so delicately, ideally white and
+transparent, with their faint tracery of azure veins&mdash;from those rosy
+hollowed palms, wherein a chiromancer would have discovered many an
+intricate crossing of lines, ten, twenty different men had drunk at a
+price. He could <i>see</i> the heads of these unknown men bending over her
+and drinking the wine. But Secinaro was one of his friends&mdash;a great
+handsome jovial fellow, imperially bearded like a very Lucius Verus, and
+a most formidable rival to have. He felt as if the dinner would never
+come to an end.</p>
+
+<p>'You are such an innovator,' Elena was saying to Donna Francesca, as she
+dipped her fingers into warm water in a pale blue finger-glass rimmed
+with silver, 'Why do you not revive the ancient fashion of having the
+water offered to one after dinner with a basin and ewer? The modern
+arrangement is very ugly, do you not think so, Sperelli?'</p>
+
+<p>Donna Francesca rose. Every one followed her example. Andrea, with a
+bow, offered his arm to Elena and she looked at him without smiling as
+she slowly laid her hand on his arm. Her last words were gaily and
+lightly spoken, but her gaze was so grave and profound that the young
+man felt it sink into his very soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Are you going to the French Embassy to-morrow evening?' she asked him.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you?' Andrea asked in return.</p>
+
+<p>'I am.'</p>
+
+<p>'So am I.'</p>
+
+<p>They smiled at one another like two lovers.</p>
+
+<p>'Sit down,' she added as she sank into a seat.</p>
+
+<p>The seat was far from the fire, with its back to the curve of a grand
+piano which was partially draped in some rich stuff. At one end of the
+divan, a tall bronze crane held in his beak a tray hanging by three
+chains like one side of a pair of scales, and on it lay a new book and a
+little Japanese scimitar&mdash;a <i>waki-gashi</i>&mdash;the scabbard and hilt
+encrusted with silver chrysanthemums.</p>
+
+<p>Elena took up the book, which was only half cut, read the title, and
+then replaced it on the tray which swung to and fro. The scimitar fell
+to the ground. As both she and Andrea stooped to pick it up, their hands
+met. She straightened herself up and examined the beautiful weapon with
+some curiosity, retaining it in her hand while Andrea talked about the
+new novel, insinuating into his remarks general arguments upon love; and
+her fingers wandered absently over the chasing of the weapon, her
+polished nails seeming a repetition of the delicate gems that sparkled
+in her rings.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, after a pause, Elena said without looking at him: 'You are
+very young&mdash;have you often been in love?'</p>
+
+<p>He answered by another question&mdash;'Which do you consider the truest,
+noblest way of love&mdash;to imagine you have discovered every aspect of the
+eternal Feminine combined in one woman, or to run rapidly over the lips
+of woman as you run your fingers over the keys of a piano, till, at
+last, you find the sublime chord of harmony?'</p>
+
+<p>'I really cannot say&mdash;and you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nor I either&mdash;I am unable to solve the great problem of sentiment.
+However, by personal instinct, I have followed the latter plan and have
+now, I fear, struck the grand chord&mdash;judging, at least, by an inward
+premonition.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'You fear?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Je crains ce que j'esp&egrave;re.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>He instinctively employed this language of affected sentiment to cloak
+his really strong emotion, and Elena felt herself caught by his voice as
+in a golden net and drawn forcibly out of the life surrounding them.</p>
+
+<p>'Her Excellency the Princess di Micigliano!' announced a footman.</p>
+
+<p>'Count di Gissi!'</p>
+
+<p>'Madame Chrysoloras!'</p>
+
+<p>'The Marchese and the Marchesa Massa d'Alba!'</p>
+
+<p>The rooms began to fill rapidly. Long shimmering trains swept over the
+deep red carpet, white shoulders emerged from bodices starred with
+diamonds, embroidered with pearls, covered with flowers, and in nearly
+every coiffure glittered those marvellous hereditary gems for which the
+Roman nobility are so much envied.</p>
+
+<p>'Her Excellency the Princess of Ferentino!'</p>
+
+<p>'His Excellency the Duke of Grimiti!'</p>
+
+<p>The guests formed themselves in various groups, the rallying points of
+gossip and of flirtation. The chief group, composed exclusively of men,
+was in the vicinity of the piano, gathered round the Duchess of Scerni,
+who had risen to her feet, the better to hold her own against her
+besiegers. The Princess of Ferentino came over to greet her friend with
+a reproach.</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you not come to Nini Santamarta's to-day? We all expected you.'</p>
+
+<p>She was tall and thin with extraordinary green eyes sunk deep in their
+shadowy sockets. Her dress was black, the bodice open in a point back
+and front, and in her hair, which was <i>blond cendr&eacute;</i>, she wore a great
+diamond crescent like Diana. She waved a huge fan of red feathers
+hastily to and fro as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'Nini is at Madame Van Hueffel's this evening.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am going there later on for a little while, so I shall see her,'
+answered the Duchess.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Ugenta,' said the Princess turning to Andrea, 'I was looking for
+you to remind you of our appointment. To-morrow is Thursday and Cardinal
+Immenraet's sale begins at twelve. Will you fetch me at one?'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall not fail, Princess.'</p>
+
+<p>'I simply must have that rock crystal.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you must be prepared for competition.'</p>
+
+<p>'From whom?'</p>
+
+<p>'My cousin for one.'</p>
+
+<p>'And who else?'</p>
+
+<p>'From me,' said Elena.</p>
+
+<p>'You?&mdash;Well, we shall see.'</p>
+
+<p>Several of the gentlemen asked for further enlightenment.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a contest between ladies of the 19th century for a rock crystal
+vase which belonged to Niccolo Niccoli,' Andrea explained with
+solemnity; 'a vase, on which is engraved the Trojan Anchises untying one
+of the sandals of Venus Aphrodite. The entertainment will be given
+gratis, at one o'clock to-morrow afternoon, in the Public Sale-rooms of
+the Via Sistina. Contending parties&mdash;the Princess of Ferentino, the
+Duchess of Scerni and the Marchesa d'Ateleta.'</p>
+
+<p>Everybody laughed, and Grimiti asked, 'Is betting permitted?'</p>
+
+<p>'The odds! The odds!' yelled Don Filippo del Monte, imitating the
+strident voice of the bookmaker Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess gave him an admonitory tap on the arm with her red fan, but
+the joke seemed to amuse them hugely and the betting began at once.
+Hearing the bursts of laughter, other ladies and gentlemen joined the
+group in order to share the fun. The news of the approaching contest
+spread like lightning and soon assumed the proportions of a society
+event.</p>
+
+<p>'Give me your arm and let us take a turn through the rooms,' said Elena
+to Andrea Sperelli.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as they were in the west room, away from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> noisy crowd,
+Andrea pressed her arm and murmured, 'Thanks.'</p>
+
+<p>She leaned on him, stopping now and again to reply to some greeting. She
+seemed fatigued, and was as pale as the pearls of her necklace. Each
+gentleman addressed her with some hackneyed compliment.</p>
+
+<p>'How stupid they all are! it makes me feel quite ill,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>As they turned, she saw Sakumi was following them noiselessly, her
+camellia in his button-hole, his eyes full of yearning not daring to
+come nearer. She threw him a compassionate smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Sakumi!'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you not notice him before?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>'While we were sitting by the piano, he was in the recess of the window,
+and never took his eyes off your hands when you were playing with the
+weapon of his native country&mdash;now reduced to being a paper-cutter for a
+European novel.'</p>
+
+<p>'Just now, do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, just now. Perhaps he was thinking how sweet it would be to perform
+<i>Hara-Kiri</i> with that little scimitar, the chrysanthemums on which
+seemed to blossom out of the lacquer and steel under the touch of your
+fingers.'</p>
+
+<p>She did not smile. A veil of sadness, almost of suffering, seemed to
+have fallen over her face; her eyes, faintly luminous under the white
+lids, seemed drowned in shadow, the corners of her mouth drooped
+wearily, her right arm hung straight and languid at her side. She no
+longer held out her hand to those who greeted her; she listened no
+longer to their speeches.</p>
+
+<p>'What is the matter?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing&mdash;I must go to the Van Hueffels' now. Take me to Francesca to
+say good-bye, and then come with me down to my carriage.'</p>
+
+<p>They returned to the first drawing-room, where Luigi Gulli, a young man,
+swarthy and curly-haired as an Arab, who had left his native Calabria in
+search of fortune, was executing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> with much feeling, Beethoven's sonata
+in C# minor. The Marchesa d'Ateleta, a patroness of his, was standing
+near the piano, with her eyes fixed on the keys. By degrees, the sweet
+and grave music drew all these frivolous spirits within its magic
+circle, like a slow-moving but irresistible whirlpool.</p>
+
+<p>'Beethoven!' exclaimed Elena in a tone of almost religious fervour, as
+she stood still and drew her arm from Andrea's.</p>
+
+<p>She had halted beside one of the great palms and, extending her left
+hand, began very slowly to put on her glove. In that attitude her whole
+figure, continued by the train, seemed taller and more erect; the shadow
+of the palm veiled and, so to speak, spiritualised the pallor of her
+skin. Andrea gazed at her in a kind of rapture, increased by the pathos
+of the music.</p>
+
+<p>As if drawn by the young man's impetuous desire, Elena turned her head a
+little, and smiled at him&mdash;a smile so subtle, so spiritual, that it
+seemed rather an emanation of the soul than a movement of the lips,
+while her eyes remained sad and as if lost in a far away dream. Thus
+overshadowed they were verily the eyes of the Night, such as Leonardo da
+Vinci might have imagined for an allegorical figure after having seen
+Lucrezia Crevelli at Milan.</p>
+
+<p>During the second that the smile lasted, Andrea felt himself absolutely
+alone with her in the crowd. An immense wave of pride flooded his heart.</p>
+
+<p>Elena now prepared to put on the other glove.</p>
+
+<p>'No, not that one,' he entreated in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>She understood, and left her hand bare.</p>
+
+<p>He was hoping to kiss that hand before she left. And suddenly he had a
+vision of the May Bazaar, and the men drinking champagne out of those
+hollowed palms, and for the second time that night he felt the keen stab
+of jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>'We will go now,' she said, taking his arm once more.</p>
+
+<p>The sonata over, conversation was resumed with fresh vigour. Three or
+four new names were announced, amongst them that of the Princess Iss&eacute;,
+who entered smiling, with funny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> little tottering steps, in European
+dress, her oval face as white and tiny as a little <i>netske</i> figurine. A
+stir of curiosity ran round the room.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night, Francesca,' said Elena, taking leave of her hostess, 'I
+shall see you to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>'Going so soon?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am due at the Van Hueffels'. I promised to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'What a pity! Mary Dyce is just going to sing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I must go&mdash;good-bye!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, take this, and good-bye. Most amiable of cousins, please look
+after her.'</p>
+
+<p>The Marchesa pressed a bunch of double violets into her hand and hurried
+away to receive the Princess Iss&eacute; very graciously. Mary Dyce, in a red
+dress, slender and undulating as a tongue of fire, began to sing.</p>
+
+<p>'I am so tired!' murmured Elena, leaning wearily on Andrea's arm.
+'Please ask for my cloak.'</p>
+
+<p>He took her cloak from the attendant, and in helping her to put it on,
+touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and felt her shiver.
+The words of one of Schumann's songs was borne to them on Mary Dyce's
+passionate soprano, <i>Ich kann's nicht fassen, nicht glauben!</i></p>
+
+<p>They descended the stairs in silence. A footman preceded them to call
+the duchess's carriage. The stamping of the horses rang through the
+echoing portico. At every step, Andrea felt the pressure of Elena's arm
+grow heavier; she held her head high, and her eyes were half closed.</p>
+
+<p>'As you ascended these stairs, my admiration followed you, unknown to
+you. Now, as you come down, my love accompanies you,' he said softly,
+almost humbly, faltering a little between the two last words.</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply, but she lifted the bunch of violets to her face, and
+inhaled the perfume. In so doing, the wide sleeve of her evening cloak
+slipped back over her arm beyond her elbow, thrilling the young man's
+senses almost beyond control. His lips trembled, and he with difficulty
+restrained the burning words that rose to them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The carriage was standing at the foot of the great stairway; a footman
+held open the door.</p>
+
+<p>'To Madame Van Hueffel's,' said the duchess to him, while Andrea helped
+her in.</p>
+
+<p>The man left the door and returned to his seat beside the coachman. The
+horses stamped, striking out sparks from the stones.</p>
+
+<p>'Take care!' cried Elena, holding out her hand to the young man. Her
+eyes and her diamonds flashed through the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, to be in there with her in the shadow&mdash;to press my lips to her
+satin neck under the perfumed fur of her mantle!'</p>
+
+<p>'Take me with you!' he would like to have cried.</p>
+
+<p>But the horses plunged. 'Oh, take care!' Elena repeated.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand&mdash;pressing his lips to it as if to leave the mark of
+his burning passion. He closed the door and the carriage rolled rapidly
+away under the porch, and out to the Forum.</p>
+
+<p>And thus ended Andrea Sperelli's first meeting with the Duchess of
+Scerni.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The gray deluge of democratic mud, which swallows up so many beautiful
+and rare things, is likewise gradually engulfing that particular class
+of the old Italian nobility in which from generation to generation were
+kept alive certain family traditions of eminent culture, refinement and
+art.</p>
+
+<p>To this class, which I should be inclined to denominate Arcadian because
+it shone with greatest splendour in the charming atmosphere of the
+eighteenth century life, belonged the Sperelli. Urbanity, hellenism,
+love of all that was exquisite, a predilection for out-of-the-way
+studies, an &aelig;sthetic curiosity, a passion for arch&aelig;ology, and an
+epicurean taste in gallantry were hereditary qualities of the house of
+Sperelli. An Alessandro Sperelli brought in 1466 to Frederic of Aragon,
+son of Ferdinand King of Naples, and brother to Alfonso Duke of
+Calabria, a manuscript in folio containing the 'less rude' poems of the
+old Tuscan writers which Lorenzo de Medici had promised him at Pisa in
+1465; and in concert with the most erudite scholars of his time, that
+same Alessandro wrote a Latin elegy on the death of the divine
+Simonetta&mdash;sad and melting numbers after the manner of Tibullus. Another
+Sperelli&mdash;Stefano,&mdash;was during the same century in Flanders, in the
+midst of all the pomp, the extravagant elegance, the almost fabulous
+magnificence of the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, where
+he remained, having allied himself with a Flemish family. A son of his,
+named Giusto, learned painting under the direction of Gossaert, in whose
+company he came to Italy in the suite of Philip of Burgundy, the
+ambassador of the Emperor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> Maximilian to Pope Julius <span class="smcap">ii</span>. in 1508. He
+settled in Florence, where the chief branch of his family continued to
+flourish, and had for his second master Piero di Cosimo, that jocund and
+facile painter and vivid and harmonious colourist, under whose brush the
+pagan deities came to life again. This Giusto was by no means a mediocre
+artist, but he consumed all his forces in the vain effort to reconcile
+his primary Gothic education with the newly awakened spirit of the
+Renaissance. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century the Sperelli
+family migrated to Naples. There a Bartolomeo Sperelli published in 1679
+an astrological treatise: <i>De Nativitatibus</i>; in 1720 a Giovanni
+Sperelli wrote for the theatre an opera bouffe entitled <i>La Faustina</i>
+and also a lyrical tragedy entitled <i>Progne</i>; 1756 a Carlo Sperelli
+brought out a book of amatory verses in which much licentious persiflage
+was expressed with the Horatian elegance so much affected at that
+period. A better poet, and moreover a man of exquisite gallantry, was
+Luigi Sperelli, attached to the court of the <i>lazzaroni</i> king of Naples
+and his queen Caroline. His Muse was very charming, and affected a
+certain epicurean melancholy. He loved much and with a fine
+discrimination, and had innumerable adventures&mdash;some of them famous&mdash;as,
+for instance, that with the Marchesa di Bugnano who poisoned herself out
+of jealousy, and with the Countess of Chesterfield who died of
+consumption, and whom he mourned in a series of odes, sonnets and
+elegies&mdash;very moving, if perhaps somewhat overladen with metaphor.</p>
+
+<p>Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi d'Ugenta, sole heir to the family, carried
+on its traditions. He was, in truth, the ideal type of the young Italian
+nobleman of the nineteenth century, a true representative of a race of
+chivalrous gentlemen and graceful artists, the last scion of an
+intellectual line.</p>
+
+<p>He was, so to speak, thoroughly impregnated with art. His early youth,
+nourished as it was by the most varied and profound studies, promised
+wonders. Up to his twentieth year, he alternated between severe study
+and long journeys, in company with his father, and could thus complete
+his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> extraordinary &aelig;sthetic education under paternal direction, without
+the restrictions and constraints imposed by tutors. And it was to his
+father that he owed his taste for everything pertaining to art, his
+passionate cult of the Beautiful, his paradoxical disdain of prejudice,
+and his keen appetite for the sensuous.</p>
+
+<p>That father, who had grown up in the midst of the last expiring
+splendours of the Bourbon court of Naples, understood life on a large
+scale, was profoundly initiated into all the arts of the voluptuary,
+combined with a certain Byronic leaning towards fantastic romanticism.
+His marriage had occurred under <i>quasi</i> tragic circumstances, the finale
+of a mad passion; then, after disturbing and undermining the conjugal
+peace in every possible fashion, he had separated from his wife, and,
+keeping his son always with him, had travelled about the whole of
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea's education had thus been a living one; that is to say, derived
+less from books than from the study of life as he had seen it. His mind
+was corrupted not only by over-refined culture, but also by actual
+experiments, and in him curiosity grew keener in proportion as his
+knowledge grew wider. From the beginning, he had ever been prodigal of
+his powers, for the great nervous force with which nature had endowed
+him was inexhaustible in providing him with the treasures he dispensed
+so lavishly. But the expansion of that energy caused in him the
+destruction of another force: the moral one, which his own father had
+not scrupled to repress in him. And he never perceived that his whole
+life was a steady retrogression of all his faculties, of his hopes, his
+joys&mdash;a species of gradual renunciation&mdash;and that the circle was slowly
+but inexorably narrowing round him.</p>
+
+<p>Among other fundamental maxims his father had given him the following:
+You must <i>make</i> your own life as you would any other work of art. The
+life of a man of intellect should be of his own designing. Herein lies
+the only true superiority.</p>
+
+<p>Again: Never, let it cost what it may, lose the mastery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> over yourself
+even in the most intoxicating rapture of the senses. <i>Habere non haberi</i>
+is the rule from which the man of intellect should never swerve.</p>
+
+<p>And again&mdash;Regret is the idle pastime of an unoccupied mind. The best
+method, therefore, to avoid regret is to keep the mind constantly
+occupied with new fancies, fresh sensations.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, however, these <i>voluntary</i> axioms, which from their
+ambiguity might just as easily be interpreted as lofty moral rules, fell
+upon an <i>involuntary</i> nature; that is to say, one in which the will
+power was extremely feeble.</p>
+
+<p>Another seed sown by the paternal hand had borne evil fruit in Andrea's
+spirit&mdash;the seed of sophistry. Sophistry, said this imprudent teacher,
+is at the bottom of all human pleasure or pain. Therefore, quicken and
+multiply your sophisms and you quicken and multiply your own pleasure or
+your own pain. It is possible that the whole science of life consists in
+obscuring the truth. The word is a very profound matter in which
+inexhaustible treasure is concealed for the man who knows how to use it.
+The Greeks, who were artists in words, were the most refined
+voluptuaries of antiquity. The sophists flourished in the greatest
+number during the age of Pericles, the Golden Age of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>This germ had found a favourable soil in the unhealthy culture of the
+young man's mind. By degrees, insincerity&mdash;rather towards himself than
+towards others&mdash;became such a habit of Andrea's mind, that finally he
+was incapable of being wholly sincere or of regaining dominion over
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>The death of his father left him alone at the age of twenty, master of a
+considerable fortune, separated from his mother, and at the mercy of his
+passions and his tastes. He spent fifteen months in England. His mother
+married again, and he returned to Rome from choice.</p>
+
+<p>Rome was his passion&mdash;not the Rome of the C&aelig;sars, but the Rome of the
+Popes&mdash;not the Rome of the Triumphal Arches, the Forums, the Baths, but
+the Rome of the Villas, the Fountains, the Churches. He would have given
+all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> Colosseums in the world for the Villa Medici, the Campo Vaccino
+for the Piazza di Spagna, the Arch of Titus for the Fountain of the
+Tortoises. The princely magnificence of the Colonnas, the Dorias, the
+Barberinis, attracted him far more than the ruins of imperial grandeur.
+It was his dream to possess a palace crowned by a cornice of Michael
+Angelo's, and with frescos by the Carracci like the Farnese palace&mdash;a
+gallery of Raphaels, Titians and Domenichini like the Borghese; a villa
+like that of Alessandro Albani, where deep shadowy groves, red granite
+of the East, white marble from Luni, Greek statues and Renaissance
+pictures should weave an enchantment round some sumptuous amour of his.
+In an album of 'Confessions' at his cousin's, the Marchesa d'Ateleta,
+against the question&mdash;'What would you most like to be?' he had written,
+'A Roman prince.'</p>
+
+<p>Arriving in Rome about the end of September, he set up his 'home' in the
+Palazzo Zuccari, near the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti, where the obelisk of Pius
+<span class="smcap">vi</span>. marks with its shadow the passing hours. The whole of October was
+devoted to furnishing them. When the rooms were all finished and
+decorated to his taste, he passed some days of invincible melancholy and
+loneliness in his new abode. It was a St. Martin's summer, a 'Springtime
+of the Dead,' calmly sad and sweet, in which Rome lay all golden, like a
+city of the Far East, under a milk-white sky, diaphanous as the
+firmament reflected in Southern seas.</p>
+
+<p>All this languor of atmosphere and light, in which things seemed to lose
+their substance and reality, oppressed the young man with an infinite
+weariness, an inexpressible sense of discontent, of discomfort, of
+solitude, emptiness and home-sickness, mostly, no doubt, the result of
+the change of climate and customs.</p>
+
+<p>It was just this, that he was entering upon a new phase of life. Would
+he find therein the woman and the work capable of dominating his heart
+and becoming an object in life to him? Within himself he felt neither
+the conviction of power nor the presage of fame or happiness. Though
+penetrated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> impregnated with art, as yet he had not produced anything
+remarkable. Eager in the pursuit of pleasure and of love, he had never
+yet really loved or really enjoyed whole-heartedly. Tortured by
+aspirations after an Ideal, and abhorring pain both by nature and
+education, he was vulnerable on every side, accessible to pain at every
+point.</p>
+
+<p>In the tumult of his conflicting inclinations, he had lost all guiding
+will-power and moral perception. Will, in abdicating had yielded the
+sceptre to instinct and the &aelig;sthetic sense was substituted for the
+moral. But, it was nevertheless precisely to his &aelig;sthetic sense&mdash;in him
+most subtle and powerful&mdash;that he owed a certain strength and
+equilibrium of mind, so that one might say his existence was a perpetual
+struggle between contrary forces, enclosed within the limits of that
+equilibrium. Men of intellect, educated in the cult of the beautiful,
+preserve a certain sense of order even in their worst depravities. The
+conception of the beautiful is, so to speak, the axis of their being,
+round which all their passions revolve.</p>
+
+<p>Over this sadness, the recollection of Constance Landbrooke still
+floated like a faded perfume. His love for Conny had been a very
+delicate affair, for she was a very sweet little creature. She was like
+one of Lawrence's creations, with all the dainty feminine graces so dear
+to that painter of furbelows and laces and velvets, of lustrous eyes and
+pouting lips, a very re-incarnation of the little Countess of
+Shaftesbury. Lively, chattering, never still, lavish of infantile
+diminutives and silvery peals of laughter, easily moved to sudden
+caresses and as sudden melancholies and quick bursts of anger, she
+contributed to her share of love a vast amount of movement, much variety
+and many caprices. But Conny Landbrooke's melodious twitterings had left
+no more mark on Andrea's heart than the light musical echo left in one's
+ear for a time by some gay ritornella. More than once in some pensive
+hour of twilight melancholy, she had said to him with a mist of tears
+before her eyes&mdash;'I know you do not love me.' And in truth he did not
+love her, she did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> not by any means satisfy his longings. His ideal was
+less northern in character. Ideally he felt himself attracted by those
+courtesans of the sixteenth century, over whose faces there would appear
+to be drawn some indefinable veil of sorcery, some transparent mask of
+enchantment, some divine nocturnal spell.</p>
+
+<p>The moment Andrea set eyes on the Duchess of Scerni, he said to
+himself&mdash;'<i>This</i> is my Ideal Woman!' and his whole soul went out to her
+in a transport of joy, in the presentiment of the future.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The next day the public sale-room of the Via Sistina was thronged with
+fashionable people, come to look on at the famous contest.</p>
+
+<p>It was raining hard; the light in the low-roofed damp rooms was dull and
+gray. Along the walls were ranged various pieces of carved furniture,
+several large diptychs and triptychs of the Tuscan school of the
+fourteenth century; four pieces of Flemish tapestry representing the
+Story of Narcissus hung from ceiling to floor; Metaurensian majolicas
+occupied two long shelves; stuffs&mdash;for the most part ecclesiastical&mdash;lay
+spread out on chairs or heaped up on tables; antiquities of the rarest
+kind&mdash;ivories, enamels, crystals, engraved gems, medals, coins,
+breviaries, illuminated manuscripts, silver of delicate workmanship were
+massed together in high cabinets behind the auctioneer's table. A
+peculiar musty odour, arising from the clamminess of the atmosphere and
+this collection of ancient things, pervaded the air.</p>
+
+<p>When Andrea Sperelli entered the room with the Princess di Ferentino, he
+looked about him rapidly with a secret tremor&mdash;Is <i>she</i> here? he said to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>She was there, seated at the table between the Cavaliere Davila and Don
+Filippo del Monte. Before her on the table lay her gloves and her muff,
+to which a little bunch of violets was fastened. She held in her hand a
+little bas-relief in silver, attributed to Caradosso Foppa, which she
+was examining with great attention. Each article passed from hand to
+hand along the table while the auctioneer proclaimed its merits in a
+loud voice, those standing behind the line of chairs leaning over to
+look.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sale began.</p>
+
+<p>'Make your bids, gentlemen! make your bids!' cried the auctioneer from
+time to time.</p>
+
+<p>Some amateur encouraged by this cry bid a higher sum with his eye on his
+competitors. The auctioneer raised his hammer.</p>
+
+<p>'Going&mdash;Going&mdash;Gone!'</p>
+
+<p>He rapped the table. The article fell to the last bidder. A murmur went
+round the assemblage, then the bidding recommenced. The Cavaliere
+Davila, a Neapolitan gentleman of gigantic stature and almost femininely
+gentle manners, a noted collector and connoisseur of majolica, gave his
+opinion on each article of importance. Three lots in this sale of the
+Cardinal's effects were really of 'superior' quality: the Story of
+Narcissus, the rock-crystal goblet, and an embossed silver helmet by
+Antonio del Pollajuolo presented by the City of Florence to the Count of
+Urbino in 1472 for services rendered during the taking of Volterra.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is the Princess,' said Filippo del Monte to the Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>Elena rose and shook hands with her friend.</p>
+
+<p>'Already in the field!' exclaimed the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>'Already.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Francesca?'</p>
+
+<p>'She has not come yet.'</p>
+
+<p>Four or five young men&mdash;the Duke of Grimiti, Roberto Casteldieri,
+Ludovico Barbarisi, Gianetto Rutolo&mdash;drew up round them. Others joined
+them. The rattle of the rain against the windows almost drowned their
+voices.</p>
+
+<p>Elena held out her hand frankly to Sperelli as to everybody else, but
+somehow he felt that that handshake set him at a distance from her.
+Elena seemed to him cold and grave. That instant sufficed to freeze and
+destroy all his dreams; his memories of the preceding evening grew
+confused and dim, the torch of hope was extinguished. What had happened
+to her?&mdash;She was not the same woman. She was wrapped in the folds of a
+long otter-skin coat, and wore a toque of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> same fur on her head.
+There was something hard, almost contemptuous, in the expression of her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>'The goblet will not come on for some time yet,' she observed to the
+Princess, as she resumed her seat.</p>
+
+<p>Every object passed through her hands. She was much tempted by a centaur
+cut in a sardonyx, a very exquisite piece of workmanship, part, perhaps,
+of the scattered collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent. She took part in
+the bidding, communicating her offers to the auctioneer in a low voice
+without raising her eyes to him. Presently the competition stopped; she
+obtained the intaglio for a good price.</p>
+
+<p>'A most admirable acquisition,' observed Andrea Sperelli from behind her
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>Elena could not repress a slight start. She took up the sardonyx and
+handed it to him to look at over her shoulder without turning round. It
+was really a very beautiful thing.</p>
+
+<p>'It might be the centaur copied by Donatello,' Andrea added.</p>
+
+<p>And in his heart, with his admiration for the work of art, there rose up
+also a sincere admiration for the noble taste of the lady who now filled
+all his thoughts. 'What a rare creature both in mind and body!' he
+thought. But the higher she rose in his imagination, the further she
+seemed removed from him in reality. All the security of the preceding
+evening was transformed into uneasiness, and his first doubts re-awoke.
+He had dreamed too much last night with waking eyes, bathed in a
+felicity that knew no bounds, while the memory of a gesture, a smile, a
+turn of the head, a fold of her raiment held him captive as in a net.
+Now all this imaginary world had tumbled miserably about his ears at the
+touch of reality. In Elena's eyes there had been no sign of that special
+greeting to which he had so ardently looked forward; she had in no wise
+singled him out from the crowd, had offered him no mark of favour. Why
+not? He felt himself slighted, humiliated. All these fatuous people
+irritated him, he was exasperated by the things which seemed to engross
+Elena's attention, and more particularly by Filippo del Monte,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> who
+leaned towards her every now and then to whisper something to
+her&mdash;scandal no doubt. The Marchesa d'Ateleta now arrived, cheerful as
+ever. Her laugh, out of the centre of the circle of men who hastened to
+surround her, caused Don Filippo to turn round.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah&mdash;so the trinity is complete!' he exclaimed, rising from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea instantly slipped into it at Elena Muti's side. As the subtle
+perfume of the violets reached him, he murmured&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'These are not those of last night, are they?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' she answered coldly.</p>
+
+<p>In all her varying moods, changeful and caressing as the waves of the
+sea, there always lay a hidden menace of rebuff. She was often taken
+with fits of cold restraint. Andrea held his tongue, bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>'Make your bids, gentlemen,' cried the auctioneer.</p>
+
+<p>The bids rose higher. Antonio del Pollajuolo's silver helmet was being
+hotly contested. Even the Cavaliere Davila entered the lists. The very
+air seemed gradually to become hotter; the feverish desire to possess so
+beautiful an object seemed to spread like a contagion.</p>
+
+<p>In that year the craze for <i>bibelots</i> and <i>bric-&agrave;-brac</i> reached the
+point of madness. The drawing-rooms of the nobility and the upper middle
+classes were crammed with curios; every lady must needs cover the
+cushions of her sofas and chairs with some piece of church vestment, and
+put her roses into an Umbrian ointment pot, or a chalcedony jar. The
+sale-rooms were the favourite meeting-places, and every sale crowded. It
+was the fashion for the ladies when they dropped in anywhere for tea in
+the afternoon, to enter with some such remark as&mdash;'I have just come from
+the sale of the painter Campos' things. Tremendous bidding! Such
+Hispano-Moresque plaques! I secured a jewel belonging to Maria
+Leczinska. Look!'</p>
+
+<p>The bidding continued. Fashionable purchasers crowded round the table,
+vieing with each other in artistic and critical comparisons between the
+Giottoesque Nativities and Annuncia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>tions. Into this atmosphere of
+mustiness and antiquity the ladies brought the perfume of their furs,
+and more especially of the violets which each one wore on her muff,
+according to the then prevailing charming fashion, and their presence
+diffused a delicious air of warmth and fragrance. Outside, the rain
+continued to fall, and the light to fade. Here and there a little flame
+of gas struggled feebly with such daylight as remained.</p>
+
+<p>'Going&mdash;going&mdash;gone!' The stroke of the hammer put Lord Humphrey
+Heathfield in possession of the Florentine helmet. The bidding then
+began for smaller articles, which passed in turn from hand to hand down
+the long table. Elena handled them carefully, examined them, and placed
+them in front of Andrea without remark. There were enamels, ivories,
+eighteenth century watches, Milanese goldsmiths' work of the time of
+Ludovico the Moor, Books of Hours inscribed in gold letters on pale blue
+vellum. These precious things seemed to increase in value under the
+touch of Elena's fingers; her little hands had a faint tremor of
+eagerness when they came in contact with some specially desirable
+object. Andrea watched them intently, and his imagination transformed
+every movement of her hands into a caress. 'But why did she place each
+thing upon the table instead of passing it to him?'</p>
+
+<p>He forestalled her next time by holding out his hand. And from
+thenceforth the ivories, the enamels, the ornaments passed from the
+hands of the lady to those of her lover, to whom they communicated an
+ineffable thrill of delight. He felt that thus some particle of the
+charm of the beloved woman entered into these objects, just as a portion
+of the virtue of the magnet enters into the iron. It was, in truth, the
+magnetic sense of love&mdash;one of those acute and profound sensations which
+are rarely felt but at love's beginning, and which, differing
+essentially from all others, seem to have no physical or moral seat, but
+to exist in some neutral element of our being&mdash;an element that is
+intermediate, and the nature of which is unknown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Here again is a rapture I have never felt before,' thought Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>A kind of torpor seemed creeping over him. Little by little, he was
+losing consciousness of time and place.</p>
+
+<p>'I recommend this clock to your notice,' Elena was saying to him, with a
+look the full significance of which he did not for the first moment
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>It was a small Death's-head, carved in ivory with extraordinary power
+and anatomical skill. Each jaw was furnished with a row of diamonds, and
+two rubies flashed from the deep eye-sockets. On the forehead was
+engraved, <i>Ruit Hora</i>; and on the occiput <i>Tibi</i>, <i>Hippolyta</i>. It opened
+like a box, the hinging being almost imperceptible, and the ticking
+inside lent an indescribable air of life to the diminutive skull. This
+sepulchral jewel, the offering of some unknown artist to his mistress,
+had doubtless marked many an hour of rapture, and served as a warning
+symbol to their amorous souls.</p>
+
+<p>Could a lover wish for anything more exquisite and more suggestive? 'Has
+she any special reason for recommending this to me?' thought Andrea, all
+his hopes reviving on the instant. He threw himself into the bidding
+with a sort of fury. Two or three others bid against him, notably
+Giannetto Rutolo, who, being in love with Donna Ippolita Albonico, was
+attracted by the dedication: <i>Tibi, Hippolyta</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Rutolo and Sperelli were left alone in the contest. The
+bidding rose higher than the actual value of the article, which forced a
+smile from the auctioneer. At last, vanquished by his adversary's
+determination, Giannetto Rutolo was silent.</p>
+
+<p>'Going&mdash;going&mdash;!'</p>
+
+<p>Donna Ippolita's lover, a little pale, cried one last sum. Sperelli
+named a higher&mdash;there was a moment's silence. The auctioneer looked from
+one to the other, then he raised his hammer and slowly, still looking at
+the two&mdash;'Going&mdash;going&mdash;gone!'</p>
+
+<p>The Death's-head fell to the Conte d'Ugenta. A murmur ran round the
+room. A sudden flood of light burst through the windows, lit up the
+gleaming gold backgrounds of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> triptychs, and played over the
+sorrowfully patient brow of the Siennese Madonna and the glittering
+steel scales on the Princess di Ferentino's little grey hat.</p>
+
+<p>'When is the goblet coming on?' asked the princess impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Her friends consulted the catalogue. There was no hope of the goblet for
+that day. The unusual amount of competition made the sale go slowly.
+There was still a long list of smaller articles&mdash;cameos, medallions,
+coins. Several antiquaries and Prince Stroganow disputed each piece
+hotly. The rest felt considerably disappointed. The Duchess of Scerni
+rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye, Sperelli,' she said. 'I shall see you again this
+evening&mdash;perhaps.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why perhaps?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not feel well.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is the matter?'</p>
+
+<p>She turned away without replying, and took leave of the others. Many of
+them followed her example and left with her. The young men were making
+fun of the 'spectacle manqu&eacute;.' The Marchesa d'Ateleta laughed, but the
+princess was evidently thoroughly out of temper. The footmen waiting in
+the hall called for the carriages as if at the door of a theatre or
+concert hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you not coming on to Laura Miano's?' Francesca asked the duchess.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I am going home.'</p>
+
+<p>She waited on the pavement for her brougham to come up. The rain was
+passing over; patches of blue were beginning to appear between the great
+banks of white cloud; a shaft of sunshine made the wet flags glitter.
+Flooded by this pale rose splendour, her magnificent furs falling in
+straight symmetrical folds to her feet, Elena was very beautiful. As
+Andrea caught a glimpse of the inside of her brougham, all cosily lined
+with white satin like a little boudoir, with its shining silver
+foot-warmer for the comfort of her small feet, his dream of the
+preceding evening came back to him&mdash;'Oh,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> to be there with her alone,
+and feel the warm perfume of her breath mingling with the
+violets&mdash;behind the mist-dimmed windows through which one hardly sees
+the muddy streets, the gray houses, the dull crowd!'</p>
+
+<p>But she only bowed slightly to him at the door, without even a smile,
+and the next moment the carriage had flashed away in the direction of
+the Palazzo Barberini, leaving the young man with a dim sense of
+depression and heartache.</p>
+
+<p>She only said 'perhaps,' so it was quite possible that she would not be
+at the Palazzo Farnese that evening. What should he do then? The thought
+that he might not see her was intolerable; already every hour he passed
+far from her weighed heavily on his spirits. 'Am I then so deeply in
+love with her already?' he asked himself. His spirit seemed imprisoned
+within a circle in which the phantoms of all his sensations in presence
+of this woman surged and wheeled around him. Suddenly there would emerge
+from this tangle of memory, with singular precision, some phrase of
+hers, an inflection of her voice, an attitude, a glance, the seat where
+they had sat, the finale of the Beethoven sonata, a burst of melody from
+Mary Dyce, the face of the footman who had held back the
+<i>porti&egrave;re</i>&mdash;anything that happened to have caught his attention at the
+moment&mdash;and these images obscured by their extreme vividness the actual
+life around him. He pleaded with her; said to her in thought what he
+would say to her in reality by and by.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived in his own rooms, he ordered tea of his man-servant, installed
+himself in front of the fire and gave himself up to the fictions of his
+hope and his desire. He took the little jewelled skull out of its case
+and examined it carefully. The tiny diamond teeth flashed back at him in
+the firelight, and the rubies lit up the shadowy orbits. Behind the
+smooth ivory brow time pulsed unceasingly&mdash;<i>Ruit Hora</i>. Who was the
+artist who had contrived for his Hippolyta so superb and bold a fantasy
+of Death, at a period too when the masters of enamelling had been wont
+to ornament with tender idylls the little watches destined to warn
+Coquette of the time of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> the rendezvous in the parks of Watteau? The
+modelling gave evidence of a masterly hand&mdash;vigorous and full of
+admirable style; altogether it was worthy of a fifteenth century artist
+as forcible as Verrocchio.</p>
+
+<p>'I recommend this clock to your consideration.' Andrea could not help
+smiling a little at Elena's words uttered in so peculiar a tone after so
+cold a silence. He was assured that she intended him to put the
+construction upon her words which he had afterwards done, but then why
+retire into impenetrable reserve again&mdash;why take no further notice of
+him&mdash;what ailed her? Andrea lost himself in a maze of conjecture.
+Nevertheless, the warm atmosphere of the room, the luxurious chair, the
+shaded lamp, the fitful gleams of firelight, the aroma of the tea&mdash;all
+these soothing influences combined to mitigate his pain. He went on
+dreamingly, aimlessly, as if wandering through a fantastic labyrinth.
+With him reverie sometimes had the effect of opium&mdash;it intoxicated him.</p>
+
+<p>'May I take the liberty of reminding the Signor Conte that he is
+expected at the Casa Doria at seven o'clock,' observed his valet in a
+subdued and discreet murmur, one of his offices being to jog his
+master's memory. 'Everything is ready.'</p>
+
+<p>He went into an adjoining octagonal room to dress, the most luxurious
+and comfortable dressing-room any young man of fashion could possibly
+desire. On a great Roman sarcophagus, transformed with much taste into a
+toilet table, were ranged a selection of cambric handkerchiefs, evening
+gloves, card and cigarette cases, bottles of scent, and five or six
+fresh gardenias in separate little pale blue china vases&mdash;all these
+frivolous and fragile things on this mass of stone, on which a funeral
+<i>cort&egrave;ge</i> was sculptured by a masterly hand!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>At the Casa Doria, speaking of one thing and another, the Duchess
+Angelieri remarked&mdash;'It seems that Laura Miano and Elena Muti have
+quarrelled.'</p>
+
+<p>'About Giorgio perhaps?' returned another lady laughing.</p>
+
+<p>'So they say. The story began this summer at Lucerne&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'But Laura was not at Lucerne,'</p>
+
+<p>'Exactly&mdash;but her husband was&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe it is a pure invention,' broke in the Florentine countess
+Donna Bianca Dolcebuono&mdash;'Giorgio is in Paris now.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea heard it all in spite of the chattering of the little Contessa
+Starnina, who sat at his right hand, and never gave him a moment's
+peace. Bianca Dolcebuono's words did little to ease the smart of his
+wound. At least, he would have liked to know the whole story. But the
+Duchess Angelieri did not resume the thread of her discourse, and other
+conversations crossed and recrossed the table under the great gorgeous
+roses from the Villa Pamfili.</p>
+
+<p>Who was this Giorgio? A former lover? Elena had spent part of the summer
+at Lucerne,&mdash;she had just come from Paris. After the sale she had
+refused to go to Laura Miano's. A fierce desire assailed him to see her,
+to speak to her again. The invitation at the Palazzo Farnese was for ten
+o'clock&mdash;half past ten found him there waiting anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>He waited long. The rooms filled rapidly; the dancing began. In the
+Carracci gallery the divinities of fashionable Rome vied in beauty with
+the Ariadnes, the Galateas, the Auroras, the Dianas of the frescos;
+couples whirled past;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> heads glittering with jewels drooped or raised
+themselves, bosoms panted, the breath came fast through parted crimson
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>'You are not dancing, Sperelli?' asked Gabriella Barbarisi, a girl brown
+as the <i>oliva speciosa</i>, as she passed him on the arm of her partner,
+fanning herself and smiling to show a dimple she had at the corner of
+her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;later on,' Andrea responded hastily&mdash;'later on.'</p>
+
+<p>Heedless of introductions or greetings, his torment increased with every
+moment of this fruitless expectation, and he roamed aimlessly from room
+to room. That 'perhaps' made him sadly afraid that Elena would not come.
+And supposing she really did not? When was he likely to see her again?
+Donna Bianca Dolcebuono passed, and, almost without knowing why, he
+attached himself to her side, saying a thousand agreeable things to her,
+feeling some slight comfort in her society. He had the greatest desire
+to speak to her about Elena, to question her, to reassure himself; but
+the orchestra struck up a languorous mazurka and the Florentine countess
+was carried off by her partner.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, Andrea joined a group of young men near one of the
+doors&mdash;Ludovico Barbarisi, the Duke di Beffi, Filippo del Gallo and Gino
+Bomminaco. They were watching the couples, and exchanging observations
+not over refined in quality. One of them turned to Andrea as he came up.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, what has become of you this evening? Your cousin was looking for
+you a moment ago. There she is dancing with my brother now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Look!' exclaimed Filippo del Gallo&mdash;'the Albonico has come back, she is
+dancing with Giannetto.'</p>
+
+<p>'The Duchess of Scerni came back last week,' said Ludovico; 'what a
+lovely creature!'</p>
+
+<p>'Is she here?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not seen her yet,'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea's heart stopped beating for a moment, fearing that something
+would be said against her by one or other of these malicious tongues.
+But the passing of the Princess Iss&eacute; on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> the arm of the Danish Minister
+diverted their attention. Nevertheless, his desire for further knowledge
+was so intense, that it almost drove him to lead back the conversation
+to the name of his lady-love. But he was not quite bold enough. The
+mazurka was over; the group broke up. 'She is not coming! She is not
+coming!' His secret anxiety rose to such a pitch that he half thought of
+leaving the place altogether; the contact of this laughing, careless
+throng was intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>As he turned away, he saw the Duchess of Scerni entering the gallery on
+the arm of the French ambassador. For one instant their eyes met, but
+that one glance seemed to draw them to each other, to penetrate to the
+very depths of their souls. Both knew that each had only been looking
+for the other, and at that moment there seemed to fall a silence upon
+both hearts, even in the midst of the babel of voices, and all their
+surroundings to vanish and be swept away by the force of their own
+absorbing thought.</p>
+
+<p>She advanced along the frescoed gallery where the crowd was thinnest,
+her long white train rippling like a wave over the floor behind her. All
+white and simple, she passed slowly along, turning from side to side in
+answer to the numerous greetings, with an air of manifest fatigue and a
+somewhat strained smile which drew down the corners of her mouth, while
+her eyes looked larger than ever under the low white brow, her extreme
+pallor imparting to her whole face a look so ethereal and delicate as to
+be almost ghostly. This was not the same woman who had sat beside him at
+the Ateleta's table, nor the one of the Sale Rooms, nor the one standing
+waiting for a moment on the pavement of the Via Sistina. Her beauty at
+this moment was of ideal nobility, and shone with additional splendour
+among all these women heated with the dance, over-excited and restless
+in their manner. The men looked at her and grew thoughtful; no mind was
+so obtuse or empty that she did not exercise a disturbing influence upon
+it, inspire some vague and indefinable hope. He whose heart was free
+imagined with a thrill what such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> woman's love would be; he who loved
+already conceived a vague regret, and dreamed of raptures hitherto
+unknown; he who bore a wound dealt by some woman's jealousy or
+faithlessness suddenly felt that he might easily recover.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she advanced amid the homage of the men, enveloped by their gaze.
+Arrived at the end of the gallery, she joined a group of ladies who were
+talking and fanning themselves excitedly under the fresco of Perseus
+turning Phineus to stone. They were the Princess di Ferentino, Hortensa
+Massa d'Alba, the Marchesa Daddi-Tosinghi and Bianca Dolcebuono.</p>
+
+<p>'Why so late?' asked the latter.</p>
+
+<p>'I hesitated very much whether to come at all&mdash;I don't feel well.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, you look very pale.'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe I am going to have neuralgia badly again, like last year.'</p>
+
+<p>'Heaven forefend!'</p>
+
+<p>'Elena, do look at Madame de la Boissi&egrave;re,' exclaimed Giovanella Daddi
+in her queer husky voice; 'doesn't she look like a camel with a yellow
+wig!'</p>
+
+<p>'Mademoiselle Vanloo is losing her head over your cousin,' said Hortensa
+Massa d'Alba to the Princess as Sophie Vanloo passed on Ludovico
+Barbarisi's arm. 'I heard her say just now when they passed me in the
+mazurka&mdash;<i>Ludovic, ne faites plus &ccedil;a en dansant; je frissonne toute</i>&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>The ladies laughed in chorus, fluttering their fans. The first notes of
+a Hungarian waltz floated in from the next room. The gentlemen came to
+claim their partners. At last Andrea was able to offer Elena his arm and
+carry her off.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought I should have died waiting for you! If you had not come I
+should have gone to find you&mdash;anywhere. When I saw you come in I could
+scarcely repress a cry. This is only the second evening I have met you,
+and yet I feel as if I had loved you for years. The thought of you and
+you alone is now the life of my life.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He uttered his burning words of love in a low voice, looking straight
+before him, and she listened in a similar attitude, apparently quite
+impassive, almost stony. Only a sprinkling of people remained in the
+gallery. Between the busts of the C&aelig;sars along the walls, lamps with
+milky globes shaped like lilies shed an even, tempered light. The
+profusion of palms and flowering plants gave the whole place the look of
+a sumptuous conservatory. The music floated through the warm-scented air
+under the vaulted roof and over all this mythology like a breeze though
+an enchanted garden.</p>
+
+<p>'Can you love me?' he asked: 'tell me if you think you can ever love
+me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I came only for you,' she returned slowly.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me that you will love me,' he repeated, while every drop of blood
+seemed to rush in a tumult of joy to his heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps&mdash;&mdash;' she answered, and she looked into his face with that same
+look which, on the preceding evening, had seemed to hold a divine
+promise, that ineffable gaze which acts like the velvet touch of a
+loving hand. Neither of them spoke; they listened to the sweet and
+fitful strains of the music, now slow and faint as a zephyr, now loud
+and rushing like a sudden tempest.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we dance?' he asked with a secret tremor of delight at the
+prospect of encircling her with his arm.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a moment before replying. 'No; I would rather not.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, seeing the Duchess of Bugnare, her aunt, entering the gallery with
+the Princess Alberoni and the French ambassadress, she added hurriedly,
+'Now&mdash;be prudent, and leave me.'</p>
+
+<p>She held out her gloved hand to him and advanced alone to meet the
+ladies with a light firm step. Her long white train lent an additional
+grace to her figure, the wide and heavy folds of brocade serving to
+accentuate the slenderness of her waist. Andrea, as he followed her with
+his eyes, kept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> repeating her words to himself, 'I came for you alone&mdash;I
+came for you alone!' The orchestra suddenly took up the waltz measure
+with a fresh impetus. And never, through all his life, did he forget
+that music, nor the attitude of the woman he loved, nor the sumptuous
+folds of the brocade trailing over the floor, nor the faintest shadow on
+the rich material, nor one single detail of that supreme moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Elena left the Farnese palace very soon after this, almost stealthily,
+without taking leave of Andrea or of any one else. She had therefore not
+stayed more than half an hour at the ball. Her lover searched for her
+through all the rooms in vain. The next morning, he sent a servant to
+the Palazzo Barberini to inquire after the duchess, and learned from him
+that she was ill. In the evening he went in person, hoping to be
+received; but a maid informed him that her mistress was in great pain
+and could see no one. On the Saturday, towards five o'clock, he came
+back once more, still hoping for better luck.</p>
+
+<p>He left his house on foot. The evening was chill and gray, and a heavy
+leaden twilight was settling over the city. The lamps were already
+lighted round the fountain in the Piazza Barberini like pale tapers
+round a funeral bier, and the Triton, whether being under repair or for
+some other reason, had ceased to spout water. Down the sloping roadway
+came a line of carts drawn by two or three horses harnessed in single
+file, and bands of workmen returning home from the new buildings. A
+group of these came swaying along arm in arm, singing a lewd song at the
+pitch of their voices.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea stopped to let them pass. Two or three of the debased,
+weather-beaten faces impressed themselves on his memory. He noticed that
+a carter had his hand wrapped in a blood-stained bandage, and that
+another, who was kneeling in his cart, had the livid complexion, deep
+sunken eyes and convulsively contracted mouth of a man who has been
+poisoned. The words of the song were mingled with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> guttural cries, the
+cracking of whips, the grinding of wheels, the jingling of horse bells
+and shrill discordant laughter.</p>
+
+<p>His mental depression increased. He found himself in a very curious
+mood. The sensibility of his nerves was so acute that the most trivial
+impression conveyed to them by external means assumed the gravity of a
+wound. While one fixed thought occupied and tormented his spirit, the
+rest of his being was left exposed to the rude jostling of surrounding
+circumstances. Groups of sensations rushed with lightning rapidity
+across his mental field of vision, like the phantasmagoria of a magic
+lantern, startling and alarming him. The banked-up clouds of evening,
+the form of the Triton surrounded by the cadaverous lights, this sudden
+descent of savage looking men and huge animals, these shouts and songs
+and curses aggravated his condition, arousing a vague terror in his
+heart, a foreboding of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>A closed carriage drove out of the palace garden. He caught a glimpse of
+a lady bowing to him, but he failed to recognise her. The palace rose up
+before him, vast as some royal residence. The windows of the first floor
+gleamed with violet reflections, a pale strip of sunset sky rested just
+above it; a brougham was turning away from the door.</p>
+
+<p>'If I could but see her!' he thought to himself, standing still for a
+moment. He lingered, purposely to prolong his uncertainty and his hope.
+Shut up in this immense edifice she seemed to him immeasurably far
+away&mdash;lost to him.</p>
+
+<p>The brougham stopped, and a gentleman put his head out of the window and
+called&mdash;'Andrea!'</p>
+
+<p>It was the Duke of Grimiti, a near relative of his.</p>
+
+<p>'Going to call on the Scerni?' asked the duke with a significant smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' answered Andrea, 'to inquire after her&mdash;she is ill, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know&mdash;I have just come from there. She is better.'</p>
+
+<p>'Does she receive?'</p>
+
+<p>'Me&mdash;no. But she may perhaps receive you.' And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> Grimiti laughed
+maliciously through the smoke of his cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't understand,' Andrea answered coldly.</p>
+
+<p>'Bah!' said the duke. 'Report says you are high in favour. I heard it
+last night at the Pallavicinis', from a lady, a great friend of
+yours&mdash;give you my word!'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea turned on his heel with a gesture of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Bonne chance</i>!' cried the duke.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea entered the portico. In reality he was delighted and flattered
+that such a report should be circulated already. Grimiti's words had
+suddenly revived his courage like a draught of some cordial. As he
+mounted the steps, his hopes rose high. He waited for a moment at the
+door to allow his excitement to calm down a little. Then he rang.</p>
+
+<p>The servant recognised him and said at once: 'If the Signor Conte will
+have the kindness to wait a moment I will go and inform <i>Mademoiselle</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>He nodded assent, and began pacing the vast ante-chamber, which seemed
+to echo the violent beating of his heart. Hanging lamps of wrought iron
+shed an uncertain light over the stamped leather panelling of the walls,
+the carved oak chests, the antique busts on pedestals. Under a
+magnificently embroidered baldachin blazed the ducal arms: a unicorn on
+a field gules. A bronze card-tray, heaped with cards, stood in the
+middle of a table, and happening to cast his eye over them, Andrea
+noticed the one which Grimiti had just left lying on the top&mdash;<i>Bonne
+chance!</i>&mdash;The ironical augury still rang in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle now made her appearance. 'The duchess is feeling a little
+better,' she said. 'I think the Signor Conte might see her for a moment.
+This way, if you please.'</p>
+
+<p>She was a woman past her first youth, rather thin and dressed in black,
+with a pair of gray eyes that glittered curiously under the curls of her
+false fringe. Her step and her movements generally were light, not to
+say furtive, as of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> one who is in the habit of attending upon invalids
+or of executing secret orders.</p>
+
+<p>'This way, Signor Conte.'</p>
+
+<p>She preceded Andrea though the long flight of dimly-lighted rooms, the
+thick soft carpets deadening every sound; and even through the almost
+uncontrollable tumult of his soul, the young man was conscious of an
+instinctive feeling of repulsion against her, without being able to
+assign an adequate reason for it.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived in front of a door concealed by two pieces of tapestry of the
+Medicean period, bordered with deep red velvet, she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>'I will go first and announce you. Please to wait here.'</p>
+
+<p>A voice from within, which he recognised as Elena's, called,
+'Christina!'</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of her voice coming thus unexpectedly, Andrea began to
+tremble so violently that he thought to himself&mdash;'I am sure I am going
+to faint.' He had a dim presentiment of some more than mortal happiness
+in store for him which should exceed his utmost expectations, his
+wildest dreams&mdash;almost beyond his powers to support. She was there&mdash;on
+the other side of that door. All perception of reality deserted him. It
+seemed to him that he had already imagined&mdash;in some picture, some
+poem&mdash;a similar adventure, under the self-same circumstances, with these
+identical surroundings and enveloped in the same mystery, but of which
+<i>another</i>&mdash;some fiction of his own brain&mdash;was the hero. And now, by some
+strange trick of the imagination, the fictitious was confounded with the
+real, causing him an indescribable sense of confusion and bewilderment.
+On each of the pieces of tapestry was a large symbolical figure&mdash;Silence
+and Slumber&mdash;two Genii, tall and slender, which might have been designed
+by Primaticcio of Bologna, guarding the door. And he&mdash;he himself&mdash;stood
+before the door waiting, and on the other side of it was his divine
+lady. He almost thought he could hear her breathe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At last Mademoiselle returned. Holding back the heavy draperies she
+smiled, and in a low voice said:</p>
+
+<p>'Please go in.'</p>
+
+<p>She effaced herself, and Andrea entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>He noticed first of all that the air was very hot, almost stifling, and
+that there was a strong odour of chloroform. Then, through the
+semi-darkness, he became aware of something red&mdash;the crimson of the wall
+paper and the curtains of the bed&mdash;and then he heard Elena's languid
+voice murmuring, 'Thank you so much for coming, Andrea&mdash;I feel better
+now.'</p>
+
+<p>He made his way to her with some difficulty, being unable to distinguish
+things very clearly in the half light.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled wanly at him from among the pillows out of the gloom. Across
+her forehead and round her face, like a nun's wimple, lay a band of
+white linen which was scarcely whiter than the cheeks it encircled, such
+was her extreme pallor. The outer angles of her eyelids were contracted
+by the pain of her inflamed nerves, the lower lids quivering
+spasmodically from time to time, and the eyes were dewy and infinitely
+melting as if veiled by a mist of unshed tears under the trembling
+lashes.</p>
+
+<p>A flood of pity and tenderness swept over the young man's heart when he
+came close to her and could see her clearly. Very slowly she drew one
+hand from under the coverlet and held it out to him. He bent over it
+till he half knelt on the edge of the couch and rained kisses thick and
+fast upon that burning, fevered hand, and the white wrist with its
+hurrying pulse.</p>
+
+<p>'Elena&mdash;Elena&mdash;my love!'</p>
+
+<p>Elena had closed her eyes, as if to resign herself more wholly to the
+ecstasy that penetrated to the most hidden fibre of her being. Then she
+turned her hand over that she might feel those kisses on her palm, on
+each finger, all round her wrist, on every vein, in every pore.</p>
+
+<p>'Enough!' she murmured at last, opening her eyes again, and passed her
+languid hand softly over Andrea's hair.</p>
+
+<p>Her caress, though light, was so ineffably tender, that to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> the lover's
+soul it had the effect of a rose leaf falling into a full cup of water.
+His passion brimmed over. His lips trembled under a confused torrent of
+words which rose to them but which he could not express. He had the
+violent and divine sensation as of a new life spreading in widening
+circles round him beyond all physical perception.</p>
+
+<p>'What bliss!' said Elena, repeating her fond gesture, and a tremor ran
+through her whole person, visible through the coverlet.</p>
+
+<p>But when Andrea made as if to take her hand again&mdash;'No,' she entreated,
+'do not move&mdash;stay as you are, I like to have you so.'</p>
+
+<p>She gently pressed his head down till his cheek lay against her knee.
+She gazed at him a little, still with that caressing touch upon his
+head, and then in a voice that seemed to faint with ecstasy she
+murmured, lingering over the syllables&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'How I love you!'</p>
+
+<p>There was an ineffable seduction in the way she pronounced the words&mdash;so
+liquid, so enthralling on a woman's lips.</p>
+
+<p>'Again!' whispered her lover, whose senses were languishing with passion
+under the touch of those hands, the sound of that caressing voice. 'Say
+it again&mdash;go on speaking.'</p>
+
+<p>'I love you,' repeated Elena, noticing that his eyes were fixed upon her
+lips, and being perhaps aware of the fascination that emanated from them
+while pronouncing the words.</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden movement she raised herself from the pillows, and taking
+Andrea's head between her two hands, she drew him to her, and their lips
+met in a long and passionate kiss.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards she fell back again, and lying with her arms stretched
+straight along the coverlet at her sides, she gazed at Andrea with wide
+open eyes, while one by one the great tears gathered slowly, and
+silently rolled down her cheeks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'What is it, Elena&mdash;tell me&mdash;What is it?' asked her lover, clasping her
+hands and leaning over her to kiss away the tears.</p>
+
+<p>She clenched her teeth and bit her lips to keep back the sobs.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;go now, leave me&mdash;please! You shall see me
+to-morrow&mdash;go now.'</p>
+
+<p>Her voice and her look were so imploring that Andrea obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye,' he said, and kissed her tenderly on the lips, carrying away
+upon his own the taste of her salt tears. 'Good-bye! Love me&mdash;and do not
+forget.'</p>
+
+<p>As he crossed the threshold, he seemed to hear her break into sobs
+behind him. He went on a little unsteadily, like a man who is not sure
+of his sight. The odour of chloroform lingered in his nostrils like the
+fumes of an intoxicating vapour; but, with every step he took, some
+virtue seemed to go out of him, to be dissipated in the air. The rooms
+lay empty and silent before him. 'Mademoiselle' appeared at a door
+without any warning sound of steps or rustle of garments, like a ghost.</p>
+
+<p>'This way Signor Conte, you will not be able to find your way.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled in an ambiguous and irritating manner, her gray eyes
+glittering with ill-concealed curiosity. Andrea did not speak. Once more
+the presence of this woman annoyed and disturbed him, arousing an
+undefined sense of repulsion and anger in him.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was he outside the door than he drew a deep breath like a man
+relieved from some heavy burden. The gentle splash of the fountain came
+through the trees, broken now and then by some clearer, louder sound;
+the whole firmament glittered with stars, veiled here and there by long
+trailing strips of cloud like tresses of pale hair; carriage lamps
+flitted rapidly hither and thither, the life of the great city sent up
+its breath into the keen air, bells were ringing far and near. At last,
+he had the full consciousness of his overwhelming felicity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER VI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Thus began for them a bliss that was full, frenzied, for ever changing
+and for ever new; a passion that wrapped them round and rendered them
+oblivious of all that did not minister immediately to their mutual
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>'What a strange love!' Elena said once, recalling those first days&mdash;her
+illness, her rapid surrender&mdash;'My heart was yours from the first moment
+I saw you.'</p>
+
+<p>She felt a certain pride in the fact.</p>
+
+<p>'And when, on that evening, I heard my name announced immediately after
+yours,' her lover replied, 'I don't know why, but I suddenly had the
+firm conviction that my life was bound to yours&mdash;for ever!'</p>
+
+<p>And they really believed what they said. Together they re-read Goethe's
+Roman elegy&mdash;<i>Lass dich, Geliebte, nicht reu'n, dass du mir so schnell
+dich ergeben!</i>&mdash;Have no regrets, my Beloved, that thou didst yield thee
+so soon&mdash;'Believe me, dearest, I do not attribute one base or impure
+thought to you. Cupid's darts have varying effects&mdash;some inflict but a
+slight scratch, and the poison they insinuate lingers for years before
+it really touches the heart, while others, well feathered and armed with
+a sharp and penetrating point, pierce to the heart's core at once and
+send the fever racing through the blood. In the old heroic days of the
+loves of the gods and goddesses desire followed upon sight. Think you
+that the goddess of Love considered long in the grove of Ida that day
+Anchises found favour in her eyes? And Luna?&mdash;had she hesitated, envious
+Aurora would soon have wakened her handsome shepherd.'</p>
+
+<p>For them, as for Faustina's divine singer, Rome was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> illumined by a new
+light. Wherever their footsteps strayed they left a memory of love. The
+forgotten churches of the Aventine&mdash;Santa Sabina with its wonderful
+columns of Parian marble, the charming garden of Santa Maria del
+Priorata, the campanile of Santa Maria in Cosmedin piercing the azure
+with its slender rose-coloured spire grew to know them well. The villas
+of the cardinals and the princes&mdash;the Villa Pamfili mirrored in its
+fountains and its lakes, all sweetness and grace, where every shady
+grove seems to harbour some noble idyll; the Villa Albani, cold and
+silent as a church, with its avenues of sculptured marble and
+centenarian trees; where in the vestibules, under the porticos and
+between the granite pillars, Caryatides and Hermes, symbols of
+immobility, gaze at the immutable symmetry of the verdant lawns; and the
+Villa Medici&mdash;like a forest of emerald green spreading away in a fairy
+tale, and the Villa Ludovici&mdash;a little wild&mdash;redolent of violets,
+consecrated by the presence of that Juno adored by Goethe in the days
+when the plane-trees and the cypresses, that one might well have thought
+immortal, had already begun to tremble with the foreboding of sale and
+death&mdash;all the patrician villas, the crowning glory of Rome, became well
+acquainted with their love. The picture and sculpture galleries too&mdash;the
+room in the Borghese where, before Correggio's 'Danae' Elena smiled as
+at her own reflection; and the Mirror Room, where her image glided among
+the Cupids of Ciro Ferri and the garlands of Mario de' Fiori; the
+chamber of Heliodorus, where Raphael has succeeded in making the dull
+walls throb and palpitate with life; and the apartments of the Borgias,
+where the great fantasia of Penturicchio unfolds its marvellous web of
+history, fable, dreams, caprices and audacities; and the Galatea Room,
+through which is diffused an ineffable freshness, a perennial serenity
+of light and grace; and the room where the Hermaphrodite, that gentle
+monster, offspring of the loves of a nymph and a demi-god, extends his
+ambiguous form amidst the sparkle of polished stone&mdash;all these
+unfrequented abodes of Beauty were well acquainted with them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They echoed fervently the sublime cry of the poet&mdash;<i>Eine Welt zwar bist
+du, O Rom!</i> Thou art a world in thyself, oh Rome! But as without love
+the world would not be the world, so Rome without love would not be
+Rome, and the stairway of the Trinit&agrave;, glorified by the slow ascension
+of the Day, became the Stairway of Felicity by the ascent of Elena the
+Fair on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.</p>
+
+<p>'At times,' Elena said to him, 'my feeling for you is so delicate, so
+profound, that it becomes&mdash;how shall I describe it?&mdash;maternal almost!'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea laughed, for she was his senior by barely three years.</p>
+
+<p>'And at times,' he rejoined, 'I feel the communion of our spirits to be
+so chaste that I could call you sister while I kiss your hands.'</p>
+
+<p>These fallacious ideas of purity and loftiness of sentiment were but the
+reaction after more carnal delights, when the soul experiences a vague
+yearning for the ideal. At such times too, the young man's aspirations
+towards the art he so much loved were apt to revive. The desire to give
+pleasure to his mistress by his literary or artistic efforts drove him
+to work. He accordingly wrote <i>La Simona</i>, and executed his two
+engravings: <i>The Zodiac</i> and <i>Alexander's Bowl</i>.</p>
+
+<p>For the execution of his art, he chose by preference, the most
+difficult, exact, and incorruptible vehicles&mdash;verse and engraving; and
+he aimed at adhering strictly to, and reviving, the traditional Italian
+methods, by going back to the poets of the <i>stil novo</i>, and the painters
+who were precursors of the Renaissance. His tendencies were essentially
+towards form; his mind more occupied by the expression of his thought
+than the thought itself. Like Taine, he considered it a greater
+achievement to write three really fine lines, than to win a pitched
+battle. His <i>Story of the Hermaphrodite</i> imitated in its structure
+Poligiano's <i>Story of Orpheus</i> and contained lines of extraordinary
+delicacy, power and melody, particularly in the choruses of hybrid
+monsters&mdash;the Centaurs, Sirens and Sphinxes. His new tragedy, <i>La
+Simona</i>, of moderate length,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> possessed a most singular charm. Written
+and rhymed though it was, on the ancient Tuscan rules, it might have
+been conceived by an English poet of Elizabeth's time, after a story
+from the <i>Decameron</i>, and it breathed something of the strange and
+delicious charm of certain of the minor dramas of Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>On the frontispiece of the single copy, the author had signed his work:
+<span class="smcap">A. S. Calcographus Aqua Forti Sibi Tibi Fecit</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Copper had greater attractions for him than paper, nitric acid than ink,
+the graving-tool than the pen. One of his ancestors before him, Giusto
+Sperelli, had tried his hand at engraving. Certain plates of his,
+executed about 1520, showed distinct evidences of the influence of
+Antonio del Pollajuolo by the depth and acidity, so to speak, of the
+design. Andrea used the Rembrandt method <i>a tratti liberi</i> and the
+<i>maniera nera</i> so much affected by the English engravers of the school
+of Green, Dixon, and Earlom. He had formed himself on all models, had
+studied separately the effects sought after by each engraver, had
+schooled himself under Albrecht D&uuml;rer and Parmigianino, Marc' Antonio
+and Holbein, Hannibal Carracci, MacArdell, Guido, Toschi and Audran; but
+once his copper plate before him, his one aim was to light up, by
+Rembrandtesque effects, the elegance in design of the fifteenth-century
+Florentines of the second generation, such as Botticelli, Ghirlandajo
+and Filippino Lippi.</p>
+
+<p>One of Andrea's most precious possessions was a bed-cover of finest silk
+in faded blue, round the border of which circled the twelve signs of the
+Zodiac, each with its appropriate legend: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer,
+Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius,
+Pisces&mdash;in gothic characters. A flaming golden sun occupied the centre;
+the animal figures, drawn in somewhat archaic style, as one sees in
+mosaics, were extraordinarily brilliant. The whole thing was worthy to
+grace an Emperor's bed, and had, in fact, formed part of the trousseau
+of Bianca Maria Sforza, niece<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> of Ludovico the Moor, when she espoused
+the Emperor Maximilian.</p>
+
+<p>One of the engravings represented Elena asleep under this celestial
+counterpane. The rounded limbs appeared outlined under the silken folds,
+the head thrown carelessly back towards the edge of the couch, the hair
+rippling in a torrent to the floor, one arm hanging down, the other
+stretched along her side. The parts which were left uncovered, the face,
+the neck, the shoulders, and the arms, were extremely luminous, and the
+stile had reproduced most effectively the glitter of the embroidery in
+the half-light and the mysterious quality of the symbols. A tall white
+hound, Famulus, brother to the one which lays its head on the knee of
+the Countess of Arundel in Rubens' picture, stretched his muzzle towards
+the lady, guarding her slumbers, and was designed with much felicitous
+boldness of foreshortening. The background of the room was sumptuous and
+shadowy.</p>
+
+<p>The other engraving referred to an immense silver basin which Elena had
+inherited from her aunt Flaminia.</p>
+
+<p>This basin was historical, and was known as Alexander's Bowl. It had
+been given to the Princess of Bisenti by Caesar Borgia on his departure
+for France, when he went to carry the Papal Bill of divorce and
+dispensation to Louis <span class="smcap">xii</span>. The design for the figures running round it
+and the two which rose over the edge at either side were attributed to
+Raphael.</p>
+
+<p>It was called the Bowl of Alexander because it purported to be a
+reproduction of the prodigious vessel out of which the famous King of
+Macedonia was wont to drink at his splendid festivals. Groups of archers
+surrounded its base, their bows stretched, in the admirable attitudes of
+those painted by Raphael aiming their arrows at Hermes in the fresco of
+that room in the Borghese decorated by John of Bologna. They were in
+pursuit of a great Chimera, which emerged over the edge of the bowl in
+guise of a handle, while on the opposite side bounded the youthful
+Bellerophon, his bow at full stretch against the monster. The ornaments
+of the base and the edge were of rare elegance. The inside was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> gilded,
+the metal sonorous as a bell, and weighed three hundred pounds. Its
+shape was extremely harmonious.</p>
+
+<p>Never had Andrea Sperelli experienced so intensely both the delight and
+the anxiety of the artist who watches the blind and irreparable action
+of the acid; never before had he brought so much patience to bear upon
+the delicate work of the dry point. The fact was, that like Lucas of
+Leyden, he was a born engraver, possessed of an admirable knowledge, or,
+more properly speaking, a rare instinct as to the most minute
+particularity of time and degree, which may aid in varying the efficacy
+of the acid on copper. It was not only practice, industry, and
+intelligence, but more especially this inborn, well-nigh infallible
+instinct which warned him of the exact instant at which the corrosion
+had proceeded far enough to give such and such a value to the shadows
+as, in the artist's intention, the engraving required. It was just this
+triumph of mind over matter, this power of infusing an &aelig;sthetic spirit
+into it, as it were, this mysterious correspondence between the throb of
+his pulses and the progressive gnawing of the acid that was his pride,
+his torment, and his joy.</p>
+
+<p>In his dedication of these works to her, Elena felt herself deified by
+her lover as was Isotta di Rimini by the medals which Sigismondo
+Malatesta caused to be struck in her honour; and yet, on those days when
+Andrea was at work, she would become moody and taciturn, as if under the
+influence of some secret grief, or she would give way to such sudden
+bursts of tenderness, mingled with tears and half-suppressed sobs, that
+the young man was startled and, not understanding her, became
+suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, they were returning on horseback from the Aventine down the
+Via di Santa Sabina, their eyes still filled with a vision of imperial
+palaces flaming under the setting sun that burned red through the
+cypresses and seemed to cover them with golden dust. They rode in
+silence, for Elena seemed out of spirits, and her depression had
+communicated itself to her lover. As they passed the church of Santa
+Sabina, Andrea reined up his horse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember?' he said.</p>
+
+<p>Some fowls, picking about peacefully in the grass, skurried away at the
+barking of Famulus. The whole place was as quiet and unassuming as the
+purlieus of a village church, but the walls had that singular luminous
+glow which the buildings of Rome seem to give out at 'Titian's hour.'</p>
+
+<p>Elena drew up beside him.</p>
+
+<p>'That day&mdash;how long ago it seems now!' she said with a little tremor in
+her voice.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the memory of it had already dropped away into the gulf of
+time as if their love had endured for years. Elena's words raised that
+illusion in Andrea's mind, but, at the same time, a certain uneasiness.
+She began recalling the details of their visit to Santa Sabina one
+afternoon in January under a prematurely mild sun. She dwelt insistently
+upon the most trivial incidents, breaking off from time to time as if
+following a separate train of thought, distinct from the words she
+uttered. Andrea fancied he caught a note of regret in her voice. Yet,
+what had she to regret? Surely their love had many a sweeter day before
+it still&mdash;the Spring had come again to Rome. Doubting and perplexed, he
+ceased to listen to her. The horses went on down the hill at a walk,
+side by side, snorting noisily from time to time, and putting their
+heads together, as if exchanging confidences. Famulus sped on before, or
+bounded after them, perpetually on the gallop.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember,' Elena went on, 'do you remember the Brother who came
+to open the gates for us when we rang the bell?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;yes.'</p>
+
+<p>'And how perfectly aghast he looked when he saw who it was? He was such
+a little, little red-faced man without any beard. When he went to get
+the keys of the church, he left us alone in the vestibule&mdash;and you
+kissed me&mdash;do you remember?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>'And all those barrels in the vestibule! And the smell of wine while the
+Brother was explaining the legends carved on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> the cypress-wood door. And
+then about the Madonna of the Rosary&mdash;do you remember?&mdash;his explanation
+made you laugh, and I could not help laughing too, and the poor man was
+so put out, that he would not open his mouth again, not even to thank
+you at the last&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>There was a little pause. Then she began again.</p>
+
+<p>'And at Sant' Alexio, where you would not let me look at the cupola
+through the keyhole. How we laughed then too!'</p>
+
+<p>Renewed silence. Along the road towards them came a party of men
+carrying a coffin, and followed by a hired conveyance full of tearful
+relatives. They were on their way to the Jewish cemetery. It was a grim
+and silent funeral. The men with their hooked noses and rapacious eyes
+were all as like one another as brothers. The two horses separated to
+let the procession pass, keeping close to the wall on either side, and
+the lovers looked at each other across the dead, their spirits sinking
+lower with every moment.</p>
+
+<p>When presently they rejoined one another, Andrea said&mdash;'Tell me&mdash;what is
+the matter? What is on your mind?'</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a moment before replying, keeping her eyes on her horse's
+neck and stroking it with the end of her riding whip, irresolute and
+very pale.</p>
+
+<p>'You have something on your mind,' persisted the young man.</p>
+
+<p>'Very well then&mdash;yes&mdash;and I had better tell you and get it over. I am
+going away next Wednesday. I do not know for how long&mdash;perhaps for a
+long time&mdash;perhaps for ever. I cannot say. We must break with one
+another. It is entirely my fault. But do not ask me why&mdash;do not ask me
+anything, I entreat you&mdash;I could not answer you.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea looked at her incredulously. The thing seemed to him so utterly
+impossible that it did not affect him painfully.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you are only joking, Elena?'</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head; there was a lump in her throat, and she could not
+speak. She suddenly set her horse into a trot.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Behind them the bells of Santa Sabina and Santa Prisca began to ring
+through the twilight. They trotted on in silence, awakening the echoes
+under the arches and among the temples&mdash;all the solitary and desolate
+ruins on their way. They passed San Giorgio in Velabo on their left,
+which still retained a gleam of rosy light on its campanile; they passed
+the Roman Forum, the Forum of Nerva already full of blue shadow like
+that which hovers over the glaciers at night, and stopped at last at the
+Arco dei Pantani, where their grooms and carriages awaited them.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly was Elena out of the saddle, than she held out her hand to Andrea
+without meeting his eyes. She seemed in a great hurry to be gone.</p>
+
+<p>'Well?' said Andrea as he helped her into the carriage.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p><p>'To-morrow&mdash;not this evening&mdash;I cannot&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER VII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The Campagna stretched away before them under an ideal light, as a
+landscape seen in dreams, where the objects seem visible at a great
+distance by virtue of some inward irradiation which magnifies their
+outlines.</p>
+
+<p>The closed carriage rolled along smoothly at a brisk trot; the walls of
+ancient patrician villas, grayish-white and dim, slid past the windows
+with a continuous and gentle motion. Great iron gateways came in view
+from time to time, through which you caught a glimpse of an avenue of
+lofty beech trees, or some verdant cloister inhabited by antique
+statues, or a long green arcade pierced here and there by a laughing ray
+of pale sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Wrapped in her ample furs, her veil drawn down, her hands encased in
+thick chamois leather gloves, Elena sat and mutely watched the passing
+landscape. Andrea breathed with delight the subtle perfume of heliotrope
+exhaled by the costly fur, while he felt Elena's arm warm against his
+own. They felt themselves far from the haunts of men&mdash;alone&mdash;although
+from time to time the black carriage of a priest would flit past them,
+or a drover on horseback, or a herd of cattle.</p>
+
+<p>Just before they reached the bridge she said&mdash;'Let us get out here.'</p>
+
+<p>Here in the open country the light was translucent and cold as the
+waters of a spring, and when the trees waved in the wind their
+undulation seemed to communicate itself to all the surrounding objects.</p>
+
+<p>She clung close to his arm, stumbling a little on the uneven ground. 'I
+am going away this evening,' she said,&mdash;'this is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>the last time&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence; then in plaintive tones, and with frequent
+pauses in between, she began to speak of the necessity of her departure,
+the necessity of their rupture. The wind wrenched the words from her
+lips, but she continued in spite of it, till Andrea interrupted her by
+seizing her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't!' he cried&mdash;'be quiet.'</p>
+
+<p>They walked on struggling against the fierce gusts of wind.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't go&mdash;don't leave me! I want you&mdash;want you always.'</p>
+
+<p>He had managed to unfasten her glove and laid hold of her bare wrist
+with a caressing insistent clasp that was full of tormenting desire.</p>
+
+<p>She threw him one of those glances that intoxicate like wine. They were
+quite near the bridge now, all rosy under the setting sun. The river
+looked motionless and steely throughout its sinuous length. Reeds swayed
+and shivered on the banks, and some stakes, fixed in the clay of the
+river-bed to fasten nets, shook with the motion of the water.</p>
+
+<p>He then endeavoured to move her by reminiscences. He recalled those
+first days&mdash;the ball at the Farnese palace, a certain hunting party out
+in the Campagna, their early morning meetings in the Piazza di Spagna in
+front of the jewellers' windows, or in the quiet and aristocratic Via
+Sistina when she came out of the Barberini palace followed by the flower
+girls offering her baskets of roses.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember&mdash;do you remember?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>'And that evening&mdash;quite at the beginning, when I brought in such a mass
+of flowers.&mdash;You were alone&mdash;beside the window&mdash;reading. You remember?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;yes.'</p>
+
+<p>'I came in. You scarcely turned your head and you spoke quite harshly to
+me&mdash;what was the matter?&mdash;I do not know. I laid the flowers upon the
+tables and waited. You spoke of trivial things at first, with
+indifference&mdash;without interest. I thought to myself bitterly&mdash;"She is
+tired of me already&mdash;she does not love me." But the scent of the flowers
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> very strong&mdash;the room was full of it. I can see you now&mdash;how you
+suddenly seized the whole mass in your two hands and buried your face in
+it, drinking in the perfume. When you lifted it again all the blood
+seemed to have left your face, and your eyes were swimming in a kind of
+ecstasy&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Go on&mdash;go on!' said Elena feverishly, as she leaned over the parapet
+fascinated by the rushing waters below.</p>
+
+<p>'Afterwards, you remember on the sofa&mdash;I smothered you in flowers&mdash;your
+face, your bosom, your shoulders, and you raised yourself out of them
+every moment to offer me your lips, your throat, your half closed lids.
+And between your skin and my lips I felt the rose leaves soft and cool.
+I kissed your throat and a shiver ran through you, and you put out your
+hands to keep me away.&mdash;Oh, then&mdash;your head was sunk in the cushions,
+your breast hidden under the roses, your arms bare to the elbow&mdash;nothing
+in this world could be so dear and sweet as the little tremor of your
+white hands upon my temples&mdash;do you remember?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;go on.'</p>
+
+<p>He went on with ever-increasing fervour. Carried away by his own
+eloquence, he was hardly conscious of what he said. Elena, her back
+turned to the light, leaned nearer and nearer to him. Under them the
+river flowed cold and silent; long slender rushes, like strands of hair,
+bent with every gust and trailed on the surface of the water.</p>
+
+<p>He had ceased to speak, but they were gazing into one another's eyes and
+their ears were filled with a low continuous murmur which seemed to
+carry away part of their life's being&mdash;as if something sonorous had
+escaped from their very brains and were spreading away in waves of sound
+till it filled the whole air about them.</p>
+
+<p>Elena rose from her stooping posture. 'Let us go on,' she said. 'I am so
+thirsty&mdash;where can we get some water?' They crossed the bridge to a
+little inn on the other side, in front of which some carters were
+unharnessing their horses with much lively invective. The setting sun
+lit up the group of men and beasts vividly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The people at the inn showed not the faintest sign of surprise at the
+entry of the two strangers. Two or three men shivering with ague, morose
+and jaundiced, were crouching round a square brazier. A red-haired
+bullock-driver was snoring in a corner, his empty pipe still between his
+teeth. A pair of haggard, ill-conditioned young vagabonds were playing
+at cards, fixing one another in the pauses with a look of tigerish
+eagerness. The woman of the inn, corpulent to obesity, carried in her
+arms a child which she rocked heavily to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>While Elena drank the water out of a rude earthenware mug, the woman,
+with wails and plaints, drew her attention to the wretched infant.</p>
+
+<p>'Look, signora mia&mdash;look at it!'</p>
+
+<p>The poor little creature was wasted to a skeleton, its lips purple and
+broken out, the inside of its mouth coated with a white eruption. It
+looked as if life had abandoned the miserable little body, leaving but a
+little substance for fungoid growths to flourish in.</p>
+
+<p>'Feel, dear lady,&mdash;its hands are icy cold. It cannot eat, it cannot
+drink&mdash;it does not sleep any more&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>The mother broke into loud sobs. The ague-stricken men looked on with
+eyes full of utter prostration, while the sound of the weeping only drew
+an impatient movement from the two youths.</p>
+
+<p>'Come away&mdash;come away!' said Andrea, taking Elena by the arm and
+dragging her away, after throwing a piece of money on the table.</p>
+
+<p>They returned over the bridge. The river was lighted up by the flames of
+the dying day, and in the distance the water looked smooth and
+glistening as if great spots of oil or bitumen were floating on it. The
+Campagna, stretching away like an ocean of ruins, was of a uniform
+violet tint. Nearer the town the sky flushed a deep crimson.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor little thing!' murmured Elena in a tone of heartfelt compassion,
+and pressing closer to Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>The wind had risen to a gale. A flock of crows swept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> across the burning
+heavens, very high up, croaking hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden passionate exaltation suddenly filled the souls of the two at
+sight of this vast solitude. Something tragic and heroic seemed to enter
+into their love and the hill-tops of their passion to catch the blaze of
+the stormy sunset. Elena stood still.</p>
+
+<p>'I can go no further,' she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage was still at some distance, standing motionless where they
+had left it.</p>
+
+<p>'A little further, Elena, just a step or two! Shall I carry you?'</p>
+
+<p>Then, seized with a sort of frenzy, he burst out again&mdash;Why was she
+going away? Why did she want to break with him? Surely their destinies
+were indissolubly knit together now? He could not live without
+her&mdash;without her eyes, her voice, the constant thought of her. He was
+saturated through and through with love of her&mdash;his whole blood was on
+fire as with some deadly poison. Why was she running away from him?&mdash;He
+would hold her fast&mdash;would suffocate her on his heart first&mdash;&mdash;No&mdash;it
+could not, must not be&mdash;never!</p>
+
+<p>Elena listened, with bent head to meet the blast, but she did not
+answer. Presently she raised her hand and beckoned to the coachman. The
+horses pawed and pranced as they started.</p>
+
+<p>'Stop at the Porta Pia,' she called to the man, and entered the carriage
+with her lover. Then she turned and with a sudden gesture yielded
+herself to his desire, and he kissed her greedily&mdash;her lips, her brow,
+her hair, her eyes&mdash;rapidly, without giving himself time to breathe.</p>
+
+<p>'Elena! Elena!'</p>
+
+<p>A vivid gleam of crimson light reflected from the red brick houses
+penetrated the carriage. The ringing trot of several horses came nearer
+along the road.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning against her lover's shoulder with ineffable tenderness she
+said&mdash;'Good-bye, dear love&mdash;good-bye&mdash;good-bye!'</p>
+
+<p>As she raised herself again, ten or twelve red-coated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> horsemen passed
+to right and left of the carriage returning from a fox hunt. One of
+them, the Duke di Beffi, bent low over his saddle to peer in at the
+window as he rode by.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea said no more. His whole soul was weighed down by hopeless
+depression. The first impulse of revolt over, the childish weakness of
+his nature almost led him to give way to tears. He wanted to cast
+himself at her feet, to humble himself, to beg and entreat, to move this
+woman to pity by his tears. He felt giddy and confused; a subtle
+sensation of cold seemed to grip the back of his head and penetrate to
+the roots of his hair.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye,' repeated Elena for the last time, and the carriage stopped
+under the archway of the Porta Pia to let him get out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER VIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Their final farewells <i>au grand air</i>, by Elena's desire, did nothing
+towards dissipating Andrea's suspicions. 'What could be her secret
+reasons for this abrupt departure?' He tried in vain to penetrate the
+mystery; he was oppressed with doubt and fear.</p>
+
+<p>During the first days, the anguish of his loss was so cruelly poignant
+that he thought he must die of it. His jealousy, lulled to sleep by the
+persistent ardour of Elena's affection, awoke now with redoubled vigour,
+and the suspicion that a man was at the bottom of this enigmatical
+affair increased his sufferings a hundredfold. Sometimes he would be
+seized with sullen anger against the absent woman, a bitter rancour,
+almost a desire for revenge, as if she had mystified and duped him in
+order to give herself to another. Then again he would feel that he did
+not long for her, did not love her any more, had never loved her. But
+these fits of oblivion were but of short duration. The Spring had come
+again to Rome in a riot of colour and sunshine. The city of limestone
+and brick absorbed the light as a parched forest the rain, the papal
+fountains rose into a limpid sapphire sky, the Piazza di Spagna was
+fragrant as a rose-garden, and above the great flight of steps, alive
+with little children, the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti shone in a blaze of gold.</p>
+
+<p>Excited by the re-awakened beauty of Rome, all that still remained of
+Elena's fascination in his blood and his spirit revived and re-kindled.
+He was stirred to his very depths by sudden invincible pain, by
+implacable inward tumults, by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> indefinable languors, almost like some
+strange renewal of his adolescence.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea's liaison with Elena Muti had been perfectly well known, as
+sooner or later every adventure and every flirtation becomes known in
+Roman society, or the society of any other city for the matter of that.
+Precautions are useless. To the initiated a look, a gesture, a smile
+suffices to betray the secret. Besides which, in every society there are
+certain persons who make it their business in life to ferret out and
+follow up the traces of a love affair with an assiduity only to be
+equalled by the hunter of rare game. They are ever on the watch, though
+not apparently so; never, by any chance, miss a murmured word, the
+faintest smile, a tremor, a blush, a lightning glance. At balls or any
+large gatherings, where there is more probability of imprudence, they
+are ubiquitous, with ear stretched to catch a fragment of dialogue, and
+eye keenly on the watch to note a stolen hand-clasp, a tremulous sigh,
+the nervous pressure of delicate fingers on a partner's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>One such terrible trapper, for example, was Don Filippo del Monte. But
+to tell the truth, Elena Muti did not trouble herself overmuch about
+what society said of her covering her every audacity with the mantle of
+her beauty, her wealth, and her ancient name; and she went on her way
+serenely, surrounded by adulation and homage, by reason of a certain
+good-natured tolerance which is one of the most pleasing qualities of
+Roman society, amounting almost to an article of faith.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, Andrea's connection with the Duchess of Scerni had
+instantly raised him enormously in the estimation of the women. An
+atmosphere of favour surrounded him and his successes became
+astonishing. Moreover, he owed something to his reputation as a
+mysterious artist, and two sonnets which he wrote in the Princess di
+Ferentino's album became famous, in which, as in an ambiguous diptych,
+he lauded in turn a diabolical and an angelic mouth&mdash;the one that
+destroys souls and the other that sings 'Ave!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He responded, without a moment's hesitation, to every advance. No longer
+restrained by Elena's complete dominion over him, his energies returned
+to their original state of disorder. He passed from one liaison to
+another with incredible frivolity, carrying on several at the same time,
+and weaving without scruple a great net of deceptions and lies, in which
+to catch as much prey as possible. The habit of duplicity undermined his
+conscience, but one instinct remained alive, implacably alive in
+him&mdash;the repugnance at all this which attracted without holding him
+captive. His will, as useless to him now as a sword of indifferently
+tempered steel, hung as if at the side of an inebriated or paralysed
+man.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, at the Dolcebuonos', when he had outstayed the rest of the
+guests in the drawing-room, full of flowers and still vibrating with a
+<i>Cachoucha</i> of Raff's, he had spoken of love to Bianca. He did it almost
+without thinking, attracted instinctively by the reflected charm of her
+being a friend of Elena's. Maybe too, that the little germ of sympathy
+sown in his heart by her kindly championship at the dinner in the Doria
+palace was now bearing fruit. Who can say by what mysterious process
+some contact&mdash;whether spiritual or material&mdash;- between a man and a woman
+may generate and nourish in them a sentiment which, latent and
+unsuspected for long, may suddenly wake to life through unforeseen
+circumstances? It is the same phenomenon so often encountered in our
+mental world, when the germ of an idea or a shadowy fancy suddenly
+reappears before us after a long interval of unconscious development as
+a finished picture, a complex thought. The same law governs all the
+varying activities of our being; and the activities of which we are
+conscious form but a small part of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>Donna Bianca Dolcebuono was the ideal type of Florentine beauty, such as
+Ghirlandajo has given us in the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni at Santa
+Maria Novella. Her face was fair and oval, with a broad white brow, a
+sweet and expressive mouth, a nose a trifle <i>retrouss&eacute;</i> and eyes of that
+deep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> hazel so dear to Firenzuola. She was fond of wearing her hair
+parted and arranged in full puffs half way over her cheeks in the quaint
+old style. Her name suited her admirably for into the artificial life of
+fashionable society she brought a great natural sweetness of temper,
+much indulgence for the failings of others, courtesy accorded
+impartially to high and low, and a most melodious voice.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing Andrea's hackneyed phrases, she exclaimed in graceful
+surprise&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'What, have you forgotten Elena so soon?'</p>
+
+<p>Then after a few days of engaging hesitation, it pleased her to yield to
+his solicitations, and she often spoke of Elena to the faithless young
+lover, but with perfect frankness and without jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>'But why did she go away sooner than usual this year?' she asked him one
+day with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>'I have no idea,' answered Andrea, not without a touch of impatience and
+bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>'Then it is all over between you&mdash;quite over?'</p>
+
+<p>'For pity's sake, Bianca, let us talk about ourselves,' he retorted
+sharply. The subject disturbed and irritated him.</p>
+
+<p>She remained pensive for a moment, as if seeking to unravel some enigma,
+then she smiled and shook her head with a little fugitive shadow of
+melancholy in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Such is love!' she sighed, and returned Andrea's kisses.</p>
+
+<p>In her he seemed to possess all those charming women of whom Lorenzo the
+Magnificent sang:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And on every side we find,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Absence, as men say, estranges,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fancy ranges as the eye ranges,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of sight is out of mind.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love departs and is not love:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As from sight the eye departs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even so do hearts from hearts;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And at other hands we prove<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fancies love as the eyes rove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Parted pleasures come again.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When the summer came, and she was on the point of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> leaving Rome, she
+said to him, without seeking to conceal her gentle emotion&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'When we meet again I know you will not love me any more. That is love.
+But think of me always as a friend.'</p>
+
+<p>He did not love her, certainly; nevertheless during the heat and tedium
+of the days that followed, certain cadences of that dulcet voice
+returned to him like a haunting melody, suggesting visions of a garden,
+fresh with splashing fountains, where Bianca wandered in company with
+other fair women playing on the viol and singing as in a vignette of the
+'Dream of Polyphilo.'</p>
+
+<p>And Bianca passed and was succeeded by others&mdash;sometimes two at a time;
+but it was finally the little ivory Death's-head which had belonged to
+the Cardinal Immenraet, the funereal jewel dedicated to an unknown
+Ippolita, that suggested to him the caprice of tempting Donna Ippolita
+Albonico.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER IX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Donna Ippolita Albonico had a great air of princely nobility in her
+whole person, and bore some resemblance to Maria Maddalena of Austria,
+wife of Cosimo <span class="smcap">ii</span>. of Medici, whose portrait by Suttermans is at
+Florence in the possession of the Corsinis. She affected a sumptuous
+style of dress&mdash;brocades, velvets, laces&mdash;and the high Medici collars
+which seemed the most appropriate setting to her superb and imperial
+head.</p>
+
+<p>One day at the races, when seated beside her, Andrea was suddenly seized
+with the whim to get her to promise to come to the Palazzo Zuccari and
+receive the mysterious little clock dedicated to her namesake. Hearing
+his audacious words, she frowned, wavering between curiosity and
+prudence; but as he, nothing daunted, persevered in the attack, an
+irrepressible smile quivered on her lips. Under the shadow of her large
+hat with its white plumes, and with her lace-flounced parasol as a
+background, she was marvellously handsome.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Tibi, Hippolyta!</i> Then you will come? I shall be on the look-out for
+you all the afternoon, from two o'clock till evening&mdash;Is that settled?'</p>
+
+<p>'You must be mad!'</p>
+
+<p>'What have you to fear? I swear that I will not rob Your Majesty of so
+much as a glove. You shall remain seated as on a throne, as befits your
+regal state, and even in taking a cup of tea, you shall not lay aside
+the invisible sceptre you carry for ever in your imperial right hand. On
+these conditions is the grace accorded?'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But she smiled nevertheless, flattered by this exaltation of the regal
+aspect of her beauty, wherein she gloried. And Sperelli continued to
+tempt her, always in a tone of banter or entreaty, but adding to the
+seduction of his voice a gaze so subtle, so penetrating and disturbing
+that, at length, Donna Ippolita, half offended and blushing faintly,
+said to him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I will not have you look at me like that.'</p>
+
+<p>Few persons besides themselves remained upon the stand. Ladies and
+gentlemen strolled up and down across the grass, along the barrier, or
+surrounded the victorious horse or the yelling bookmakers, under the
+inconstant rays of the sun that came and went between the floating
+archipelago of clouds.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us go down,' she said, unaware of Giannetto Rutolo leaning with
+watchful eyes upon the railing of the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>As they passed him, Sperelli called back over his shoulder&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Addio, Marchese&mdash;see you again soon. Our race is on directly.'</p>
+
+<p>Rutolo bowed profoundly to Donna Ippolita, and a deep flush rose
+suddenly to his face. He seemed to have caught a touch of derision in
+Sperelli's greeting. Leaning on the railing, he followed the retreating
+couple with hungry eyes. He was obviously suffering.</p>
+
+<p>'Rutolo, be on your guard!' said the Contessa di Lucoli with a malicious
+laugh as she passed down the stairs on the arm of Don Filippo del Monte.</p>
+
+<p>The blow struck home. Donna Ippolita and the Conte d'Ugenta having
+penetrated as far as the umpire's stand were now retracing their steps.
+The lady held her sunshade over her shoulder, twirling the handle
+languidly in her fingers; the white cupola stood out round her head like
+a halo, and the lace frills rose and fluttered incessantly. Within this
+revolving circle, she laughed from time to time at what her companion
+said, and a delicate flush stained the noble pallor of her face.
+Sometimes they would both stand still.</p>
+
+<p>Under pretext of examining the horses now entering the race-course,
+Giannetto turned his field-glass upon the two.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> His hands trembled
+visibly. Every smile, every movement, every glance of Ippolita's was a
+sword-thrust in his heart. When he dropped his glass, he was deadly
+pale. He had surprised a look in the eyes that met Sperelli's which he
+knew full well of old. Everything seemed crumbling to ruins around him.
+The love of years was over&mdash;irrevocably lost&mdash;slain by that glance. The
+sun was the sun no longer, life was not life any more.</p>
+
+<p>The grand stand was rapidly refilling; the signal for the third race was
+about to be given. The ladies stood up on their seats. A murmur ran
+along the tiers like a breeze over a sloping garden. The bell rang. The
+horses started like a flight of arrows.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall ride in your honour, Donna Ippolita,' said Andrea Sperelli as
+he look leave of her to get ready for the next race, which was for
+gentlemen riders&mdash;'<i>Tibi, Hippolyta, Semper!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>She pressed his hand warmly for luck, never remembering that Giannetto
+Rutolo was also among the competitors. When, a moment later, she noticed
+him going down the stairs, pale and alone, the unconcealed cruelty of
+indifference shone in her beautiful dark eyes. The old love had fallen
+away from her like a useless garment, and had given place to the new.
+This man was nothing to her, had no claims of any kind upon her now that
+she no longer loved him. It is inconceivable how quickly a woman regains
+entire possession of her own heart once she has ceased to love a man.</p>
+
+<p>'He has stolen her from me!' he thought to himself, as he made his way
+to the Jockey Club tent, and the grass seemed to give beneath his feet
+like sand. At a little distance in front of him walked the other with a
+firm and elastic step. In his long gray overcoat his tall and shapely
+figure had that peculiar and inimitable air of elegance which only
+breeding can give. He was smoking, and Giannetto Rutolo, coming up
+behind him, caught the delicate aroma of the cigarette with every puff,
+causing him an intolerable nausea as if it had been poison.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke di Beffi and Paolo Caligaro were at the entrance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> already in
+racing dress. The duke was making gymnastic movements to test the
+elasticity of his leather breeches and the strength of his knees. Little
+Caligaro was execrating last night's rain, which had made the ground
+heavy.</p>
+
+<p>'You have a very good chance with <i>Miching Mallecho</i>, I consider,' he
+remarked to Sperelli when he came up.</p>
+
+<p>Giannetto Rutolo heard this forecast with a bitter pang. He had founded
+a vague hope on the event of his own victory. He represented to himself
+the advantage he might gain over his enemy by a victorious race and a
+successful duel. As he changed his clothes his every movement betrayed
+his preoccupation.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is a man who before getting on horseback sees the grave open
+before him,' said the duke, laying his hand on the young man's shoulder
+with a serio-comic air&mdash;'<i>Ecce homo novus</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea Sperelli, who felt in the best of spirits at that moment, gave
+vent to one of those frank bursts of laughter which were the most
+engaging trait of his youth.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you laughing at?' demanded Rutolo, lividly pale, glaring at
+him from under frowning brows.</p>
+
+<p>'It seems to me, my dear fellow,' returned Sperelli unmoved 'that you
+are a little out of temper&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'And if I am?'</p>
+
+<p>'You are at liberty to think what you like about my laughing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I think it is idiotic.'</p>
+
+<p>Sperelli bounded to his feet and made a stride forward with uplifted
+whip. By a miracle, Paolo Caligaro managed to catch his arm. Violent
+words followed. Don Marc Antonio Spada appeared upon the scene and heard
+the altercation.</p>
+
+<p>'That's enough, boys&mdash;you both know what you have to do
+to-morrow&mdash;you've got to ride now.'</p>
+
+<p>The two adversaries finished their dressing in silence and then went
+out. The news of the quarrel had already spread through the enclosure
+and up to the grand stand, increasing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> the excitement of the race. With
+a refinement of perfidy, the Contessa di Lucoli repeated it to Donna
+Ippolita.</p>
+
+<p>The latter gave no sign of inward perturbation. 'I am sorry to hear
+that,' was her only comment, 'I thought they were friends.'</p>
+
+<p>The crowd surged round the bookmakers. <i>Miching Mallecho</i>, the horse of
+the Conte d'Ugenta, and <i>Brummel</i>, that of the Marchese Rutolo, were the
+favourites; then came the Duke di Beffi's <i>Satirist</i> and Caligaro's
+<i>Carbonilla</i>. However, the best judges had not overmuch confidence in
+the two first, thinking that the nervous excitement of their riders must
+inevitably tell upon the racing.</p>
+
+<p>But Andrea Sperelli was perfectly calm, not to say gay.</p>
+
+<p>His sense of superiority over his rival gave him assurance; moreover,
+his romantic taste for any adventure savouring of peril, inherited from
+his Byronic father, shed a halo of glory round the situation, and all
+the inborn generosity of his young blood awoke at the prospect of
+danger.</p>
+
+<p>With a beating heart, he went forward to meet his horse as to a friend
+who was bringing him the news of some great good fortune. He stroked its
+nose fondly, and the glances of the animal's eye, an eye that flashed
+with the inextinguishable fire of noblest breeding, intoxicated him like
+a woman's magnetic gaze.</p>
+
+<p>'Mallecho,' he whispered as he caressed the horse, 'this is a great
+day&mdash;we must win!'</p>
+
+<p>His trainer, a little red-faced man, who was engaged in scrutinising the
+other horses as they were led past by their grooms, answered in his
+rough husky voice,&mdash;'There's no doubt but you will!'</p>
+
+<p>Miching Mallecho was a superb bay from the stables of the Baron de
+Soubeyran, and combined extreme elegance of build with extraordinary
+strength of muscle. His fine and shining coat, under which the tracery
+of veins was distinctly visible on chest and flank, seemed almost to
+exhale a fiery vapour, so intense was the creature's vitality. A
+splendid jumper, he had often carried his master in the hunting-field<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+over every obstacle of the Roman countryside, irrespective of the nature
+of the ground, never refusing the highest gate, the most forbidding
+wall, for ever at the tail of the hounds. A word from his rider had more
+effect on him than the spur, a caress made him quiver with delight.</p>
+
+<p>Before mounting, Andrea carefully examined every strap and buckle, then
+with a smile he vaulted into the saddle. As he watched his master move
+away the trainer expressed his confidence in an eloquent gesture.</p>
+
+<p>A crowd of bettors pressed round the indicator. Andrea felt that every
+eye was upon him. Gazing eagerly at the stand to the right, he tried to
+catch sight of Ippolita Albonico, but could distinguish no one among the
+multitude of ladies. The Marchesa d'Ateleta, who had heard of the
+quarrel, made him a sign of reproof from afar.</p>
+
+<p>'How is the betting on Mallecho?' he asked of Ludovico Barbarisi.</p>
+
+<p>As he moved towards the starting-post, he reflected calmly on the means
+he would employ for winning, and considered his three rivals critically,
+calculating the strength and science of each of them. Paolo Caligaro was
+a tricky devil, as thoroughly versed in all the knavery of the stable as
+any jockey; but Carbonilla, although fast, had little staying power. The
+Duke di Beffi, a rider of the 'haute &eacute;cole' style, who had come off
+victorious in more than one race in England, was mounted on an animal of
+uncertain temper which would probably refuse some of the jumps.
+Giannetto Rutolo, on the contrary, was riding a well-bred and
+well-trained horse, but though he was a very capable rider he was too
+impetuous; moreover, this was the first time he had taken part in a
+public race. Besides, he must be in a terrible state of nervous
+irritation, as was apparent from numerous signs.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked at him, Andrea thought to himself&mdash;'I have no doubt that my
+victory to-day would influence the course of the duel to-morrow. In both
+instances, he will lose his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>head&mdash;it behoves me to keep calm on both
+fields&mdash;&mdash;' Then&mdash;'I wonder what Donna Ippolita feels about it?' There
+seemed to be an unusual silence round about him. With his eye he
+measured the distance that separated him from the first hurdle; he
+noticed a shining stone on the course; he observed that Rutolo was
+watching him, and a tremor ran through him from head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>The bell gave the signal, but Brummel was off too soon and the start was
+no good. The second time too they made a false start, and again through
+Brummel's fault. Sperelli and the duke exchanged a furtive smile.</p>
+
+<p>The third start was successful. Brummel instantly detached himself from
+the group and swept along by the palings. The other three horses
+followed abreast for a moment or so, and cleared the first hurdle and
+then the second very well. Each of the three riders played a different
+game. The Duke di Beffi tried to keep with the group, so that Satirist
+might be induced to follow the example of the other horses at the
+obstacles; Caligaro moderated Carbonilla's pace in order to save up her
+strength for the last five hundred yards. Sperelli increased his speed
+gradually with the intention of catching up with his adversary in the
+neighbourhood of the most difficult obstacle. In effect, Mallecho soon
+distanced his two companions and began to press Brummel very closely.</p>
+
+<p>Rutolo heard the rapidly approaching hoof-thuds behind him and was
+seized with such nervousness that his sight seemed to fail him.
+Everything swam before his eyes as if he were on the point of swooning.
+He made a frightful effort to keep his spurs at his horse's sides,
+overcome by terror at the thought that his senses might leave him. There
+was a muffled roar in his ears, and through that roar he caught the
+hard, clear sound of Andrea Sperelli's 'Hi!'</p>
+
+<p>More susceptible to the voice than any other mode of urging, Mallecho
+simply devoured the intervening space; he was not more than two or three
+lengths behind Brummel&mdash;was on the point of joining&mdash;of passing him.</p>
+
+<p>'Hi!'</p>
+
+<p>A high barrier intersected the course. Rutolo actually did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> not see it,
+having lost all sense of his surroundings, and only preserved a furious
+instinct to remain glued to his horse and force it along, never mind
+how. Brummel jumped, but receiving no aid from his rider, caught his
+hind legs against the barrier, and came down so awkwardly on the other
+side that the rider lost his stirrups, without, however, coming out of
+the saddle, and he continued to run. Andrea Sperelli now took the lead,
+Giannetto Rutolo, without having recovered his stirrups, being second,
+with Paolo Caligaro close upon his heels; the duke, retarded by a
+refusal from Satirist, came last. In this order they passed the grand
+stand. They heard a confused clamour but it soon died away.</p>
+
+<p>The spectators held their breath in suspense. From time to time,
+somebody would remark aloud on the various incidents of the running. At
+every change in the order of the horses numerous exclamations sounded
+through the continuous murmur, and the ladies thrilled visibly. Donna
+Ippolita Albonico, mounted on a seat, with her hands on the shoulders of
+her husband who stood below her, watched the race with marvellous
+self-control and without a trace of apparent emotion, unless the
+over-tight compression of her lips and a scarcely perceptible furrow
+between her brows might have revealed the effort to an observant eye. At
+a certain moment, however, she drew her hands away from her husband's
+shoulder, fearful of betraying herself by some involuntary movement.</p>
+
+<p>'Sperelli is down!' announced the Contessa di Lucoli in a loud voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mallecho, in jumping, had slipped on the wet grass and come down on his
+knees, but recovered himself in an instant. Andrea had gone over his
+head, but was none the worse, and with lightning rapidity was back in
+the saddle as Rutolo and Caligaro came up with him. Brummel performed
+prodigies, in spite of the wounded leg, and showed the quality of his
+blood. Carbonilla was at last putting out all her speed, guided with
+consummate skill by her rider. There were still about eight hundred
+yards to the winning post.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sperelli saw victory escaping him and gathered up all his forces to
+grasp it again. Standing in the stirrups, bent low over his horse's
+neck, he uttered from time to time that short, sharp, ringing word which
+always acted so effectively upon the noble creature. While Brummel and
+Carbonilla, fatigued by the heaviness of the ground, began to lose the
+pace, Mallecho steadily increased the vehemence of his rush and had
+nearly reconquered his former position, scenting victory already with
+his fiery nostrils. Flying over the last obstacle, he passed
+Brummel&mdash;his head was level with Carbonilla's shoulder&mdash;a hundred yards
+from the post he skirted the barrier&mdash;on&mdash;on&mdash;leaving Caligaro's black
+mare ten lengths behind. The bell rang&mdash;a furious clapping of hands,
+like the pelting of hail-stones, and then a dull roar spread through the
+great crowd on the green sward under the flood of brilliant sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>As he entered the enclosure, Andrea Sperelli thought to
+himself&mdash;'Fortune is with me to-day, but how will it be to-morrow?' And
+feeling the breath of triumph surge round him, a vague sense of
+resentment rose up in him against the possibilities of the morrow. He
+would have preferred to face it to-day and get it over, that he might
+enjoy a double victory and then taste the fruit offered to him by the
+hand of Ippolita Albonico. He was possessed, for the moment, by that
+inexplicable intoxication which results&mdash;with certain men of
+intellect&mdash;from the exercise of their physical powers, the experience of
+their courage and the revelation of their inherent brutality. The
+substratum of primitive ferocity which exists at the bottom of most of
+us rushes to the surface, on occasion, with curious vehemence, and under
+the skin-deep varnish of modern civilisation, our hearts swell sometimes
+with a nameless sanguinary fury, and visions of carnage rise up before
+us. Inhaling the hot and acrid exhalations of his horse, Andrea Sperelli
+felt that none of the delicate perfumes affected by him up till now, had
+ever afforded him such intense enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>He had scarcely quitted the saddle, before he found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> himself surrounded
+by friends of both sexes, eager to congratulate him. Mallecho, breathing
+hard, smoking and covered with foam, snorted and stretched his neck,
+shaking the bridle. His sides rose and fell with a deep continuous
+movement, as if they must burst; his muscles vibrated under skin like a
+bow-string after the shot; his eyes, dilated and bloodshot, had the
+cruel glare of those of a beast of prey; his coat, now showing great
+patches of darker colour, ran down with rivulets of perspiration. The
+incessant trembling of his whole body was pitiable to see, like the
+suffering of a human being.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor fellow!' murmured one of the ladies.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea examined his knees to see if he had taken any hurt from his fall.
+They were sound. Then patting him softly on the neck, he said in an
+indefinable tone of gentleness&mdash;'Go, Mallecho, go&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>And he followed him with his eyes till he disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Directly he had changed his clothes, he went in search of Ludovico
+Barbarisi and the Baron di Santa Margherita.</p>
+
+<p>Both instantly accepted the office of arranging preliminaries with
+Rutolo. He begged them to hasten matters as much as possible.</p>
+
+<p>'Fix it all by this evening. To-morrow by one o'clock I absolutely must
+be free. But let me sleep till nine to-morrow morning. I dine with the
+Ferentinos, then I shall look in at the Palazzo Giustiniani, and after
+that I shall go to the Club, but it will be late&mdash;You will know where to
+find me. Many thanks, my dear fellows, and <i>a rividerci</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>He repaired to the grand stand, but avoided approaching Donna Ippolita
+at once. He smiled, feeling every feminine eye upon him. Many a fair
+hand was held out, many a sweet voice called him
+familiarly&mdash;'Andrea'&mdash;some of them even a little ostentatiously. The
+ladies who had bet upon his horses told him the amount of their
+winnings, others asked curiously if he were really going to fight.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to him that in one day he had reached the summit of
+adventurous glory. He had come out victor in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> a record race, had gained
+the graces of a new love, magnificent and serene as a Venetian
+Dogaressa, had provoked a man to mortal combat and now was passing calm
+and courteous&mdash;but neither more so nor less than usual&mdash;amid the openly
+adoring smiles of all these fair women.</p>
+
+<p>'See the conquering hero comes!' cried Ippolita's husband with
+outstretched hand and pressing Andrea's with unusual warmth.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, indeed; quite a hero!' echoed Donna Ippolita in the superficial
+tone of necessary compliment, affecting ignorance of the real drama.</p>
+
+<p>Sperelli bowed and passed on, feeling strangely embarrassed by
+Albonico's excessive friendliness. A suspicion crossed his mind that he
+was grateful to him for having provoked a quarrel with his wife's lover,
+and the cowardice of the man brought a supercilious smile to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>Returning from the races on the Prince di Ferentino's mail coach, he
+espied Giannetto Rutolo tearing back to Rome in a little two-wheeled
+trap behind a great fast-trotting roan; bending forward with head down,
+a cigar between his teeth and utterly regardless of the injunctions of
+the police to keep in the line. Rome rose up before them, black against
+a band of saffron light, and in the violet sky above that light the
+statues on the Basilica of San Giovanni stood out exaggeratedly large.
+And Andrea then fully realised the pain he was inflicting on this man's
+soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER X</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>At the Palazzo Giustiniani that evening, Andrea said to Ippolita
+Albonico, 'Well then, it is a fixed thing that I expect you to-morrow
+between two and five?'</p>
+
+<p>She would like to have said: 'Then you are not going to fight
+to-morrow?' but she did not dare.</p>
+
+<p>'I have promised,' she replied.</p>
+
+<p>A minute or two afterwards, her husband came up to Andrea and taking his
+arm with much effusion, began asking particulars about the duel. He was
+a youngish man, slim, with very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and
+projecting teeth. He had a slight stammer.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, well&mdash;so it is to come off to-morrow, is it?'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea could not repress his disgust, and let his arm hang loosely at
+his side to show that he was in no mood for these familiarities. Seeing
+the Baron di Santa Margherita enter the room, he disengaged himself
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>'Excuse me, Count,' he said, 'I want to speak to Santa Margherita.'</p>
+
+<p>The Baron met him with the assurance that all was in order. 'Very
+good&mdash;at what hour?'</p>
+
+<p>'Half-past ten at the Villa Sciarra. Rapiers and fencing-gloves, <i>&agrave;
+outrance</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Whom else have you got for seconds?'</p>
+
+<p>'Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo de Souza. We settled everything as
+quickly as possible, avoiding formalities. Giannetto had got his seconds
+already. We arranged the proceedings at the Club without any fuss. Try
+not to be too late in going to bed&mdash;you must be dead tired.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But, heedless of this good advice, on leaving the Palazzo Giustiniani,
+Andrea betook himself to the Club, where Santa Margherita came upon him
+at two o'clock in the morning, and, forcing him to leave the
+card-tables, bore him off on foot to the Palazzo Zuccari.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear boy,' he said reproachfully as they walked along, 'you are
+really foolhardy. In a case like this, the smallest imprudence might
+lead to fatal results. To preserve his full strength and activity, a
+good swordsman should have as much care for his person as a tenor has
+for his voice. The wrist is as delicate an organ as the throat&mdash;the
+articulations of the legs as sensitive as the vocal chords. The
+mechanism suffers from the smallest disturbance; the instrument gets out
+of gear and will not answer to the player. After a night of play or
+drink, Camillo Agrippa himself could not thrust straight, and his
+parries were neither sure nor rapid. An error of a hair's breadth will
+suffice to let three inches of steel into one's body.' They were at the
+top of the Via Condotti, and in the distance they could see the Piazza
+di Spagna, lighted up by the full moon, the stairway bathed in silver,
+and the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti rising into the soft blue.</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly,' continued the Baron, 'you have great advantages over your
+adversary, amongst others, a cool head&mdash;also you have been out before. I
+saw you in Paris in your affair with Gauvaudan&mdash;you remember? A grand
+duel that! You fought like a god!'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea laughed, much gratified. The praise of this unrivalled duellist
+made his heart swell with pride, and infused fresh vigour into his
+muscles. Instinctively, he grasped his walking stick, and repeated the
+famous pass which pierced the arm of the Marquis de Gauvaudan the
+previous winter.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he said, 'it was a direct return hit after a parry of "contre de
+tierce."'</p>
+
+<p>'On the floor, Giannetto Rutolo is a skilful swordsman, but in the open
+he gets confused. He has only been out once before with my cousin
+Cassibile, and he came off badly. He does far too much of the one,
+two,&mdash;one, two, three business<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> in attacking. Stop thrusts and hits with
+a <i>half volte</i> would be useful to you. It was just in that way that my
+cousin touched him in the second round. And those thrusts are your
+special <i>forte</i>. Keep a sharp look-out and try to keep your distance.
+And do not forget that you have to do with a man whom, as I hear, you
+have robbed of his mistress, and to whom you lifted your whip.'</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the Piazza di Spagna. The Barcaccia splashed and
+gurgled softly, glistening under the moon that was mirrored in its
+waters. Four or five hackney carriages stood in a line with their lamps
+lighted. From the Via del Babuino came a tinkle of bells, and the dull
+tramp of hoofs, as of a herd in motion.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the steps the Baron took leave of him.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye then, till to-morrow. I shall be with you a little before nine
+with Ludovico. You must make a pass or so, just to unstiffen the
+muscles. We will see about the doctor. Off with you now and get a good
+sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea mounted the steps. At the first broad landing, he stood still to
+listen to the tinkle of the approaching bells. In truth, he did feel
+rather tired, and even a little heartsick. Now that the excitement
+called up by the conversation on fencing, and the recollection of his
+former doughty deeds in that line had subsided, a sense of
+dissatisfaction had come upon him, confusedly, as yet, and mingled with
+doubt and regret. After being on the stretch throughout the violent
+feverish incidents of the day, his nerves relaxed under the balmy
+influences of the spring night. Why should he, without any excuse of
+passion, out of mere caprice, from pure vanity and arrogance, have taken
+pleasure in awakening the hatred, and deeply wounding the heart of a
+fellow man? The thought of the horrid pain that must be torturing his
+adversary filled him with a sort of compassion. Elena's image flashed
+before him, and he called to mind the anguish he had endured the year
+before, what time he had lost her&mdash;his jealousy, his anger, his nameless
+torments. Then, as now, the nights were serene and calm, and filled
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> perfume, and yet how they weighed upon his spirit! He inhaled the
+fragrant breath of the roses blooming in the little gardens about, and
+watched the flock of sheep passing through the Piazza below.</p>
+
+<p>The mass of thick white fleece advanced with a continuous undulating
+motion, a compact and unbroken surface, like a muddy wave pouring over
+the pavement. A sharp quavering bleat would mingle with the tinkling
+bells to be answered by other voices, fainter and more timid; from time
+to time, the mounted shepherds, riding at either side or behind the
+flock, gave a sharp word of command, or used their long staves. The
+splendour of the moonlight lent to this passage of flocks through the
+midst of the slumbering city the mystery of things seen in a dream.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea recalled one serene February night when, on coming away from a
+ball at the English Embassy, he and Elena had met a flock of sheep in
+the Via Venti Settembre which obliged their carriage to stop. Elena, her
+face pressed to the window, watched the sheep crowding against the
+carriage wheels, and pointed to the little lambs with childish delight;
+and he with his face close to hers, his eyes half closed, listened to
+the pattering hoofs, the bleating, the tinkling bells.</p>
+
+<p>Why should these recollections of Elena come back to him just now?&mdash;He
+resumed his way slowly up the steps, his feet heavy with fatigue, his
+knees giving way beneath him. Suddenly the thought of death flashed
+across his mind. 'What if I were killed, or received such a wound as to
+maim me for life?' But his thirst for life and pleasure caused his whole
+being to revolt against such a sinister possibility. 'I <i>must</i> come off
+victorious!' he said to himself. And he began reviewing all the
+advantages that would fall to him from this second victory: the prestige
+of his success, the fame of his prowess, Ippolita's kisses, new loves,
+new pleasures, the gratification of new whims.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, however, he bethought him of the necessary precautions for
+insuring his bodily vigour. He went to bed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> and slept soundly till he
+was awakened by the arrival of his seconds; took his customary
+shower-bath; had a strip of linoleum laid down and invited Santa
+Margherita and then Barbarisi to exchange a few passes with him, during
+which he executed with precision several stop thrusts.</p>
+
+<p>'In capital form!' the Baron congratulated him.</p>
+
+<p>Sperelli then took two cups of tea and some biscuits, donned a very easy
+pair of trousers, comfortable shoes with low heels and a very slightly
+starched shirt; he prepared his gloves by moistening the palm slightly
+and rubbing in powdered resin; arranged a leather strap for fastening
+the guard to his wrist; examined the blade and the point of both
+rapiers; omitted no precaution, no detail.</p>
+
+<p>When all was to his satisfaction&mdash;'Let us be going now,' he said;
+'better be on the ground before the others. What about the doctor?'</p>
+
+<p>'He will be waiting for us there.'</p>
+
+<p>On the way down stairs they met Grimiti, who had come on behalf of the
+Marchesa d'Ateleta.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall follow you to the Villa and then bring the news as quickly as
+possible to Francesca,' said he.</p>
+
+<p>They all went down together. The Duke jumped into his buggy and the
+others entered a closed carriage. Andrea made no show of indifference or
+good spirits&mdash;to make jokes before engaging in a serious duel seemed to
+him execrably bad taste&mdash;but he was perfectly calm. He smoked and
+listened composedly to Santa Margherita and Barbarisi, who were
+discussing&mdash;apropos of a recent case in France&mdash;whether it was
+legitimate or not to use the left hand against an adversary. Now and
+again, he leaned forward to look out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>On this May morning Rome shone resplendent under the caressing sun. Here
+a fountain lit up with its silvery laughter a little piazzetta still
+plunged in shadow; there the open gates of a palace disclosed a vista of
+courtyard with a background of portico and statues; from the baroque
+architecture of a brick church hung the decorations for the month of
+Mary.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> Under the bridge, the Tiber gleamed and glistened as it hurried
+away between the gray-green houses towards the island of San Bartolomeo.
+After a short ascent, the whole city spread out before them, immense,
+imperial, radiant, bristling with spires and columns and obelisks,
+crowned with cupolas and rotundas, clean cut out of the blue like a
+citadel.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Ave Roma, moriturus te salutat!</i>' exclaimed Andrea Sperelli, throwing
+away the end of his cigarette. 'Though, to tell the truth, my dear
+fellows.' he added, 'a sword-thrust would decidedly inconvenience me
+this morning.'</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the Villa Sciarra, already partially profaned by the
+builders of modern houses, and were passing through an avenue of tall
+and slender laurels bordered by hedges of roses. Santa Margherita,
+putting his head out of the window, caught sight of another carriage
+standing in the drive before the villa.</p>
+
+<p>'They are waiting for us,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>He consulted his watch&mdash;ten minutes yet to the hour agreed upon. He got
+out of the carriage and went across with the other seconds and the
+surgeons to the opponents. Andrea stayed behind in the avenue. He went
+over, in his own mind, certain points of attack and defence he hoped to
+employ successfully, but the miracles of light and shadow playing
+fitfully through the interlacing laurels distracted his attention. While
+his mind was occupied with the position of the wound he intended
+inflicting, his eyes were attracted by the reeds shivering in the
+morning breeze, and the trees, tender as the amorous allegories of
+Petrarch, sighed gently over a head that was wholly absorbed in plans of
+dealing a mortal blow.</p>
+
+<p>Barbarisi came to call him.</p>
+
+<p>'Everything is ready,' he said. 'The caretaker has opened the villa for
+us&mdash;we have the rooms on the ground floor at our disposal&mdash;most
+convenient. Come and undress.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea followed him. While he undressed, the two surgeons opened their
+surgical cases and displayed the array<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> of glittering steel instruments
+within. One of them was a youngish man, pale, bald, and with feminine
+hands and a hard mouth, with a continual and visible contraction of the
+lower jaw, which was extraordinarily developed. The other was a thickset
+man of mature years with a freckled face, bushy red beard and the neck
+of an ox. The one seemed the antithesis of the other, and their
+disparity excited Sperelli's curiosity and attention. They set out upon
+a table bandages and carbolic acid for disinfecting the weapons. The
+smell of the acid diffused itself through the room.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Sperelli was ready, he went out accompanied by his second and
+the surgeons. Once again, the view of Rome seen through the laurels
+attracted his eyes and made his heart beat fast. He was full of
+impatience. He wished he could put himself on guard at that very
+instant, and hear the signal for the attack. He seemed to have the
+decisive thrust, the victory in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Ready?' asked Santa Margherita advancing to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>'Quite ready.'</p>
+
+<p>The spot chosen for the encounter was a path at the side of the villa,
+in the shade, and covered with fine rolled gravel. Rutolo was already
+stationed there, at the further end, with Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo
+di Souza. Everybody wore a grave, not to say solemn, air. The two
+adversaries were placed opposite to one another and their eyes met.
+Santa Margherita, who had the direction of the combat, noticed that
+Rutolo's shirt was very stiffly starched and the collar too high. He
+remarked upon it to Casteldieri who exchanged a few words with his
+principal, and Sperelli saw the blood rush to his adversary's face while
+he proceeded resolutely to divest himself of his shirt. Andrea with cold
+composure followed his example. He then turned up his trousers and Santa
+Margherita handed him the glove, the strap and the rapier. He armed
+himself with scrupulous care, and shook his weapon slightly to see that
+he had it well in hand. The movement brought out the play of his biceps
+very visibly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> bearing witness to long practice of the arm and the
+strength it had thereby acquired.</p>
+
+<p>When the two combatants measured their swords for the distance, that of
+Giannetto Rutolo shook convulsively. After the usual set phrases as to
+the honour and good faith of the combatants, Santa Margherita gave the
+word in a ringing powerful voice.</p>
+
+<p>'Gentlemen&mdash;on guard!'</p>
+
+<p>The duellists threw themselves on guard simultaneously; Rutolo, with a
+stamp of the foot, Sperelli, bending forward lightly. Rutolo was of
+medium height, very slender, all nerves, with an olive face, to which
+the curled moustaches and the little pointed beard &agrave; la Charles <span class="smcap">i</span>. in
+Van Dyck's pictures lent a certain piquant and dashing air. Sperelli was
+taller, more dignified, admirable of attitude, calm and collected,
+perfectly balanced between grace and strength, his whole person
+proclaiming the <i>grand seigneur</i>. They looked each other full in the
+eye, and each experienced a curious internal thrill at the sight of the
+bare flesh against which he pointed his sharp blade. Through the silence
+came the fresh murmur of the fountain mingled with the rustle of the
+breeze among the climbing rose-bushes, where innumerable yellow and
+white roses nodded their fragrant heads.</p>
+
+<p>'Play!' cried the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea was prepared for an impetuous attack from Rutolo, but the latter
+did not move. For about a minute, they stood watching each other closely
+without ever crossing swords, almost motionless. Sperelli bending his
+knees still more, on guard with the point low, assumed the tierce guard
+and sought to provoke his adversary by the insolent challenge of his
+eyes and by stamping his foot. Rutolo made a step forward with a menace
+of straight thrust, accompanying it with a cry after the manner of
+certain Sicilian fencers. The duel began.</p>
+
+<p>Sperelli avoided any decisive movement, restricting himself to parrying
+only, forcing his opponent to discover his intentions, to exhaust all
+his methods, to bring out his whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> repertoire of sword-play. His
+parries were neat and rapid, never yielding a foot of ground, admirable
+in precision, as if he were taking part in a fencing match in the school
+with blunt foils; whereas Rutolo attacked him warmly, accompanying each
+thrust with a hoarse cry like that of the wood-cutters when they use
+their hatchets.</p>
+
+<p>'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita, whose vigilant eye marked every flash of
+the blades.</p>
+
+<p>He went up to Rutolo, 'You are touched, if I am not mistaken,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>True, Rutolo had a scratch on the forearm, but so slight that there was
+no need even of sticking-plaster. Nevertheless, he was breathing hard,
+and his livid pallor bore witness to his suppressed anger.</p>
+
+<p>'I know my man thoroughly now,' whispered Sperelli with a smile to
+Barbarisi. 'You watch the second round. I mean to pink him on the right
+breast.'</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, he absently rested the point of his rapier on the ground.
+The bald young surgeon with the strong jaw immediately came up to him
+with a sponge soaked in carbolic acid and proceeded to purify the weapon
+again.</p>
+
+<p>'Good heavens!' Andrea exclaimed in a low voice to Barbarisi, 'he has
+all the air of a <i>jettatore</i>. This rapier is certain to break.'</p>
+
+<p>A thrush began to sing somewhere in the trees. Here and there a rose
+scattered its petals on the breeze. Some low-lying fleecy clouds rose to
+meet the sun, broke up into airy flakes and gradually dispersed.</p>
+
+<p>'On guard!'</p>
+
+<p>Conscious of his inferiority, Rutolo determined to hamper his opponent's
+play, to attack him at close quarters and so break his continuity of
+action. For this he enjoyed the advantage of shorter stature and a frame
+which, being wiry, thin and flexible, offered but little mark to the
+other's weapon.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea foresaw that Rutolo would adopt this plan. He stood on guard,
+bent like a taut bow, watching for the right moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita.</p>
+
+<p>A streak of blood showed on Rutolo's breast. The rapier had penetrated,
+just under the right breast, almost to the rib. The surgeons hurried
+over, but the wounded man instantly turned to Casteldieri, and with a
+tremor of anger in his voice said roughly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'It is a mere scratch. I shall go on.'</p>
+
+<p>He refused to go inside to have the wound-dressed. The bald doctor,
+after squeezing the small hole, which scarcely bled, and sponging it
+with antiseptic lotion, applied a simple piece of lint and said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'You may go on now.'</p>
+
+<p>At Casteldieri's invitation, the Baron gave the word without delay for
+the third round.</p>
+
+<p>'On guard!'</p>
+
+<p>Sperelli perceived his danger. Directly in front of him stood his
+adversary, his knees firmly bent, masked, as it were, behind his rapier,
+his whole strength resolutely collected for one supreme effort. His eyes
+had a singular glitter, and the calf of his left leg quivered
+perceptibly under the excessive tension of the muscles. This time, in
+order to avoid the shock of his opponent's impetus, Andrea determined to
+throw himself to one side and repeat the thrust which Cassibile had
+employed so successfully, the white patch of lint on Rutolo's breast
+serving him as a mark. It was there he proposed wounding him again, but,
+this time, the rapier should enter the intercostal space and not be
+deterred by the rib. The silence all about them deepened, the spectators
+felt the homicidal desire that animated the two men, and were seized
+with apprehension, their hearts sinking at the thought that doubtless
+they would have to carry away a dead or dying man. The sun, veiled by
+fleecy cloudlets, shed a milky light over the scene, the trees rustled
+fitfully, the thrush sang on invisible.</p>
+
+<p>'Play!'</p>
+
+<p>Rutolo charged his adversary with a double derobe. Sperelli parried and
+returned, giving way a step. Rutolo followed up furiously with a rush of
+rapid thrusts, nearly all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> in the low line, without uttering the usual
+cries. Sperelli, nothing daunted by this onslaught, and wishing to avoid
+an actual hand-to-hand fight, parried vigorously, and returned with such
+directness that he might, had he so wished, have run his adversary
+through the body each time. Rutolo's leg was bleeding near the groin.</p>
+
+<p>'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita the moment he perceived it.</p>
+
+<p>But in the same instant Sperelli, parrying low quarte and not
+encountering his adversary's blade, received a thrust full in the
+breast. He fell back into Barbarisi's arms and fainted.</p>
+
+<p>'Wound penetrating the thorax through the fourth intercostal space on
+the right side with superficial wound of the lung,' pronounced the
+bull-necked surgeon, after his examination in the room to which they had
+conveyed the wounded man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_II" id="BOOK_II"></a>BOOK II</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Ib" id="CHAPTER_Ib"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER I</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Convalescence is a purification, a new birth. Never is life so sweet as
+after the pangs of physical suffering, and never is the human soul so
+inclined towards purity and faith as after having had a glimpse into the
+abyss of death.</p>
+
+<p>After his terrible wound, after a long, slow, agonising struggle, Andrea
+Sperelli came back to life renewed in body and spirit&mdash;like another man,
+like a creature risen out of the icy waters of death, with a mind swept
+bare of all that has gone before. The past had receded into the dim
+perspective, the troubled waters had calmed, the mud sunk to the bottom;
+his soul was cleansed. He returned to the bosom of Mother Nature, and he
+felt her re-inforce him maternally with goodness and with strength.</p>
+
+<p>The guest of his cousin at her villa of Schifanoja, Andrea returned to
+life again in sight of the sea. The convalescent drew his breath in
+harmony with the deep, calm breath of the ocean; his mind was
+tranquillised by the serenity of the horizon. Little by little, in these
+hours of enforced idleness and retirement, his spirit expanded, bloomed
+out, erected itself slowly, like the grass trodden under foot on the
+pathway, and he returned to truth and simple faith, became natural and
+free of heart, open to the knowledge and disposed to the contemplation
+of pure things.</p>
+
+<p>August was drawing to a close. An ecstatic serenity reigned over the
+sea; the waters were so transparent that they repeated every image with
+absolute fidelity, and their ultimate line melted so imperceptibly into
+the sky that the two elements seemed as one, impalpable and
+supernatural.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> The wide amphitheatre of hills, clothed with olives,
+oranges and pines and all the noblest forms of Italian vegetation,
+embraced the silent sea, and seemed not a multiplicity of things, but a
+single vast object under the all-pervading sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Lying on the grass, or sitting on a rock or under a tree, the young man
+felt the river of life flow within him; as in a trance, he seemed to
+feel the whole universe throb and palpitate in his breast; in a species
+of religious rapture, he felt that he possessed the infinite. That which
+he experienced was ineffable, divine. The vista before him opened out by
+degrees into a profound and long continued vision, the branches of the
+trees overhead supported the firmament, filling the blue, and shining
+like the garlands of immortal poets. And he gazed and listened and
+breathed with the sea and the earth, placid as a god.</p>
+
+<p>Where were now all his vanities and his cruelties, his schemes and his
+duplicities? What had become of all his loves and his illusions, his
+disappointments and his disgusts, and the implacable reaction after
+pleasure? He remembered none of them. His spirit had renounced them all,
+and with the absence of desire, he had found peace.</p>
+
+<p>Desire had abandoned its throne and intellect was free to follow its
+proper course, and reflect the objective world purely from the outside
+point of view; things appeared clearly and precisely under their true
+form, in their true colours, in all their real significance and beauty;
+every personal sentiment was in abeyance.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht&mdash;Man freut sich ihrer Pracht.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>One desires not the stars, but rejoices in their splendour&mdash;and for the
+first time in his life the young man really recognised the poetic
+harmony of summer skies at night.</p>
+
+<p>These were the last nights of August, and there was no moon. Innumerable
+in the deep starry vault, the constellations throbbed and palpitated
+with ardent life. The two Bears, Hercules, Cassiopeia, glittered with so
+rapid a palpitation that they seemed almost to approach the earth, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+penetrate the terrestrial atmosphere. The Milky Way flowed wide like a
+regal a&euml;rian river, a confluence of the waters of Paradise, over a bed
+of crystal between starry banks. Brilliant meteors cleft the motionless
+air from time to time, gliding lightly and silently as a drop of water
+over a sheet of glass. The slow and solemn respiration of the sea
+sufficed to measure the peace of the night without disturbing it, and
+the pauses were almost sweeter than the music.</p>
+
+<p>In every aspect of the things around him he beheld some analogy to his
+own inner life. The landscape became to him a symbol, an emblem, a sign
+to guide him through the labyrinthine passes of his own soul. He
+discovered secret affinities between the visible life around him and the
+intimate life of his desires and memories. 'To me, high mountains are a
+<i>feeling</i>'&mdash;and as the mountains were to Byron, so the sea was to him a
+<i>sentiment</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, that limpid September sea! Calm and guileless as a sleeping child,
+it lay outstretched beneath the pearly sky&mdash;now green, the delicate and
+precious green of malachite, the little red sails upon it like
+flickering tongues of fire, now intensely&mdash;almost one might call it
+heraldically&mdash;blue, and veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, with
+pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it
+took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the
+greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate,
+and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the
+background of a Giotto picture.</p>
+
+<p>Forgotten sensations of early youth came back to him, that impression of
+freshness which the salt breath of the sea infuses into young blood, the
+indescribable effects produced by the changing lights and shadows, the
+tints, the smell of the salt water upon the unsullied soul. The sea was
+not only a delight to his eyes, but also an inexhaustible wellspring of
+peace, a magic fount of youth wherein his body regained health, and his
+spirit nobility. The ocean had for him the mysterious attraction of a
+mother country, and he abandoned himself to it with filial confidence,
+as a feeble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> child might sink into the arms of an omnipotent mother. And
+he received comfort and encouragement; for who ever confided his pain,
+his yearnings or his dreams to her in vain?</p>
+
+<p>For him the sea had ever a profound word, some sudden revelation, some
+unlocked for enlightenment, some unexpected significance. She revealed
+to him, in the secret recesses of his soul, a wound still gaping though
+quiescent, and she made it bleed again, but only to heal it with balm
+that was doubly sweet. She re-awakened the dragon that slumbered within
+him, till he felt once more the terrible grip of its claws, and then she
+slew it once for all and buried it deep in his heart never to rise
+again. No corner of his being but lay open to the great Consolatrix.</p>
+
+<p>But at times, under the continuous dominion of this influence, under the
+persistent tyranny of this fascination, the convalescent was conscious
+of a sort of bewilderment and fear, as if both the dominion and
+fascination were insupportable to his weak state. The incessant colloquy
+between him and the sea gave him a vague sense of prostration, as if the
+sublime language were beyond his restricted powers, so eager to grasp
+the meaning of the incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<p>But this period of visions, of abstractions, of pure contemplativeness
+was of short duration. By degrees, he began to resume his attitude of
+self-consciousness, to recover the sensation of his personality, to
+return to his original frame of mind. One day at the hour of high noon,
+the vast and terrible silence when all life seems suspended, a sudden
+glimpse into his own heart revealed shuddering abysses, inextinguishable
+desires, ineffaceable memories, accumulations of suffering and
+regret&mdash;all the wretchedness he had gone through, all the inevitable
+scars of his vices, all the results of his passions. He seemed to be
+witnessing the shipwreck of his whole life. A thousand voices cried to
+him for succour, imploring aid, cursing death&mdash;voices that he knew, that
+he had listened to in days gone by. But they cried and implored and
+cursed in vain, feeling that they were perishing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> choked by the hungry
+waves; then the voices grew faint, broken, irrecognisable&mdash;and died away
+into silence.</p>
+
+<p>He was alone. Of all his youth, of all his boasted fulness of inner
+life, of all his ideality, not a vestige remained; within&mdash;a black and
+yawning abyss, around him&mdash;impassive nature, endless source of pain to
+solitary souls. Every hope was dead, every voice mute, every anchor
+gone&mdash;what use was life?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the image of Elena rose up before him, then that of other women
+whom he had known and loved. Each of them smiled a hostile smile, and
+each one, as she vanished, seemed to carry away something of him&mdash;what,
+he could not definitely say. An unspeakable distress weighed upon him,
+an icy breath of age swept over him, a tragic, warning voice rang
+through his heart&mdash;Too late! Too late!</p>
+
+<p>All his recent comfort and peace seemed now a vain delusion, a dream
+that had flown, a pleasure enjoyed by some other spirit. Every wound he
+had ruthlessly dealt to his soul's dignity bled afresh; every
+degradation he had inflicted upon his conscience started out and spread
+like a leprosy. Every violation he had committed upon his ideality
+roused an endless, despairing, terrible remorse in him. He had lied too
+flagrantly, had deceived, debased himself beyond all power of redress.
+He loathed himself and all his evil works&mdash;Shame! Shame! Nothing could
+wipe out those dishonouring stains, no balm could ever heal those
+wounds, he must for ever endure the torment of that
+self-loathing.&mdash;Shame!&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>His eyes filled with tears, and dropping his head upon his arms he
+abandoned himself to the weight of his misery, prostrate as a man who
+has no hope of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>With the new day, he awoke to new life, one of those awakenings, so
+fresh and limpid, that are only vouchsafed to adolescence in its
+triumphant springtide. It was a marvellous morning&mdash;only to breathe the
+air was pure delight. The whole earth rejoiced in the living light; the
+hills were wrapped about with a diaphanous silvery veil and seemed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+quiver with life, the sea appeared to be traversed by rivulets of milk,
+by rivers of crystal and of emerald, by a thousand currents forming the
+rippling intricacies of a watery labyrinth. A sense of nuptial joy and
+religious grace emanated from the concord between earth and sky.</p>
+
+<p>And he breathed and gazed and listened, not a little surprised During
+his sleep the fever had left him. He had slumbered, lulled by the voice
+of the waters as if by the voice of a faithful friend&mdash;and he who sleeps
+to the sound of that lullaby enjoys a repose that is full of healing
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed and listened mutely, fondly, letting the flood of immortal life
+penetrate to his heart's core. Never had the sacred music of a great
+master&mdash;an Offertory of Haydn, a Te Deum of Mozart&mdash;produced in him the
+emotion caused now by the simple chimes of the distant village churches,
+as they greeted the rising of the sun into the heavens. His soul swelled
+and overflowed with unspeakable emotion. Some vision, vague but sublime,
+hovered over him like a rippling veil through which gleamed the
+splendour of the mysterious treasure of ultimate felicity. Up till now,
+he had always known exactly what he wished for, and had never found any
+pleasure in desiring vainly. Now, he could not have named his desire,
+but he had no doubts that the thing wished for was infinitely sweet,
+since the very act of wishing was bliss. The words of the Chimera in
+'The King of Cyprus'&mdash;old world, half-forgotten verses, recurred to him
+with all the force of a caressing appeal&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">'Would'st thou fight?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would'st kill? would'st thou behold rivers of blood?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great heaps of gold? white herds of captive women?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slaves? other, and far other spoils? Would'st thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bid marble breathe? Would'st thou set up a temple?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would'st fashion an immortal hymn? Would'st (hearken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearken, O youth, hearken!)&mdash;would'st thou divinely<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He smiled faintly to himself. 'Whom should I love?&mdash;Art?&mdash;a woman?&mdash;what
+woman?' Elena seemed far removed from him, lost to him, a
+stranger&mdash;dead. The others&mdash;still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> further off, dead for evermore.
+Therefore he was free. But why renew a pursuit so useless and so
+perilous? Why stretch out his hand again towards the tree of knowledge?
+'The tree of knowledge has been plucked&mdash;all's known!' as Byron said in
+Don Juan. What he desired, at the bottom of his heart, was to give
+himself freely, gratefully to some higher and purer being. But where to
+find that being was the question.</p>
+
+<p>Truly his salvation in the future lay rather in the practice of caution,
+prudence, sagacity. His tone of mind seemed to him admirably expressed
+in a sonnet of a contemporary poet, whom, from a certain affinity of
+literary tastes and similar &aelig;sthetic education, he particularly
+affected&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am as one who lays himself to rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the shadow of a laden tree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above his head hangs the ripe fruit, and he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is weary of drawing bow or arbalest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He shakes not the fair bough that lowliest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Droops, neither lifts he hand, nor turns to see;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But lies, and gathers to him indolently<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fruits that drop into his very breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In that juiced sweetness, over-exquisite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He bites not deep; he fears the bitterness;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet sets it to his lips, that he may smell,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sucks it with pleasure, not with greediness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he is neither grieved nor glad at it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is the ending of the parable.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Art! Art! She was the only faithful mistress&mdash;forever young&mdash;immortal;
+there was the Fountain of all pure joys, closed to the multitude but
+freely open to the elect; that was the precious Food which makes a man
+like unto a god! How could he have quaffed from other cups after having
+pressed his lips to that one?&mdash;how have followed after other joys when
+he had tasted that supreme one?</p>
+
+<p>'But what if my intellect has become decadent?&mdash;if my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> hand has lost its
+cunning? What if I am no longer <i>worthy</i>?' He was seized with such panic
+at the thought, that he set himself wildly to find some immediate means
+of proving to himself the irrational nature of his fears. He would
+instantly compose some difficult verses, draw a figure, engrave a plate,
+solve some problem of form. Well&mdash;and what then? Might not the result be
+entirely fallacious? The slow decay of power may be imperceptible to the
+possessor&mdash;that is the terrible thing about it. The artist who loses his
+genius little by little is unaware of his progressive feebleness, for as
+he loses his power of production he also loses his critical faculty, his
+judgment. He no longer perceives the defects of his work&mdash;does not know
+that it is mediocre or bad. That is the horror of it! The artist who has
+fallen from his original high estate is no more conscious of his
+failings than the lunatic is aware of his mental aberration.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea was seized with terror. Better&mdash;far better be dead! Never, as at
+this moment, had he so fully grasped the divine nature of that <i>gift</i>,
+never had the <i>spark</i> of genius appeared to him so sacred. His whole
+being was shaken to its foundations by the mere suggestion that that
+gift might be destroyed, that spark extinguished. Better to die!</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his head and shook off his inertia, then he went down to the
+park and walked slowly under the trees, unable to form a definite plan.
+A light breeze rippled through the tree tops, now and again the leaves
+rustled as if a band of squirrels were passing through them; patches of
+blue sky gleamed between the branches like eyes beneath their lids.
+Arrived at a favourite spot of his, a sort of tiny <i>lucus</i> presided over
+by a four-fronted Hermes plunged in quadruple meditation, he stopped and
+seated himself on the grass, with his back against the pedestal of the
+statue and his face turned to the sea. Before him the tree-trunks,
+straight but of uneven height, like the pipes of the great god Pan,
+intercepted his view of the sea; all around him the acanthus spread the
+exquisite grace of its foliage, symmetrical as the capitals of
+Callimachus.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He thought of the words of Salamis in the <i>Story of the Hermaphrodite</i>,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Noble acanthus, in the woods of Earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tokens of peace, high-flowering coronals,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of most pure form; O ye, the slender basket<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Silence weaves with light, untroubled hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To gather up the flowers of woody dreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What virtue have ye poured on this fair youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of those dusky and sweet-smelling leaves?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naked he sleeps; his arm supports his head.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Other lines came back to him, and yet others&mdash;a riot of verse. His soul
+was filled with the music of rhymes and rhythmic measures. He was
+overjoyed; coming to him thus spontaneously and unexpectedly, this
+poetic agitation caused him inexpressible happiness. And he gave ear to
+the music, delighting himself in rich imagery, in rare epithets, in the
+luminous metaphors, the exquisite harmonies, the subtle refinements
+which distinguished his metrical style and the mysterious artifices of
+the endecasyllabic verse learned from the admirable poets of the
+fourteenth century, and more especially from Petrarch. Once more the
+magic spell of versification subjugated his soul, and he felt the full
+force of the sentiment of a contemporary poet&mdash;Verse is everything!</p>
+
+<p>A perfect line of verse is absolute, immutable, deathless. It encloses a
+thought as within a clearly marked circle which no force can break; it
+belongs no more to the poet, it belongs to all and yet to none, as do
+space, light, all things intransitory and perpetual. When the poet is
+about to bring forth one of these deathless lines he is warned by a
+divine torrent of joy which sweeps over his soul.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea half closed his eyes to prolong this delicious tremor which with
+him was ever the forerunner of inspiration, and more especially of
+poetic inspiration, and he determined in a moment upon the metrical form
+into which he would pour his thoughts, like wine into a cup&mdash;the sonnet.</p>
+
+<p>While composing Andrea studied himself curiously. It was long since he
+had made verses. Had this interval of idleness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> been harmful to his
+technical capacities? It seemed to him that the lines, rising one by one
+out of the depths of his brain, had a new grace. The consonance came of
+itself, and ideas were born of the rhymes. Then suddenly some obstacle
+would intercept the flow, a line would rebel and the whole verse would
+be displaced like a shaken puzzle; the syllables would struggle against
+the constraint of the measure; a musical and luminous word which had
+taken his fancy had to be excluded by the severity of the rhythm, do
+what he would to retain it, and the verse was like a medal which has
+turned out imperfect through the inexperience of the caster, who has not
+calculated the proper quantity of metal necessary for filling the mould.
+With ingenious patience he poured the metal back into the crucible and
+began all over again. Finally the verse came out full and clear, and the
+whole sonnet lived and breathed like a free and perfect creature.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he composed&mdash;now slow, now fast&mdash;with a delight never felt before.
+As the day grew, the sea cast luminous darts between the trees as
+between the columns of a jasper portico. Here Alma Tadema would have
+depicted a Sappho with hyacinthine locks, seated at the foot of the
+marble Hermes, singing to a seven-stringed lyre and surrounded by a
+chorus of maidens with locks of flame, all pallid and intent, drinking
+in the pure harmony of the verses.</p>
+
+<p>Having accomplished the four sonnets, he heaved a sigh and proceeded to
+recite them silently but with inward emphasis. Then he wrote them on the
+quadrangular pedestal of the Hermes, one on each surface in the
+following order&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Four-fronted Hermes, to thy four-fold sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have these my marvellous tidings been made known?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suave spirits, singing on their way, have flown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth from my heart, light-hearted; and from thence<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Have cast forth every foul intelligence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every foul stream dammed, and overthrown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old unguarded bridges, stone by stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And quenched the flame of my impenitence.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Singing, the spirits ascend; I know the voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hymn; and, inextinguishable and vast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delighting laughters from my heart arise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pale, but a king, I bid my soul rejoice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hearken my heart's laughter, as at last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Low in the dust the conquered evil lies.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The glad soul laughs, because its loves have fled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because the conquered evil bites the dust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which into intertangled fires had thrust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As into fiery thickets, feet now led<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Into the circle human sorrows tread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It leaves the treacherous labyrinths of lust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the fair pagan monsters lure the just,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In hyacinth robes, a novice, garmented.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now may no Sphinx with golden nails ensnare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No Gorgon freeze it out of snaky folds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No Siren lull it on a sleepy coast;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But, at the circle's summit, see, a fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White woman, in the act of worship, holds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her pure hands the sacrificial Host.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beyond all harm, all ambush, and all hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tranquil of face, and strong at heart, she stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And knows till death, and scorns, and understands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All evil things that on her passage wait.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Thou hast in ward and keeping every gate,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The winds breathe sweetness at thy sweet commands,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Might'st thou but take, when with these restless hands</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I lay at thine untroubled feet my fate!</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Even now there shines before me in thy meek</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And holy hands the Host, like to a sun.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Have I attained, have I then paid the price?</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She, that is favourable to all that seek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lifting the Host, declares: <i>Now is begun</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And ended the eternal sacrifice!</i><br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>For I</i>, she saith, <i>am the unnatural Rose,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I am the Rose of Beauty. I instil</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The drunkenness of ecstasy, I fill</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The spirit with my rapture and repose</i>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Sowing with tears, sorrowful still are those</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That with much singing gather harvest still.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>After long sorrow, this my sweetness will</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Be sweeter than all sweets thy spirit knows.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So be it, Madonna; and from my heart outburst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blood of tears, flooding all mortal things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the immortal sorrow be yet whole;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let the depths swallow me, let there as at first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be darkness, so I see the glimmerings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of light that rain on my unconquered soul!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="r">
+Die <span class="smcap">xii</span>. Septembris <span class="smcap">mdccclxxxvi</span>.'<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIb" id="CHAPTER_IIb"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Schifanoja was situated on the heights at that point where the chain of
+hills, after following the curving coast line, took a landward bend and
+sloped away towards the plain. Notwithstanding that it had been built in
+the latter half of the eighteenth century&mdash;by the Cardinal Alfonso
+Carafa d'Ateleta&mdash;the villa showed a certain purity of architectural
+design. It was a square building of two stories, with arched colonnades
+alternating with the apartments, which imparted to the whole edifice a
+look of lightness and grace. It was a real summer palace, open on all
+sides to the breath of the sea. At the side towards the sloping gardens,
+a wide hall opened on to a noble double flight of steps leading to a
+platform like a vast terrace, surrounded by a stone balustrade and
+adorned by two fountains. At either end of this terrace, other flights
+of steps interrupted by more terraces led by easy stages almost to the
+sea, affording a full view from the level ground of their seven-fold
+windings through superb verdure and masses of roses. The special glories
+of Schifanoja were its cypresses and its roses. Roses were there of
+every kind and for every season, enough '<i>pour en tirer neuf ou dix
+muytz d'eaue rose</i>' as the poet of the <i>Vergier d'honneur</i> would have
+said. The cypresses, sharp-pointed and sombre, more hieratic than the
+Pyramids, more enigmatic than the obelisks, were in no respect inferior
+either to those of the Villa d'Este, or the Villa Mondragone or any of
+the giants growing round the glorious Roman villas.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchesa d'Ateleta was in the habit of spending the summer and part
+of the autumn at Schifanoja; for, though a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> thorough woman of the world,
+she was fond of the country and its freedom, and liked to keep open
+house there for her friends. She had lavished every care and attention
+upon Andrea during his illness; had been to him like an elder sister,
+almost a mother, and untiring in her devotion. She cherished a profound
+affection for her cousin, was ever ready to excuse or pardon, was a good
+and frank friend to him, capable of understanding many things, always at
+his beck and call, always cheerful, always bright and witty. Although
+she had overstepped the thirties by a year, she had lost nothing of her
+youth, vivacity and great personal charm, for she possessed the secret
+of Madame de Pompadour's fascination, that '<i>beaut&eacute; sans traits</i>' which
+lights up with unexpected graces. Moreover, she possessed that rare gift
+commonly called tact. A fine feminine sense of the fitness of things was
+an infallible guide to her. In her relations with a host of
+acquaintances of either sex she always succeeded in steering her course
+discreetly; she never committed an error of taste, never weighed heavily
+on the lives of others, never arrived at an inopportune moment nor
+became importunate, no deed or word of hers but was entirely to the
+point. Her treatment of Andrea during the somewhat trying period of his
+convalescence was beyond all praise. She did her utmost to avoid
+disturbing or annoying him, and, what is more, managed that no one else
+should; she left him complete liberty, pretended not to notice his whims
+and melancholies; never worried him with indiscreet questions; made her
+company sit as lightly as possible on him at obligatory moments, and
+even went so far as to refrain from her usual witty remarks in his
+presence to save him the trouble of forcing a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea recognised her delicacy and was profoundly grateful.</p>
+
+<p>Returning from the garden with unwonted lightness of heart on that
+September morning after writing his sonnets on the Hermes, he
+encountered Donna Francesca on the steps, and, kissing her hand, he
+exclaimed in laughing tones:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Cousin Francesca, I have found the Truth and the Way!</p>
+
+<p>'Alleluja!' she returned, lifting up her fair rounded arms,&mdash;'Alleluja!'</p>
+
+<p>And she continued on her way down to the garden while Andrea went on to
+his room with heart refreshed.</p>
+
+<p>A little while afterwards there came a gentle knock at the door and
+Francesca's voice asking&mdash;'May I come in?'</p>
+
+<p>She entered with the lap of her dress and both arms full of great
+clusters of dewy roses, white, yellow, crimson, russet brown. Some were
+wide and transparent like those of the Villa Pamfili, all fresh and
+glistening, others were densely petalled, and with that intensity of
+colouring which recalls the boasted magnificence of the dyes of Tyre and
+Sidon; others again were like little heaps of odorous snow, and gave one
+a strange desire to bite into them and eat them. The infinite gradations
+of red, from violent crimson to the faded pink of over-ripe
+strawberries, mingled with the most delicate and almost imperceptible
+variations of white, from the immaculate purity of freshly fallen snow
+to the indefinable shades of new milk, the sap of the reed, dull silver,
+alabaster and opal.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a <i>festa</i> to-day,' she said, her laughing face appearing over the
+flowers that covered her whole bosom up to the throat.</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks! Thanks!' Andrea cried again and again as he helped her to empty
+the mass of bloom on to the table, all over the books and papers and
+portfolios&mdash;'<i>Rosa rosarum!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Her hands once free, she proceeded to collect all the vases in the room
+and fill them with roses, arranging each cluster with rare artistic
+skill. While she did so, she talked of a thousand things with her usual
+blithe volubility, almost as if compensating herself for the parsimony
+of words and laughter she had exercised up till now, out of regard for
+Andrea's taciturn melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she remarked, 'On the 15th we expect a beautiful guest, Donna
+Maria Ferr&egrave;s y Capdevila, the wife of the Plenipotentiary for Guatemala.
+Do you know her?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I think not,'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I do not suppose you could. She only returned to Italy a few months
+ago, but she will spend next winter in Rome because her husband has been
+appointed to that post. She is a very dear friend of mine&mdash;we knew each
+other as children, and were three years together at the Convent of the
+Annunciation in Florence. She is younger than I am.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is she an American?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, an Italian. She is from Sienna. She comes of the Bandinelli family,
+and was baptized with water from the "Fonte Gaja." For all that, she is
+rather melancholy by nature, but very sweet. The story of her marriage
+is not a very cheerful one. Ferr&egrave;s is a most unsympathetic person.
+However, they have a little girl&mdash;a perfect darling&mdash;you will see; a
+little white face with enormous eyes and masses of dark hair. She is
+very like her mother&mdash;Look, Andrea, is not that rose just like velvet?
+And this&mdash;I could eat it&mdash;look&mdash;it is like glorified cream. How
+delicious!'</p>
+
+<p>She went on picking out the different roses and chatting pleasantly. A
+wave of perfume, intoxicating as century-old wine, streamed from the
+massed flowers; some of the petals dropped and hung in the folds of
+Francesca's gown; beneath the window the dark shaft of a cypress pierced
+the golden sunshine, and through Andrea's memory ran persistently, like
+a phrase of music, a line from Petrarch:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>'Cosi partia le rose e le parole.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Two days afterwards he repaid his cousin by presenting her with a sonnet
+curiously fashioned on an antique model and inscribed on vellum with
+illuminated ornaments in the style of those that enliven the missals of
+Attavante and of Liberale of Verona.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Ferrara, for its d'Estes glorious,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Cossa strove in triumphs to recall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cosimo Tura's triumphs on the wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw never feast more fair and plenteous.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Monna Francesca plucked and bore to us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such store of roses, and so shed on all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That heaven had lacked for such a coronal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little angels it engarlands thus.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She spoke, and shed the roses in such showers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And such a loveliness was seen in her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>This</i> said I, <i>is some Grace the sun discloses.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I trembled at the sweetness of the flowers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A verse of Petrarch mounted in the air:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>She scatters words and scatters with them roses</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIIb" id="CHAPTER_IIIb"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>On the following Wednesday, the 15th of September, the new guest
+arrived.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchesa, accompanied by Andrea and her eldest son, Fernanindo,
+drove over to Rovigliano, the nearest station, to meet her. As they
+drove along the road shadowed by lofty poplars, the Marchesa spoke to
+Andrea of her friend with much affection.</p>
+
+<p>'I think you will like her,' she remarked in conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Then she began to laugh as if at some sudden thought.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you laugh?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'I am making a comparison.'</p>
+
+<p>'What comparison?'</p>
+
+<p>'Guess.'</p>
+
+<p>'I can't.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I was thinking of another introduction I gave you about two years
+ago, which I accompanied by a delightful prophecy&mdash;you remember?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah&mdash;ha&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'And I laughed because this time again there is an unknown lady in
+question and this time too I may play the part of&mdash;an involuntary
+providence.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh&mdash;oh!'</p>
+
+<p>'But this case is very different, or rather the difference lies in the
+heroine of the possible drama.'</p>
+
+<p>'You mean&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'That Maria Ferr&egrave;s is a <i>turris eburnea</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I am now a <i>vas spirituale</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah yes, I had forgotten that you had, at last, found the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> Truth and the
+Way&mdash;"'The glad soul laughs because its loves have fled&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>'What&mdash;you are quoting my verses?'</p>
+
+<p>'I know them by heart.'</p>
+
+<p>'How sweet of you!'</p>
+
+<p>'However, I confess, my dear cousin, that your "fair white woman"
+holding the Host in her pure hands seems to me a trifle suspicious. She
+has, to my mind, too much of the air of a hollow shape, a robe without a
+body inside it, at the mercy of whatever soul, be it angel or demon,
+that chooses to enter it and offer you the communion.</p>
+
+<p>'But this is sacrilege&mdash;rank sacrilege!'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you had better take care! Watch that figure and use plenty of
+exorcisms&mdash;But there, I am prophesying again! Really, it seems a
+weakness of mine.'</p>
+
+<p>'Here we are at the station.'</p>
+
+<p>They both laughed, and all three entered the little station to wait for
+the train, which was due in a few minutes. Fernandino a sickly-looking
+boy of twelve, was carrying a bouquet which he was to present to Donna
+Maria. Andrea, put in excellent spirits by his little conversation with
+his cousin, took a tea-rose from the bouquet and stuck it in his
+button-hole, then cast a rapid glance over his light summer clothes and
+noticed with complaisance that his hands had become whiter and thinner
+since his illness. But he did it all without reflection, simply from an
+instinct of harmless vanity which had suddenly awakened in him.</p>
+
+<p>'Here comes the train,' said Fernandino.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchesa hurried forward to greet her friend, who was already
+leaning out of the carriage window waving her hand and nodding. Her head
+was enveloped in a large gray gauze veil which half covered her large
+black hat.</p>
+
+<p>'Francesca! Francesca!' she cried with a little tremor of joy in her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of that voice made a singular impression on Andrea&mdash;it
+reminded him vaguely of a voice he knew&mdash;but whose?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Donna Maria left the carriage with a rapid and light step, and with a
+pretty grace raised her veil above her mouth to kiss her friend.
+Suddenly Andrea was struck by the profound charm of this slender,
+graceful, veiled woman of whose face he saw only the mouth and chin.</p>
+
+<p>'Maria, let me present my cousin to you&mdash;Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi
+d'Ugenta.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea bowed. The lady's lips parted in a smile that was rendered
+mysterious from the rest of the face being concealed by the veil.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchesa then introduced Andrea to Don Manuel Ferr&egrave;s y Capdevila;
+then, stroking the hair of the little girl who was gazing at the young
+man with a pair of wide-open, astonished eyes, 'This is Delfina,' she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>In the carriage, Andrea sat opposite to Donna Maria and beside her
+husband. She kept her veil down still; Fernandino's bouquet lay in her
+lap and from time to time she raised it to her face to inhale the
+perfume while she answered the Marchesa's questions. Andrea was right;
+there were tones in her voice exactly like Elena's. He was seized with
+impatient curiosity to see her face&mdash;its expression and colouring.</p>
+
+<p>'Manuel,' she was saying, 'has to leave on Friday. He will come back for
+me later on.'</p>
+
+<p>'Much later, let us hope,' said Donna Francesca cordially. 'A month, at
+the very least, eh, Don Manuel? The best plan would be to wait and all
+go on the same day. We are at Schifanoja till the first of November.'</p>
+
+<p>'If my mother were not expecting me, nothing would delight me more than
+to stay with you. But I have promised faithfully to be in Sienna for the
+17th of October&mdash;Delfina's birthday.'</p>
+
+<p>'What a pity! on the 20th there is the Festival of the Donations at
+Rovigliano&mdash;so very beautiful and peculiar.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is to be done? If I do not keep my promise, my mother will be
+dreadfully disappointed. She adores Delfina.'</p>
+
+<p>The husband took no part whatever in the conversation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> he seemed a very
+taciturn man. He was of middle height, inclined to be stout and bald,
+and his skin of a most peculiar hue&mdash;something between green and violet,
+in which the whites of the eyes gleamed as they moved like the enamel
+eyes of certain antique bronze heads. His moustache, which was harsh and
+black and cut evenly like the bristles of a brush, shadowed a coarse and
+sardonic mouth. He appeared to be about forty, or rather more. In his
+whole appearance there was something disagreeably hybrid and morose,
+that indefinable air of viciousness which belongs to the later
+generations of bastard races brought up in the midst of moral disorder.</p>
+
+<p>'Look, Delfina&mdash;orange trees, all in flower!' exclaimed Donna Maria,
+stretching out her hand to pluck a spray as they passed.</p>
+
+<p>Near Schifanoja, the road lay between orange groves, the trees being so
+high that they afforded a pleasant shade, through which the sea-breeze
+sighed and fluttered, so laden with perfume that one might almost have
+quaffed it like a draught of cool water.</p>
+
+<p>Delfina was kneeling on the carriage seat and leaned out to catch at the
+branches. Her mother wound an arm about her to keep her from falling
+out.</p>
+
+<p>'Take care! Take care! You will tumble&mdash;wait a moment till I untie my
+veil. Would you mind helping me, Francesca?'</p>
+
+<p>She bent her head towards her friend to let her unfasten the veil from
+her hat, and in doing so the bouquet of roses fell at her feet. Andrea
+promptly picked them up, and as he rose from his stooping position, he
+at last saw her whole face uncovered.</p>
+
+<p>It was an oval face, perhaps the least trifle too long, but hardly worth
+mentioning&mdash;that aristocratic oval which the most graceful portrait
+painters of the fifteenth century were rather fond of exaggerating. The
+refined features had that subtle expression of suffering and lassitude
+which lends the human charm to the Virgins of the Florentine <i>tondi</i> of
+the time of Cosimo. A soft and tender shadow, the fusion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> two
+diaphanous tints&mdash;violet and blue, lay under her eyes, which had the
+leonine irises of the brown-haired angels. Her hair lay on her forehead
+and temples like a heavy crown, and was gathered into a massive coil on
+her neck. The shorter locks in front were thick and waving as those that
+cover the head of the Farnese Antinous. Nothing could exceed the charm
+of that delicate head, which seemed to droop under its burden as under
+some divine chastisement.</p>
+
+<p>'Dio mio!' she sighed, endeavouring to lighten with her hands the weight
+of tresses gathered up and compressed under her hat. 'My head aches as
+if I had been hanging by the hair for an hour. I cannot keep it fastened
+up for long together, it tires me so. It is a perfect slavery.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember at school,' broke in Francesca, 'how we were all wild
+to comb your hair? It led to furious quarrels every day. Fancy,
+Andrea&mdash;at last it came to bloodshed! Oh, I shall never forget the scene
+between Carlotta Fiordelise and Gabriella Vanni. It got to be sheer
+monomania. To comb Maria Bandinelli's hair was the one ambition in life
+of every school-girl there&mdash;big or little. The epidemic spread through
+the whole school, and resulted in scoldings, punishments, and finally
+threats to have your hair cut off. Do you remember, Maria? Our very
+souls were enthralled by the magnificent black plait that hung like a
+rope to your heels!'</p>
+
+<p>Donna Maria smiled a mournful, dreamy smile. Her lips were slightly
+parted, the upper one projecting the least little bit beyond the under
+one; the corners of her mouth drooped plaintively, the soft curve losing
+itself in shadow which gave her an expression both sad and kind, but
+with a dash of that pride which reveals the moral elevation of those who
+have suffered much and been strong.</p>
+
+<p>To Andrea the story of these girls enamoured of a plait of hair,
+enflamed with passion and jealousy, wild to pass a comb or their fingers
+through the living treasure, seemed a charming and poetic episode of
+convent life, and in his imagination, this woman with the sumptuous hair
+became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> vaguely illumined like the heroine of some Christian legend of
+the childhood of a saint destined for martyrdom and future canonisation.
+At the same time, it struck him what rich and varied lines might be
+afforded to the design of a female figure by the undulating masses of
+that black hair.</p>
+
+<p>Not that it was really black, as Andrea perceived next day at dinner,
+when a ray of sunshine touched the lady's head, bringing out sombre
+violet lights, reflections as of tempered steel or burnished silver.
+Notwithstanding its density too, it was perfectly light, each hair
+seeming to stand apart as if permeated by and breathing the air. Her
+conversation revealed keen intelligence and a delicate mind, much
+refinement of taste and pleasure in the &aelig;sthetic. She possessed abundant
+and varied culture, a vivid imagination, and the rich, descriptive
+language of one who has seen many lands, lived under widely different
+climes, known many people. To Andrea, she seemed to exhale some exotic
+charm, some strange fascination, some spell born of the phantoms of the
+far off things she had looked upon, the scenes she still preserved
+before her mind's eye, the memories that filled her soul; as if she
+still bore about her some traces of the sunshine she had basked in, the
+perfumes she had inhaled, the strange dialects she had heard&mdash;all the
+magic of these countries of the Sun.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, in the great room opening off the hall, she went over to
+the piano, and opening it, she said: 'Do you still play, Francesca?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no,' replied the Marchesa, 'I have not practised for years. I feel
+that listening to others is decidedly preferable. However, I affect to
+be a patroness of Art, and during the winter I gladly preside at the
+execution of a little good music. Is that not so, Andrea?'</p>
+
+<p>'My cousin is too modest, Donna Maria; she does something more than
+merely patronise&mdash;she is a reviver of good taste. Only last February,
+thanks to her, we were made acquainted with a quintett, a quartett, and
+a trio of Boccherini, and besides that with a quartett of
+Cherubini&mdash;music that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> was well-nigh forgotten, but admirable and always
+new. Boccherini's adagios and minuets are deliciously fresh; only the
+finales seem to me a trifle antiquated. I am sure you must know
+something of his.'</p>
+
+<p>'I remember having heard one of his quintetts four of five years ago at
+the Conservatoire in Brussels, and I thought it magnificent&mdash;in the very
+newest style and full of unexpected episodes. I remember perfectly that
+in certain passages the quintett was reduced to a duet by employing the
+unison, but the effects produced by the difference in the tone of the
+instruments was something marvellous! I cannot recall anything the least
+like it in other instrumental compositions.'</p>
+
+<p>She discussed music with all the subtlety of a true connoisseur, and in
+describing the sentiments aroused in her by some particular composition,
+or the entire work of a master, she expressed herself most felicitously.</p>
+
+<p>'I have played and heard a great deal of music,' she said, 'and of every
+symphony, every sonata, every nocturne I have a separate and distinct
+picture, an impression of shape and colour, of a figure, a group, a
+landscape, so that each of my favourite compositions has a name
+corresponding to the picture;&mdash;for instance, the Sonata of the Forty
+Daughters-in-law of Priam; the Nocturne of the Sleeping Beauty in the
+Wood, the Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies, the Gigue of the Mill, the
+Prelude of the Drops of Water, and so on.'</p>
+
+<p>She laughed softly, a laugh which surprised one with its ineffable grace
+on that plaintive mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'You remember, Francesca, the multitude of notes with which we afflicted
+the margins of our favourite pieces at school. One day, after a most
+serious consultation, we changed the title of every piece of Schumann's
+we possessed, and each title had a long explanatory note. I have the
+papers still. Now, when I play the <i>Myrthen</i> or the <i>Albumbl&auml;tter</i>, all
+these mysterious annotations are quite incomprehensible to me; my
+emotions and my point of view have changed completely, but there is a
+delicate pleasure in comparing the sentiments of the present with those
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> past, the new picture and the old. It is a pleasure very similar
+to that of re-reading one's diary, only perhaps rather more mournful and
+intense. A diary is generally the description of real events, a
+chronicle of days happy or otherwise, the gray or rosy traces left by
+time in its flight; the notes written in youth on the margin of a piece
+of music are, on the contrary, fragments of the secret poems of a soul
+that is just breaking into bloom, the lyric effusions of our ideality as
+yet untouched, the story of our dreams. What language? What a flow of
+words! You remember, Francesca?'</p>
+
+<p>She talked with perfect freedom, even with a touch of spiritual
+exaltation, like a person long condemned to intercourse with inferiors,
+who has the irresistible desire to open her mind and heart to a breath
+of the higher life. Andrea listened to her and was conscious of a
+pleasing sense of gratitude towards her. It seemed to him that in
+speaking of these things in his presence, she offered him a kindly proof
+of friendship, and permitted him to draw nearer to her. He thereby
+caught a glimpse of her inner world, less through the actual words she
+uttered than by the modulations of her voice. And again he recognised
+the accents of <i>the other</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was an ambiguous voice, a voice with double chords in it, so to
+speak. The more virile tones, deep and slightly veiled, would soften,
+brighten, become feminine, as it were, by a transition so harmonious
+that the ear of the listener was at once surprised, delighted, and
+perplexed by it. The phenomenon was so singular that it sufficed by
+itself to occupy the mind of the listener independently of the sense of
+the words, so that after a few minutes the mind yielded to the
+mysterious charm and remained suspended between expectation and desire
+to hear the sweet cadence, as if waiting for a melody played upon an
+instrument. It was the feminine note in this voice which recalled <i>the
+other</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'You sing?' asked Andrea half shyly.</p>
+
+<p>'A little,' she replied.</p>
+
+<p>'Then please sing a little,' entreated Donna Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>'Very well, but I can only give you a sort of idea of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> music, for,
+during the last year, I have almost lost my voice.'</p>
+
+<p>In the adjoining room, Don Manuel was silently playing cards with the
+Marchese d'Ateleta. In the drawing-room the light of the lamps shone
+softly red through a great Japanese shade. The sea-breeze, entering
+through the pillars of the hall, shook the high Karamanieh curtains and
+wafted the perfume of the garden on its wings. Beyond the pillars was a
+vista of tall cypresses, massive and black as ebony against a diaphanous
+sky throbbing with stars.</p>
+
+<p>'As we are on the subject of old music,' said Donna Maria seating
+herself at the piano, 'I will give you an air of Paisiello's out of
+<i>Nina Pazza</i>, an exquisite thing.'</p>
+
+<p>She accompanied herself as she sang. In the fervour of the song, the two
+tones of her voice blended into one another like two precious metals
+combining to make a single one&mdash;sonorous, warm, caressing, vibrating.
+Paisiello's melody&mdash;simple, pure and spontaneous, full of delicious
+languor and winged sadness, with a delicately light
+accompaniment&mdash;issued from that plaintive mouth and rose with such a
+flame of passion that the convalescent was moved to the depths of his
+being, and felt the notes drop one by one through his veins, as if all
+the blood in his body had stopped in its course to listen. A cold shiver
+stirred the roots of his hair, shadows, thick and rapid, passed before
+his eyes, he held his breath with excitement. In the weak state of his
+nerves his sensations were so poignant that it was all he could do to
+keep back his tears.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, dearest Maria!' exclaimed Donna Francesca, kissing her fondly on
+the hair when she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea could not utter a word; he remained seated where he was, with his
+back to the light and his face in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>'Please go on,' said Francesca.</p>
+
+<p>She sang an Arietta by Antonio Salieri, then she played a Toccata by
+Leonardo Leo, a Gavotte by Rameau, a Gigue by Sebastian Bach. Under her
+magic fingers the music of the eighteenth century lived again&mdash;so
+melancholy in its dance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> airs, that sound as if they were intended to be
+danced to in a languid afternoon of a Saint Martin's summer, in a
+deserted park, amid silent fountains and statueless pedestals, on a
+carpet of dead roses by pairs of lovers on the point of ceasing to love
+one another.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IVb" id="CHAPTER_IVb"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>'Let down a rope of your hair to me that I may climb up,' Andrea called
+laughingly from the terrace below to Donna Maria, where she stood
+between two pillars of the loggia opening out of her rooms.</p>
+
+<p>It was morning, and she had come out into the sun to dry her wet hair,
+which hung round her like a heavy mantle, and accentuated the soft
+pallor of her face. The black border of the vivid orange-coloured awning
+hung above her head like a frieze, such as one sees round the antique
+Greek vases of the Campagna. Had she had a garland of narcissus on her
+brows and at her side a great nine-stringed lyre with bas-reliefs of
+Apollo and a greyhound, she might have been taken for a pupil of the
+school of Mytilene, or a Lesbian musician in repose as imagined by a
+Pre-Raphaelite.</p>
+
+<p>'You send me up a madrigal,' she answered in the same playful tone, but
+drawing back a little from view.</p>
+
+<p>'Very well, I will go and write one in your honour on the marble
+balustrade of the lowest terrace. Come down and read it when you are
+ready.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea proceeded slowly to descend the steps leading to the lower level.
+In that September morning his soul seemed to dilate with every breath he
+drew. A certain sanctity seemed to pervade the air; the sea shone with a
+splendour of its own, as if the sources of magic rays lay in its depths;
+the whole landscape was steeped in sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>He stood still from time to time. The thought that Donna Maria was
+perhaps watching him from the loggia disturbed him curiously, made his
+heart beat fast and flutter timidly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> as if he were a boy in love for
+the first time. It was unspeakable bliss merely to breathe the same warm
+and limpid air that she did. An immense wave of tenderness flooded his
+heart and communicated itself to the trees, the rocks, the sea, as if to
+beings who were his friends and confidants. He was filled with a desire
+to worship humbly and purely; to bend his knee and clasp his hands and
+offer up to some one this vague mute adoration which he would have been
+at a loss to explain. He felt as if the goodness of all created things
+was being poured out upon him and mingling with all he possessed of
+goodness into one jubilant stream.</p>
+
+<p>'Can it be that I love her?' he asked himself. But he dared not look
+closely into his soul, lest the delicate enchantment should disperse and
+vanish like a dream at break of day.</p>
+
+<p>'Do I love her? And what does she think? And if she comes alone, shall I
+tell her that I love her?' He took pleasure in thus asking himself
+questions which he did not answer, intercepting the reply of his heart
+by another question, prolonging his uncertainty&mdash;at once so tormenting
+and so sweet. 'No, no&mdash;I shall not tell her that I love her. She is far
+above all the others.'</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the lowest terrace, he turned round and looked up, and there
+in the loggia, in the full blaze of the sun, he could just make out the
+indistinct outline of a woman's form. Had she followed him with her eyes
+and her thoughts down the long flights of steps? A childish impulse made
+him suddenly pronounce her name aloud on the deserted terrace. 'Maria!
+Maria!' he repeated, listening to his own voice. No word, no name had
+ever seemed to him so sweet, so melodious so caressing. How happy he
+would be if she would only allow him to call her Maria, like a sister.</p>
+
+<p>This woman&mdash;so spiritual, so soulful&mdash;inspired him with the highest
+sentiment of devotion and humility. If he had been asked what he
+considered the sweetest possible task, he would have answered in all
+sincerity&mdash;'To obey her.' Nothing in the world would have mortified him
+so much as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> to be accounted by her a commonplace man. By no other woman
+had he so ardently desired to be praised, admired, understood,
+appreciated in his tastes, his cultivation, his artistic aspirations,
+his ideals, his dreams, all the noblest parts of his spirit and his
+life. And his highest ambition was to fill her heart.</p>
+
+<p>She had now been ten days at Schifanoja, and in those ten days how
+entirely she had subjugated him! They had conversed sometimes for hours
+seated on the terrace or on one of the numerous marble benches scattered
+about the grounds or in the long rose-bordered avenues, while Delfina
+sped like a little gazelle through the winding paths of the orange
+groves. In her conversation she displayed a charming flow of language,
+many gems of delicate yet keen observation, occasionally affording
+glimpses of her inner self with a candour that was full of grace; and
+when speaking of her travels, she would often, by a single picturesque
+phrase, call up before Andrea's eyes wide vistas of distant lands and
+seas. On his part, he did his utmost to show himself to the best
+advantage, to impress upon her the wide range of his culture, the
+refinement of his taste, the exquisite keenness of his susceptibilities,
+and his heart swelled with pride when she said in tones of unfeigned
+sincerity after reading his <i>Story of the Hermaphrodite</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'No music has ever carried me away like this poem, nor has any statue
+ever given me such an impression of harmonious beauty. Certain lines
+haunt me persistently, and will continue to do so for long, I am
+sure&mdash;they are so intense.'</p>
+
+<p>As he sat now on the marble balustrade, he was thinking of these words
+of hers. Donna Maria was no longer in the loggia, the awning concealed
+the whole space between the pillars. Perhaps she would soon be
+down&mdash;should he write the madrigal he had promised her? But even the
+slight effort necessary for writing the lines thus in hot haste seemed
+intolerable to him here in the wide and opulent garden, blossoming under
+the September sunshine in a sort of magical Spring. Why disturb these
+rare and delicious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> emotions by a hurried search after rhymes? why
+reduce this far reaching sentiment to a brief metrical sigh?</p>
+
+<p>He resolved to break his promise and remained as he was, idly watching
+the sails on the distant horizon, like fiery torches outshining the sun.</p>
+
+<p>But as time went on, he grew restless and nervous, turning round every
+minute to see if a feminine form had not appeared between the columns of
+the vestibule which gave access to the steps&mdash;'Was this then a love
+tryst? Did he expect her to join him here for some secret interview? Had
+she any idea of his agitation?'</p>
+
+<p>His heart gave a great throb&mdash;it was she!</p>
+
+<p>She was alone. Slowly she descended the steps, and when she reached the
+first terrace she stopped beside the fountain. Andrea followed her
+intently with his eyes; her every movement, every attitude sent a
+delicious thrill through him, as if each one of them had some special
+significance, were a form of individual expression. Thus she passed down
+the succession of steps and terraces, appearing and disappearing, now
+completely hidden by the rose-bushes, now only her head or her rounded
+bust visible above them. Sometimes the thickly interlaced boughs hid her
+for several minutes, then, where the bushes were thinner, the colour of
+her dress would show through them and the pale straw of her hat would
+catch the sunlight. The nearer she came the more slowly she walked,
+loitering among the verdant shrubs, stopping to gaze at the cypresses,
+stooping to gather a handful of fallen leaves. From the last terrace but
+one, she waved her hand to Andrea standing waiting for her at the foot
+of the steps, and threw down to him the leaves she had gathered, which
+first rose fluttering in the air like a cloud of butterflies and then
+floated down&mdash;now fast, now slow,&mdash;noiseless as snowflakes on the
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>'Well?' she asked, leaning over the balustrade, 'what have you got for
+me?'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea bent his knee to the step and lifted his clasped hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing!' he was obliged to confess. 'I implore you to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> forgive me;
+but, this morning, you and the sun together filled the whole world for
+me with sweetness and light. <i>Adoremus!</i></p>
+
+<p>The confession was perfectly sincere, as was the adoration also, though
+both were uttered in a tone of banter. Donna Maria evidently felt the
+sincerity, for she coloured slightly as she said with peculiar
+earnestness&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;don't&mdash;please don't kneel.'</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and she offered him her hand, adding, 'I will forgive you this
+time because you are an invalid.'</p>
+
+<p>She wore a dress of a curious indefinable dull rusty red, one of those
+so-called &aelig;sthetic colours one meets with in the pictures of the Early
+Masters or of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was arranged in a multitude of
+straight regular folds beginning immediately under the arms, and was
+confined at the waist by a wide blue-green ribbon, of the pale tinge of
+a faded turquoise, that fell in a great knot at her side. The sleeves
+were very full and soft, and were gathered in closely at the wrist.
+Another ribbon of the same shade, but much narrower, encircled her neck
+and was tied at the left side in a small bow, and a similar ribbon
+fastened the end of the prodigious plait which fell from under her straw
+hat, round which was twined a wreath of hyacinths like that of Alma
+Tadema's Pandora. A great Persian turquoise, her sole ornament, shaped
+like a scarabeus and engraved with talismanic characters, fastened her
+dress at the throat.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us wait for Delfina,' she said, 'and then, what do you say to our
+going as far as the gate of the Cybele? Would that suit you?'</p>
+
+<p>She was full of delicate consideration for the convalescent Andrea was
+still very pale and thin, which made his eyes look extraordinarily
+large, the somewhat sensual expression of his mouth forming a singular
+and not unattractive contrast to the upper part of his face.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he replied, 'and I am deeply grateful to you.' Then, after a
+moment's hesitation&mdash;'Do you mind if I am rather silent this morning?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Why do you ask me that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because I feel as if I had lost my tongue and could find nothing to
+say; and yet silence becomes burdensome and annoying if it is prolonged.
+That is why I ask if, during our walk, you will allow me to be silent
+and only listen to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, then, we will be silent together,' she said with a little smile.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up towards the villa with evident impatience&mdash;'What a long
+time Delfina is!'</p>
+
+<p>'Was Francesca up when you came out?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no, she is incredibly lazy&mdash;ah, there is Delfina, do you see her?'</p>
+
+<p>The little girl came hurrying down, followed by her governess. Though
+not visible on the flight of steps, she appeared upon the terraces which
+she traversed at a run, her hair floating over her shoulders in the
+breeze from under a broad-brimmed straw hat wreathed with poppies. On
+the last step she opened her arms wide to her mother and covered her
+face with kisses. After this she said&mdash;'Good morning, Andrea,' and
+presented her forehead to his kiss with childlike and adorable grace.</p>
+
+<p>She was a fragile creature, highly strung and vibrating as an instrument
+fashioned of sentient material, her flesh so delicately transparent as
+to seem incapable of concealing or even veiling the radiance of the
+spirit that dwelt within it like a flame in a precious lamp.</p>
+
+<p>'Heart's dearest!' murmured her mother, gazing at her with a look in
+which was concentrated all the tenderness of a soul wholly occupied by
+this one absorbing affection. But at those words, that look, that
+caress, Andrea felt a sudden stab of jealousy, something like a rebuff,
+as if her heart were turning away from him, eluding him, becoming
+inaccessible.</p>
+
+<p>The governess asked permission to return to the villa, and the three
+turned into a path bordered by orange-trees. Delfina ran on in front
+with her hoop, her straight slender little legs in their long black
+stockings, moving with rhythmic grace.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'You seem a little out of spirits now,' said Donna Maria to her
+companion, 'and only a little while ago, when you came down, you seemed
+so bright. Is something troubling you?&mdash;do you not feel so well?'</p>
+
+<p>She put these questions in an almost sisterly manner soberly and kindly,
+inviting his confidence. A timid desire, a vague temptation assailed the
+invalid to slip his arm through hers, and let her lead him in silence
+through the flickering shadows and the perfumes, over the flower-strewn
+ground, down the pathways measured off at intervals by ancient
+moss-grown statues. He seemed, all at once, to have returned to the
+first days of his illness, those never-to-be-forgotten days of happy
+languor and semi-unconsciousness, and felt as if he had great need of a
+friendly support, an affectionate, a familiar arm. The desire grew so
+intense that the words which would give it voice rushed to his lips.
+However he merely replied&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'No, Donna Maria, thank you, I feel quite well. It is only that the
+September weather rather affects me.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him as if she rather doubted the sincerity of his reply;
+but, to avoid an awkward silence after his evasive remark, she asked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Which of the neutral months do you like best&mdash;April or September?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, September. It is more feminine, more discreet, more
+mysterious&mdash;like a Spring seen in a dream. Then all the plants slowly
+lose their vital forces, and, at the same time, some of their reality.
+Look at the sea over there&mdash;has it not more the appearance of an
+atmosphere than of a solid mass of water? And never, to my mind, does
+the union of sea and sky seem so mystical, so profound as in September.'</p>
+
+<p>They had very nearly reached the end of the path. Why should Andrea be
+suddenly seized with a tremor of nervous fear on approaching the spot
+where, a fortnight ago, he had written the sonnets on his deliverance?
+Why this struggle between hope and anxiety lest she should discover them
+and read them? Why did some of the lines keep running in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> mind to
+the exclusion of others, as if they expressed his actual sentiments at
+that moment, his aspirations, the new dream he carried in his heart?</p>
+
+<p>'I lay at thine untroubled feet my fate!'</p>
+
+<p>It was true! It was true! He loved her, he laid his whole life at her
+feet&mdash;was conscious of but one desire&mdash;humble and absorbing&mdash;to be the
+earth between her footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>'How beautiful it is here!' exclaimed Donna Maria, as she entered the
+demesne of the four-fronted Hermes, into the paradise of the acanthus.
+'But what a strange scent!'</p>
+
+<p>The whole air was full of the odour of musk, as from the unseen presence
+of some musk-breathing insect or animal. The shadows were deep and
+mysterious, the rays of light which pierced the foliage, already touched
+by the finger of autumn, seemed like shafts of moonlight shining through
+the storied windows of a cathedral. A mixed sentiment, partly Pagan,
+partly Christian, seemed to emanate from this sylvan retreat, as from a
+mythological picture painted by an early Christian artist.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh look, look, Delfina!' her mother exclaimed in the excited tones of
+one who suddenly comes upon a thing of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Delfina had skilfully woven little sprays of orange blossom into a
+garland, and now, with the fancifulness of childhood, she was eager that
+it should encircle the head of the marble deity. She could not reach it,
+but did her best to accomplish her object by standing on tip-toe and
+stretching her arm to its utmost extent; her slender, elegant and
+vivacious little figure offering a striking contrast to the rigid,
+square and solemn form of the statue, like a lily-stem against an oak.
+All her efforts were, however, fruitless.</p>
+
+<p>Smilingly, her mother came to her aid. Taking the wreath from the
+child's hand, she placed it on the pensive brows of the god. As she did
+so, her eyes fell involuntarily upon the inscriptions.</p>
+
+<p>'Who has been writing verses here.&mdash;You?' she asked,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> turning to Andrea
+in surprise and pleasure. 'Yes&mdash;I recognise your hand.'</p>
+
+<p>Forthwith, she knelt upon the grass to read with eager curiosity. While
+Donna Maria read the words in a low voice, Delfina leaned upon her
+mother's shoulder, one arm about her neck, cheek pressed to cheek. The
+two figures thus bending over the pedestal of the tall flower-wreathed
+statue, in the uncertain light, surrounded by the emblematical acanthus,
+formed a group so harmonious in line and colouring that the poet stood a
+moment lost in pure &aelig;sthetic pleasure and admiration.</p>
+
+<p>But the next moment the old obscure sense of jealousy was upon him once
+more. The fragile little creature clinging to the mother, indissolubly
+connected with her mother's very being, seemed to him an enemy, an
+insurmountable obstacle rising up against his love, his desires, his
+hopes. He was not jealous of the husband, but he was of the daughter. It
+was not the body but the soul of this woman that he longed to possess,
+and to possess it wholly, undivided, with all its tenderness, all its
+joys, its hopes, its fears, its pain, its dreams&mdash;in short the sum total
+of her spiritual being, and be able to say&mdash;'I am the life of her life.'</p>
+
+<p>But instead, it was the daughter who possessed all this incontestably,
+absolutely, continuously. When her idol left her side, even for a short
+time, the mother seemed to miss some essential element of her existence.
+Her face was instantaneously and visibly transfigured when, after a
+brief absence, that childish voice fell upon her ear once more. At
+times, unconsciously and as if by some occult correspondence, some law
+of common vital accordance, she would repeat a gesture of the child's, a
+smile, an attitude, a pose of the head. Again, when the child was in
+repose or asleep, she had moments of contemplation so intense that she
+seemed to have lost all sense of her surroundings and to have absorbed
+herself into the creature she was contemplating. When she spoke to her
+darling, every word was a caress, and the plaintive lines vanished from
+her mouth. Under the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> child's kisses, her lips quivered and her eyes
+filled with ineffable happiness like the eyes of an ecstatic at a
+beatific vision. If she happened to be conversing with other people or
+listening to their talk, she would appear to have sudden lapses of
+attention, momentary absence of mind, and this was for her daughter&mdash;for
+her&mdash;always for her.</p>
+
+<p>Who could ever break that chain? Could any one ever succeed in
+conquering a part&mdash;even the very smallest atom of that heart? Andrea
+suffered as under an irreparable loss, some forced renunciation, some
+shattered hope. At this moment, this very moment, was not the child
+stealing something from him?</p>
+
+<p>For Delfina was playfully constraining her mother to remain upon her
+knees. She hung with all her weight round Donna Maria's neck, crying
+through her laughter&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;no&mdash;no&mdash;you shall not get up!'</p>
+
+<p>And whenever her mother opened her mouth to speak, she clapped her
+little hands over it to prevent her, made her laugh, bandaged her eyes
+with the long plait&mdash;played a hundred pranks.</p>
+
+<p>Watching her, Andrea felt, that by all this playful commotion, she was
+dispelling from her mother all that his verses had possibly instilled
+into her mind.</p>
+
+<p>When, at last, Donna Maria succeeded in freeing herself from her darling
+tyrant, she saw his annoyance in his face, and hastened to say&mdash;'Forgive
+me, Andrea, Delfina is sometimes taken with these fits of wildness.'</p>
+
+<p>With a deft hand she re-arranged the disordered folds of her dress.
+There was a faint flush under her eyes and her breath came quickly.</p>
+
+<p>'And forgive her too,' she continued with a smile to which the unwonted
+animation of colour lent a singular light, 'out of consideration for her
+unconscious homage, for it was she who had the happy inspiration to
+place a nuptial wreath over your verses which sing of nuptial communion.
+That sets a seal upon the alliance.'</p>
+
+<p>'My thanks both to you and to Delfina,' answered Andrea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> It was the
+first time she had called him by his Christian name, and the unexpected
+familiarity, combined with her gentle words, restored his confidence.
+Delfina had run off down one of the paths.</p>
+
+<p>'These verses are a spiritual record, are they not?' Donna Maria
+resumed. 'Will you give them to me that I may not forget them?'</p>
+
+<p>His natural impulse was to answer&mdash;'They are yours by right to-day, for
+they speak of you and to you&mdash;&mdash;' But he only said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'You shall have them.'</p>
+
+<p>They continued their way towards the Cybele, but as they were leaving
+the little enclosure, Donna Maria suddenly turned round towards the
+Hermes as if some one had called her; her brow seemed heavy with
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you thinking about?' Andrea asked her almost timidly.</p>
+
+<p>'I was thinking about you,' she replied.</p>
+
+<p>'What were you thinking about me?'</p>
+
+<p>'I was thinking of your past life, of which I know nothing whatever. You
+have suffered greatly?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have greatly sinned.'</p>
+
+<p>'And loved much?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not know. Perhaps it was not love that I felt. Perhaps I have yet
+to learn what love is&mdash;really I cannot say.'</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer. They walked on in silence for a little way. To their
+right, the path was bordered by high laurels, alternating at regular
+intervals with cypress trees, and in the background, through the
+fluttering leaves, the sea rippled and laughed, blue as the flower of
+the flax. On their left ran a kind of parapet like the back of a long
+stone bench, ornamented throughout its whole length with the Ateleta
+shield and arms and a griffin alternately, under each of which again was
+a sculptured mask through whose mouth a slender stream of water fell
+into a basin below, shaped like a sarcophagus and ornamented with
+mythological subjects in low relief. There must have been a hundred of
+these mouths, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> walk was called the avenue of the Hundred
+Fountains, but many of them were stopped up by time and had ceased to
+spout, while others did very little. Many of the shields were broken and
+moss had obliterated the coats of arms; many of the griffins were
+headless and the figures on the sarcophagi appeared through a veil of
+moss like fragments of silver work through an old and ragged velvet
+cover. On the water in the basins&mdash;more green and limpid than
+emerald&mdash;maiden-hair waved and quivered, or rose leaves, fallen from the
+bushes overhead, floated slowly while the surviving waterpipes sent
+forth a sweet and gurgling music that played over the murmur of the sea
+like the accompaniment to a melody.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you hear that?' said Donna Maria, standing still to listen,
+attracted by the charm of the sound. 'That is the music of salt and of
+sweet waters!'</p>
+
+<p>She stood in the middle of the path, finger on lip, leaning a little
+towards the fountains, in the attitude of one who listens and fears to
+be disturbed. Andrea, who was next the parapet, turned and saw her thus
+against a background of delicate and feathery verdure such as an Umbrian
+painter would have given to an Annunciation or a Nativity.</p>
+
+<p>'Maria!' he murmured, his heart filling with fond adoration,
+'Maria!&mdash;Maria&mdash;!'</p>
+
+<p>It afforded him untold pleasure to mingle the soft accents of her name
+with the music of the waters. She did not look at him, but she laid her
+finger on her lips as a sign to him to be silent.</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive me,' he said, unable to control his emotion&mdash;'but I cannot help
+myself&mdash;it is my soul that calls to you.'</p>
+
+<p>A strange nervous exaltation had taken possession of him, all the
+hill-tops of his soul had caught the lyric glow and flamed up
+irresistibly; the hour, the place, the sunshine, everything about them
+suggested love&mdash;from the extreme limits of the sea to the humble little
+ferns of the fountains&mdash;all seemed to him part of the same magic circle
+whose central point was this woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'You can never know,' he went on in a subdued voice as if fearful of
+offending her&mdash;'You can never know how absolutely my soul is yours.'</p>
+
+<p>She grew suddenly very pale, as if all the blood in her veins had rushed
+to her heart. She did not speak, she did not look at him.</p>
+
+<p>'Delfina!' she cried, with a tremor of agitation in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer; the little girl had wandered off among the trees at
+the end of the long avenue.</p>
+
+<p>'Delfina,' she repeated, louder than before, in a sort of terror.</p>
+
+<p>In the pause that followed her cry the songs of the two waters seemed to
+make the silence deeper.</p>
+
+<p>'Delfina!'</p>
+
+<p>There was a rustling in the leaves as if from the passage of a little
+kid, and the child came bounding through the laurel thicket, carrying in
+her hands her straw hat heaped to the brim with little red berries she
+had gathered. Her exertions and the running had brought a deep flush to
+her cheeks, broken twigs were sticking in her frock, and some leaves
+hung trembling in the meshes of her ruffled hair.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh mamma, come quick&mdash;do come with me!'</p>
+
+<p>She began dragging her mother away&mdash;'There is a perfect forest over
+there&mdash;heaps and heaps of berries! Come with me, mamma, do come&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'No, darling, I would rather not&mdash;it is getting late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, do come!'</p>
+
+<p>'But it is late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come! Come!'</p>
+
+<p>Donna Maria was obliged to give in and let herself be dragged along by
+the hand.</p>
+
+<p>'There is a way of reaching the arbutus wood without going through the
+thicket,' said Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you hear, Delfina? There is a better way.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, mamma, I want you to come with me.'</p>
+
+<p>Delfina pulled her mother along towards the sea through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> the laurel
+thicket, and Andrea followed, content to be able to gaze without
+restraint at the beloved figure in front of him, to devour her with his
+eyes, to study her every movement and her rhythmic walk, interrupted
+every moment by the irregularities of the path, the obstacles presented
+by the trees and their interlaced branches. But while his eyes feasted
+on these things, his mind was chiefly occupied in recalling the one
+attitude, the one look&mdash;oh, that pallor, that sudden pallor just now
+when he had proffered those few low words! And the indefinable tone of
+her voice when she called Delfina.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it far now?' asked Donna Maria.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, mamma, we are just there&mdash;here it is!'</p>
+
+<p>As they neared the spot a sort of shyness came over Andrea. Since those
+words of his he had not met Maria's eye. What did she think? What were
+her feelings? What would her eyes say when, at last, she looked at him?</p>
+
+<p>'Here it is!' cried the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>The laurels had grown thinner, affording a freer view of the sea, and
+the next moment the mass of arbutus flushed rosy-red before them like a
+forest of coral with large tassels of blossom at the end of their
+branches.</p>
+
+<p>'What a glory!' murmured Maria.</p>
+
+<p>The marvellous wilderness bloomed and bore fruit in a deep and sunny
+space curved like an amphitheatre, in which all the delicious sweetness
+of that aromatic shore seemed gathered up and concentrated. The stems,
+tall and slender, crimson for the most part, but here and there yellow,
+bore great shining green leaves, all motionless in the calm air.
+Innumerable tassels of blossom, like sprays of lily-of-the-valley, white
+and dewy, hung from the young boughs, while the maturer ones were loaded
+with red or orange-yellow fruit. And all this wondrous pomp of blossom
+and fruit, of green leaves and rosy stems displayed against the
+brilliant blue of the sea, like a garden in a fairy tale, intense and
+fantastic as a dream.</p>
+
+<p>'What a marvel!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Donna Maria advanced slowly, no longer led by Delfina, who, wild with
+delight, rushed about with no thought but for stripping the whole wood.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea plucked up his courage.</p>
+
+<p>'Can you forgive me?' he asked anxiously. 'I did not mean to offend you.
+Indeed, seeing you so far above me, so pure, so unapproachable, I
+thought that never in this world could I reveal my secret to you, never
+ask anything of you, never put myself in your way. Since ever I saw you,
+I have thought of you night and day, but without hope, without any
+definite end in view. I know that you do not love me, that you never can
+love me. And yet, believe me, I would renounce every promise that life
+may have in store for me, just for the hope of living in a little corner
+of your heart&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She continued to advance slowly under the sun-flecked trees, while the
+delicate tassels of pink and white blossom swayed gently above her head.</p>
+
+<p>'Believe me, Maria&mdash;only believe me! If I were bidden at this moment to
+give up every desire and every ambition, the dearest memories of the
+past and the most flattering promises of the future, and to live solely
+in the thought of and for you&mdash;without a to-morrow, without a yesterday,
+without other ties or attachments, far from the world, lost to
+everything but you, till death&mdash;to all eternity&mdash;I would not hesitate
+for one instant. You have looked at me and talked to me, have smiled and
+answered; you have sat at my side pensive and silent; side by side with
+me you have lived your own inner life, that inscrutable and inaccessible
+existence of which I know nothing&mdash;can never know anything&mdash;- and your
+soul has taken full and absolute possession of mine to its deepest
+depths, but without ever a thought, without being aware of it, as the
+ocean swallows up a river.&mdash;What is my love to you? What is any one's
+love to you? The word has too often been profaned, and the sentiment too
+often a make-believe.&mdash;I do not offer you love. But surely you will not
+refuse the humble tribute of devotion that my spirit offers up to a
+being nobler and higher than itself.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She walked on at the same slow pace, her head bent, her face bloodless,
+towards a seat at the further end of the wood and facing the sea.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wide semicircle of white marble with a back running round the
+entire length and, for sole ornamentation, a lion's paw at each end as a
+support. It recalled those antique seats on which, in some island of the
+Archipelago or in Greece or Pompeii, ladies reclined and listened to a
+reading from the poets, under the shade of the oleanders, within sight
+of the sea. Here the arbutus cast the shadow of its blossom and its
+fruit, and in contrast to the marble, the coral of the stems seemed more
+vivid than elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>'I care for everything that interests you; you possess all those things
+after which I am seeking. Pity from you would be more precious to me
+than passionate love from any other woman. Your hand upon my heart&mdash;I
+know&mdash;would cause a second youth to spring up in me far purer than the
+first and stronger. The ceaseless vacillation which makes up the sum of
+my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and
+restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and
+repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven
+of refuge against the doubts which contaminate every ideal, and weaken
+the will. There are men more unfortunate, but I doubt if in the whole
+wide world there was ever one less happy than I.'</p>
+
+<p>He was making use of Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of
+sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his
+melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own
+voice&mdash;with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it&mdash;served to augment
+his emotions.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not venture to tell you all my thoughts. At your side, during the
+few days since I first met you, I have had moments of oblivion so
+complete as almost to make me feel that I was back in the first days of
+my convalescence, when the sense of another world was still present with
+me. The past, the future were obliterated&mdash;as if the former had never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+been, and the latter never would be. The whole world was without form
+and void. Then, something like a dream, dim but stupendous, rose upon my
+soul&mdash;a fluttering veil, now impenetrable, now transparent, and yielding
+intermittent glimpses of a splendid but unattainable treasure. What did
+you know or care about me in such moments? Doubtless your spirit was far
+away from me. And yet, your mere bodily presence was sufficient to
+intoxicate me&mdash;I felt it flowing through my veins like blood, taking
+hold upon my soul with superhuman force&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She sat silent and motionless, gazing straight before her, her figure
+erect, her hands rigidly clasped in her lap, in the attitude of one who
+makes a supreme effort to brace himself against his own weakness. Only
+her mouth&mdash;the expression of the lips she vainly strove to keep
+firm&mdash;betrayed a sort of anguished rapture.</p>
+
+<p>'I dare not tell you all I feel.&mdash;Maria, Maria, can you forgive me?&mdash;say
+that you forgive me.'</p>
+
+<p>Two little hands came suddenly from behind the seat and clasped
+themselves over the mother's eyes, and a voice panting with fun and
+mischief cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Guess who it is&mdash;guess who it is!'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, and allowed herself to be drawn backwards by Delfina's
+clinging fingers, and instantly, with preternatural clearness, Andrea
+saw that smile wipe away all the obscure, delicious pain from her lips,
+efface every sign that might be construed into an avowal, put to flight
+the least lingering shadow of uncertainty that he might possibly have
+converted into a gleam of hope. He sat there like a man who has expected
+to drink from an overflowing cup and suddenly finds it has nothing but
+the empty air to offer to his thirsty lips.</p>
+
+<p>'Guess!'</p>
+
+<p>The little girl covered her mother's head with loud, quick kisses, in a
+kind of frenzy, even hurting her a little.</p>
+
+<p>'I know who it is&mdash;I know who it is,' cried Donna Maria&mdash;'Let me go!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'What will you give me if I do?'</p>
+
+<p>'Anything you like.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I want a pony to carry back my berries to the house. Come and see
+what a heap I have collected.'</p>
+
+<p>She ran round the seat and pulled her mother by the hand. Donna Maria
+rose rather wearily, and as she stood up she closed her eyes for a
+moment as if overcome by sudden giddiness. Andrea rose too, and both
+followed in Delfina's wake.</p>
+
+<p>The mischievous child had stripped half the wood of fruit. The lower
+branches had not a single berry left. With the aid of a stick, picked up
+goodness knows where, she had reaped a prodigious harvest and then piled
+up the fruit into one great heap, so intense in colouring against the
+dark soil, that it looked like a heap of glowing embers. The flowers had
+apparently not attracted her; there they hung, white and pink and yellow
+and translucent, more delicate than the flowering locks of the acacia,
+more graceful than the lily-of-the-valley, all bathed in dim golden
+light.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh Delfina! Delfina!' exclaimed Donna Maria, looking round upon the
+devastation, 'what have you done!'</p>
+
+<p>The child laughed and clapped her hands with glee in front of the
+crimson pyramid.</p>
+
+<p>'You will have to leave it all here.'</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;no&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>At first she refused, but she thought for a moment, and then said, half
+to herself with beaming eyes: 'The doe will come and eat them.'</p>
+
+<p>She had probably noticed the beautiful creature moving about in the
+park, and the thought of having collected so much food for it pleased
+her and fired her imagination, already full of stories in which deer are
+beneficent and powerful fairies who repose on silken cushions and drink
+from jewelled cups. She remained silent and absorbed, picturing to
+herself the beautiful tawny animal browsing on the fruit under the
+flowering trees.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come,' said Donna Maria, 'it is getting late.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Holding Delfina by the hand, she walked on till they came to the edge of
+the wood. Here she stopped to look at the sea, which, catching the
+reflection of the clouds, was like a vast undulating, glittering sheet
+of silk.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word, Andrea plucked a spray of blossom, so full that the twig
+it hung from bent beneath its weight, and offered it to Donna Maria. As
+she took it from his hand she looked at him, but she did not open her
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>They passed on down the avenue, Delfina talking, talking incessantly;
+repeating the same things over and over again, infatuated about the doe,
+inventing long monotonous tales in which she ran one fairy story into
+another, losing herself in labyrinths of her own creation, as if the
+sparkling freshness of the morning air had gone to her head. And round
+about the doe she grouped the children of the king, Cinderellas, fairy
+queens, magicians, monsters&mdash;all the familiar personages of those
+imaginary realms, crowding them in tumultuously with the kaleidoscopic
+rapidity of a dream. Her prattle sounded like the warbling of a bird;
+full of sweet modulations, with now and then a rapid succession of
+melodious notes that were not words,&mdash;a continuation of the wave of
+music already set in motion, like the vibrations of a string during a
+pause&mdash;when in the childish mind, the connection between the idea and
+its verbal expression met with a momentary interruption.</p>
+
+<p>The other two neither spoke nor listened. To them the little girl's
+bird-like twittering covered the murmur of their own thoughts, and if
+Delfina stopped for a moment's breathing space, they felt as strangely
+perturbed and apprehensive as if the silence might disclose or lay bare
+their souls.</p>
+
+<p>The avenue of the Hundred Fountains stretched away before them in
+diminishing perspective; a peacock, perched upon one of the shields,
+took flight at their approach, scattering the rose leaves into a
+fountain below. A few steps further on, Andrea recognised the one beside
+which Donna Maria had stood, and listened to the music of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>In the retreat of the Hermes the smell of musk had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> evaporated. The
+statue, all pensive under its garland, was flecked with patches of
+sunshine which filtered through the surrounding foliage. Blackbirds
+piped and answered one another.</p>
+
+<p>Taken with a sudden fancy, Delfina exclaimed, 'Mamma, I want the wreath
+again.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, leave it there&mdash;why should you take it away?'</p>
+
+<p>'I want it for Muriella.'</p>
+
+<p>'But Muriella will spoil it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do, please, give it me.'</p>
+
+<p>Donna Maria looked at Andrea. He slowly went up to the statue, lifted
+the wreath and handed it to Delfina. In the exaltation of their spirits,
+this simple little episode had all the mysterious significance of an
+allegory&mdash;was in some way symbolical. One of his own lines ran
+persistently in Andrea's head&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">'Have I attained, have I then paid the price?'</p>
+
+<p>The nearer they approached the end of the pathway, the fiercer grew the
+pain at his heart; he would have given half his life for a word from the
+woman he loved. A dozen times she seemed on the point of speaking, but
+she did not.</p>
+
+<p>'Look, mamma, there are Fernandino and Muriella and Ricardo,' cried
+Delfina, catching sight of Francesca's children; and she started off
+running towards them and waving her wreath.</p>
+
+<p>'Muriella! Muriella! Muriella!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Vb" id="CHAPTER_Vb"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Maria Ferr&egrave;s had always remained faithful to her girlhood's habit of
+setting down daily in her journal the passing thoughts, the joys, the
+sorrows, the fancies, the doubts, the aspirations, the regrets and the
+hopes&mdash;all the events of her spiritual life as well as the various
+incidents of her outward existence, compiling thereby a sort of
+Itinerary of the Soul which she liked occasionally to study, both for
+guidance on the path still to be pursued and also to follow the traces
+of things long dead and forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Perpetually denied, by force of circumstances, the relief of
+self-expansion, enclosed within the magic circle of her purity as in a
+tower of ivory for ever incorruptible and inaccessible, she found solace
+and refreshment in the daily outpourings she confided to the white pages
+of her private book. Therein she was free to make her moan, to abandon
+herself to her griefs, to seek to decipher the enigma of her own heart,
+to interrogate her conscience; here she gained courage in prayer,
+tranquillised herself by meditation, laid her troubled spirit once more
+in the hands of the Heavenly Father. And from every page shone the same
+pure light&mdash;the light of Truth.</p>
+
+
+<p>'<i>September 15th</i> (Schifanoja).&mdash;How tired I feel! The journey was
+rather fatiguing and the unaccustomed sea air makes my head ache at
+first. I need rest, and I already seem to have a foretaste of the
+sweetness of sleep and the happiness of awaking in the morning in the
+house of a friend and to the pleasures of Francesca's cordial
+hospitality at Schifanoja with its lovely roses and its tall cypress
+trees. I shall wake up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> to the knowledge that I have some weeks of peace
+before me&mdash;twenty days, perhaps even more, of congenial intellectual
+companionship. I am very grateful to Francesca for her invitation. To
+see her again was like meeting a sister. How much and how profoundly I
+have changed since the dear old days in Florence!</p>
+
+<p>'Speaking to-day of my hair, Francesca began recalling stories of our
+absurd childish passions and melancholies in those days; of Carlotta
+Fiordelise and Gabriella Vanni and various incidents of that distant
+school life which seems to me now as though I had never lived it, but
+only read it of it in some old forgotten book or seen it in a dream. My
+hair has not fallen, but for every hair of my head there has been a
+thorn in my destiny.</p>
+
+<p>'But why let my sad thoughts get the upper hand over me again? And why
+let memory cause me pain? It is useless to lament over a grave which
+never gives back its dead. Would to Heaven I could remember that, once
+for all!</p>
+
+<p>'Francesca is still young, and has retained the frank and charming
+gaiety which, in our school days, exercised such a strange fascination
+over my somewhat gloomy temperament. She has one great and rare virtue:
+though she is light-hearted herself, she can enter into the troubles of
+others and knows how to lighten them by her kindly sympathy and pity.
+She is above all things a woman of high intelligence and refined tastes,
+a perfect hostess and a friend who never palls upon one. She is perhaps
+a trifle too fond of witty <i>mots</i> and sparkling epigrams, but her darts
+are always tipped with gold, and she aims them with inimitable grace.
+Among all the women of the great world I have ever known there is
+certainly not one to compare with her, and of all my friends, she is the
+one I care for most.</p>
+
+<p>'Her children are not like her, they are not handsome. But the youngest,
+Muriella, is a dear little thing, with the sweet laugh and the eyes of
+her mother. She did the honours of the house to Delfina with all the air
+of a little lady; she has certainly inherited her mother's perfect
+manner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Delfina seems to be happy. She has already explored the greater part of
+the grounds, as far as the sea, and has run down all the flights of
+steps. She came to tell me about all the wonderful things she had
+seen&mdash;panting, swallowing half the words, her eyes looking almost
+dazzled. She spoke continually of her new friend Muriella&mdash;a pretty name
+that sounds still prettier from her lips.</p>
+
+<p>'She is fast asleep. When her eyes are closed, her lashes cast a long,
+long shadow on her cheeks. Francesca's cousin was struck by their length
+this evening and quoted a beautiful line from Shakespeare's Tempest on
+Miranda's eyelashes.</p>
+
+<p>'The scent of the flowers is too strong in this room. Delfina was
+anxious to keep the bouquet of roses by her bedside, but now that she is
+asleep I shall take them away and put them out into the loggia in the
+fresh air.</p>
+
+<p>'I am tired, and yet I have written four pages; I am sleepy, and yet I
+would gladly prolong this languor of soul, lulled by I know not what
+unwonted sense of tenderness diffused around me. It is so long&mdash;so
+long&mdash;since I have felt myself surrounded by a little kindness!</p>
+
+<p>'I have just carried the vase of roses into the loggia and stayed there
+a few moments to listen to the voices of the night, moved by the regret
+of losing in the blindness of sleep the hours that pass under so
+beautiful a sky. How strange is the harmony between the song of the
+fountains and the murmur of the sea! The cypresses seemed to be the
+pillars of the firmament; the stars shining just above them tipped their
+summits with fire.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 16th.</i>&mdash;A delightful afternoon, spent almost entirely in
+conversation with Francesca in the loggia, on the terraces, in the
+avenues, at the various points of outlook of this villa, which looks as
+if it had been built by a princely poet to drown a grief. The name of
+the Palace at Ferrara suits it admirably.</p>
+
+<p>'Francesca gave me a sonnet of Count Sperelli's to read&mdash;a trifle, but
+of rare literary charm, and inscribed on vellum.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> Sperelli has a mind of
+a very high order, and is most intense. To-day at dinner, he said
+several very beautiful things. He is recovering from a terrible wound
+received in a duel in Rome last May. In all his actions, his looks, his
+words, there is that affectionate and charming licence which is the
+prerogative of the convalescent, of those who have newly escaped the
+clutches of death. He must be very young, but he has gone through much
+and lived fast. He bears the evidences of it.... A charming evening of
+conversation and music all by ourselves after dinner. I talked too much,
+or, at any rate, with two much eagerness. But Francesca listened and
+encouraged me, and so did Count Sperelli. That is just the delightful
+part of a conversation not on common subjects&mdash;to feel the same degree
+of warmth animating the minds of all present. Only then do one's words
+have the true ring of sincerity and give real pleasure, both to the
+speaker and the hearer.</p>
+
+<p>'Francesca's cousin is a most cultivated judge of music. He greatly
+admires the masters of the eighteenth century, Domenico Scarlatti being
+his special favourite. But his most ardent devotion is reserved for
+Sebastian Bach. He does not care much for Chopin, and Beethoven affects
+him too profoundly and perturbs his spirit.</p>
+
+<p>'He listened to me with a singular expression, almost as if dazed or
+distressed. I nearly always addressed myself to Francesca, but I felt
+his eyes upon me with an insistence which embarrassed but did not offend
+me. He must still be weak and ill and a prey to his nerves. Finally he
+asked me&mdash;"Do you sing?" in the same tone in which he would have
+said&mdash;"Do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>'I sang an air of Paisiello's and another by Salieri, and I played a
+little eighteenth century music. I was in good voice and my touch on the
+piano happy.</p>
+
+<p>'He gave me no word of thanks or praise, but remained perfectly silent.
+I wonder why?</p>
+
+<p>'Delfina was in bed by that time. When I went upstairs afterwards to see
+her, I found her asleep, but with her eye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>lashes wet as if with tears.
+Poor darling! Dorothy told me that my voice could be heard distinctly up
+here, and that Delfina had wakened from her first sleep and begun to
+sob, and wanted to come down.</p>
+
+<p>'She is asleep again now, but from time to time her little bosom heaves
+with a suppressed sob which sends a vague distress into my own heart,
+and a desire to respond to that involuntary sob, to this grief which
+sleep cannot assuage. Poor darling!</p>
+
+<p>'Who is playing the piano downstairs, I wonder? With the soft pedal
+down, some one is trying over that gavotte of Rameau's, so full of
+bewitching melancholy, that I was playing just now. Who can it be?
+Francesca came up with me&mdash;it is late.</p>
+
+<p>'I went out and leaned over the loggia. The room opening into the
+vestibule is dark, but there is light in the room next to it, where
+Manuel and the Marchese are still playing cards.</p>
+
+<p>'The gavotte has stopped, some one is going down the steps into the
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should I be so alert, so watchful, so curious? Why should every
+sound startle me to-night?</p>
+
+<p>'Delfina has wakened and is calling me.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 17th.</i>&mdash;Manuel left this morning. We accompanied him to the
+station at Rovigliano. He will return about the 10th of October to fetch
+me, and we all go on to Sienna, to my mother. Delfina and I will
+probably stay at Sienna till after the New Year. I shall see the Loggia
+of the Pope and the Fonte Gaja, and my beautiful black and white
+Cathedral once more&mdash;that beloved dwelling-place of the Blessed Virgin,
+where a part of my soul has ever remained to pray in a spot that my
+knees know well.</p>
+
+<p>'I always have a vision of that spot clearly before me, and when I go
+back I shall kneel on the exact stone where I always used to. I know it
+as well as if my knees had left a deep hollow there. And there too I
+shall find that portion of my soul which still lingers there in prayer
+beneath the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> starry blue vault above, which is mirrored in the marble
+floor like a midnight sky in a placid lake.</p>
+
+<p>'Assuredly nothing there is changed. In the costly chapel, full of
+palpitating shadow and mysterious gloom, alive with the glint of
+precious marble, the lamps burned softly, all their light seemingly
+gathered into the little globe of oil that fed the flame as into some
+limpid topaz. Little by little, under my intent gaze, the sculptured
+stone grew less coldly white, took on warm ivory tints, became gradually
+penetrated by the pallid life of the celestial beings, and over the
+marble forms crept the faint transparency of angelic flesh.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, how fervent and spontaneous were my prayers then! When I absorbed
+myself in meditation, I seemed to be walking through the secret paths of
+my soul as in a garden of delight, where nightingales sang in the
+blossoming trees and turtle-doves cooed beside the running waters of
+Grace divine.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 18th.</i>&mdash;A day of nameless torture. Something seems to be
+forcing me to gather up, to re-adjust, to join together the fragments of
+a dream, half of which is being confusedly realised outside of me, and
+the other half going on equally confusedly in my own heart. And try as I
+will, I cannot succeed in piecing it completely together.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 19th.</i>&mdash;Continued torture. Long ago, some one sang to me but
+never finished the song. Now some one is taking up the strain at the
+point where it broke off, but meanwhile, I have forgotten the beginning.
+And my spirit loses itself in vain gropings after the old melody, nor
+can it find any pleasure in the new.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 20th.</i>&mdash;To-day, after lunch, Andrea Sperelli invited me and
+Francesca to come to his room and look at some drawings that had arrived
+for him yesterday from Rome.</p>
+
+<p>'It would not be too much to say that an entire Art has passed before
+our eyes to-day&mdash;an art studied and analysed by the hand of a master
+draughtsman. I have never experienced a more intense pleasure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'The drawings are Sperelli's own work&mdash;studies, sketches, notes,
+mementos of every gallery in Europe; they are, so to speak, his
+breviary, a wonderful breviary in which each of the Old Masters has his
+special page, affording a condensed example of his manner, bringing out
+the most lofty and original beauties of his work, the <i>punctum saliens</i>
+of his entire productions. In going through the large collection, not
+only have I received a distinct impression of the various schools, the
+movements, the influences which have combined to develop the art of
+painting in various countries, but I feel that I have had a glimpse into
+the spirit, the essential meaning of the art of each individual painter.
+I am as if intoxicated with art, my brain is full of lines and figures,
+but in the midst of the apparent confusion there stand out clearly
+before me the women of the early masters, those never-to-be-forgotten
+heads of Saints and Virgins which smiled down upon my childish piety in
+old Sienna from the frescoes of Taddeo and Simone.</p>
+
+<p>'No masterpiece of art, however advanced and brilliant, leaves upon the
+mind so strong and enduring an impression. All these slender forms,
+delicate and drooping as lily-buds, these grave and noble attitudes for
+receiving a flower offered by an angel, placing the fingers on an open
+book, bending over the Holy Infant, or supporting the body of Christ; in
+the act of blessing, of agonising, of ascending into Heaven&mdash;all these
+things, so pure, so sincere, so profoundly touching, affect the soul to
+its depths and imprint themselves for ever on the memory.</p>
+
+<p>'Thus, one by one, the women of the Early Masters passed in review
+before us. Francesca and I were seated on a low couch with a great stand
+before us, on which lay the portfolio containing the drawings which the
+artist, seated opposite, slowly turned over, commenting on each in
+succession. I watched his hand as he took up a sheet and placed it with
+peculiar care on the other side of the portfolio, and each time I felt a
+sort of thrill, as if that hand were going to touch me&mdash;Why?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Presently, his position doubtless becoming uncomfortable, he knelt on
+the floor, and in that attitude continued turning over the drawings. In
+speaking, he nearly always addressed himself to me, not at all with the
+air of imparting instruction, but as if discussing the pictures with a
+person as familiar with the subject as he was himself; and, at the
+bottom of my heart, I was conscious of a sense of complacency mingled
+with gratitude. Whenever I exclaimed in admiration, he looked at me with
+a smile which I can still see, but cannot define. Two or three times,
+Francesca rested her arm on his shoulder in unconscious familiarity.
+Looking at the head of the first-born of Moses, copied from Botticelli's
+fresco in the Sistine Chapel, she said&mdash;"It has a look of you when you
+are in one of your melancholy moods."&mdash;And when we came to the head of
+the Archangel Michael from Perugino's Madonna of Pavia, she
+remarked&mdash;-"It is a little like Giulia Moceto, is it not?" He did not
+answer, but only turned the page over rather sooner than usual. Upon
+which she added with a laugh&mdash;"Away with the pictures of sin!"</p>
+
+<p>'This Giulia Moceto is, I suppose, some one he was once in love with.
+The page once turned, I had a wild, unreasoning desire to look at the
+Michael again and examine the face more closely. Was it merely artistic
+curiosity?</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot say, I dare not pry into my heart, I prefer to temporise, to
+deceive myself; I have not the courage to face the battle, I am a
+coward.</p>
+
+<p>'And yet the present is so sweet. My imagination is as excited as if I
+had drunk strong tea. I have no desire to go to bed. The night is soft
+and warm as if it were August, the sky is cloudless but dimly veiled,
+the breathing of the sea comes slow and deep, but the fountains fill up
+the pauses. The loggia attracts me&mdash;shall we go out and dream a little,
+my heart and I?&mdash;dream of what?</p>
+
+<p>'The eyes of the Virgins and the Saints pursue me&mdash;deep-set, long and
+narrow, with meekly downcast lids, from under which they gaze at one
+with that charmed look&mdash;innocent as the dove, and yet a little side-long
+like the serpent. "Be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> ye harmless as doves and wise as serpents," said
+Our Lord&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, be wise&mdash;go, say your prayers, and then, to bed and sleep&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 21st.</i>&mdash;Alas, must the heavy task ever painfully begin again
+from the beginning, the steep path be climbed, the battle that was won
+fought over again!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 22nd.</i>&mdash;He has given me one of his poems, <i>The Story of the
+Hermaphrodite</i>, the twenty-first of the twenty-five copies, printed on
+vellum and with two proof engravings of the frontispiece.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a remarkable work, enclosing a mystic and profound idea, although
+the musical element predominates, entrancing the soul by the unfamiliar
+magic of its melody, which envelopes the thoughts that shine out like a
+glister of gold and diamonds through a limpid stream. Certain lines
+pursue me incessantly and will continue to do so for long, no
+doubt&mdash;they are so intense.... Every day and every hour he subjugates me
+more and more, mind and soul&mdash;against my will, despite my resistance.
+His every word and look, his slightest action sinks into my heart.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 23rd.</i>&mdash;When we converse with one another, I sometimes feel
+as if his voice were an echo of my soul. At times, a sudden wild frenzy
+comes over me, a blind desire, an unreasoning impulse to make some
+remark, utter some word that would betray my secret weakness. I only
+save myself from it by a miracle, and then there falls an interval of
+silence, during which I am shaken with inward terror. Then, when I do
+speak again, it is to say something trivial in the lightest tone I can
+command, but I feel as if a flame were rushing over my face&mdash;that I am
+going to blush. If he were to seize this moment to look me boldly in the
+eyes, I should be lost!</p>
+
+<p>'I played a good deal this evening, chiefly Bach and Schumann. As on the
+first evening, he sat in a low chair to the right but a little behind
+me. From time to time, at the end of each piece, he rose and leaned over
+me, turning the pages to point out another Fugue or Intermezzo. Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> he
+would sit down again and listen, motionless, profoundly absorbed, his
+eyes fixed on me, forcing me to <i>feel</i> his presence.</p>
+
+<p>'Did he understand, I wonder, how much of myself, of my thoughts and
+griefs found voice in the music of others?</p>
+
+<p>'It is a threatening night. A hot moist wind blows over the garden and
+its dull moaning dies away in the darkness only to begin again more
+loudly. The tops of the cypresses wave to and fro under an almost inky
+sky in which the stars burn with feeble ray. A band of clouds spans the
+heavens from side to side, ragged, contorted, blacker than the sky, like
+the tragic locks of a Medusa. The sea is invisible through the darkness,
+but it sobs as if in measureless and uncontrollable grief&mdash;forsaken and
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>'Why this unreasoning terror? The night seems to warn me of approaching
+disaster, a warning that finds its echo in a dim remorse within my
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>'But I always take comfort from my daughter, she heals my fever like
+some blessed balm.</p>
+
+<p>'She is asleep now, shaded from the lamp which shines with the soft
+radiance of the moon. Her face&mdash;white with dewy freshness of a white
+rose, seems half buried in the masses of her dark hair. One would think
+the eyelids were too delicately transparent to veil the splendour of her
+eyes. As I lean over her and gaze at her, all the sinister voices of the
+night are silenced for me, and the silence is measured only by her
+gentle respiration.</p>
+
+<p>'She feels the vicinity of her mother. The longer I contemplate her, the
+more does she assume in my eyes the aspect of some ethereal creature, of
+a being formed of "such stuff as dreams are made of."</p>
+
+<p>'She shall grow up nourished and enwrapped by the flame of my love&mdash;of
+my great, my <i>only</i> love&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 24th.</i>&mdash;I can form no resolve&mdash;I can decide upon no plan of
+action. I am simply abandoning myself a little to this new sentiment,
+shutting my eyes to the distant peril, and my ears to the warning voice
+of conscience, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> the shuddering temerity of one who, in gathering
+violets, ventures too near the edge of a precipice at the foot of which
+roars a hungry torrent.</p>
+
+<p>'He shall never know anything from my lips, I shall never know anything
+from his. Our two souls will mount together, for a brief space, to the
+mountain-tops of the Ideal, will drink side by side at the perennial
+fountains, and then each go on its separate way, encouraged and
+refreshed.</p>
+
+<p>'How still the air is this afternoon! The sea has the faint milky-blue
+tints of the opal, of Murano glass, with here and there a patch like a
+mirror dimmed by a breath.</p>
+
+<p>'I am reading Shelley, a favourite poet with him, that divine Ariel
+feeding upon light and speaking with the tongues of angels. It is
+night&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 25th.</i>&mdash;<i>Mio Dio! Mio Dio!</i> His voice when he spoke my
+name&mdash;the tremor in it&mdash;oh, I thought my heart was breaking in my bosom,
+and that I must inevitably lose consciousness.&mdash;"You will never know,"
+he said&mdash;"never know how utterly my soul is yours."</p>
+
+<p>'We were in the avenue of the fountains&mdash;I was listening to the sound of
+the water; but from that moment, I heard nothing more. Everything around
+me seemed to flee away, carrying my life with it, and the earth to open
+beneath my feet. I made a superhuman effort to control myself. Delfina's
+name rose to my lips and I was seized with a wild impulse to fly to her
+for protection, for safety. Three times I cried that name, but in the
+intervals my heart ceased to beat and the breath died away upon my lips.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 26th.</i>&mdash;Was it true? Was it not merely some illusion of my
+overwrought and distracted spirit? Why should that hour yesterday seem
+to me so far away, so <i>unreal</i>?</p>
+
+<p>'He spoke a second time, at greater length, close to my side while I
+walked on under the trees as in a dream.&mdash;Under the trees was it? It
+seemed to me rather that I was walking through the hidden pathways of my
+soul, among flowers born of my imagination, listening to the words of an
+invisible spirit that yet was part of myself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I can still hear the sweet and dreadful words&mdash;"I would renounce all
+that the future may hold for me to live in a small corner of your
+heart&mdash;Far from the world, wholly lost in the thought of you&mdash;until
+death, to all eternity"&mdash;And again&mdash;"Pity from you would be far dearer
+to me than love from any other woman. Your mere presence suffices to
+intoxicate me&mdash;I feel it flowing into my veins like my life's blood and
+filling my soul with rapture beyond all telling."</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 27th.</i>&mdash;When he gathered the spray of blossom at the
+entrance to the wood and offered it to me, did I not, in my heart, call
+him&mdash;<i>Life of my life</i>?</p>
+
+<p>'When, in the avenue, we passed again by the fountain where he first
+spoke to me, did I not call him <i>Life of my life</i>?</p>
+
+<p>'When he took the wreath from off the Hermes and gave it back to my
+child, did he not give me to understand that the woman exalted in these
+verses had fallen from her high estate, and that I, I alone, was all his
+hope? And once more I called him <i>Life of my life</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 28th.</i>&mdash;How long I have been in finding peace!</p>
+
+<p>'From that moment onwards, what hours of struggle and travail I have
+had, how painfully I have striven to penetrate the real state of my
+mind, to see things in their true light, bring a calm and fair judgment
+to bear upon what has happened, to recognise and determine upon my duty!
+But I continually evaded myself, my mind became confused, my will was
+but a broken reed on which to lean, every effort was vain. By a sort of
+instinct, I have avoided being alone with him, kept close to Francesca
+or my child, or stayed here in my room as in a haven of refuge. When my
+eyes did meet his, I seemed to read in them a profound and imploring
+sadness. Does he not know how deeply, deeply, deeply I love him?</p>
+
+<p>'He does not know it, nor ever will. That is my firm resolve&mdash;that is my
+duty. Courage!</p>
+
+<p>'Help me, oh my God!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 29th.</i>&mdash;Why did he speak? Why did he break<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> the enchanted
+silence in which I let my soul be steeped, almost without regret or
+fear? Why tear away the veil of uncertainty and put me face to face with
+his unveiled love? Now I have no further excuse for temporising, for
+deluding myself. The danger is there&mdash;certain, undeniable, manifest&mdash;it
+attracts me to its dizzy edge like a precipice. One moment of weakness,
+of languor, and I am lost.</p>
+
+<p>'I ask myself&mdash;am I sincere in my pain and regret at this unexpected
+revelation? How is it that I think perpetually of those words? And why,
+when I repeat them to myself, does a wave of ineffable rapture sweep
+over my soul? Why do I thrill to the heart's core at the imagined
+prospect of hearing more&mdash;more such words?</p>
+
+<p>'Night. The agitation of my soul takes the forms of questions,
+riddles&mdash;I ask myself endless questions to which I never have an answer.
+I have not had the courage to look myself through and through&mdash;to form a
+really bold and honest resolution. I am pusillanimous, I am a coward. I
+shrink from pain, I want to suffer as little as possible, I prefer to
+temporise, to hang back, to resort to subterfuges, to wilfully blind
+myself instead of courageously facing the risks of a decisive battle.</p>
+
+<p>'The fact of the matter is this&mdash;that I am <i>afraid</i> of being alone with
+him, of having a serious conversation with him, and so my life is
+reduced to a series of petty schemes and man&oelig;uvrings and pretexts for
+avoiding his company. Such devices are unworthy of me. Either I must
+renounce this love altogether, and he shall hear my sad but firm
+resolve, or I shall accept it, in so far as it is pure, and he will
+receive my spiritual consent.</p>
+
+<p>'And now I ask myself&mdash;What do I really want? Which of the two paths am
+I to choose? Must I renounce&mdash;shall I accept?</p>
+
+<p>'My God! my God! answer Thou for me&mdash;light up the path before me!</p>
+
+<p>'To renounce is like tearing out a piece of my heart with my own hands.
+The agony would be supreme, the wrench<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> would exceed the limits of the
+endurable. But, by God's grace, such heroism would be crowned by
+resignation, would be rewarded by that sweet and holy calm which follows
+upon every high moral impulse, every victory of the soul over the dread
+of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall renounce&mdash;my daughter shall keep possession of my whole life,
+of my whole soul. That is the path of duty, and I will walk in it.</p>
+
+<p>'Sow in tears, oh mourning souls, that ye may reap with songs of
+gladness!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>September 30th.</i>&mdash;I feel somewhat calmer in writing these pages. I
+regain, at least for the moment, some slight balance of mind. I can look
+my misfortune more clearly in the face, and my heart seems relieved as
+if after confession.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, if I could but go to confession!&mdash;could implore counsel and help of
+my old friend and comforter, Dom Luigi!</p>
+
+<p>'What sustains me most of all in my tribulation, is the thought that in
+a short time I shall see him again and be able to pour out all my griefs
+and fears to him, show him all my wounds, ask of him a balm for all my
+ills, as I used to in the days when his benign and solemn words would
+call up tears of tenderness to my eyes, that knew not then the
+bitterness of other tears or&mdash;more terrible by far&mdash;the burning pain of
+dry-eyed misery.</p>
+
+<p>'Will he understand me still? Can he fathom the deep anguish of the
+woman as he understood the vague and fitful melancholy of the girl?
+Shall I ever again see him lean towards me in pity and consolation, that
+gentle brow, crowned with silvery locks, illumined with purity and
+holiness, and sanctified by the hand of the Lord?</p>
+
+<p>'In the chapel, after mass, I played on the organ music of Bach and of
+Cherubini. I played the same prelude as the other evening.</p>
+
+<p>'A soul weeps and moans, weighed down with anguish, weeps and moans and
+cries to God, asking His pardon, imploring His aid, with a prayer that
+rises to heaven like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> a tongue of fire. It cries and it is heard&mdash;its
+prayer is answered; it receives light from above, utters songs of
+gladness reaches at length the haven of Peace and Truth and rests in the
+Lord&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'The organ is not large nor is the chapel, but, nevertheless, my soul
+expanded as in a basilica, soared up as under some vast dome, and
+touched the pinnacle of high Heaven where blazes the Sign of Signs in
+the azure of Paradise, in the sublime ether.</p>
+
+<p>'Night. Alas: nothing is of any avail&mdash;nothing gives me one hour, one
+minute, one second's respite. Nothing can ever cure me, no dream of my
+mind can ever efface the dream of my heart.&mdash;All has been in vain; this
+anguish is killing me. I feel that my hurt is mortal, my heart pains me
+as if some one were actually crushing it, were tearing it to pieces. My
+agony of mind is so great that it has become a physical
+torment&mdash;atrocious, unbearable. I know perfectly well that I am
+overwrought, nervous&mdash;the victim of a sort of madness; but I cannot get
+the upper hand over myself, cannot pull myself together, cannot regain
+control of my reason. I cannot&mdash;I simply cannot!</p>
+
+<p>'So this, then, is love!</p>
+
+<p>'He went off somewhere this morning on horseback accompanied by a
+servant before I saw him, and I spent the whole morning in the chapel.
+When lunch time came he had not returned. His absence caused me such
+misery that I myself was astonished at the violence of my pain. I came
+up to my room afterwards, and to ease my heart I wrote a page of my
+journal, a devotional page, seeking to revive my fainting spirit at the
+glowing memory of my girlhood's faith. Then I read a few pieces, here
+and there, of Shelley's <i>Epipsychidion</i>, after which I went down into
+the park looking for Delfina. But no matter what I did, the thought of
+him was ever present with me, held me captive and tortured me
+relentlessly.</p>
+
+<p>'When, at last, I heard his voice again, I was on the first terrace. He
+was speaking to Francesca in the vestibule. She came out and called to
+me to come up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I felt my knees giving way beneath me at each step. He held out his
+hand to me and he must have noticed the trembling of mine, for I saw a
+sudden gleam flash into his eyes. We all three sat down on low cane
+lounges in the vestibule, facing the sea. He complained of feeling very
+tired, and smoked while he told us of his ride. He had gone as far as
+Vicomile, where he had made a halt.</p>
+
+<p>'Vicomile, he said, possesses three wonderful treasures&mdash;a pine wood, a
+tower, and a fifteenth-century monstrance. Imagine a pine wood, between
+the sea and the hill, interspersed by a number of pools that multiply
+the trees indefinitely; a campanile in the old rugged Lombardy style
+that goes back to the eleventh century&mdash;a tree-trunk of stone, as it
+were, covered with sculptured sirens and peacocks, serpents and griffins
+and dragons&mdash;a thousand and one monsters and flowers; and a silver-gilt
+monstrance all enamelled, engraved and chased&mdash;Gothico-Byzantine in
+style and form with a foretaste of Renaissance, the work of Gallucci, an
+almost unknown artist, but who was the great forerunner of Benvenuto
+Cellini&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'He addressed himself all the time to me. Strange how exactly I remember
+every word he says! I could set down any conversation of his, word for
+word, from beginning to end; if there were any means of doing so, I
+could reproduce every modulation of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>'He showed us two or three little sketches he had made, and then began
+again describing the wonders of Vicomile with that warmth with which he
+always speaks of beautiful things and that enthusiasm for art which is
+one of his most potent attractions.</p>
+
+<p>'"I promised the Canonico to come back to-morrow. We will all go, will
+we not, Francesca? Donna Maria ought to see Vicomile!"</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my name on his lips! If it were possible, I could reproduce the
+very movements of his lips in uttering each syllable of those two
+words&mdash;Donna Maria&mdash;&mdash;But what I never could express is my own emotion
+on hearing it; could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> never explain the unknown, undreamed-of sensation
+awakened in me by the presence of this man.</p>
+
+<p>'We sat there till dinner-time. Contrary to her usual habit, Francesca
+seemed a little pensive and out of spirits. There were moments when
+heavy silence fell upon us. But between him and me there then occurred
+one of those <i>silent colloquies</i> in which the soul exhales the Ineffable
+and hears the murmur of its thoughts. He said things to me then that
+made me sink back against the cushions of my chair faint with
+rapture&mdash;things that his lips will never repeat to me, that my ears will
+never hear.</p>
+
+<p>'In front of us, the cypresses, tipped with fire by the setting sun,
+stood up tall and motionless like votive candles. The sea was the colour
+of aloe leaves, dashed here and there with liquid turquoise; there was
+an indescribable delicacy of varying pallor&mdash;a diffusion of angelic
+light, in which each sail looked like an angel's wing upon the waters.
+And the harmony of faint and mingled perfumes seemed like the soul of
+the declining day.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh sweet and tranquil death of September!</p>
+
+<p>'Another month ended, lost, dropped away into the abyss of
+Time&mdash;Farewell!</p>
+
+<p>'I have lived more in this last fortnight than in fourteen years; and
+not one of my long weeks of unhappiness has ever equalled in sharpness
+of torture this one short week of passion. My heart aches, my head
+swims; in the depths of my being, I feel a something obscure and
+burning&mdash;a something that has suddenly awakened in me like a latent
+disease, and now begins to creep through my blood and into my soul in
+spite of myself, baffling every remedy&mdash;desire.</p>
+
+<p>'It fills me with shame and horror as at some dishonour, some sacrilege
+or outrage; it fills me with wild and desperate terror as at some
+treacherous enemy who will make use of secret paths to enter the citadel
+which are unknown to myself.</p>
+
+<p>'And here I sit in the night watches, and while I write these pages,
+with all the feverish ardour that lovers put into their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> love-letters, I
+cease to listen to the gentle breathing of my child. She sleeps in
+peace; she little knows how far away from her her mother's spirit is!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>October 1st.</i>&mdash;I see much in him that I did not observe before. When
+he speaks, I cannot take my eyes off his mouth&mdash;the play of his lips and
+their colouring occupies my attention more than the sound or the sense
+of his words.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>October 2nd.</i>&mdash;To-day is Saturday&mdash;just a week since the
+never-to-be-forgotten day, the 25th of September.</p>
+
+<p>'By some strange chance, although I no longer avoid being alone with
+him&mdash;for I am anxious now for the dread and heroical moment&mdash;by some
+strange chance, that moment has not yet occurred.</p>
+
+<p>'Francesca has always been with me the whole day long. This morning we
+had a ride along the road to Rovigliano, and we spent the best part of
+the afternoon at the piano. She made me play some sixteenth-century
+dance music, and then Clementi's famous Toccata and two or three
+Caprices of Scarlatti's, and, after that, I had to sing certain songs
+from Schumann's <i>Frauenliebe</i>&mdash;what contrasts!</p>
+
+<p>'Francesca has lost much of her old gaiety, she is not as she used to be
+in the first days of my stay here. She is often silent and preoccupied,
+and when she does laugh or make fun, her gaiety seems to me very forced.
+I said to her once. "Is something worrying you?"</p>
+
+<p>'"Why?" she answered with assumed surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'"Because you seem to me a little out of spirits lately."</p>
+
+<p>'"Out of spirits? oh, no, you are quite mistaken," she answered, and she
+laughed, but with an involuntary note of bitterness. This troubles me
+and causes me a vague sense of uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>'We are going to Vicomile to-morrow afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>'He asked me&mdash;"Would it tire you too much to come on horseback? In that
+way we could cut right through the pine wood!"</p>
+
+<p>'So we are going to ride and Francesca will join us. The others,
+including Delfina, will come in the mail-coach.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'What a strange state of mind I am in this evening! I feel a kind of
+dull and angry bitterness at the bottom of my heart, without knowing
+why&mdash;am impatient with myself, my life, the whole world&mdash;my nervous
+irritation rises, at times, to such a pitch, that I am seized with an
+insane desire to scream aloud, to dig my nails into my flesh, to bruise
+my fingers against the wall&mdash;any physical suffering would be better than
+this intolerable mental discomfort, this unbearable wretchedness. I feel
+as if I had a burning knot in my bosom, that my throat were closed by a
+sob I dared not give vent to&mdash;I am icy cold and burning hot by turns
+and, from time to time, a sudden pang darts through me, an irrational
+terror that I can neither shake off nor control. Thoughts and images
+flash suddenly across my brain, coming from I know not what ignoble
+depths of my soul.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>October 3rd.</i>&mdash;How weak and miserable is the human soul, how utterly
+defenceless against the attacks of all that is least noble and least
+pure in us, and that slumbers in the obscurity of our unconscious life,
+in those unexplored abysses where dark dreams are born of hidden
+sensations!</p>
+
+<p>'A dream can poison a whole soul, a single involuntary thought is
+sufficient to corrupt and break down the force of will.</p>
+
+<p>'We are just starting for Vicomile. Delfina is in raptures.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the festival of Our Lady of the Rosary. Courage, my heart!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>October 4th.</i>&mdash;I found no courage.</p>
+
+<p>'Yesterday was so full of trifling incidents and great emotions, so
+joyful and so sad, so strangely agitating that I am almost at a loss
+when I try to remember it all. And yet all&mdash;all other recollections pale
+and vanish before the one.</p>
+
+<p>'After having visited the tower and admired the monstrance, we prepared
+to return home at about half-past five. Francesca was tired and
+preferred going back in the coach to getting on horseback again. We
+followed them for a while, riding behind or beside them, while Delfina
+and Muriella waved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> long flowering bulrushes at us, laughing and
+threatening us with their splendid spears.</p>
+
+<p>'The evening was calm, not a breath of wind stirred. The sun was sinking
+behind the hill at Rovigliano in a sky all rosy-red, like a sunset in
+the Far East.</p>
+
+<p>'When we came in sight of the pine-wood, he suddenly said to me: "Shall
+we ride through it?"</p>
+
+<p>'The high road skirted the wood, describing a wide curve, at one part of
+which it almost touched the sea-shore. The wood was already growing dark
+and was full of deep-green twilight, but under the trees the pools
+gleamed with a pure and intense light, like fragments of a sky far
+fairer than the one above our heads.</p>
+
+<p>'Without giving me time to answer, he said to Francesca, "We are going
+to ride through the wood and shall join you at the other side, on the
+high road, by the bridge"&mdash;and he reined in his horse.</p>
+
+<p>'Why did I consent&mdash;why did I follow him? There was a sort of dazzle
+before my eyes. I felt as if I were under the influence of some nameless
+fascination, as if the landscape, the light, this incident, the whole
+combination of circumstances were not new to me, but things that had all
+happened to me before, in another existence, and were now only being
+repeated. The impression is quite indescribable. My will seemed
+paralysed. It was as when some incident of one's life reappears in a
+dream, but with added details that differ from the real circumstances. I
+shall never be able to adequately describe even a part of this strange
+phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>'We rode in silence at a foot's pace; the cawing of the rooks, the dull
+beat of the horses' hoofs and their noisy breathing in no way disturbed
+the all-pervading peace that seemed to grow every minute deeper and more
+magical.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, why did he break the spell we ourselves had woven?</p>
+
+<p>'He began to speak; he poured out upon me a flood of burning
+words&mdash;words which, in the silence of the wood, frightened me because
+they carried with them an impression of something preternatural,
+something indefinably weird and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> compelling. He was no longer the humble
+suppliant of that morning in the park, spoke no more of his diffident
+hopes, his half-mystical aspirations, his incurable sense of sorrow.
+This time he did not beg and entreat. It was the voice of passion, full
+of audacity and virile power, a voice I did not know in him.</p>
+
+<p>'"You love me, you love me&mdash;you cannot help but love me&mdash;tell me that
+you love me!"</p>
+
+<p>'His horse was close beside mine. I felt him brush me; I almost felt the
+breath of his burning words upon my cheek, and I thought I must swoon
+with anguish and fall into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>'"Tell me that you love me," he repeated obstinately, relentlessly.
+"Tell me that you love me!"</p>
+
+<p>'Under the terrible strain of his insistent voice, I believe I answered
+wildly&mdash;whether with a cry or a sob, I do not know&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'"I love you, I love you, I love you!" and I set my horse at a gallop
+down the narrow rugged path between the crowded tree-trunks, unconscious
+of what I was doing.</p>
+
+<p>'He followed me crying&mdash;"Maria, Maria, stop&mdash;you will hurt yourself."</p>
+
+<p>'But I fled blindly on. I do not know how my horse managed to keep clear
+of the trees, I do not know why I was not thrown; I am incapable of
+retracing my impressions in that mad flight through the dark wood, past
+the gleaming patches of water. When at last I came out upon the road,
+near the bridge, I seemed to have come out of some hallucination.</p>
+
+<p>'"Do you want to kill yourself?" he said almost fiercely. We heard the
+sound of the approaching carriage and turned to meet it. He was going to
+speak to me again.</p>
+
+<p>'"Hush, for pity's sake," I entreated, for I felt I was at the end of my
+forces.</p>
+
+<p>'He was silent. Then, with an assurance that stupefied me, he said to
+Francesca&mdash;"Such a pity you did not come! It was perfectly enchanting."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'And he went on talking as quietly and unconcernedly as if nothing had
+happened, even with a certain amount of gaiety. I was only too thankful
+for his dissimulation which screened me, for if I had been obliged to
+speak, I should inevitably have betrayed myself, and for both of us to
+have been silent would doubtless have aroused Francesca's suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>'A little further on, the road wound up the hill towards Schifanoja. Oh,
+the boundless melancholy of the evening! A new moon shone in the
+faintly-tinted, pale-green sky, where my eyes, and perhaps mine alone,
+detected a lingering rosy tinge&mdash;that same rosy light that gleamed upon
+the pools down in the pine wood.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>October 5th.</i>&mdash;He knows now that I love him, and knows it from my own
+lips. Nothing is left for me but flight&mdash;this is what I have come to!</p>
+
+<p>'When he looks at me now, there is a strange gleam in the depths of his
+eyes that was not there before. To-day, while Francesca was absent for a
+moment, he took my hand and made as if he would kiss it. I managed to
+draw it away, but I saw his lips tremble; I caught, as it were, the
+reflection of the kiss that never left his lips, and the image of that
+kiss haunts me now&mdash;it haunts me&mdash;haunts me&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'<i>October 6th.</i>&mdash;On the 25th of September, on the marble seat in the
+arbutus wood, he said to me&mdash;"I know you do not love me and that you
+never will love me!" And on the 3rd of October&mdash;"You love me&mdash;you love
+me&mdash;you cannot help but love me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>'In Francesca's presence, he asked if I would allow him to make a study
+of my hands, and I consented. He will begin to-day.</p>
+
+<p>'I am nervous and frightened, as if I were going to expose my hands to
+some nameless ordeal.</p>
+
+<p>'Night. It has begun, the slow, sweet, unspeakable torture.</p>
+
+<p>'He drew with red and black chalk. My right hand lay on a piece of
+velvet; near me on the table stood a Corean vase, yellow and spotted
+like the skin of a python, and in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> vase was a group of orchids,
+those grotesque flowers for which Francesca has so curious a
+predilection.</p>
+
+<p>'When I felt that I could no longer bear the ordeal, I looked at the
+flowers to distract my thoughts, and their strange, distorted shapes
+carried me to the distant countries of their birth, giving me a moment's
+respite from my haunting grief. He went on drawing in silence; his eyes
+passing continually from the paper to my hand. Two or three times he
+looked at the vase; at last, rising from his chair, he said&mdash;"Excuse
+me"&mdash;and lifting the vase, he carried it away and placed it on another
+table. I do not know why.</p>
+
+<p>'After that, he resumed his drawing with much greater freedom, as if
+relieved of an annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot describe the sensation produced in me by his eyes. I felt as
+if not my hand, but a part of my soul were laid bare to his scrutinising
+gaze, that his eyes pierced to its very depths, exploring its most
+secret recesses. Never had my hand felt so alive, so expressive, so
+responsive to my heart, revealing so much that I would fain have kept
+secret. Under his gaze I felt it quiver imperceptibly but continuously,
+and the tremor spread to my innermost veins. When his gaze grew too
+intense, I was seized with an instinctive desire to withdraw my hand
+altogether, arising from a sense of shame.</p>
+
+<p>'Now and then, he would stop drawing and sit for quite an appreciable
+time with his eyes fixed, and then I had the impression that he was
+absorbing something of me through his pupils, or that he was caressing
+me with a touch that was softer than the velvet beneath my hand. At
+other times, while he bent over the drawing, transferring maybe into the
+lines what he had taken from me, a faint smile played round his mouth,
+so faint that I only just caught it. I do not know why, but that smile
+sent a pang of delight thrilling through my heart. Once or twice, I saw
+the image of a kiss appear again upon his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'At last, curiosity got the better of me and I said&mdash;"Well&mdash;what is
+it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Francesca was at the piano with her back turned to us, her fingers
+wandering over the keys, trying to remember Rameau's Gavotte <i>of the
+Yellow Ladies</i> that I have played so often, and which will always be
+connected in my mind with my stay at Schifanoja. She muffled the notes
+with the soft pedal and broke off frequently. These interruptions and
+gaps in the melody which was so familiar to me and which my ear filled
+up each time, in advance, added immeasurably to my distress. All at
+once, she struck one note hard several times in succession as if under
+the spur of some nervous irritation; then she started up and came and
+bent over the drawing.</p>
+
+<p>'I looked at her&mdash;I understood it all.</p>
+
+<p>'This last drop was wanting in my cup of bitterness. God had still this
+last and cruelest trial of all reserved for me.&mdash;His will be done!</p>
+
+<p>'<i>October 7th.</i>&mdash;I have now but one thought, one desire&mdash;to fly from
+here&mdash;to escape.</p>
+
+<p>'I have come to the end of my strength. This love is crushing me, is
+killing me, and the unexpected discovery I have made increases my
+wretchedness a thousand-fold. What are her feelings towards me? What
+does she think? So she loves him too?&mdash;and since when? Does he know it?
+Or has he no suspicion of the fact?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Mio Dio! Mio Dio!</i> I believe I am going out of my mind&mdash;all my
+strength of will is forsaking me. At long intervals there comes a pause
+in my torment, as when the wild elements of the tempest hold their
+breath for a moment, only to break forth again with redoubled fury. I
+sit then in a kind of stupor, with heavy head and my limbs feeling as
+bruised and tired as if I had been beaten, and while my pain gathers
+itself up for a fresh onslaught, I do not succeed in collecting
+sufficient strength to resist it.</p>
+
+<p>'What does she think of me? What does she think? How much does she know?</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, to be misjudged by her&mdash;my best, my dearest friend&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> one to
+whom I have always been able to open my heart! This is my crowning
+grief, my bitterest trial&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I must speak to her before I go. She must know all from me, I must know
+all from her&mdash;that is only right and just.</p>
+
+<p>'Night. About five o'clock she proposed a drive along the Rovigliano
+road. We two went alone in the open carriage. I was trembling with
+agitation as I said to myself&mdash;"Here is my opportunity for speaking to
+her." But my nervousness deprived me of every vestige of courage. Did
+she expect me to confide in her? I cannot tell.</p>
+
+<p>'We sat silent for a long while, listening to the steady trot of the
+horses, looking at the trees and the meadows by the side of the road.
+From time to time, by a brief remark or a sign, she drew my attention to
+some detail of the autumnal landscape.</p>
+
+<p>'All the witchery of the Autumn concentrated itself into this hour. The
+slanting rays of the evening sun lit up the rich and sombre harmonies of
+the dying foliage. Gold, amber, saffron, violet, purple,
+sea-green&mdash;tints the most faded and the most violent mingled in one deep
+strain, not to be surpassed by any melody of Spring, however sweet.</p>
+
+<p>'"Look," she said, pointing to the acacias, "would you not say they were
+in flower?"</p>
+
+<p>'At last, after an interval of silence, to make a beginning I said:
+"Manuel is sure to be here by Saturday. I expect a telegram from him
+to-morrow, and we shall leave by the early train on Sunday. You have
+been very good to me while I have been with you&mdash;I am deeply grateful to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>'My voice broke, a flood of tenderness swelled my heart. She took my
+hand and clasped it tight without speaking or looking at me. We remained
+silent for a long time, holding one another by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Presently she asked&mdash;"How long will you be with your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>'"Till the end of the year, I hope&mdash;perhaps longer."</p>
+
+<p>'"As long as that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'We fell silent again. By this time, I felt I should never have the
+courage to face an explanation; besides which, I felt that it was less
+necessary now. Francesca seemed to have come back to me, to understand
+me, to be once more the sweet kind sister of old. My sorrow drew out her
+sadness as the moon attracts the waters of the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>'"Listen!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>'The sound of women's voices, singing, floated over to us from the
+fields, a slow song, full and solemn as a Gregorian chant. Further on,
+we came in sight of the singers. They were coming away from a field of
+dried sunflowers; walking in single file like a religious procession,
+and the sunflowers on their long leafless stalks, their great discs
+stripped of their halo of petals and their wealth of seed, were like
+liturgic emblems or monstrances of pale gold.</p>
+
+<p>'My emotion waxed greater. The song spread wide through the evening air.
+We passed through Rovigliano, where the lamps were beginning to twinkle,
+and came out again upon the high road. The church bells rang softly
+behind us. A moist breeze rustled in the trees that cast a faint blue
+shadow on the white road, and in the air a shadow as liquid as water.</p>
+
+<p>'"Are you not cold?" she asked me, and she ordered the footman to spread
+a rug over us, and told the coachman to turn homewards.</p>
+
+<p>'In the belfry at Rovigliano, a bell tolled with deep slow strokes as
+for some solemn rite, and the wave of sound seemed to send a wave of
+cold through the air. With a simultaneous movement, we drew closer to
+one another, settling the rug more warmly over our knees, and a shiver
+ran through us both. The carriage entered the town at a walk.</p>
+
+<p>'"What can that bell be ringing for?" she murmured in a voice that
+hardly seemed like her own.</p>
+
+<p>'I answered&mdash;"I fancy it must be for the Viaticum."</p>
+
+<p>'And in fact, a little further on we saw the priest just entering a door
+while a clerk held the canopy over him, and two others stood upon the
+threshold, straight as candelabra,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> holding up lighted lanterns. A
+single window of the house was lighted up, the one behind which the
+dying Christian was awaiting Extreme Unction. Faint shadows flitted
+across the brightness of that pale yellow square on which was outlined
+the whole mysterious drama of Death.</p>
+
+<p>'The footman bent down from the box and asked in a low voice&mdash;"Who is
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>'The person addressed answered in dialect and mentioned a woman's name.</p>
+
+<p>'I would have liked to muffle the sound of the carriage wheels upon the
+stones, to have made our passage a silent one past the spot where a soul
+was about to take flight. Francesca, I am sure, shared my feeling.</p>
+
+<p>'The carriage turned into the road to Schifanoja and the horses set off
+at a brisk trot. The moon, ringed by a halo, shone like an opal in the
+milk-white sky. A train of cloud rose out of the sea and stretched away
+by degrees in spiral form, like a trail of smoke. The somewhat stormy
+sea drowned all other sounds with its roar. Never, I think, did a
+heavier sadness weigh upon two spirits.</p>
+
+<p>'I felt something wet upon my cold cheek, and turning to Francesca to
+see if she noticed that I was crying, I met her eyes&mdash;they were full of
+tears. And so we sat, side by side, with mute, convulsively closed lips,
+clasping one another's hand, the tears rolling silently drop by drop
+over our cheeks, both knowing that they were for him.</p>
+
+<p>'As we neared Schifanoja I dried my eyes, and she did the same, each
+striving to hide her own weakness.</p>
+
+<p>'He was standing in the hall with Delfina and Muriella looking out for
+us. Why did I feel a sudden vague distrust of him, as if some instinct
+warned me of hidden danger? What troubles are in store for me in the
+future? Shall I be able to escape from the passion that attracts and
+blinds me?</p>
+
+<p>'And yet, those few tears have given me much relief! I feel less broken,
+less scorched, more self-confident; and it affords me an indescribable
+fond pleasure to retrace again, for myself alone, that last drive, while
+Delfina sleeps, made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> happy by the storm of kisses I rained upon her
+face, and while the moon that so lately saw me weep smiles sadly through
+the window panes.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>October 8th.</i>&mdash;Did I sleep last night&mdash;did I wake? I could not say.
+Through my brain, like thick dark shadows, flitted terrifying thoughts,
+insupportable images of torment; and my heart gave sudden throbs and
+bounds, and I would find myself staring wide-eyed into the darkness, not
+knowing whether I had just awakened from a dream or whether I had never
+been asleep at all. And this state of semi-consciousness&mdash;infinitely
+more unbearable than real sleeplessness&mdash;continued throughout the night.</p>
+
+<p>'Nevertheless, when I heard my little girl's morning call, I did not
+answer, but pretended to be sound asleep, so that I need not rise, so
+that I might remain a few minutes longer in bed and thus retard for a
+while the inexorable certainty of the realities of life. The torments of
+thought and imagination seemed to me less cruel than those, so
+impossible to foresee, which awaited me in these last two days.</p>
+
+<p>'A little while later, Delfina came in on tip-toe, holding her breath.
+She looked at me and then whispered to Dorothy, with a little fond
+tremor in her voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'"She is fast asleep! We will not wake her!"</p>
+
+<p>'Night. I do not believe I have a spark of life left in me. As I came
+upstairs I felt, at each step, as if every drop of blood had left my
+veins. I am as weak as one at the point of death.</p>
+
+<p>'Courage! courage!&mdash;only a few hours more. Manuel will be here to-morrow
+morning. We shall leave on Sunday, and on Monday I shall be with my
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>'Just now, I returned him two or three books he had lent me. In the
+volume of Shelley I underlined with my nail the last two lines of a
+certain verse and put a mark in the page&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And forget me, for I <i>can never</i>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be thine!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'<i>October 9th.</i>&mdash;Night. All day long he has sought an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> opportunity for
+speaking to me. His distress is evident. And all day long I have done my
+utmost to avoid him, so that he might not sow fresh seeds of pain, of
+desire, of regret and remorse in my heart. And I have triumphed&mdash;I was
+strong and brave&mdash;My God, I thank Thee!</p>
+
+<p>'This night is the last. To-morrow we leave&mdash;all will be over.</p>
+
+<p>'All will be over? A voice out of the depths cries unto me&mdash;I do not
+understand its words, but I know that it tells me of coming disaster,
+unknown but inevitable, mysterious and inexorable as death. The future
+is lugubrious as a cemetery full of open graves, ready to receive the
+dead, with here and there a flicker of pale torches which I can scarce
+distinguish, and I know not if they are there to lure me on to
+destruction or to show me to a path of safety.</p>
+
+<p>'I have re-read my Journal slowly, carefully, from the 15th of
+September, the day of my arrival. What a difference between the first
+entry and the last!</p>
+
+<p>'I wrote:&mdash;I shall wake up in the house of a friend, to the enjoyment of
+Francesca's cordial hospitality, in Schifanoja, where the roses are so
+fair and the cypresses so tall and grand. I shall wake with the prospect
+of some weeks of peace before me&mdash;twenty days or more of congenial
+intellectual companionship&mdash;Alas! where is that promised peace? But the
+roses, the beautiful roses, were they, too, faithless to their promise?
+Did I perhaps, on that first night in the loggia, open my heart too wide
+to their seductive fragrance while Delfina slept? And now the October
+moon floods the sky with its cold radiance, and through the closed
+windows I see the sharp points of the cypresses, all sombre and
+motionless, and on that night they seemed to touch the stars.</p>
+
+<p>'Of that prelude there is but one phrase which finds a place in this sad
+finale: So many hairs on my head, so many thorns in my woeful destiny!</p>
+
+<p>'I am going, and what will he do when I am far away? What will Francesca
+do?</p>
+
+<p>'The change in Francesca still remains incomprehensible,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+inexplicable&mdash;an enigma that torments and bewilders me. She loves
+him&mdash;but since when?&mdash;and does he know it? Confess, oh, my soul, to this
+fresh misery. A new poison is added to that already infecting me&mdash;I am
+jealous!</p>
+
+<p>'But I am prepared for any suffering, even the most horrible; I know
+well the martyrdom that awaits me; I know that the anguish of these days
+is as nought compared to that which I must face presently, the terrible
+cross on which my soul must hang. I am ready. All I ask, oh my God, is a
+respite, a short respite for the hours that remain to me here. To-morrow
+I shall have need of all my strength.</p>
+
+<p>'How strangely sometimes the incidents of one's life repeat themselves!
+This evening in the drawing-room, I seemed to have gone back to the 16th
+of September, when I first played and sang and my thoughts began to
+occupy themselves with him. This evening again I was seated at the
+piano, and the same subdued light illumined the room, and next door
+Manuel and the Marchese were at the card-table. I played the Gavotte <i>of
+the Yellow Ladies</i>, of which Francesca is so fond and which I heard some
+one trying to play on the 16th of September while I sat up in my room
+and began my nightly vigils of unrest.</p>
+
+<p>'He, I am sure, is not asleep. When I came upstairs, he went in and took
+the Marchese's place opposite to my husband. Are they playing still?
+Doubtless he is thinking and his heart aches while he plays. What are
+his thoughts?&mdash;what are his sufferings?</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot sleep. I shall go out into the loggia. I want to see if they
+are still playing, or if he has gone to his room. His windows are at the
+corner, in the second story.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a clear, mild night. There are lights still in the card-room. I
+stayed a long time in the loggia looking down at the light shining out
+against the cypresses and mingling with the silvery whiteness of the
+moon. I am trembling from head to foot. I cannot describe the almost
+tragic effect of those lighted windows behind which the two men are
+playing, opposite to one another, in the deep silence of the night,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+scarcely broken by the dull sob of the sea. And they will perhaps play
+on till morning, if he will pander so far to my husband's terrible
+failing. So we shall all three wake till the dawn and take no rest, each
+a prey to his own passion.</p>
+
+<p>'But what is he really thinking of? Of what nature is his pain? What
+would I not give, at this moment, to see him, to be able to gaze at him
+till the day breaks, even if it were only through the window, in the
+night dews, trembling, as I do now, from head to foot. The maddest,
+wildest thoughts rush through my brain like flashes of lightning,
+dazzling and confusing me. I feel the prompting of some evil spirit to
+do some rash and irreparable thing, I feel as if I were treading on the
+edge of perdition. It would, I feel, lift the great weight from my
+heart, would take this suffocating knot from my throat if, at this
+moment, I could cry aloud, into the silence of the night, with all the
+strength of my soul&mdash;"I love him! I love him! I love him!"'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_III" id="BOOK_III"></a>BOOK III</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Ic" id="CHAPTER_Ic"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER I</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Two or three days after the departure of the Ferr&egrave;s, Sperelli and his
+cousins returned to Rome, Donna Francesca, contrary to her custom,
+wishing to shorten her stay at Schifanoja.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief stay at Naples, Andrea reached Rome on the 24th of
+October, a Sunday, in the first heavy morning rain of the Autumn season.
+He experienced an extraordinary pleasure in returning to his apartments
+in the Casa Zuccari, his tasteful and charming <i>buen retiro</i>. There he
+seemed to find again some portion of himself, something he had missed.
+Nothing was altered; everything about him retained, in his eyes, that
+indescribable look of life which material objects assume, amongst which
+one has lived and loved and suffered. His old servants, Jenny and
+Terenzio, had taken the utmost care of everything, and Stephen had
+attended to every detail likely to conduce to his master's comfort.</p>
+
+<p>It was raining. Andrea went to the window and stood for some time
+looking out upon his beloved Rome. The piazza of the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti
+was solitary and deserted, left to the guardianship of its obelisk. The
+trees along the wall that joins the church to the Villa Medici, already
+half stripped of their leaves, rustled mournfully in the wind and the
+rain. The Pincio alone still shone green, like an island in a lake of
+mist.</p>
+
+<p>And as he gazed, one sentiment dominated all the others in his heart;
+the sudden and lively re-awakening of his old love for Rome&mdash;fairest
+Rome&mdash;that city of cities, immense, imperial, unique&mdash;like the sea, for
+ever young, for ever new, for ever mysterious.</p>
+
+<p>'What time is it?' Andrea asked of Stephen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was about nine o'clock. Feeling somewhat tired, he determined to have
+a sleep: also, that he would see no one that day and spend the evening
+quietly at home. Seeing that he was about to re-enter the life of the
+great world of Rome, he wished, before taking up the old round of
+activity, to indulge in a little meditation, a slight preparation; to
+lay down certain rules, to discuss with himself his future line of
+conduct.</p>
+
+<p>'If any one calls,' he said to Stephen, 'say that I have not yet
+returned; and let the porter know it too. Tell James I shall not want
+him to-day, but he can come round for orders this evening. Bring me
+lunch at three&mdash;something very light&mdash;and dinner at nine. That is all.</p>
+
+<p>He fell asleep almost immediately. The servant woke him at two and
+informed him that, just before twelve o'clock, the Duke of Grimiti had
+called, having heard from the Marchesa d'Ateleta that he had returned to
+town.</p>
+
+<p>'Well?'</p>
+
+<p>'Il Signor Duca left word that he would call again in the afternoon.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it still raining? Open the shutters wide.'</p>
+
+<p>The rain had stopped, the sky was lighter. A band of pale sunshine
+streamed into the room and spread over the tapestry representing <i>The
+Virgin with the Holy Child and Stefano Sperelli</i>, a work of art brought
+by Giusto Sperelli from Flanders in 1508. Andrea's eyes wandered slowly
+over the walls, rejoicing in the beautiful hangings, the harmonious
+tints; and all these things so familiar and so dear to him seemed to
+offer him a welcome. The sight of them afforded him intense pleasure,
+and then the image of Maria Ferr&egrave;s rose up before him.</p>
+
+<p>He raised himself a little on the pillows, lit a cigarette and abandoned
+himself luxuriously to his meditations. An unwonted sense of comfort and
+well-being filled his body, while his mind was in its happiest vein. His
+thoughts mingled with the rings of smoke in the subdued light in which
+all forms and colours assume a pleasing vagueness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Instead of reverting to the days that were past, his thoughts carried
+him forward into the future.&mdash;He would see Donna Maria again in two or
+three months&mdash;perhaps much sooner; there was no saying. Then he would
+resume the broken thread of that love which held for him so many obscure
+promises, so many secret attractions. To a man of culture, Donna Maria
+Ferr&egrave;s was the Ideal Woman, Baudelaire's <i>Amie avec des hanches</i>, the
+perfect <i>Consolatrix</i>, the friend who can hold out both comfort and
+pardon. Though she had marked those sorrowful lines in the volume of
+Shelley, she had, most assuredly, said very different words in her
+heart. 'I can never be thine!' Why <i>never</i>? Ah, there had been too much
+passionate intensity for that in the voice in which she answered him
+that day in the wood at Vicomile&mdash;'I love you! I love you! I love you!'</p>
+
+<p>He could hear her voice now, that never-to-be-forgotten voice!</p>
+
+<p>Stephen knocked at the door. 'May I remind the Signor Conte that it is
+three o'clock?'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea rose and passed into the octagonal room to dress. The sun shone
+through the lace window screens and sparkled on the Hispano-Mauresque
+tiles, the innumerable toilet articles of crystal and silver, the
+bas-reliefs on the antique sarcophagus; its dancing reflections
+imparting a delightful sense of movement to the air. He felt in the best
+of spirits, completely cured, full of the joy and the vivacity of life.
+He was inexpressibly happy to be back in his home once more. All that
+was most frivolous, most capricious, most worldly in him awoke with a
+bound. It was as if the surrounding objects had the power to evoke in
+him the man of former days. His sensual curiosity, his elasticity, his
+ubiquity of mind reappeared. He already began to feel the necessity of
+expansion, of mixing in the world of pleasure and with his friends.</p>
+
+<p>He discovered that he was very hungry, and ordered the servant to bring
+the lunch at once. He rarely dined at home, but for special
+occasions&mdash;some <i>recherch&eacute;</i> lunch or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> private little supper&mdash;he had a
+dining-room decorated with eighteenth century Neapolitan tapestries
+which Carlo Sperelli had ordered of Pietro Dinanti in 1766 from designs
+by Storace. The seven wall panels represented episodes of Bacchic love,
+the porti&egrave;res and the draperies above the doors and windows having
+groups of fruit and flowers. Shades of gold&mdash;pale or
+tawny&mdash;predominated, and mingling with the warm, pearly flesh-tints and
+sombre blues, formed a harmony of colour that was both delicate and
+sumptuous.</p>
+
+<p>'When the Duke of Grimiti comes back, show him up,' he said to the
+servant.</p>
+
+<p>Into this room too, the sun, sinking towards the Monte Mario, shot his
+dazzling rays. You could hear the rumble of the carriages in the piazza
+of the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti. The rain over, it looked as if all the
+luminous gold of the Roman October were spread out over the city.</p>
+
+<p>'Open the window,' he said to the servant.</p>
+
+<p>The noise of the carriage wheels was louder now, a soft damp breeze
+stirred the curtains lightly.</p>
+
+<p>'Divine Rome!' he thought as he looked at the sky between the wide
+curtains.</p>
+
+<p>An irresistible curiosity drew him to the open window.</p>
+
+<p>Rome appeared, all pearly gray, spread out before him, its lines a
+little blurred like a faded picture, under a Claude Lorrain sky,
+sprinkled with ethereal clouds, their noble grouping lending to the
+clear spaces between an indescribable delicacy, as flowers lend a new
+grace to the verdure which surrounds them. On the distant heights the
+gray deepened gradually to amethyst. Long trailing vapours slid through
+the cypresses of the Monte Mario like waving locks through a comb of
+bronze. Close by, the pines of the Monte Pincio spread their sun-gilded
+canopies. Below, on the piazza, the obelisk of Pius <span class="smcap">vi</span>. looked like a
+pillar of agate. Under this rich autumnal light everything took on a
+sumptuous air.</p>
+
+<p>Divine Rome!</p>
+
+<p>He feasted his eyes on the prospect before him. Looking down, he saw a
+group of red-robed clerics pass along by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> church; then the black
+coach of a prelate with its two black, long-tailed horses; then other
+open carriages containing ladies and children. He recognised the
+Princess of Ferentino with Barbarella Viti, followed by the Countess of
+Lucoli driving a pair of ponies and accompanied by her great Danish
+hound. A perturbing breath of the old life passed over his spirit,
+awakening indeterminate desires in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>He left the window and returned to his lunch. The sun shone on the wall
+and lit up a dance of satyrs round a Silenus.</p>
+
+<p>'The Duke of Grimiti and two other gentlemen,' announced the servant.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke entered with Ludovico Barbarisi and Giulio Musellaro. Andrea
+hastened forward to meet them and they greeted him warmly.</p>
+
+<p>'You, Giulio!' exclaimed Sperelli, who had not seen his friend for more
+than two years. How long have you been in Rome?'</p>
+
+<p>'Only a week. I was going to write to you to Schifanoja, but thought I
+would rather wait till you came back. And how are you? You are looking a
+little thin, but very well. It was only when I got back to Rome that I
+heard of your affair; otherwise, I would certainly have come from India
+to offer you my services. At the beginning of May, I was at Padmavati in
+the Bahara. What a heap of things I have to tell you!'</p>
+
+<p>'And so have I!'</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands heartily a second time. Sperelli seemed overjoyed. None
+of his friends were so dear to him as Musellaro, for his noble
+character, his keen and penetrating mind and rare culture.</p>
+
+<p>'Ruggiero&mdash;Ludovico&mdash;sit down. Giulio, will you sit here?'</p>
+
+<p>He offered them tea, cigarettes, liqueurs. The conversation grew very
+lively. Grimiti and Barbarisi gave the news of Rome, especially the more
+spicy items of society gossip. The aroma of the tea mingled with that of
+the tobacco.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I have brought you a chest of tea,' said Musellaro to Sperelli, 'and
+much better tea too than your famous Kien Loung used to drink.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, do you remember, in London, how he used to make tea after the
+poetical method of the Great Emperor?'</p>
+
+<p>'I say,' said Grimiti, 'do you know that the fair Clara Green is in
+Rome? I saw her on Sunday at the Villa Borghese. She recognised me and
+stopped her carriage to speak to me. She is as lovely as ever. You
+remember her passion for you, and how she went on when she thought you
+were in love with Constance Landbrooke? She instantly asked for news of
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should be very pleased to see her again. Does she still dress in
+green and wear sunflowers in her hat?</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no. She has apparently abandoned the &aelig;sthetic for good and all. She
+goes in for feathers now. On Sunday, she was wearing an enormous hat &agrave;
+la Montpensier with a perfectly fabulous feather in it.'</p>
+
+<p>'The season is in full swing, I suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>'Earlier than usual this year, both as to saints and sinners.'</p>
+
+<p>'Which of the saints are already in Rome?'</p>
+
+<p>'Almost all&mdash;Giulia Moceto, Barbarella Viti, the Princess of Micigliano,
+Laura Miano, the Marchesa Massa d'Alba, the Countess Lucoli&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'I saw her just now from the window, driving. And I saw your cousin too
+with Barbarella Viti.'</p>
+
+<p>'My cousin is only here till to-morrow, then she goes back to Frascati.
+On Wednesday, she gives a kind of garden party at the villa in the style
+of the Princess of Sagan. Costume is not absolutely <i>de rigueur</i>, but
+the ladies will all wear Louis <span class="smcap">xv.</span> or Directoire hats. We are going.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are not leaving Rome again so soon, I hope?' Grimiti asked of
+Sperelli.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall stay till the beginning of November. Then I am going to France
+for a fortnight to see about some horses. I shall be back in Rome about
+the end of the month.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Talking of horses,' said Ludovico, 'Leonetto Lanza wants to sell
+<i>Campomorto</i>. You know it&mdash;a magnificent animal, a first-rate jumper.
+That would be something for you.'</p>
+
+<p>'How much does he want for it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Fifteen thousand lire, I think.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we might see&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Leonetto is going to be married directly. He got engaged this summer at
+Aix-les-Bains.'</p>
+
+<p>'I forgot to tell you,' said Musellaro, 'that Galeazzo Secinaro sends
+you his remembrances. We travelled back from India together. If you only
+knew of all Galeazzo's doughty deeds on the journey! He is at Palermo
+now, but he will be in Rome in January.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Gino Bomminaco begs to be remembered to you,' added Barbarisi.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, ha!' exclaimed the duke with a burst of laughter, 'you should get
+Gino to tell you the story of his adventure with Donna Giulia Moceto.
+You are, I fancy, in a position to give us some details on the subject
+of Donna Giulia.'</p>
+
+<p>Ludovico, too, began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I know,' broke in Musellaro, 'you have made the most tremendous
+conquests in Rome. <i>Gratulator tibi</i>!'</p>
+
+<p>'But tell me&mdash;do tell me about this adventure,' asked Andrea with
+impatient curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>These subjects excited him. Encouraged by his friends, he launched forth
+into a discourse on female beauty, displaying the profound knowledge and
+fervour of a connoisseur, taking a pleasure in using the most
+highly-coloured expressions, with the subtle distinctions of an artist
+and a libertine. Indeed, had any one taken the trouble to write down the
+conversation of the four young men within these walls, hung with the
+voluptuous scenes of the Bacchic tapestries, it might well have formed
+the <i>Breviarium arcanum</i> of upper-class corruption at the end of the
+nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The shades of evening were falling, but the air was still permeated with
+light as a sponge absorbs the water.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> Through the windows, one caught a
+glimpse of the horizon and a band of orange against which the cypresses
+of the Monte Mario stood out sharply like the teeth of a great ebony
+rake. Ever and anon, came the cawing of the rooks, assembling in groups
+on the roof of the Villa Medici before descending on the Villa Borghese
+and into the narrow Valley of Sleep.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you going to do this evening?' Barbarisi asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'I really don't know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, come with us&mdash;dinner at eight, at Doney's, to inaugurate
+his new restaurant at the Teatro Nazionale.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, come with us, do come with us!' entreated Giulio Musellaro.</p>
+
+<p>'Besides the three of us,' continued the duke, 'there will be Giulia
+Arici, B&eacute;b&eacute; Silva and Maria Fortuna&mdash;That reminds me&mdash;capital idea!&mdash;you
+bring Clara Green.'</p>
+
+<p>'A capital idea!' echoed Ludovico Barbarisi.</p>
+
+<p>'And where shall I find Clara Green?'</p>
+
+<p>'At the Hotel de l'Europe, close by, in the Piazza di Spagna. A note
+from you would put her in the seventh heaven. She is certain to give up
+any other engagement she may have.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea was quite agreeable to the plan.</p>
+
+<p>'But it would be better if I called on her,' he said. 'She is pretty
+sure to be in now. Don't you think so, Ruggiero?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, dress quick and come out with us now.'</p>
+
+<p>Clara Green had just come in. She received Andrea with childish delight.
+No doubt she would have preferred to dine alone with him, but she
+accepted the invitation without hesitating, wrote a note to excuse
+herself from a previous engagement, and sent the key of her box at the
+theatre to a lady friend. She seemed overjoyed. She told him a string of
+sentimental stories and vowed that she had never been able to forget
+him; holding Andrea's hands in hers while she talked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I love you more than words can say, Andrew:</p>
+
+<p>She was still young. With her pure and regular profile, her pale gold
+hair parted and knotted very low on her neck, she looked like a beauty
+in a Keepsake. A certain affectation of &aelig;stheticism clung to her since
+her liaison with the poet-painter Adolphus Jeckyll, a disciple in poetry
+of Keats, in painting of Holman Hunt; a composer of obscure sonnets, a
+painter of subjects from the <i>Vita Nuova</i>. She had sat to him for a
+<i>Sibylla Palmifera</i> and a <i>Madonna with the Lily</i>. She had also sat to
+Andrea for a study of the head of Isabella in Boccaccio's story. Art
+therefore had conferred upon her the stamp of nobility. But, at bottom,
+she possessed no spiritual qualities whatsoever; she even became
+tiresome in the long-run by reason of that sentimental romanticism so
+often affected by English <i>demi-mondaines</i> which contrasts so strangely
+with the depravity of their licentiousness.</p>
+
+<p>'Who would have thought that we should ever be together again, Andrew?'</p>
+
+<p>An hour later, Andrea left her and returned to the Palazzo Zuccari by
+the little flight of steps leading from the Piazza Mignanelli to the
+Trinit&agrave;. The murmur of the city floated up the solitary little stairway
+through the mild air of the October evening. The stars twinkled in a
+cool pure sky. Down below, at the Palazzo Casteldelfina, the shrubs
+inside the little gate cast vague uncertain shadows in the mysterious
+light, like marine plants waving at the bottom of an aquarium. From the
+palace, through a lighted window with red curtains, came the tinkle of a
+piano. The church bells were ringing. Andrea felt his heart suddenly
+grow heavy. The recollection of Donna Maria came back to him with a
+rush, filling him with a dim sense of regret, almost of remorse. What
+was she doing at this moment? Thinking? Suffering? Deep sadness fell
+upon him. He felt as if something in the depths of his heart had taken
+flight&mdash;he could not define what it was, but it affected him as some
+irreparable loss.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of his plan of the morning&mdash;an evening of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> solitude in the
+rooms to which some day perhaps she might come, an evening, sad yet
+sweet, in company with remembrances and dreams, in company with her
+spirit, an evening of meditation and self-communings. In truth, he had
+kept well to his promises! He was on his way to a dinner with friends
+and <i>demi-mondaines</i> and, doubtless, would go home with Clara Green
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>His regret was so poignant, so intolerable, that he dressed with
+unwonted rapidity, jumped into his brougham and arrived at the hotel
+before the appointed time. He found Clara ready and waiting, and offered
+her a drive round the streets of Rome to pass the time till eight
+o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>They drove through the Via del Babuino, round the obelisk in the Piazza
+del Popolo, along the Corso and to the right down the Via della
+Fontanella di Borghese, returning by the Montecitorio to the Corso which
+they followed as far as the Piazza di Venezia and so to the Teatro
+Nazionale. Clara kept up an incessant chatter, bending, every other
+minute, towards her companion to press a kiss on the corner of his
+mouth, screening the furtive caress behind a fan of white feathers which
+gave out a delicate odour of 'white rose.' But Andrea appeared not to
+hear her, and even her caress only drew from him a slight smile.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Che pensi?</i>' she asked, pronouncing the Italian words with a certain
+hesitation which was very taking.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing,' returned Andrea, taking up one of her ungloved hands and
+examining the rings.</p>
+
+<p><i>'Chi lo sa!</i>' she sighed, throwing a vast amount of expression into
+these three words, which foreign women pick up at once, because they
+imagine that they contain all the pensive melancholy of Italian love.
+'<i>Chi lo sa!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden change of humour, Andrea kissed her on the ear, slipped an
+arm round her waist and proceeded to say a host of foolish things to
+her. The Corso was very lively, the shop windows resplendent,
+newspaper-vendors yelled, public and private vehicles crossed the path
+of their carriage; all the stir and animation of Roman evening life was
+in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> full swing from the Piazza Colonna to the Piazza di Venezia.</p>
+
+<p>It was ten minutes past eight by the time they reached Doney's. The
+other guests were already there. Andrea Sperelli greeted the assembled
+company, and taking Clara Green by the hand&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'This,' he said, 'is Miss Clara Green, <i>ancilla Domini, Sibylla
+palmifera, candida puella</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Ora pro nobis!</i>' replied Musellaro, Barbarisi, and Grimiti in chorus.</p>
+
+<p>The women laughed though they did not understand. Clara smiled, and
+slipping out of her cloak appeared in a white dress, quite simple and
+short, with a V-shaped opening back and front, a knot of sea-green
+ribbon on her left shoulder, and emeralds in her ears, perfectly
+unabashed by the triple scrutiny of Giulia Arici, B&eacute;b&eacute; Silva and Maria
+Fortuna.</p>
+
+<p>Musellaro and Grimiti were old acquaintances; Barbarisi was introduced.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea proceeded&mdash;'Mercedes Silva, surnamed B&eacute;b&eacute;&mdash;<i>chica pero qualsa</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Maria Fortuna, a veritable <i>Fortuna publica</i> for our Rome which has the
+good fortune to possess her.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, turning to Barbarisi&mdash;'Do us the honour to present us to this lady
+who is, if I am not mistaken, the divine Giulia Farnese.'</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;Arici,' Giulia broke in.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I beg your pardon, but really, to believe that, I should have to
+call upon all my powers of credulity and to consult Pinturicchio in the
+Fifth Room.'</p>
+
+<p>He uttered these absurdities with a grave smile, amusing himself by
+bewildering and teasing these pretty fools. In the <i>demi-monde</i> he
+adopted a manner and style entirely his own, using grotesque phrases,
+launching the most ridiculous paradoxes or atrocious impertinences under
+cover of the ambiguity of his words; and all this in most original
+language, rich in a thousand different flavours, like a Rabelaisian
+<i>olla podrida</i> full of strong spices and succulent morsels.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Pinturicchio,' asked Giulia turning to Barbarisi; 'who's that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Pinturicchio,' exclaimed Andrea, 'oh, a sort of feeble house-painter
+who once took it into his head to paint your picture on a door in the
+Pope's apartments. Never mind him&mdash;he is dead.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dead? How?'</p>
+
+<p>'In a most appalling manner! His wife's lover was a soldier from Perugia
+in garrison at Sienna&mdash;ask Ludovico&mdash;he knows all about it, but has
+never liked to tell you, for fear of hurting your feelings. Allow me to
+inform you, B&eacute;b&eacute;, that the Prince of Wales does not begin to smoke till
+between the second and third courses&mdash;never sooner. You are
+anticipating.'</p>
+
+<p>B&eacute;b&eacute; Silva had lighted a cigarette and was eating oysters, while she let
+the smoke curl through her nostrils. She was like a restless schoolboy,
+a little depraved hermaphrodite; pale and thin, the brightness of her
+eyes heightened by fever and kohl, with lips that were too red, and
+short and rather woolly hair that covered her head like an astrachan
+cap. Fixed tightly in her left eye was a single eye-glass; she wore a
+high stiff collar, a white necktie, an open waistcoat, a little black
+coat of masculine cut and a gardenia in her button-hole. She affected
+the manners of a dandy and spoke in a deep husky voice. And just therein
+lay the secret of her attraction&mdash;in this imprint of vice, of depravity,
+of abnormity in her appearance, her attitudes and her words. <i>Sal y
+pimienta</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Maria Fortuna, on the contrary, was of somewhat bovine type, a Madame de
+Parab&egrave;re with a tendency to stoutness.</p>
+
+<p>Like the fair mistress of the Regent, she possessed a very white skin,
+one of those opaque white complexions which seem only to flourish and
+improve on sensual pleasure. Her liquid violet eyes swam in a faint blue
+shadow; and her lips, always a little parted, disclosed a vague gleam of
+pearl behind their soft rosy line, like a half-opened shell.</p>
+
+<p>Giulia Arici took Andrea's fancy very much on account of her
+golden-brown tints and her great velvety eyes of that soft<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> deep
+chestnut that sometimes shows tawny gleams. The somewhat fleshy nose,
+and the full, dewy scarlet, very firm lips gave the lower part of her
+face a frankly animal look. Her eye-teeth, which were too prominent,
+raised her upper lip a little and she continually ran the point of her
+tongue along the edge to moisten it, like the thick petal of a rose
+running over a row of little white almonds.</p>
+
+<p>'Giulia,' said Andrea with his eyes on her mouth, 'Saint Bernard uses,
+in one of his sermons, an epithet which would suit you marvellously. And
+I'll be bound you don't know this either.'</p>
+
+<p>Giulia laughed her sonorous rather vacant laugh, exhaling, in the
+excitement of her hilarity, a more poignant perfume, like a scented
+shrub when it is shaken.</p>
+
+<p>'What will you give me,' continued Andrea, 'if I extract from the holy
+sermon a voluptuous motto to fit you?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know,' she replied laughing, holding a glass of Chablis in her
+long slender fingers. 'Anything you like.'</p>
+
+<p>'The substantive of the adjective.'</p>
+
+<p>'What?'</p>
+
+<p>'We will come back to that presently. The word is: <i>linguatica</i>&mdash;Messer
+Ludovico, you can add this clause to your litanies&mdash;'<i>Rosa linguatica,
+glube nos</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'What a pity,' said Musellaro, 'that you are not at the table of a
+sixteenth-century prince, sitting between a Violante and an Imperia with
+Pietro Aretino, Giulio Romano, and Marc' Antonio!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIc" id="CHAPTER_IIc"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The year was dying gracefully. A late wintry sun filled the sky over
+Rome with a soft, mild, golden light that made the air feel almost
+spring-like. The streets were full as on a Sunday in May. A stream of
+carriages passed and repassed rapidly through the Piazza Barberini and
+the Piazza di Spagna, and from thence a vague and continuous rumble
+mounted to the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti and the Via Sistina and even faintly
+reached the apartments of the Palazzo Zuccari.</p>
+
+<p>The rooms began slowly to fill with the scent exhaled from numberless
+vases of flowers. Full-blown roses hung their heavy heads over crystal
+vases that opened like diamond lilies on a golden stem, similar to those
+standing behind the Virgin in the <i>tondo</i> of Botticelli in the Borghese
+Gallery. No other shape of vase is to be compared with this for
+elegance; in that diaphanous prison, the flowers seemed to etherealise
+and had more the air of a religious than an amatory offering.</p>
+
+<p>For Andrea Sperelli was expecting Elena Muti.</p>
+
+<p>He had met her only yesterday morning in the Via Condotti, where she was
+looking at the shops. She had returned to Rome a day or two before,
+after her long and mysterious absence. They had both been considerably
+agitated by the unexpected encounter, but the publicity of the street
+compelled them to treat one another with ceremonious, almost cold
+politeness. However, he had said with a grave, half-mournful air,
+looking her full in the eyes&mdash;'I have much to say to you, Elena; will
+you come to my rooms to-morrow? Everything is just as it used to
+be&mdash;nothing is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> changed.' To which she replied quite simply&mdash;'Very well,
+I will come. You may expect me about four o'clock. I too have something
+to say to you&mdash;but leave me now.'</p>
+
+<p>That she should have accepted the invitation so promptly, without demur,
+without imposing any conditions or seemingly attaching the smallest
+importance to the matter, roused a certain vague suspicion in Andrea's
+mind. Was she coming as friend or lover?&mdash;to renew old ties or to
+destroy all hope of such a thing for ever? What vicissitudes had not
+occurred in this woman's soul during the last two years? Of that he was
+necessarily ignorant, but he had carried away with him the thrill of
+emotion called up in him by Elena's glance when they suddenly met in the
+street and he bent his head in greeting before her. It was the same look
+as of old&mdash;so tender, so deep, so infinitely seductive from under the
+long lashes.</p>
+
+<p>Everything in the arrangement of the rooms showed evidences of special
+loving care. Logs of juniper wood burned brightly on the hearth; the
+little tea-table stood ready with its cups and saucers of Castel-Durante
+majolica, of antique shape and inimitable grace, whereon were depicted
+mythological subjects by Luzio Dolci, with lines from Ovid underneath in
+black characters and a running hand. The light from the windows was
+tempered by heavy curtains of red brocade embroidered all over with
+silver pomegranates, trailing leaves and mottos. The declining sun, as
+it caught the window-panes, cast the shadow of the lace blinds on the
+carpet.</p>
+
+<p>The clock of the Trinit&agrave; struck half-past three. He had half an hour
+still to wait. Andrea rose from the sofa where he had been lying and
+opened one of the windows; he wandered aimlessly about the room, took up
+a book, read a few lines and threw it down again; looked about him
+undecidedly as if searching for something. The suspense was so trying
+that he felt the necessity of rousing himself, of counteracting his
+mental disquietude by physical means. He went over to the fireplace,
+stirred up the logs and put on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> a fresh one. The glowing mass collapsed,
+sending up a shower of sparks, and part of it rolled out as far as the
+fender. The flames broke into a quantity of little tongues of blue fire,
+springing up and disappearing fitfully, while the broken ends of the log
+smoked.</p>
+
+<p>The sight brought back certain memories to him. In days gone by Elena
+had been fond of lingering over this fireside. She expended much art and
+ingenuity in piling the wood high on the fire-dogs, grasping the heavy
+tongs in both hands and leaning her head slightly back to avoid the
+sparks. Her hands were small and very supple, with that tendril-like
+flexibility, so to speak, of a Daphne at the very first onset of the
+fabled metamorphose.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely were these matters arranged to her satisfaction than the logs
+would catch and send forth a sudden blaze, and the warm ruddy light
+would struggle for a moment with the icy gray shades of evening
+filtering through the windows. The sharp fumes of the burning wood
+seemed to rise to her head, and facing the glowing mass Elena would be
+seized with fits of childish glee. She had a rather cruel habit of
+pulling all the flowers to pieces and scattering them over the carpet at
+the end of each of her visits and then stand ready to go, fastening a
+glove or a bracelet, and smile in the midst of the devastation she had
+wrought.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was changed since then. A host of memories were associated with
+these things which Elena had touched, on which her eyes had rested, and
+scenes of that time rose up vividly and tumultuously before him. After
+nearly two years' absence, Elena was going to cross his threshold once
+more. In half an hour, she would be seated in that chair&mdash;a little out
+of breath at first, as of yore&mdash;would have removed her veil&mdash;be
+speaking. All these familiar objects would hear the sound of her voice
+again&mdash;perhaps even her laugh&mdash;after two long years.</p>
+
+<p>'How shall I receive her&mdash;what shall I say?'</p>
+
+<p>He was quite sincere in his anxiety and nervousness, for he had really
+begun to love this woman once more, but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> expression of his
+sentiments, whether verbal or otherwise, was ever with him such an
+artificial matter, so far removed from truth and simplicity, that he had
+recourse to these preparations from pure habit even when, as was the
+case now, he was sincerely and deeply moved.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to imagine the scene beforehand, to compose some phrases; he
+looked about him in the room, considering where would be the most
+appropriate spot for the interview. Then he went over to a looking-glass
+to see if his face were as pale as befitted the occasion, and his gaze
+rested complacently on his forehead, just where the hair began at the
+temples and where, in the old days, Elena was often wont to press a
+delicate kiss. In matters of love, his vitiated and effeminate vanity
+seized upon every advantage of personal grace or of dress to heighten
+the charm of his appearance, and he knew how to extract the greatest
+amount of pleasure therefrom. The chief reason of his unfailing success
+lay in the fact that, in the game of love, he shrank from no artifice,
+no duplicity, no falsehood that might further his cause. A great portion
+of his strength lay in his capacity for deception.</p>
+
+<p>'What shall I do&mdash;what shall I say when she comes?'</p>
+
+<p>His mind was all undecided and yet the minutes were flying. Besides, he
+had no idea in what frame of mind Elena might arrive.</p>
+
+<p>It wanted but two or three minutes now to the hour. His excitement was
+so great that he felt half suffocated. He returned to the window and
+looked out at the steps of the Trinit&agrave;. She used always to come up those
+steps, and when she reached the top, would halt for a moment before
+rapidly crossing the square in front of the Casa Casteldelfina. Through
+the silence, he often heard the tapping of her light footsteps on the
+pavement below.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck four. The rumble of carriage wheels came up from the
+Piazza di Spagna and the Pincio. A great many people were strolling
+under the trees in front of the Villa Medici. Two women seated on a
+stone bench beside the church were keeping watch over some children
+playing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> round the obelisk, which shone rosy red under the sunset, and
+cast a long, slanting, blue-gray shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The air freshened as the sun sank lower. Farther off, the city stood out
+golden against the colourless clear sky, which made the cypresses on the
+Monte Mario look jet black.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea started. A shadow stole up the little flight of steps beside the
+Casa Casteldelfina leading up from the Piazzetta Mignanelli. It was not
+Elena; it was some other lady, who slowly turned the corner into the Via
+Gregoriana.</p>
+
+<p>'What if she did not come at all?' he said to himself as he left the
+window. Coming away from the colder outside air he felt the warmth of
+the room all the more cosy, the scent of the burning wood and the roses
+more piercing sweet, the shadow of the curtains and porti&egrave;res more
+delightfully mysterious. At that moment the whole room seemed on the
+alert for the arrival of the woman he loved. He imagined Elena's
+sensations on entering. It was hardly possible that she should be able
+to resist the influence of these surroundings, so full of tender
+memories for her; she would suddenly lose all sense of time and reality,
+would fancy herself back at one of the old rendezvous, the Elena of
+those happy days. Since nothing was altered in the <i>mise-en-sc&egrave;ne</i> of
+their love, why should their love itself be changed? She must of
+necessity feel the profound charm of all these things which once upon a
+time had been so dear to her.</p>
+
+<p>And now the anguish of hope deferred created a fresh torture for him.
+Minds that have the habit of imaginative contemplation and poetic
+dreaming attribute to inanimate objects a soul, sensitive and variable
+as their own, and recognise in all things&mdash;be it form or colour, sound
+or perfume&mdash;a transparent symbol, an emblem of some emotion or thought;
+in every phenomenon and every group of phenomena they claim to discover
+a psychical condition, a moral significance. At times the vision is so
+lucid as to produce actual pain in such minds, they feel themselves
+overwhelmed by the plenitude of life revealed to them and are terrified
+by the phantom of their own creation.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Andrea saw his own dire distress reflected in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> aspect of the
+objects surrounding him, and as his own fond desires seemed wasting
+fruitlessly in this protracted expectation, so the erotic essence, so to
+speak, of the room appeared to be evaporating and exhaling uselessly. In
+his eyes these apartments in which he had loved and also suffered so
+much had acquired something of his own sensibility&mdash;had not only been
+witness of his loves, his pleasures, his sorrows, but had taken part in
+it all. In his memories, every outline, every tint harmonised with some
+feminine image, was a note in a chord of beauty, an element in an
+ecstasy of passion. The very nature of his tastes led him to seek for a
+diversity of enjoyment in his love, and seeing that he set out upon that
+quest as an accomplished artist and &aelig;sthetic it was only natural that he
+should derive a great part of his delight from the world of external
+objects. To this fastidious actor the comedy of love was nothing without
+the scenery.</p>
+
+<p>From that point of view his stage was certainly quite perfect, and he
+himself a most adroit actor-manager; for he almost always entered heart
+and soul into his own artifice, he forgot himself so completely that he
+was deceived by his own deception, fell into the trap of his own laying,
+and wounded himself with his own weapons&mdash;a magician enclosed in the
+spells of his own weaving.</p>
+
+<p>The roses in the tall Florentine vases, they too were waiting and
+breathing out their sweetness. On the divan cover and on the walls
+inscriptions on silver scrolls singing the praises of woman and of wine
+gleamed in the rays of the setting sun, and harmonised admirably with
+the faded colours of the sixteenth century Persian carpet. Elsewhere the
+shadow was deeply transparent and as if animated by that indefinable
+luminous tremor felt in hidden sanctuaries where some mystic treasure
+lies enshrined. The fire crackled on the hearth, each flame, as Shelley
+puts it, like a separate jewel dissolved in ever moving light. To Andrea
+it seemed that at that moment every shape, every colour, every perfume
+gave forth the essential and delicate spirit of its being. And yet <i>she</i>
+came not, <i>she</i> came not!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For the first time, the thought of her husband presented itself to him.</p>
+
+<p>Elena was no longer free. Some months after her abrupt departure from
+Rome, she had renounced the agreeable liberty of widowhood to marry an
+English nobleman, Lord Humphrey Heathfield. Andrea had seen the
+announcement of the marriage in a society paper in the October following
+and had heard a world of comment on the new Lady Humphrey in every
+country house he stayed in during the autumn. He remembered also having
+met Lord Humphrey some half a score of times during the preceding winter
+at the Saturdays of the Princess Giustiniani-Bandini, or in the public
+sale-rooms. He was a man of about forty, with colourless fair hair, bald
+at the temples, an excessively pale face, a pair of piercing light eyes
+and a prominent forehead, on which a network of veins stood out. He had
+his name of Heathfield from that lieutenant-general who was the hero of
+the defence of Gibraltar and afterwards immortalised by the brush of Sir
+Joshua Reynolds.</p>
+
+<p>What part had this man in Elena's life? What ties, beyond the convention
+of marriage, bound her to him? What transformations had the physical and
+moral contact of this husband brought to pass in her?</p>
+
+<p>These enigmas rose tumultuously before him, making his pain so
+intolerable, that he started up with the instinctive bound of a man who
+has been stabbed unawares. He crossed the room to the ante-chamber and
+listened at the door which he had left ajar. It was on the stroke of a
+quarter to five.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment he heard footsteps on the stair, the rustle of skirts
+and a quick panting breath. A woman was coming up hurriedly. His heart
+beat with such vehemence that&mdash;his nerves all unstrung by his long
+suspense&mdash;he felt hardly able to stand on his feet. The steps drew
+nearer, there was a long-drawn sigh&mdash;a step upon the landing&mdash;at the
+door&mdash;Elena entered.</p>
+
+<p>'O Elena&mdash;at last!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was in that cry such a profound accent of agony endured, that it
+brought to Elena's lips an indescribable smile, mingled of pleasure and
+pity. He took her by her ungloved right hand and drew her into the room.
+She was still a little out of breath, and under her black veil a faint
+flush diffused itself over her whole face.</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive me, Andrea! I could not get away any sooner&mdash;there is so much
+to do&mdash;so many calls to return&mdash;such tiring days! I hardly know where to
+turn. How warm it is in here! What a delicious smell!'</p>
+
+<p>She was standing in the middle of the room&mdash;a little undecided and ill
+at ease in spite of her rapid and lightly spoken words. A velvet coat
+with Empire sleeves, very full at the shoulders and buttoned closely at
+the wrists and with an immense collar of blue fox for sole trimming,
+covered her from head to foot, but without disguising the grace of her
+figure. She looked at Andrea with eyes in which a curious tremulous
+smile softened the flash and sparkle.</p>
+
+<p>'You have changed somehow,' she said; 'I don't quite know what it
+is&mdash;but round your mouth, for instance, there are bitter lines that used
+not to be there.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke in a tone of affectionate familiarity. The sound of her voice
+once more in this room caused him such exquisite delight that he
+exclaimed&mdash;'Speak again, Elena&mdash;go on speaking!'</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. 'Why?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'You know why,' he answered, taking her hand again.</p>
+
+<p>She drew her hand away and looked the young man deep in the eyes. 'I
+know nothing any more.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you have changed very much.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;very much indeed.'</p>
+
+<p>They had both dropped their bantering tone. Elena's answer threw a
+sudden search-light upon much that was problematical before. Andrea
+understood, and with that rapid and precise intuition so often found in
+minds practised in psychological analysis, he instantly divined the
+moral attitude of his visitor, and foresaw the further development of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> coming scene. Moreover, he was already under the spell of this
+woman's fascination as in the former days, besides being greatly piqued
+by curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you not sit down?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;for a moment.'</p>
+
+<p>'Here&mdash;in this arm-chair.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah&mdash;<i>my</i> arm-chair!' she was on the point of exclaiming, for she
+recognised an old friend, but she stopped herself in time.</p>
+
+<p>The chair was deep and roomy, and covered with antique leather on which
+pale dragons ramped in relief, after the style of the wall decorations
+of one of the rooms in the Chigi palace. The leather had taken on that
+warm and sumptuous tone which recalls the background of certain Venetian
+portraits, or a fine bronze still retaining traces of former gilding, or
+a piece of tortoise-shell with gleams of gold here and there. A great
+cushion covered with a piece of a dalmatic of faded colouring&mdash;of that
+peculiar shade which the Florentine silk merchants used to call 'rosa di
+gruogo,' saffron red, contributed to its inviting easiness.</p>
+
+<p>Elena seated herself in it, placing on the tea-table beside her her
+right hand glove and her card-case, a fragile toy in polished silver
+with a device and motto engraven on it. She then proceeded to remove her
+veil, raising her arms high to unfasten the knot, her graceful attitude
+throwing gleams of changeful light on the velvet of her coat, along the
+sleeves and over the contour of her bust. The heat of the fire was very
+strong, and with her bare hand, which shone transparent like rosy
+alabaster, she screened her face from it. The rings on her fingers
+glittered in the firelight.</p>
+
+<p>'Please screen the fire,' she said, 'it is really too fierce.'</p>
+
+<p>'What&mdash;have you lost your fondness for the flames?&mdash;and you used to be a
+perfect salamander. This hearth is full of memories&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Let memory sleep,&mdash;do not stir the embers,' she interrupted him.
+'Screen the fire and let us have some light. I will make the tea.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Won't you take off your coat?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I must go directly&mdash;it is late.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you will be melted.'</p>
+
+<p>She rose with a little gesture of impatience. 'Very well then&mdash;help me,
+please.'</p>
+
+<p>As he helped her off with the mantle, Andrea noticed that the scent was
+not the same as the familiar one of old. However, it was so delicious
+that it thrilled his every sense.</p>
+
+<p>'You have a new scent,' he said with peculiar emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' she answered simply, 'do you like it?'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea still held the mantle in his hands. He buried his face in the fur
+collar which had been next her throat and her hair&mdash;'What is it called?'
+he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>'It has no name.'</p>
+
+<p>She re-seated herself in the arm-chair within the circle of the
+firelight. Her dress was of black lace, on which sparkled a mass of tiny
+jet and steel beads.</p>
+
+<p>The day was fading from the windows. Andrea lit candles of twisted
+orange-coloured wax in wrought-iron candlesticks, after which he drew a
+screen before the fire.</p>
+
+<p>During this pause, both felt a certain perplexing uneasiness; Elena was
+no longer exactly conscious of the moment, nor was she quite mistress of
+herself. In spite of all her efforts she was unable to recall with
+precision her motives for coming here, to follow out her
+intentions&mdash;even to regain her force of will. In the presence of this
+man to whom, once upon a time, she had been bound by such passionate
+ties, and in this spot where she lived the most ardent moments of her
+life, she felt her reserve melting, her mind wavering and growing
+feeble. She was at that dangerously delicious point of sentiment at
+which the soul receives its every impulse, its attitudes, its form from
+its external surroundings as an a&euml;rial vapour from the mutations of the
+atmosphere. But she checked herself before wholly giving way to it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Is that right now?' asked Andrea in a low, almost humble voice.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled without replying. His words had given her inexpressibly keen
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>She began her delicate manipulations&mdash;lit the spirit-lamp under the
+kettle, opened the lacquer tea-caddy and put the necessary quantity of
+aromatic leaves into the tea-pot, and finally prepared two cups. Her
+movements were slow and a little hesitating, as happens when the mind is
+busied with other things than the occupation of the moment; her
+exquisite white hands hovered over the cups with the airiness of
+butterflies, and from her whole lithe form there emanated an indefinable
+charm which enveloped her lover like a caress.</p>
+
+<p>Seated quite close to her, gazing at her from under his half-closed
+lids, Andrea drank in the subtle fascination of her presence. Neither of
+them spoke. Elena, leaning back in the cushions, waited for the water to
+boil, with her eyes fixed on the blue flame while she absently slipped
+her rings up and down her fingers, lost in a dream apparently. But it
+was no dream; it was rather a vague reminiscence, faint, confused and
+evanescent. All the recollections of the love that was past rose up in
+her mind, but dimly and uncertain, leaving an indistinct impression, she
+hardly knew whether of pleasure or of pain. It was like the indefinable
+perfume of a faded bouquet, in which each separate flower has lost the
+vivacity proper to its colour and its fragrance, but from which emanates
+a common perfume wherein all the diverse component elements are
+indistinguishably blended. She seemed to carry in her heart the last
+breath of memories already faded, the last trace of joys departed for
+ever, the last tremor of a happiness that was dead&mdash;something akin to a
+mist from out of which images emerge fitfully without shape or name. She
+knew not, was it pleasure or pain, but by degrees this mysterious
+agitation, this nameless disquiet waxed greater and filled her soul with
+joy and bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent&mdash;withdrawn within herself&mdash;for though her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> heart was full
+to overflowing, her emotion was pleasurably increased by that silence.
+Speech would have broken the charm.</p>
+
+<p>The kettle began its low song.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea on a low seat, with his elbow on his knee and his chin in his
+hand, sat watching the fair woman so intently that Elena, without
+turning, felt that persistent gaze upon her with a sense of physical
+discomfort. And while he gazed upon her he thought to himself that she
+seemed altogether a new woman to him&mdash;one who had never been his, whom
+he had never clasped to his heart.</p>
+
+<p>And in truth, she was even more desirable than in the former days, the
+plastic enigma of her beauty more obscure and more enthralling. Her head
+with the low broad forehead straight nose and arched eyebrows&mdash;so pure
+and firm in outline, so classically antique in the modelling&mdash;might have
+come from some Syracusan coin. The expression of the eyes and that of
+the mouth were in singular contrast, giving her that passionate,
+ambiguous, almost preternatural look that only one or two master-hands,
+deeply imbued in all the profoundest corruption of art, have been able
+to infuse into such immortal types of woman as the Mona Lisa and Nelly
+O'Brien.</p>
+
+<p>The steam began to escape through the hole in the lid of the kettle, and
+Elena turned her attention once more to the tea-table. She poured a
+little water on the leaves; put two lumps of sugar in one of the cups,
+then poured some more water into the tea-pot and extinguished the lamp;
+doing it all with a certain fond care, but never once looking in
+Andrea's direction. By this time her inward agitation had resolved
+itself into such melting tenderness, that there was a lump in her throat
+and her eyes filled involuntarily; all her contradictory thoughts, all
+her trouble and agitation of heart, concentrated themselves in those
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>A movement of her arm knocked the little silver card-case off the table.
+Andrea picked it up and examined the device: two true lovers' knots each
+bearing an inscription in English&mdash;<i>From Dreamland</i>, and <i>A Stranger
+here</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he raised his head, Elena offered him the fragrant beverage with a
+mist of tears before her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He saw that mist, and, filled with love and gratitude at such an
+unlooked-for sign of melting, he put down the cup, sank on his knees
+before her, and seizing her hand pressed his lips passionately to it.</p>
+
+<p>'Elena! Elena!' he murmured, his face close to hers as if he would drink
+the breath from her lips. His emotion was quite sincere, though some of
+the things he said were not. He loved her&mdash;had always loved her&mdash;had
+never, never, never been able to forget her. On meeting her again, he
+had felt his passion rekindle with such vehemence that it had given him
+a kind of shock of terror&mdash;as if in one lightning flash he had witnessed
+the upheaval, the convulsion of his whole life.</p>
+
+<p>'Hush&mdash;hush&mdash;&mdash;' said Elena with a look of pain, and turning very pale.</p>
+
+<p>But Andrea went on, still on his knees, fanning the flames of his
+passion by the images he himself evoked. When she had left him so
+abruptly, he had felt that the greater and better part of him went with
+her. Afterwards&mdash;&mdash;never, never could he tell her all the misery of
+those days, the agony of regret, the ceaseless, implacable, devouring
+torture of mind and body. His wretchedness grew and increased daily till
+it burst all bounds and overwhelmed him utterly. Despair lay in wait for
+him at every turn. The mere flight of time became an intolerable burden.
+His regrets were less for the happy days gone by than for those that
+were passing all profitless for love. Those, at least, had left him a
+memory, these nothing but profoundest regret&mdash;nay, almost remorse. His
+life was preying upon itself, consumed in secret by the inextinguishable
+flame of one desire, by the unconquerable distaste to any other form of
+pleasure. Of all the fiery ardour of his youth nothing now remained to
+him but a handful of ashes. Sometimes, like a dream that vanishes at
+dawn, all the past, all the present would fade and fall away from his
+inner consciousness&mdash;like a tale that is told, a useless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> garment. Then
+he would remember the past no more, as a man newly risen from a long
+illness, a convalescent still overcome with stupor. At last he could
+forget&mdash;his tortured soul was sinking gently down to death.&mdash;&mdash;But
+suddenly, out of the depths of this lethal tranquillity his pain had
+sprung up afresh, and the fallen idol was re-established higher than
+ever. She and she alone held every fibre of his heart captive beneath
+her spells, crushing out his intelligence, keeping the doors of his soul
+against any other passion, any sorrow, any dream to the end of all
+time&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He was lying of course, but his words were so fervid, his voice so
+thrilling, the clasp of his hands so fondly caressing that Elena was
+profoundly touched.</p>
+
+<p>'Hush,' she said, 'I must not, dare not listen to you&mdash;I am yours no
+longer, I never can be yours again&mdash;never. Do not say these things&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;listen&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'I will not&mdash;good-bye&mdash;I must go now. Good-bye, Andrea,&mdash;it is late&mdash;let
+me go.'</p>
+
+<p>She drew her hands out of the young man's clasp, and, successfully
+throwing off the dangerous languor that was creeping over her, she
+prepared to rise.</p>
+
+<p>'Then why did you come?' he asked almost roughly, and preventing her
+from doing so.</p>
+
+<p>Slight as was the force he used, she frowned. She paused before
+answering.</p>
+
+<p>'I came,' she said in measured accents and looking her lover full in the
+eyes&mdash;'I came because you asked me. For the sake of the love that was
+once between us, for the manner in which that love was broken and for
+the long and unexplained silence of my absence I had not the heart to
+refuse your invitation. Besides, I wanted to say what I have said: that
+I am no longer yours&mdash;that I never can be again&mdash;never. That is what I
+wanted to tell you, honestly and frankly, to save you and myself all
+painful disillusionment, all danger or bitterness in the future.&mdash;Do you
+understand?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Andrea bowed his head almost to her knee in silence. She stroked his
+hair with a familiar gesture of old.</p>
+
+<p>'And then,' she went on in a voice that thrilled him to the heart's
+core&mdash;'and then&mdash;I wanted to tell you&mdash;that I love you&mdash;love you as much
+as ever: that you are still the heart of my heart and that I will be the
+fondest of sisters to you, the best of friends&mdash;do you understand?'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea made no reply. She took his head between her hands and raised it,
+forcing him to look her in the face.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you understand?' she repeated in a still lower, sweeter tone. Her
+eyes under the shadow of the long lashes were suffused with a pure and
+tender light, her lips were slightly open and trembling.</p>
+
+<p>'No; you never loved me, and you do not love me now!' Andrea burst out
+at last, pulling Elena's hands from his temples and drawing away from
+her, for he was sensible of the fire that was kindling in his veins
+under the mere gaze of those eyes, and his regret at having lost
+possession of this fairest of women grew more bitter and poignant than
+before. 'No, you never loved me. You had the heart to strike your love
+dead at a blow&mdash;treacherously almost&mdash;just when it had reached its
+supremest height. You ran away, you deserted me, left me alone in my
+bewilderment, my misery, while I was still blinded by your promises. You
+never loved me&mdash;neither then nor now. And now, after such a long
+absence, so full of mystery, so silent and inexorable, after I have
+wasted the bloom of my life in cherishing a wound that was dear to me
+because your hand had dealt it&mdash;after so much joy and so much pain, you
+return to this room, in which every object is replete for us with living
+memories, and you say to me calmly&mdash;"I am yours no
+longer&mdash;good-bye."&mdash;Oh no&mdash;you do not love me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you are ungrateful!' she cried, deeply wounded by the young man's
+incensed tone. 'What do you know of all that has occurred, or of what I
+have had to go through?&mdash;What do you know?'</p>
+
+<p>'I know nothing, and what is more, I do not want to,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> Andrea retorted
+stubbornly, enveloping her in a darkling look in which burned the fever
+of his desire. 'All I know is that you were mine once&mdash;wholly and
+without reserve, and I know that body and soul I shall never forget
+it&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Be silent!'</p>
+
+<p>'What do I care for your sisterly affection? In spite of yourself you
+offer it with your eyes full of quite another kind of love, and you
+cannot touch me without your hands trembling. I have seen that look in
+your eyes too often, you have too often felt me tremble with passion
+beneath your hands&mdash;I love you!'</p>
+
+<p>Carried away by his own words he grasped her wrists tightly and drew so
+close to her that she felt his hot breath on her cheek. 'I love you, I
+tell you&mdash;more than ever before,' he went on, slipping an arm about her
+waist to draw her to his kiss&mdash;'Have you forgotten&mdash;have you forgotten?'</p>
+
+<p>She pushed him forcibly from her and rose to her feet, trembling in
+every limb.</p>
+
+<p>'I will not&mdash;do you hear?'</p>
+
+<p>But he would not hear. He came towards her with arms outstretched, very
+pale and determined.</p>
+
+<p>'Could you bear,' she cried turning at bay at last, indignant at his
+violence, 'could you bear to share me with another?'</p>
+
+<p>She flung the cruel question at him point-blank, without reflection, and
+now stood looking at her lover with wide open frightened eyes, like one
+who in self-defence has dealt a blow without measuring his strength, and
+fears to have struck too deep.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea's frenzy dropped on the instant, and his face expressed such
+overwhelming pain that Elena was stricken to the heart.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment's silence&mdash;'Good-bye!' he said, but that one word
+contained all the bitterness of the words he refrained from saying.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye,' she answered gently, 'forgive me.'</p>
+
+<p>They both felt the necessity of putting an end, at least for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> that
+evening, to this perilous conversation. Andrea affected an almost
+over-strained courtesy. Elena became even gentler, almost humble. A
+nervous tremor shook her continually.</p>
+
+<p>She took her cloak from the chair and Andrea hastened to assist her. As
+she did not succeed in finding the armholes, Andrea guided her hand to
+it but scarcely touched her. He then offered her her hat and veil.
+'There is a looking-glass in the next room if you would like&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'No, thank you.' She went over beside the fireplace, where on the wall
+hung a quaint little old mirror in a frame surrounded by little figures,
+carved in so airy and vivacious a style that they seemed rather to be of
+malleable gold than of wood. It was a charming thing, the work doubtless
+of some delicate artist of the fifteenth century and designed to reflect
+the charms of some Mona Amorrosisca or some Laldomine. Many a time in
+the old happy days Elena had put on her veil in front of this dim, lack
+lustre mirror. She remembered it again now.</p>
+
+<p>On seeing her reflection rise out of its misty depths she was stirred by
+a singular emotion. A rush of profound sadness came over her. She did
+not speak.</p>
+
+<p>All this time Andrea was watching her intently.</p>
+
+<p>Her preparations concluded, she said, 'It must be very late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not very&mdash;about six o'clock, I think.'</p>
+
+<p>'I sent away my carriage. I would be very grateful if you could send for
+a closed cab for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Will you excuse me then if I leave you alone for a moment? My servant
+is out.'</p>
+
+<p>She assented. 'And please tell the man yourself where to go to&mdash;the
+Hotel Quirinal.'</p>
+
+<p>He went out and shut the door behind him. She was alone.</p>
+
+<p>She cast a rapid glance around her, embracing the whole room with an
+indefinable look that lingered on the vases of flowers. The room seemed
+to her larger, the ceiling higher than she remembered. She began to feel
+a little giddy. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> did not notice the scent of the flowers any longer,
+but the atmosphere of the room was close and heavy as in a hot-house.
+Andrea's image appeared to her in a sort of intermittent flashes&mdash;a
+vague echo of his voice rang in her ears. Was she going to faint?&mdash;Oh,
+the delight of it if she might close her eyes and abandon herself to
+this languor!</p>
+
+<p>She gave herself a little shake and went over to one of the windows,
+which she opened, and let the breeze blow in her face. Somewhat revived
+by this she turned back into the room. The pale flame of the candles
+sent flickering shadows over the walls. The fire burned low but sufficed
+to light up in part the pious figures on the screen made of stained
+glass from a church window. The cup of tea stood where Andrea had laid
+it down on the table, cold and untouched. The chair cushion retained the
+impress of the form that had leaned against it. All the objects
+surrounding her breathed an ineffable melancholy, which condensed itself
+in a heavy weight upon Elena's heart, till it sank beneath the well nigh
+insupportable burden.</p>
+
+<p><i>'Mio Dio! mio Dio!'</i></p>
+
+<p>She wished she could make her escape unseen. A puff of wind inflated the
+curtains, made the candles flicker, raised a general rustle through the
+room. She shivered, and almost without knowing what she did, she
+called&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Andrea!'</p>
+
+<p>Her own voice&mdash;that name in the silence startled her strangely, as if
+neither voice nor name had come from her lips. Why was Andrea so long in
+returning? She listened.&mdash;&mdash;There was no sound but the dull deep
+inarticulate murmur of the city. Not a carriage passed across the piazza
+of the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti. As the wind came in strong gusts from time to
+time, she closed the window, catching a glimpse as she did so of the
+point of the obelisk, black against the starry sky.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly Andrea had not found a conveyance at once on the Piazza
+Barberini. She sat herself down to wait on the sofa and tried to calm
+her foolish agitation, avoiding all heart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>searchings and endeavouring to
+fix her attention on external objects. Her eyes wandered to the figures
+on the fire-screen, faintly visible by the light of the dying logs. On
+the mantelpiece a great white rose in one of the vases was dropping its
+petals softly, languidly, one by one, giving an impression of something
+subtly feminine and sensuous. The cup-like petals rested delicately on
+the marble, like flakes of snow.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, how sweet that fragrant snow had been <i>then</i>! she thought.
+Rose-leaves strewed the carpets, the divan, the chairs, and she was
+laughing, happy in the midst of the devastation, and her happy lover was
+at her feet&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A carriage stopped down in the street. She rose and shook her aching
+head to banish the dull weight that seemed to paralyse her. The next
+moment, Andrea entered out of breath.</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive me,' he said, 'for keeping you so long, but I could not find
+the porter, so I went down to the Piazza di Spagna. The carriage is
+waiting for you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks,' answered Elena with a timid glance at him through her black
+veil.</p>
+
+<p>He was grave and pale but quite calm.</p>
+
+<p>'I expect my husband to-morrow,' she went on in a low faint voice. 'I
+will send you a line to let you know when I can see you again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you,' answered Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye then,' she said, holding out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall I see you down to the street? There is no one there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;come down with me.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked about her a little hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you forgotten anything?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>She was looking at the flowers, but she answered, 'Ah&mdash;yes&mdash;my
+card-case.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea sprang to fetch it from the table. '<i>A stranger here</i>?' he read
+as he handed it to her.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>No, my dear, a friend</i>&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was quick, her voice eager. Then suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> with a smile
+peculiarly her own, half imploring, half seductive, a mixture of
+timidity and tenderness, she said: '<i>Give me a rose.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea went from vase to vase gathering all the roses into one great
+bunch which he could scarcely hold in his hands&mdash;some of them shed their
+petals.</p>
+
+<p>'They were for you&mdash;all of them,' he said without looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>Elena hung her head and turned to go in silence followed by Andrea. They
+descended the stairs still in silence. He could see the nape of her neck
+so fair and delicate where the little dark curls mingled with the
+gray-blue fur.</p>
+
+<p>'Elena!' he cried her name in a low voice, incapable any longer of
+fighting against the passion that filled his heart to bursting.</p>
+
+<p>She turned round to him with a finger on her lips&mdash;a gesture of agonised
+entreaty&mdash;but her eyes burned through the shadow. She hastened her
+steps, flung herself into the carriage and felt rather than saw him lay
+the roses in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye! Good-bye!'</p>
+
+<p>And when the carriage turned away she threw herself back exhausted and
+burst into a passion of sobs, tearing the roses to pieces with her poor
+frenzied hands.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIIc" id="CHAPTER_IIIc"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>So she had come, she had come! She had re-entered the rooms in which
+every piece of furniture, every object must retain some memory for her,
+and she had said&mdash;'I am yours no more, can never be yours again, never!'
+and&mdash;'Could you suffer to share me with another?'&mdash;Yes, she had dared to
+fling those words in his face, in that room, in sight of all these
+things!</p>
+
+<p>A rush of pain&mdash;atrocious, immeasurable, made up of a thousand wounds,
+each distinct from the other and one more piercing than the other, came
+over him and goaded him to desperation. Passion enveloped him once more
+in a thousand tongues of fire, re-kindling in him an inextinguishable
+desire for this woman who belonged to him no more, re-awakening in his
+memory every smallest detail of past caresses and all the sweet mad
+doings of those days. And yet through it all, there persisted the
+strange difficulty in identifying that Elena with the Elena of to-day,
+who seemed to him altogether another woman, one whom he had never known,
+never held in his arms. The torture of his senses was such that he
+thought he must die of it. Impurity crept through his blood like a
+corroding poison.</p>
+
+<p>The impurity which <i>then</i> the winged flame of the soul had covered with
+a sacred veil, had surrounded with a mystery that was half divine,
+appeared <i>now</i> without the veil and without the mystery as a mere carnal
+lust, a piece of gross sensuality. He knew that the ardour he had felt
+to-day in her presence was not Love&mdash;had nothing in common with
+Love&mdash;for when she had cried&mdash;'Could you suffer to share me with
+another?'&mdash;Why, yes, he could suffer it perfectly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nothing therefore&mdash;nothing in him had remained intact. Even the memory
+of his grand passion was now corrupted, sullied, debased. The last spark
+of hope was extinct. He had reached his lowest level, never to rise
+again.</p>
+
+<p>He was seized by a terrible and frenzied desire to overthrow the idol
+that still persistently rose up lofty and enigmatic before his
+imagination, do what he would to abase it. With cynical cruelty, he set
+himself to insult, to undermine, to mutilate it. The destructive
+analysis he had already employed upon himself, he now turned upon Elena.
+To those dubious problems which, at one time, he had resolutely put away
+from him, he now sought the answer; of all the suspicions which had
+formerly presented themselves to him only to disappear without leaving a
+trace, he now studied the origin, found them justified and obtained
+their confirmation. But whereas he thought to find relief in this
+furious work of demolition, he only increased his sufferings, aggravated
+his malady and deepened his wounds.</p>
+
+<p>What had been the true cause of Elena's departure two years before?
+There were many conflicting rumours at the time, and again when she
+married Humphrey Heathfield; but the actual truth of the matter was what
+he heard, quite by chance, among other scraps of society gossip, from
+Giulio Musellaro one evening as they left the theatre together, nor did
+Andrea doubt it for a moment. Donna Elena had been obliged to leave Rome
+for pecuniary reasons, to work some 'operation' which should extricate
+her from the serious embarrassments into which her outrageous
+extravagance had plunged her. The marriage with Humphrey Heathfield, who
+was Marquis of Mount Saint Michael and Earl of Broadford, and besides
+possessing a considerable fortune was related to the highest nobility of
+Great Britain, had saved her from ruin. Donna Elena had managed matters
+with the utmost adroitness and succeeded marvellously in steering clear
+of the threatening peril. It was not to be denied that the interval of
+her three years of widowhood had been none too chaste a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> prelude to a
+second marriage&mdash;neither chaste nor prudent&mdash;nevertheless, there was
+also no denying that Elena Muti was a great lady&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, my boy, a grand creature!' said Musellaro, 'as you very well know.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>'But take my advice,' his friend went on, throwing away the cigarette
+which had gone out while he talked, 'do not resume your relations with
+her. It is the same with love as with tobacco&mdash;once out, it will not
+bear relighting. Let us go and get a cup of tea from Donna Giulia
+Moceto. They tell me one may go to her house after the theatre&mdash;it is
+never too late.'</p>
+
+<p>They were close by the Palazzo Borghese.</p>
+
+<p>'You can,' answered Andrea, 'I am going home to bed. I am rather tired
+after to-day's run with the hounds. My regards to Donna Giulia&mdash;my
+blessing go with you!'</p>
+
+<p>Musellaro went up the steps of the palace and Andrea continued on his
+way past the Borghese fountain towards the Trinit&agrave;.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those wonderful January nights, cold and serene, which
+turn Rome into a city of silver set in a ring of diamonds. The full
+moon, hanging in mid-sky, shed a triple purity of light, of frost, and
+of silence.</p>
+
+<p>He walked along in the moonlight like a somnambulist, conscious of
+nothing but his pain. The last blow had been struck, the idol was
+shattered, nothing remained standing above the ruins&mdash;this was the end!</p>
+
+<p>So it was true&mdash;she had never really loved him. She had not scrupled to
+break with him in order to contract a marriage of convenience. And now
+she put on the airs of a martyr before him, wrapped herself round with a
+mantle of conjugal inviolability! A bitter laugh rose to his lips, and
+then a rush of sullen blind rage against the woman came over him. The
+memory of his passion went for nothing&mdash;all the past was one long fraud,
+one stupendous, hideous lie; and this man, who throughout his whole life
+had made a practice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> of dissimulation and duplicity, was now incensed at
+the deception of another, was as indignant at it as at some unpardonable
+backsliding, some inexcusable and inexplicable perfidy. He was quite
+unable to understand how Elena could have committed such a crime; he
+denied her all possibility of justification, and rejected the hypothesis
+of some secret and dire necessity having driven her to sudden flight. He
+could see nothing but the bare brutal fact, its baseness, its
+vulgarity&mdash;above all its vulgarity, gross, manifest, odious, without one
+extenuating circumstance. In short, the whole matter reduced itself to
+this: a passion which was apparently sincere, which they had vowed was
+profound and inextinguishable, had been broken off for a question of
+money, for material interests, for a commercial transaction.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you are ungrateful! What do you know of all that has happened, of
+all I have suffered!'</p>
+
+<p>Elena's words recurred to him with everything else she had said, from
+beginning to end of their interview&mdash;her words of fondness, her offer of
+sisterly affection, all her sentimental phrases. And he remembered, too,
+the tears that had dimmed her eyes, her changes of countenance, her
+tremors, her choking voice when she said good-bye, and he laid the roses
+in her lap. 'But why had she ever consented to come? Why play this part,
+call up all these emotions, arrange this comedy? Why?</p>
+
+<p>By this time he had reached the top of the steps, and found himself in
+the deserted piazza. Suddenly the beauty of the night filled him with a
+vague but desperate yearning towards some unknown good. The image of
+Maria Ferr&egrave;s flashed across his mind; his heart beat fast, he thought of
+what it would be to hold her hands in his, to lean his head upon her
+breast, to feel that she was consoling him without words, by her pity
+alone. This longing for pity, for a refuge, was like the last struggle
+of a soul that will not be content to perish. He bent his head and
+entered the house without turning again to look at the night.</p>
+
+<p>Terenzio was waiting up for him and followed him to the bedroom, where
+there was a fire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Will the Signor Conte go to bed at once?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Terenzio, bring me some tea,' replied his master, sitting down
+before the fire and stretching out his hands to the blaze.</p>
+
+<p>He was shivering all over with a little nervous tremor.</p>
+
+<p>'The Signor Conte is cold?' asked Terenzio, hastening with affectionate
+interest to stir up the fire and put on fresh logs.</p>
+
+<p>He was an old servant of the house of Sperelli, having served Andrea's
+father for many years, and his devotion for the son reached the pitch of
+idolatry. No human being seemed to him so handsome, so noble, so worthy
+of devotion. He belonged to that ideal race which furnished faithful
+retainers to the romance writers of old, but differed from the servants
+of romance in that he spoke little, never offered advice, and concerned
+himself with no other business than that of carrying out his master's
+orders.</p>
+
+<p>'That will do very nicely,' said Andrea, trying to repress the
+convulsive trembling of his limbs and crouching closer over the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of the old man in this hour of misery and distress moved
+him singularly. It was an emotion somewhat similar to that which, in the
+presence of some very kind and sympathetic person, affects a man
+determined upon suicide. Never before had the old man brought back to
+him so strongly the recollection of his father, the memory of the
+beloved dead, his grief for the loss of a great and good friend. Never
+so much as now had he felt the want of that comforting voice, that
+paternal hand. What would his father say could he see his son thus
+crushed under the weight of a nameless distress? How would he have
+sought to relieve him&mdash;what would he have done?</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts turned to the dead father with boundless yearning and
+regret. And he had not the shadow of a suspicion that in the very
+teachings of that father lay the primary cause of his wretchedness.</p>
+
+<p>Terenzio brought the tea. He then proceeded slowly to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> arrange the bed
+with a care and solicitude that were almost womanly, forgetting nothing,
+as if he wished to ensure to his master refreshing and unbroken slumbers
+till the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea watched him with growing emotion. 'Go to bed now, Terenzio,' he
+said. 'I shall not want anything more.'</p>
+
+<p>The old man retired and left him alone before the fire&mdash;alone with his
+heart, alone with his misery. Tortured by his inward agitation, he rose
+and began to pace the room. He was haunted by a vision of Elena, and
+each time he came as far as the window and turned, he fancied he saw her
+and started violently. His nerves were in such an overstrung condition
+that they only increased the disorder of his imagination. The
+hallucination grew more distinct. He stood still and covered his face
+with his hands for a moment to control his excitement, and then returned
+to his seat by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>This time another image rose before him&mdash;that of Elena's husband.</p>
+
+<p>He knew him better now. That very evening in a box at the theatre, Elena
+had introduced them to one another, and he had seized that opportunity
+to examine him attentively in detail with the keenest curiosity, as
+though he hoped to obtain some revelation, to draw some secret from him.
+He could still hear the man's voice&mdash;a voice of very peculiar tone,
+somewhat harsh and strident, with an interrogative inflection at the end
+of each sentence. Again he saw those pale, pale eyes under the great
+prominent forehead, eyes that at times assumed a hideous, glassy, dead
+look, and at others lit up with an indefinable gleam that savoured of
+madness. Those hands too, he saw&mdash;white and smooth and thickly covered
+with sandy yellow down, and with something obscene in their every
+movement; their way of raising the opera-glass, of unfolding a
+handkerchief, of reclining on the cushion in front of the box or turning
+over the pages of the libretto&mdash;hands instinct with vice.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, horror! he saw those hands touching Elena, profaning her with their
+odious caresses.</p>
+
+<p>The torture became insupportable. He rose once more,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> went to the
+window, opened it, shivered under the biting breeze and shook himself.
+The Trinit&agrave; de' Monti glittered in the deep blue sky, sharply outlined
+as if sculptured in faintly tinted marble. Rome, spread out beneath him,
+had a sheen as of crystal, like a city cut in a glacier.</p>
+
+<p>The calm and sparkling cold brought his mind back to the realities of
+life and enabled him to recognise the true condition of his mind. He
+closed the window and sat down again. Once more the enigmatical aspect
+of Elena's character occupied him, questions crowded in upon him
+tumultuously, persistently. But he had the strength of mind to
+co-ordinate them, to attack them one by one, with singular lucidity. The
+deeper he went in his analysis the more lucid became his mental vision,
+and he worked out his psychological revenge with cruel relish. At last
+he felt that he had laid bare a soul, penetrated a mystery. It seemed to
+him, that thus he made Elena infinitely more his own than in the days of
+their passion.</p>
+
+<p>What, after all, was this woman?&mdash;An unbalanced mind in a sensually
+inclined body. As with all who are greedy of pleasure, the foundation of
+her moral being was overweening egotism. Her dominant faculty, her
+intellectual axis, so to speak, was imagination&mdash;an imagination
+nourished upon a wide range of literature, connected with her sex and
+perpetually stimulated by neurotic excitement. Possessed of a certain
+degree of intellectual capacity, brought up in all the luxury of a
+princely Roman house&mdash;that papal luxury which is made up of art and
+history&mdash;she had received a thin coating of &aelig;sthetic varnish, had
+acquired a graceful taste, and, having thoroughly grasped the character
+of her beauty, sought by skilful simulation and a sapient use of her
+marked histrionic talents to enhance its spirituality by surrounding it
+with a delusive halo of ideality.</p>
+
+<p>Into the comedy of human life she thus brought some highly perilous
+elements, and was thereby the occasion of more ruin and disaster than if
+she had been a <i>demi-mondaine</i> by profession.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Under the glamour of her imagination, every caprice assumed an
+appearance of pathos. She was the woman of fulminating passions, of
+suddenly blazing desire. She covered the lusts of the flesh with a
+mantle of ethereal flame, and could transform into a noble sentiment
+what was merely a base appetite.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the scathing judgment brought by Andrea against the woman he
+had once adored. At the root of every action, every expression of
+Elena's love he now discovered studied artifice, an admirable natural
+gift for carrying out a pre-arranged scheme, for playing a dramatic part
+or organising a striking scene. He did not spare their most memorable
+episodes&mdash;neither the first meeting at the Ateletas' dinner, nor the
+Cardinal Immenraet's sale, nor the ball at the French Embassy, nor the
+sudden offer of her love in the red room at the Barberini palace, nor
+their farewells out in the country in the biting March blast. The magic
+draught which had intoxicated him then now seemed but an insidious
+poison.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, in spite of it all, certain points perplexed him, as if in
+penetrating Elena's soul he had penetrated his own, and in the woman's
+perfidy had seen a reflection of his own. There was much affinity
+between their two natures. Therefore he <i>understood</i>, and little by
+little, his contempt changed to ironical indulgence. He was so
+thoroughly conversant with his own mode of procedure.</p>
+
+<p>Then with cold lucidity, he mapped out his plan of campaign. He reviewed
+every detail of the interview that had taken place on New Year's
+Eve&mdash;more than a week ago&mdash;and it pleased him to re-construct the scene,
+but without the slightest indignation or excitement, only smiling
+cynically both at Elena and himself. Why had she come?&mdash;Simply because
+this impromptu <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> with a former lover, in the well-known
+place, after a lapse of two years, had tempted a spirit always on the
+look-out for fresh emotions, had inflamed her imagination and her
+curiosity. She thirsted to see into what new situations, new intrigues
+the dangerous game would lead her. She was perhaps attracted by the
+novelty of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> platonic affection with a person who had already been the
+object of her sensual passion. As ever, she had thrown herself into the
+new part with a certain imaginative fervour. Also it was quite possible
+that, for the moment, she believed what she said, and that this illusory
+sincerity had furnished her with that deep tenderness of accent, those
+despairing attitudes, those tears. How well he knew it all! She had a
+sentimental hallucination as other people have a physical one. She
+forgot that she was acting a lie, was no longer conscious whether she
+were living in a world of truth or falsehood, of fiction or reality.</p>
+
+<p>Now this was precisely the moral phenomenon which so constantly took
+place in himself. Therefore he could not reproach her without injustice.
+But the discovery very naturally deprived him of the hope of deriving
+any pleasure from her other than sensual ones. In any case, mistrust
+would poison all the sweetness of abandon, all soulful rapture. To
+deceive a confiding and faithful heart, dominate a soul by artifice,
+possess it wholly and make it vibrate like an instrument&mdash;<i>habere non
+haberi</i>&mdash;all this, doubtless, gives intense pleasure; but to deceive,
+and know that one is being deceived in return, is a stupid and fruitless
+labour, a tiresome and aimless pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>He must therefore work upon Elena to renounce the sisterly scheme and to
+return to his arms once more. He must regain possession of this
+beautiful woman, extract the utmost possible pleasure from her beauty
+and free himself for ever of this passion by reaching the point of
+satiety. But it was a task demanding prudence and patience. In that
+first interview, his ardour had availed him nothing. Obviously, she had
+founded her plan of impeccability on the grand phrase&mdash;'Could you endure
+to share me with another?' The mainspring of the great platonic business
+was a virtuous horror of divided possession. For the rest, it was just
+within the bounds of possibility that this horror was not feigned. Most
+women addicted to the practice of free love, if they do eventually
+marry, affect, during the early days of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> marriage, a savage
+virtue, and make professions of conjugal fidelity with the most honest
+determination. Perhaps, therefore, Elena had been affected by this
+common scruple, in which case, nothing would be more ill-advised than to
+show his hand too boldly and offend against her new-found virtue. The
+better plan would be to second her spiritual aspirations, accept her as
+'the fondest of sisters, the truest of friends,' intoxicate her with the
+ideal, be skilfully platonic and then make her glide imperceptibly from
+frank sisterly relations to a more passionate friendship, and from
+thence to the complete surrender of her person. In all probability these
+transitions would occur very rapidly. It all depended upon a wise
+adjustment of circumstances&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Thus Andrea Sperelli reasoned, sitting in front of the fire which had
+glowed upon Elena, laughing among the scattered rose leaves. A boundless
+lassitude weighed upon him, a lassitude which did not invite sleep, a
+sense of weariness, so empty, so disconsolate as to be almost a longing
+for death; while the fire died out on the hearth and the tea grew cold
+in the cup.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IVc" id="CHAPTER_IVc"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>He waited in vain during the days that followed for the promised note to
+tell him when he might see Elena again&mdash;&mdash;So she did intend to make
+another appointment with him; the question was&mdash;where? At the Casa
+Zuccari again? Would she risk such an imprudence a second time? This
+uncertainty kept him on the rack. He passed whole hours in searching for
+some way of meeting her, of seeing her again. He went several times to
+the Hotel Quirinal in the hope of being received, but never once did he
+find her at home. One evening, he saw her again in the theatre with
+'Mumps,' as she called her husband. Though only saying the usual things
+about the music, the singers, the ladies, he infused a supplicating
+melancholy into his gaze. She seemed greatly taken up by the arrangement
+of their house. They were going back to the Palazzo Barberini, her old
+quarters, but were having them much enlarged, and she was for ever
+occupied with upholsterers and decorators, giving orders and
+superintending the placing of the furniture.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you going to stay long in Rome?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' she answered&mdash;'Rome will be our winter residence.' Then, after a
+moment's pause&mdash;'You could give us some very good advice about the
+furniture. Come to the palace one of these days. I am always there from
+ten to twelve.'</p>
+
+<p>He took advantage of a moment when Lord Heathfield was talking to Giulio
+Musellaro, who had just entered the box, to say to her, looking her full
+in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'To-morrow?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'By all means,' she replied with perfect simplicity, as if she had not
+noticed the tone of his question.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, about eleven, he set off on foot to the Palazzo
+Barberini through the Via Sistina. It was a road he had often traversed
+before&mdash;and, for a moment, the impressions of those days seemed to come
+back to him, and his heart swelled. The fountain of Bernini shone
+curiously luminous in the sunshine, as if the dolphins and the Triton
+with his conch-shell had, by some interrupted metamorphose transformed
+themselves into a more diaphanous material&mdash;not stone, nor yet quite
+crystal. The noise of the building of new Rome filled all the piazza and
+the adjoining streets; country children ran in and out between the carts
+and horses offering violets for sale.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed through the gate and entered the garden, he felt that he
+was beginning to tremble. 'Then I <i>do</i> love her still?' he thought to
+himself&mdash;'Is she still the woman of <i>my dreams</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the great palace, radiant under the morning sun, and his
+spirit flew back to the days when, in certain chill and misty dawns,
+this same palace had assumed for him a look of enchantment. That was in
+the early times of his happiness, when he came away warm from her kisses
+and full of his new-found bliss; the bells of Trinit&agrave; de' Monti, of San
+Isidoro and the Cappuccini rang out the Angelus into the dawning day,
+with a muffled peal as if out of the far distance&mdash;at the corner of the
+street, fires glowed red round cauldrons of boiling asphalt&mdash;a little
+herd of goats stood against the white wall of the slumbering house&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>These forgotten sensations rose up once more out of the depths of his
+consciousness, and, for an instant, a wave of the old love swept over
+his soul, for one moment he tried to imagine that Elena was still the
+Elena of those days, that his happiness had endured till now, that none
+of these miserable things were true. As he crossed the threshold of the
+palace, all this illusory ferment died away on the instant, for Lord
+Heathfield came forward to greet him with his habitual and somewhat
+ambiguous smile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With that his torture began.</p>
+
+<p>Elena appeared, and shaking hands cordially with him in her husband's
+presence, she said&mdash;'Bravo, Andrea! Come and help us, come and help us!'</p>
+
+<p>She talked and gesticulated with much vivacity and looked very girlish
+in a close-fitting jacket of dark-blue cloth, trimmed round the high
+collar and the cuffs with black astrachan and fine black braiding. She
+kept one hand in her pocket in a graceful attitude, and with the other
+pointed out the various wall-hangings, the pictures, the furniture,
+asking his advice as to their most advantageous disposal.</p>
+
+<p>'Where would you put these two chests? Look&mdash;Mumps picked them up at
+Lucca. These pictures are your beloved Botticelli's.&mdash;Where would you
+hang these tapestries?'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea recognised the four pieces of tapestry from the Immenraet sale
+representing the Story of Narcissus. He looked at Elena, but could not
+catch her eye. A profound sense of irritation against her, against her
+husband, against all these things took possession of him. He would have
+liked to go away, but politeness demanded that he should place his good
+taste at the service of the Heathfields; it also obliged him to submit
+to the arch&aelig;ological erudition of 'Mumps,' who was an ardent collector
+and was anxious to show him some of his finds. In one cabinet Andrea
+caught sight of the Pollajuolo helmet, and in another of the
+rock-crystal goblet which had belonged to Niccolo Niccoli. The presence
+of that particular goblet in this particular place moved him strangely
+and sent a flash of mad suspicion through his mind.</p>
+
+<p>So it had fallen into the hands of Lord Heathfield! The famous
+competition between the Countesses having come to nothing, nobody
+troubled themselves further about the fate of the goblet, and none of
+the party had returned to the sale after that day. Their ephemeral zeal
+had languished and finally died out and passed away, like everything
+else in the world of fashion, and the goblet had been abandoned to the
+competition of other collectors. The thing was perfectly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> natural, but
+at that moment it appeared to Andrea most extraordinary.</p>
+
+<p>He purposely stopped before the cabinet and gazed long at the precious
+goblet on which the story of Venus and Anchises glittered as if cut in a
+pure diamond.</p>
+
+<p>'Niccolo Niccoli!' said Elena, pronouncing the name with an indefinable
+accent in which the young man seemed to catch a note of sadness.</p>
+
+<p>The husband had just gone into another room to open a cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>'Remember&mdash;remember!' murmured Andrea, turning towards her.</p>
+
+<p>'I do remember.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then when may I see you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, when?'</p>
+
+<p>'But you promised me&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Heathfield returned. They passed on into an adjoining room, making
+the tour of the apartments. Everywhere they met workmen hanging papers,
+draping curtains, carrying furniture. Each time Elena asked his opinion,
+Andrea had to make an effort before answering her, in order to disguise
+his ill-humour and his impatience. At last, he managed to seize a moment
+when her husband was occupied with one of the men to say to her in a low
+voice, unable any longer to conceal his chagrin&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Why inflict this torture upon me? I expected to find you alone.'</p>
+
+<p>Passing through one of the doors, Elena's hat caught in the porti&egrave;re and
+was dragged out of place. She laughed and called to Mumps to come and
+unfasten her veil. And Andrea was forced to look on while those odious
+hands touched the hair of the woman he desired, ruffling the little
+curls at the back of her neck, those curls which under his caresses had
+seemed to breathe out a mysterious perfume, unlike any other, and
+sweeter and more intoxicating than all the rest.</p>
+
+<p>He hurriedly took his leave under pretext of being due at lunch with
+some one else.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'We shall move in here on the 1st of February,' Elena said to him, 'and
+then I hope you will be one of our <i>habitu&eacute;s</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea bowed.</p>
+
+<p>He would have given worlds not to be obliged to touch Lord Heathfield's
+hand. He went away filled with rancour, jealousy and disgust.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Vc" id="CHAPTER_Vc"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>At a late hour that same evening, happening to look in at the Club,
+where he had not been for a long time, whom should he see at one of the
+card-tables but Don Manuel Ferr&egrave;s y Capdevila. Andrea greeted him with
+effusion and inquired after Donna Maria and Delfina&mdash;whether they were
+still at Sienna&mdash;when they were coming to Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Don Manuel, who remembered to have won several thousand lire from the
+young Count during the last evening at Schifanoja, and had recognised in
+Andrea Sperelli a player of the best form and perfect style, responded
+with the utmost courtesy and cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>'They have been here some days already; they arrived on Monday,' he
+answered. 'Maria was much disappointed not to find the Marchesa
+d'Ateleta in town. I am sure it would give her the greatest pleasure if
+you would call on her. We are in the Via Nazionale. Here is the exact
+address.'</p>
+
+<p>He handed one of his cards to Andrea and then returned to the game.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke di Beffi, who was standing with a knot of gentlemen, called
+Andrea over to them.</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you not come to Cento Celli this morning?' asked the duke.</p>
+
+<p>'I had another appointment,' Andrea replied without reflecting.</p>
+
+<p>'At the Palazzo Barberini perhaps?' said the duke with a shy laugh, in
+which he was joined by the others.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps, indeed?&mdash;why, Ludovico saw you go in.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'And where were you, may I ask?' said Andrea turning to Barbarisi.</p>
+
+<p>'Over the way, at my Aunt Saviano's.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah!'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know if you had better luck than we had,' Beffi went on, 'but
+we had a run of forty-two minutes and got two foxes. The next meet is on
+Thursday at the Three Fountains.'</p>
+
+<p>'You understand&mdash;at the <i>Three</i> Fountains, not at the <i>Four</i>,' Gino
+Bomminaco admonished him with comic gravity.</p>
+
+<p>The others burst into a roar of laughter which Andrea could not help
+joining. He was by no means displeased at their gibes; on the contrary,
+now that there was no truth in their suspicions, it flattered him for
+his friends to think he had renewed his relations with Elena. He turned
+away to speak to Giulio Musellaro, who had just come in. From a few
+strays words that reached his ear, he found that the group behind him
+were discussing Lord Heathfield.</p>
+
+<p>'I knew him in London six or seven years ago,' Beffi was saying. 'He was
+Gentleman of the Bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales as far as I
+remember&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>The duke lowered his voice, he was evidently retailing the most
+appalling things. Andrea caught scraps here and there of a highly-spiced
+nature and, once or twice, the name of a newspaper famous in the annals
+of London scandal. He longed to hear more; a terrible curiosity took
+possession of him. His imagination conjured up Lord Heathfield's hands
+before him&mdash;so white, so significant, so expressive, so impossible to
+forget. Musellaro was still talking, and now said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Let us go&mdash;I want to tell you&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>On the stairs they encountered Albonico, who was coming up. He was in
+deep mourning for Donna Ippolita, and Andrea stopped to ask for details
+of the sad event. He had heard of her death when he was in Paris in
+November from Guido Montelatici, a cousin of Donna Ippolita.</p>
+
+<p>'Was it really typhus?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The wan and pale-eyed widower grasped at an occasion for pouring out his
+griefs, for he made a display of his bereavement as, at one time, he had
+made a display of his wife's beauty. He stammered and grew lachrymose
+and his colourless eyes seemed bulging from his head.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that the widower's elegy threatened to be somewhat long drawn
+out, Musellaro said to Andrea&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'If we don't take care, we shall be late.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea accordingly took leave of Albonico, promising to hear the rest of
+the funeral oration very shortly, and went away with Musellaro.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting with Albonico had re-awakened the singular emotion&mdash;partly
+regret, partly a certain peculiar satisfaction&mdash;which he had experienced
+for several days after hearing the news of this death. The image of
+Donna Ippolita, half obliterated by his illness and convalescence, by
+his love for Maria Ferr&egrave;s, by a variety of incidents, had reappeared to
+him then as in the dim distance, but invested with a nameless ideality.
+He had received a promise from her which, though it was never fulfilled,
+had procured to him the greatest happiness that can befall a man: the
+victory over a rival, a brilliant victory in the presence of the woman
+he desired. Later on, between desire and regret another sentiment grew
+up&mdash;the poetic sentiment for beauty idealised by death. It pleased him
+that the adventure should end thus for ever. This woman who had never
+been his, but to gain whom he had nearly lost his life, now rose up
+noble and unsullied before his imagination in all the sublime ideality
+of death. <i>Tibi, Hippolyta, semper!</i></p>
+
+<p>'But where are we going to?' asked Musellaro, stopping short in the
+middle of the Piazza de Venezia.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of all Andrea's perturbation and all his varying thoughts,
+was the excitement called up in him by his meeting with Don Manuel
+Ferr&egrave;s and the consequent thought of Donna Maria; and now, in the midst
+of these conflicting emotions, a sort of nervous longing drew him to her
+house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I am going home,' he answered; 'we can go through the Via Nazionale.
+Come along with me.'</p>
+
+<p>He paid no heed to what his friend was saying. The thought of Maria
+Ferr&egrave;s occupied him exclusively. Arrived in front of the theatre, he
+hesitated a moment, undecided which side of the street he had better
+take. He would find out the direction of the house by seeing which way
+the numbers ran.</p>
+
+<p>'What is the matter?' asked Musellaro.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing&mdash;go on,&mdash;I am listening.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at one number and calculated that the house must be on the
+left hand side, somewhere about the Villa Aldobrandini. The tall pines
+round the villa looked feathery light against the starry sky. The night
+was icy but serene; the Torre delle Milizie lifted up its massive bulk,
+square and sombre among the twinkling stars; the laurels on the wall of
+Servius slumbered motionless in the gleam of the street lamps.</p>
+
+<p>A few numbers more and they would reach the one mentioned on Don
+Manuel's card. Andrea trembled as if he expected Donna Maria to appear
+upon the threshold. He passed so close to the great door that he brushed
+against it; he could not refrain from looking up at the windows.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you looking at?' asked Musellaro.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing&mdash;give me a cigarette and let us walk a little faster; it is
+awfully cold.'</p>
+
+<p>They followed the Via Nazionale as far as the Four Fountains in silence.
+Andrea's preoccupation was patent.</p>
+
+<p>'You must decidedly have something serious on your mind,' said his
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea's heart beat so fast that he was on the point of pouring his
+confidences into his friend's ear, but he restrained himself. Memories
+of Schifanoja passed across his spirit like an exhilarating perfume, and
+in the midst of them beamed the figure of Maria Ferr&egrave;s with a radiance
+that almost dazzled him. But most distinctly and more luminously than
+all the rest, he saw that moment in the wood at Vicomile, when she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> had
+flung those burning words at him. Would he ever hear such words from her
+lips again? What had she been doing&mdash;what had been her thoughts&mdash;how had
+she spent the days since they parted? His agitation increased with every
+step. Fragments of scenes passed rapidly before him like the
+phantasmagoria of a dream&mdash;a bit of country, a glimpse of the sea, a
+flight of steps among the roses, the interior of a room, all the places
+in which some sentiment had had its birth, round which she had diffused
+some sweetness, where she had breathed the charm of her person. And he
+thrilled with profound emotion at the idea that perchance she still
+carried in her heart that living passion, had perhaps suffered and wept,
+had dreamed and hoped.</p>
+
+<p>'Well?' said Musellaro, 'and how is your affair with Donna Elena
+progressing?'</p>
+
+<p>They happened to be just in front of the Palazzo Barberini. Behind the
+railings and the great stone pillars of the gates stretched the garden,
+dimly visible through the gloom, animated by the low murmur of the
+fountains and dominated by the massive white palace where in the portico
+alone was light.</p>
+
+<p>'What did you say?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'I asked how you were getting on with Donna Elena.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea glanced up at the palace. At that moment he seemed to feel a
+blank indifference in his heart, the absolute death of desire&mdash;the final
+renunciation.</p>
+
+<p>'I am following your advice. I have not tried to relight the cigarette.'</p>
+
+<p>'And yet, do you know, in this one instance, I believe it would be worth
+while. Have you noticed her particularly? It seems to me that she has
+become more beautiful. I cannot help thinking there is something&mdash;how
+shall I express it?&mdash;something new, something indescribable about her.
+No, <i>new</i> is not the word. She has gained intensity without losing
+anything of the peculiar character of her beauty; in short, she is <i>more
+Elena</i> than the Elena of two years ago&mdash;the quintessence of herself. It
+is, most likely, the effect of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> second spring, for I should fancy
+she must be hard on thirty. Don't you think so?'</p>
+
+<p>As he listened, Andrea felt the dull ashes of his love stir and kindle.
+Nothing revives and excites a man's desire so much as hearing from
+another the praises of a woman he has loved too long or wooed in vain. A
+love in its death-throes may thus be prolonged as the result of the envy
+or the admiration of another; for the disgusted or wearied lover
+hesitates to abandon what he possesses or is struggling to possess in
+favour of a possible successor.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't you think so?' Musellaro repeated. 'And, besides, to make a
+Menelaus of that Heathfield would in itself be an unspeakable
+satisfaction.'</p>
+
+<p>'So I think,' answered Andrea, forcing himself to adopt his friend's
+light tone. 'Well, we shall see.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_IV" id="BOOK_IV"></a>BOOK IV</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Id" id="CHAPTER_Id"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER I</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>'Maria, grant me this one moment of unalloyed sweetness! Let me tell you
+all that is in my heart.'</p>
+
+<p>She rose. 'Forgive, me,' she said gently, without anger or bitterness
+and with an audible quiver of emotion in her voice. 'Forgive me but I
+cannot listen to you. You pain me very much.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I will not say anything&mdash;only stay&mdash;I implore you.'</p>
+
+<p>She seated herself once more. It was like the days of Schifanoja come
+back again. The same matchless grace of the delicate head drooping under
+the masses of hair as under some divine chastisement, the same deep and
+tender shadow, a fusion of diaphanous violet and soft blue, surrounding
+the tawny brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'I only wanted,' Andrea went on humbly, 'I only wanted to remind you of
+the words I spoke, the words you listened to that morning in the park
+under the shadow of the trees, in an hour that will always remain sacred
+in my memory.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not forgotten them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Since that day my unhappiness has become ever deeper, darker, more
+poignant. I can never tell you all I have suffered, all the abject
+misery of that time: can never tell you how often in spirit I have
+called upon you as if my last hour had come, nor describe to you the
+thrill of joy, the upward bound of my whole soul towards the light of
+hope, if, for one moment, I dared to think that the remembrance of me
+still lived in your heart.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke in the accents of that morning long ago; he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> seemed to have
+regained the same passionate rapture: all his vaguely felt happiness
+rose to his lips. And she sat motionless, listening with drooping head,
+almost in the same attitude as on that day; and round her lips, those
+lips which she vainly sought to keep firm, there played the same
+expression of dolorous rapture.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember Vicomile? Do you remember our ride through the wood on
+that evening in October?'</p>
+
+<p>Donna Maria bent her head slightly in sign of assent.</p>
+
+<p>'And the words you said to me?' the young man went on in a lower voice,
+but in a tone of suppressed passion and bending down to look into the
+eyes she kept steadfastly fixed upon the ground.</p>
+
+<p>She raised them now to his&mdash;those sweet, patient, pathetic eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'I have forgotten nothing,' she replied, 'nothing, nothing! Why should I
+hide my heart from you? You are good and noble-minded, and I have
+absolute trust in your generosity. Why should I act towards you like an
+ordinary foolish woman? I told you that evening that I loved you. Your
+question implies another one, I see that very well&mdash;you want to ask me
+if I love you still.'</p>
+
+<p>She faltered for a moment and her lips quivered. 'I love you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Maria!'</p>
+
+<p>'But you must give up all claim upon my love, you must keep away from
+me. Be noble, be generous, and spare me the struggle which frightens me.
+I have suffered much, Andrea, I have borne much; but the thought of
+having to struggle with you, to defend myself against you, fills me with
+a nameless terror. You do not know at the cost of what sacrifices I have
+at last gained peace of heart; you do not know what lofty and cherished
+ideals I have been obliged to bid farewell to&mdash;poor ideals! I am a
+changed woman because I could not help it; I have had to place myself on
+a lower level.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a note of grave, sweet sadness in her voice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'In those first days after I met you, I abandoned myself to the alluring
+sweetness, let myself drift with eyes closed to the distant peril. I
+thought&mdash;he shall never know anything from me, I shall never know
+anything from him. I had nothing to regret and therefore I felt no fear.
+But you spoke&mdash;you said things to me that no one had ever said before,
+and then you forced my avowal from me. The danger suddenly appeared
+before me, unmistakable, imminent. And then I abandoned myself to a
+fresh dream. Your mental distress touched me to the heart, caused me
+profound pain. "Impurity has sullied his soul," I thought to myself.
+"Oh, that I had the power to purify it again! What happiness to offer
+myself up as a sacrifice for his regeneration!" Your unhappiness
+attracted mine. I thought I might scarcely be able to console you, but I
+hoped at least you might find relief in having another soul to answer
+eternally <i>Amen</i> to all your plaints.'</p>
+
+<p>She uttered the last words with a face so suffused with spiritual
+exaltation that Andrea felt a wave of half-religious joy sweep over him,
+and his one desire, at that moment, was to take those dear and spotless
+hands in his and breathe upon them the ineffable rapture of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>'But it cannot&mdash;it may not be.' she went on, shaking her head in sad
+regret. 'We must renounce that hope for ever. Life is inexorable.
+Without intending it, you would destroy a whole existence&mdash;and more than
+one perhaps&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Maria, Maria! do not say such things!' the young man broke in, leaning
+over her once more and taking one of her hands with a sort of timid
+entreaty, as if looking for some sign of permission before venturing on
+the liberty. 'I will do anything you tell me; I will be humble and
+obedient, my one thought shall be to carry out your wishes, my one
+desire, to die with your name upon my lips. In renouncing you, I
+renounce my salvation, I fall back into irremediable ruin and disaster.
+I have no words to express my love for you. I have need of you. You
+alone are <i>true</i>&mdash;you are Truth itself, for which my soul is ever
+seeking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> All else is vanity&mdash;all else is nought. To give you up is like
+signing my death-warrant. But if this immolation is necessary to your
+peace of mind, it shall be done&mdash;I owe it to you. Do not fear, Maria, I
+will never do anything to hurt you.'</p>
+
+<p>He held her hand, but he did not press it. His voice had none of the old
+passionate ardour, it was submissive, disconsolate, heart-broken, full
+of infinite weariness. And Maria was so blinded by her compassion that
+she did not draw away her hand, but let it lie in his, abandoning
+herself for a moment to the unutterable rapture of that light contact&mdash;a
+rapture so subtle as hardly to have any physical origin&mdash;as if some
+magnetic fluid, issuing from her heart, diffused itself through her arm
+to her fingers and there flowed forth in a wave of ineffable sweetness.
+When Andrea ceased speaking, certain words of his, uttered on that
+memorable morning in the park and revived by the recent sound of his
+voice, returned to her memory&mdash;'Your mere presence suffices to
+intoxicate me&mdash;I feel it flowing through my veins like blood, flooding
+my soul with nameless emotion&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>There was an interval of silence. From time to time, a gust of wind
+shook the window-panes and bore fitfully with it the distant roar of the
+city and the rumbling of carriage wheels. The light was cold and limpid
+as spring water; shadows were gathering thickly in the corners of the
+room and in the folds of the Oriental curtains; from pieces of
+furniture, here and there, came gleams of ivory and mother-of-pearl; a
+great gilded Buddha shone out of the background under a tall palm.
+Something of the exotic mystery of these things was diffused over the
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>'And what do you suppose is going to become of me now?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed lost in perplexing thought. There was a look of irresolution
+on her face as if she were listening to two contending voices.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot describe to you,' she answered, passing her hand over her eyes
+with a rapid gesture, 'I cannot describe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> to you the strange foreboding
+that has weighed upon me for a long time past. I do not know what it is,
+but I am <i>afraid</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a pause&mdash;'Oh, to think that you may be suffering, sick at
+heart,&mdash;my poor darling&mdash;and that I can do nothing to ease your pain,
+may not be with you in your hour of anguish&mdash;may not even know that you
+have called me&mdash;<i>Mio Dio!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>There was a quiver of tears in her breaking voice. Andrea hung his head
+but did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>'To think that my spirit will follow you always, always, and yet that it
+may never, never mingle with yours, will never, never be understood by
+you!&mdash;Alas, poor love!'</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was full of tears and her mouth was drawn with pain.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, do not desert me&mdash;do not desert me!' cried the young man, seizing
+her two hands and half-kneeling at her feet, a prey to overwhelming
+excitement&mdash;'I will never ask anything of you&mdash;I want nothing but your
+pity. A little pity from you is more&mdash;far more&mdash;to me than passionate
+love from any other woman&mdash;you know it. Your hand alone can heal me, can
+bring me back to life, can raise me out of the slough into which I have
+sunk, give me back my faith and free me from the bondage of those
+shameful things that corrupt me and fill me with horror.
+Dear&mdash;dear&mdash;hands!'</p>
+
+<p>He bent over them and pressed his lips to them in a long kiss,
+abandoning himself with half-closed eyes to the utter sweetness of it.</p>
+
+<p>'I can feel you tremble,' he murmured in an indefinable tone.</p>
+
+<p>She rose abruptly, trembling from head to foot, giddy, paler still than
+on the morning when they walked together beneath the flower-laden trees.
+The wind still shook the panes; there was a dull clamour in the distance
+as of a riotous crowd. The shrill cries borne on the wind from the
+Quirinal increased her agitation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Go, Andrea&mdash;please go&mdash;you must not stay here any longer. You shall see
+me some other time&mdash;whenever you like, but go now, I entreat you&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Where shall I see you again?'</p>
+
+<p>'At the concert to-morrow&mdash;good-bye.'</p>
+
+<p>She was as perturbed and agitated as if she had been guilty of some
+grave fault. She accompanied him to the door of the room. When she found
+herself alone, she hesitated, not knowing what to do next, still under
+the sway of her terror. Her temples throbbed, her cheeks and her eyes
+burned with fierce intensity, while cold shivers ran through her limbs.
+But on her hands she still felt the pressure of that beloved mouth, a
+sensation so surpassingly sweet that she wished it might remain there
+for ever indelible like some divine impress.</p>
+
+<p>She looked about her. The light was fading, things looked shapeless in
+the shadows, the great Buddha gleamed with a weird pale light. The cries
+came up from the street fitfully. She went over to a window, opened it
+and leaned out. An icy wind blew through the street; in the direction of
+the Piazza dei Termini, they were already lighting the lamps. Across the
+way, at the Villa Aldobrandini, the trees swayed to and fro, their tops
+touched with a faint red glow. A huge crimson cloud hung solitary in the
+sky over the Torre delle Milizie.</p>
+
+<p>The evening struck her as strangely lugubrious. She withdrew from the
+window and seated herself again where she had just had her conversation
+with Andrea. Why had Delfina not returned yet? She earnestly desired to
+escape from her thoughts, and yet she weakly allowed herself to linger
+in the place where, only a few minutes ago, Andrea had breathed and
+spoken, had sighed out his love and his unhappiness. The struggles, the
+resolutions, the contrition, the prayers, the penances of four months
+had been wiped out, made utterly unavailing in one second of time, and
+she sank down more weary and vanquished than ever, without the will or
+the power to fight against the foes that beset her in her own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> heart,
+against the feelings that were upheaving her whole moral foundations.
+And while she gave way to the anguish and despair of a conscience which
+feels all its courage oozing from it, she still had the feeling that
+something of <i>him</i> lingered in the shadows of the room and enveloped her
+with all the sweetness of a passionate caress.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IId" id="CHAPTER_IId"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The next day, she arrived at the Palazzo dei Sabini, her heart beating
+fast under a bunch of violets.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea was looking out for her at the door of the concert-hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks,' he said, and pressed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>He conducted her to a seat and sat down beside her.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought the anxiety of waiting for you would have killed me,' he
+murmured. 'I was so afraid you would not come. How grateful I am to you!
+Late last night,' he went on, 'I passed your house. There was a light in
+one window&mdash;the third looking towards the Quirinal&mdash;I would have given
+much to know if you were up there. Who gave you those violets?' he asked
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>'Delfina,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Did Delfina tell you of our meeting this morning in the Piazza di
+Spagna?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;all.'</p>
+
+<p>The concert began with a Quartett by Mendelssohn. The hall was already
+nearly full, the audience consisting, for the most part, of foreign
+ladies&mdash;fair-haired women very quietly and simply dressed, grave of
+attitude, religiously silent, as in some sacred spot. The wave of music
+passing over these motionless heads spread out into the golden light, a
+light that filtered from above through faded yellow curtains and was
+reflected from the bare white walls. It was the old hall of the
+Philharmonic concerts. The whiteness of the walls was unbroken by any
+ornament, with only here and there a trace of former frescoes and its
+meagre blue porti&egrave;res<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> threatening to come down at any moment. It had
+all the air of a place that had been closed for a century and opened
+again that day for the first time. But just this faded look of age, the
+air of poverty, the nakedness of the walls lent a curious additional
+flavour to the exquisite enjoyment of the audience, making their delight
+seem more absorbing, loftier, purer by contrast. It was the 2nd of
+February; at Montecitorio the Parliament was disputing over the massacre
+of Dogali; the neighbouring streets and squares swarmed with the
+populace and with soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>Musical memories of Schifanoja came back to the lovers, a reflected
+gleam from those fair autumn days illumined their thoughts.
+Mendelssohn's Minuet called up before them a vision of the villa by the
+sea, of rooms filled with the perfume of the terraced garden, of
+cypresses lifting their dark heads into the soft sky, of flaming sails
+upon a glassy sea.</p>
+
+<p>Bending towards his companion, Andrea whispered softly: 'What are you
+thinking about?'</p>
+
+<p>With a smile so faint that he hardly caught it, she answered:</p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember the 22nd of September?'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea had no very clear recollection of this date, but he nodded his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>The Andante, calm, broad and solemn, dominated by a wonderful and
+pathetic melody, had ended in a sudden outburst of grief. The Finale
+lingered in a certain rhythmic monotony full of plaintive weariness.</p>
+
+<p>'Now comes your favourite Bach,' said Donna Maria.</p>
+
+<p>And when the music commenced they both felt an instinctive desire to
+draw closer to each other. Their shoulders touched; at the end of each
+part Andrea leant over her to read the programme which she held open in
+her hands, and in so doing pressed against her arm, inhaling the perfume
+of her violets, and sending a wild thrill of ecstasy through her. The
+Adagio rose with so exultant a song, soared with so jubilant a strain to
+the topmost summits of rapture, and flowed wide into the Infinite, that
+it seemed like the voice of some celestial being pouring out the joy of
+a deathless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> victory. The spirits of the audience were borne along on
+that irresistible torrent of sound. When the music ceased, the tremor of
+the instruments continued for a moment in the hearers. A murmur ran from
+one end of the hall to the other. A moment later and the applause broke
+forth vehemently.</p>
+
+<p>The lovers turned simultaneously and looked at one another with swimming
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The music continued; the light began to fade; a gentle warmth pervaded
+the air, and Donna Maria's violets breathed a fuller fragrance. Seeing
+nobody near him whom he knew, Andrea almost felt as if he were alone
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>But he was mistaken. Turning round in one of the pauses, he caught sight
+of Elena standing at the back of the hall with the Princess of
+Ferentino. Instantly their eyes met. As he bowed to her, he seemed to
+catch a singular smile on Elena's lips.</p>
+
+<p>'To whom are you bowing?' asked Donna Maria, turning round too, 'who are
+those ladies?'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Heathfield and the Princess of Ferentino.'</p>
+
+<p>She noticed a tremor of annoyance in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>'Which of them is the Princess of Ferentino?'</p>
+
+<p>'The fair one.'</p>
+
+<p>'The other is very beautiful.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>'But is she English?' she asked again.</p>
+
+<p>'No, she is a Roman. She was the widow of the Duke of Scerni, and now
+married again to Lord Heathfield.'</p>
+
+<p>'She is very lovely.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is coming next?' Andrea asked hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>'The Brahms Quartett in C minor.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know it?'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>'The second movement is marvellous.'</p>
+
+<p>He went on speaking to hide his embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>'When shall I see you again?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not know.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'To-morrow?'</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated. A cloud seemed to have come over her face.</p>
+
+<p>'To-morrow,' she answered, 'if it is fine I shall take Delfina to the
+Piazza di Spagna about twelve o'clock.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if it is not fine?'</p>
+
+<p>'On Saturday evening I shall be at the Countess Starnina's&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>The music began once more. The first movement expressed a sombre and
+virile struggle, the Romance a memory full of passionate but sad desire,
+followed by a slow uplifting, faltering and tentative, towards the
+distant dawn. Out of this a clear and melodious phrase developed itself
+with splendid modulations. The sentiment was very different from that
+which animated Bach's Adagio; it was more human, more earthly, more
+elegiacal. A breath of Beethoven ran through this music.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea's nervous perturbation was so great that he feared every moment
+to betray himself. All his pleasure was embittered. He could not exactly
+analyse his discomfort; he could neither gather himself together and
+overcome it, nor put it away from him; he was swayed in turn by the
+charm of the music and the fascination exercised over him by each of
+these women without being really dominated by any of the three. He had a
+vague sensation as of some empty space, in which heavy blows perpetually
+resounded followed by dolorous echoes. His thoughts seemed to break up
+and crumble away into a thousand fragments, and the images of the two
+women to melt into and destroy one another without his being able to
+disconnect them or to separate his feeling for the one from his feeling
+for the other. And above all this mental disturbance was the anxiety
+occasioned by the immediate circumstances, by the necessity for adopting
+some practical line of action. Donna Maria's slight change of attitude
+had not escaped him, and he seemed to feel Elena's gaze riveted upon
+him. What course should he pursue? He could not make up his mind whether
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> accompany Donna Maria when she left the concert, or to approach
+Elena, nor could he determine where this incident would be favourable to
+him or otherwise with either of the ladies.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going,' said Donna Maria, rising at the end of the movement.</p>
+
+<p>'You will not wait till the end?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I must be home by five o'clock.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do not forget&mdash;to-morrow morning&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand. It was perhaps the air of the close room that
+sent a flush to her pale cheek. A velvet mantle of a dull leaden shade,
+with a deep border of chinchilla, covered her to her feet, and amid the
+soft gray fur the violets were dying exquisitely. As she passed out, she
+moved with such a queenly grace that many of the ladies turned to follow
+her with their eyes. It was the first time that in this spiritual
+creature, the pure Siennese Madonna, Andrea also beheld the elegant
+woman of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The third movement of the Quartett began. The daylight had diminished so
+much that the yellow curtains had to be drawn back. Several other ladies
+left. A low hum of conversation was audible here and there. The fatigue
+and inattention which invariably marks the end of a concert began to
+make itself apparent in the audience. By one of those strange and abrupt
+manifestations of moral elasticity, Andrea experienced a sudden sense of
+relief, not to say gaiety. In a moment, he had forgotten his sentimental
+and passionate pre-occupations, and all that now appealed to him&mdash;to his
+vanity, to his corrupt senses&mdash;was the licentious aspect of the affair.
+He thought to himself that in granting him these little innocent
+rendezvous, Donna Maria had already set her foot on the gentle downward
+slope of the path at the bottom of which lies sin, inevitable even to
+the most vigilant soul; he also argued that doubtless a little touch of
+jealousy would do much towards bringing Elena back to his arms and that
+thus the one intrigue would help on the other&mdash;was it not a vague fear,
+a jealous foreboding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> that had made Donna Maria consent so quickly to
+their next meeting? He saw himself, therefore, well on the way to a
+two-fold conquest, and he could not repress a smile as he reflected that
+in both adventures the chief difficulty presented itself under the same
+guise: both women professed a wish to play the part of sister to him; it
+was for him to transform these sisters in something closer. He remarked
+upon other resemblances between the two&mdash;That voice! How curiously like
+Elena's were some tones in Donna Maria's voice! A mad thought flashed
+through his brain. That voice might furnish him with the elements of a
+study of imagination&mdash;by virtue of that affinity, he might resolve the
+two fair women into one, and thus possess a third, imaginary, mistress,
+more complex, more perfect, more <i>true</i> because she would be ideal&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The third movement, executed in faultless style, finished in a burst of
+applause. Andrea rose and approached Elena&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, there you are, Ugenta! Where have you been all this time?'
+exclaimed the Princess&mdash;'In the "pays du Tendre?"'</p>
+
+<p>'And your incognita?' asked Elena lightly as she pulled a bunch of
+violets out of her muff and sniffed them.</p>
+
+<p>'She is a great friend of my cousin Francesca's, Donna Maria Ferr&egrave;s y
+Capdevila, the wife of the new minister for Guatemala,' Andrea replied
+without turning a hair&mdash;'a beautiful creature and very cultivated&mdash;she
+was at Schifanoja with Francesca last September.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what of Francesca?' Elena broke in&mdash;'do you know when she is coming
+back?'</p>
+
+<p>'I had the latest news from her a day or two ago&mdash;from San Remo.
+Fernandino is better, but I am afraid she will have to stay on there
+another month at least, perhaps longer.'</p>
+
+<p>'What a pity!'</p>
+
+<p>The last movement, a very short one, began. Elena and the Princess
+occupied two chairs at the end of the room, against the wall under a dim
+mirror in which the melancholy hall was reflected. Elena listened with
+bent head, slowly drawing through her fingers the long ends of her boa.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The concert over, she said to Sperelli: 'Will you see us to the
+carriage?'</p>
+
+<p>As she entered her carriage after the Princess, she turned to him
+again&mdash;'Won't you come too? We will drop Eva at the Palazzo Fiano, and I
+can put you down wherever you like.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks,' answered Andrea, nothing loath. On the Corso they were obliged
+to proceed very slowly, the whole roadway being taken up by a seething,
+tumultuous crowd. From the Piazza di Montecitorio and the Piazza Colonna
+came a perfect uproar that swelled and rose and fell and rose again,
+mingled with shrill trumpet-blasts. The tumult increased as the gray
+cold twilight deepened. Horror at the tragedy enacted in a far-off land
+made the populace howl with rage; men broke through the dense crowd
+running and waving great bundles of newspapers. Through all the clamour,
+the one word Africa rang distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>'And all this for four hundred brutes who had died the death of brutes!'
+murmured Andrea, withdrawing his head from the carriage window.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you saying!' cried the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the Chigi palace the commotion assumed the aspect of a
+riot. The carriage had to stop. Elena leaned forward to look out, and
+her face emerging from the shadows and lighted up by the glare of the
+gas and the reflection of the sunset seemed of a ghastly whiteness, an
+almost icy pallor, reminding Andrea of some head he had seen before, he
+could not say where or when&mdash;in some gallery or chapel.</p>
+
+<p>'Here we are,' said the Princess, as the carriage drew up at last at the
+Palazzo Fiano. 'Good-bye&mdash;we shall meet again at the Angelieris' this
+evening. Ugenta will come and lunch with us to-morrow? You will find
+Elena and Barbarella Viti and my cousin there&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'At what time?'</p>
+
+<p>'Half-past twelve.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks, I will.'</p>
+
+<p>The Princess got out. The footman stood at the carriage door awaiting
+further orders.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Where shall I take you?' Elena asked Sperelli, who had promptly taken
+the place of the Princess beside her.</p>
+
+<p>'Far, far away&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Nonsense&mdash;tell me now,&mdash;home?' And without waiting for his answer she
+said&mdash;'To the Palazzo Zuccari, Trinit&agrave; de' Monti.'</p>
+
+<p>The footman closed the carriage door and they drove off down the Via
+Frattina leaving all the turmoil of the crowd behind them.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Elena&mdash;after so long&mdash;&mdash;' Andrea burst out, leaning down to gaze
+at the woman he so passionately desired and who had shrunk away from him
+into the shadow as if to avoid his contact.</p>
+
+<p>The brilliant lights of the shop windows pierced the gloom in the
+carriage as they passed, and he saw on Elena's white face a slow
+alluring smile.</p>
+
+<p>Still smiling thus, with a rapid movement she unwound the boa from her
+neck and cast it over Andrea's head like a lasso, and with that soft
+loop, all fragrant with the same perfume he had noticed in the blue fox
+of her coat, she drew the young man towards her and silently held up her
+lips to his.</p>
+
+<p>Well did those two pairs of lips remember the rapture of by-gone days,
+those terrible and yet deliriously sweet meetings prolonged to anguish.
+They held their breath to taste the sweetness of that kiss to the full.</p>
+
+<p>Passing through the Via due Macelli the carriage drove up the Via dei
+Tritone, turned into the Via Sistina and stopped at the door of the
+Palazzo Zuccari.</p>
+
+<p>Elena instantly released her captive, saying rather huskily&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Go now, good-bye.'</p>
+
+<p>'When will you come?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Chi sa!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>The footman opened the door and Andrea got out. The carriage turned back
+to the Via Sistina and Andrea, still vibrating with passion, a veil of
+mist before his eyes, stood watching to see if Elena's face would not
+appear at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> window; but he saw nothing. The carriage drove rapidly
+away.</p>
+
+<p>As he ascended the stairs to his apartment, he said to himself&mdash;'So she
+has come round at last!' The intoxication of her presence was still upon
+him, on his lips he still felt the pressure of her kiss, and in his eyes
+was the flash of the smile with which she had thrown that sort of smooth
+and perfumed snake about his neck. And Donna Maria?&mdash;Most assuredly it
+was to her he owed these unexpected favours. There was no doubt that at
+the bottom of Elena's strange and fantastic behaviour lay a decided
+touch of jealousy. Fearing perhaps that he was escaping her she sought
+thus to lure him back and rekindle his passion. 'Does she love me, or
+does she not?' But what did it matter to him one way or another? What
+good would it do him to know? The spell was broken irremediably. No
+miracle that ever was wrought could revive the least little atom of the
+love that was dead. The only thing that need occupy him now was the
+carnal body, and that was divine as ever.</p>
+
+<p>He indulged long in pleasurable meditation on this episode. What
+particularly took his fancy was the arch and graceful touch Elena had
+given to her caprice. The thought of the boa evoked the image of Donna
+Maria's coils, and so, confusedly, all the amorous fancies he had woven
+round that virginal mass of hair by which, once on a time, the very
+school-girls of the Florentine convent had been enthralled. And again he
+let his two loves melt into one and form the third&mdash;the Ideal.</p>
+
+<p>The musing mood still upon him while he dressed for dinner, he thought
+to himself&mdash;'Yesterday, a grand scene of passion almost ending in tears;
+to-day, a little episode of mute sensuality&mdash;and I seemed to myself as
+sincere in my sentiment yesterday as I was in my sensations to-day.
+Added to which, scarcely an hour before Elena's kiss, I had a moment of
+lofty lyrical emotion at Donna Maria's side. Of all this not one vestige
+remains. To-morrow, most assuredly I shall begin the same game over
+again. I am unstable as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> water; incoherent, inconsistent, a very
+chameleon! All my efforts towards unity of purpose are for ever vain. I
+must resign myself to my fate. The law of my being is comprised in the
+one word&mdash;<i>Nunc</i>&mdash;the will of the Law be done!'</p>
+
+<p>He laughed at himself, and from that moment began a new phase of his
+moral degradation.</p>
+
+<p>Without mercy, without remorse, without restraint, he set all his
+faculties to work to compass the realisation of his impure imaginings.
+To vanquish Maria Ferr&egrave;s he had recourse to the most subtle artifices,
+the most delicate machinations; taking care to deceive her in matters of
+the soul, of the spiritual, the ideal, the inmost life of the heart. In
+carrying on the two campaigns&mdash;the conquest of the new and the
+re-conquest of the old love&mdash;with equal adroitness, and in turning to
+the best advantage the chance circumstances of each enterprise, he was
+led into an infinity of annoying, embarrassing, and ridiculous
+situations, to extricate himself from which he was obliged to descend to
+a series of lies and deceptions, of paltry evasions, ignoble subterfuges
+and equivocal expedients. All Donna Maria's goodness and faith and
+single mindedness were powerless to disarm him. As the foundation of his
+work of seduction with her he had taken a verse from one of the
+Psalms:&mdash;<i>Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor&mdash;lavabis me et super nirem
+dealbabor</i>. And she, poor, hapless, devoted creature, imagined that she
+was saving a soul alive, redeeming an intellect, washing away by her own
+purity the stains that sin had left on him. She still believed
+implicitly in the ever-remembered words he had spoken to her in the
+park, on that Epiphany of Love, within sight of the sea; and it was just
+in this belief that she found comfort and support in the midst of the
+religious conflict that rent her conscience; this belief that blinded
+her to all suspicion and filled her with a soil of mystic intoxication
+wherein she opened the secret floodgates of her heart and let loose all
+her pent-up tenderness, and let the sweetest flowers of her womanhood
+blossom out resplendently.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time in his life, Andrea Sperelli found himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> face to
+face with a <i>real</i> passion&mdash;one of those rare and supreme manifestations
+of woman's capacity for love which occasionally flash their superb and
+terrible lightnings across the shifting gray sky of earthly loves. But
+he did not care a jot, and went on with the pitiless work which was to
+destroy both himself and his victim.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIId" id="CHAPTER_IIId"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The next day, according to their agreement at the concert, Andrea found
+Donna Maria in the Piazza di Spagna with Delfina, looking at the antique
+jewellery in a shop window. At the first sound of his voice she turned,
+and a bright flush stained the pallor of her cheek. Together they then
+examined the eighteenth-century jewels, the paste buckles and hair
+ornaments, the enamelled watches, the gold and ivory tortoise-shell
+snuff-boxes, all these pretty trifles of a by-gone day which afforded an
+impression of harmonious richness under the clear morning sun.
+Everywhere about them, the flower-sellers were offering yellow and white
+jonquils, double violets, and long branches of flowering almond. There
+was a breath of Spring in the air. The column of the Immaculate
+Conception rose lightly into the sunshine, like a flower stem with the
+<i>Rosa mystica</i> on its summit; the Barcaccia glistened in a shower of
+diamonds, the stairway of the Trinit&agrave; opened its arms gaily towards the
+church of Charles <span class="smcap">viii</span>., the two towers of which stood out boldly
+against the blue cloud-flecked sky.</p>
+
+<p>'How exquisite!' exclaimed Donna Maria. 'No wonder you are so deeply
+enamoured of Rome!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you don't know it yet,' Andrea replied, 'I wish I might be your
+guide'&mdash;she smiled&mdash;'and undertake a pilgrimage of sentiment with you
+this spring.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled again, and her whole person assumed a less grave and
+chastened air. Her dress, this morning, had a quiet elegance about it,
+but revealed the refined taste of an expert in style and in the delicate
+combinations of colour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> Her jacket, of a shade of gray inclining to
+green, was of cloth trimmed round the edge with beaver and opening over
+a vest of the same fur, the blending of the two tones&mdash;indefinable gray
+and tawny gold&mdash;forming a harmony that was a delight to the eye.</p>
+
+<p>'What did you do yesterday evening?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I left the concert-hall a few minutes after you and went home; and I
+stayed there because I seemed to feel your spirit near me. I thought
+much. Did you not <i>feel</i> my thought?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I cannot say I did. I passed a very cheerless evening. I do not
+know why. I felt so dreadfully alone!'</p>
+
+<p>The Contessa di Lucoli passed in her dog-cart, driving a big roan.
+Giulia Moceto, accompanied by Musellaro, passed on foot, and then Donna
+Isotta Cellesi.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea bowed to each. Donna Maria asked him the names of the ladies.
+That of Giulia Moceto was not new to her. She recalled the day on which
+she heard Francesca mention it while looking at Perugino's Archangel
+Michael, when they were turning over Andrea's drawings at Schifanoja.
+She followed her curiously with her eyes, seized with a sudden vague
+fear. Everything connecting Andrea with his former life was distasteful
+to her. She wished that that life, of which she knew next to nothing,
+could be entirely wiped out of the memory of this man who had flung
+himself into it with such avidity and dragged himself out with so much
+weariness, so many losses, so many wounds&mdash;'To live solely in you and
+for you, with no to-morrow and no yesterday&mdash;without other bond or
+preference&mdash;far from the world&mdash;&mdash;' Were not those his words to her?
+What a dream!</p>
+
+<p>Matters of very different import were troubling Andrea. It was fast
+approaching the Princess of Ferentino's lunch hour.</p>
+
+<p>'Where are you bound for?' he asked of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>'Wishing to make the most of the sunshine, Delfina and I had tea and
+sandwiches at Nazzari's and thought of going up to the Pincio and
+visiting the Villa Medici. If you would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>care to come with us&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>He had a moment of painful hesitation. The Pincio, the Villa Medici, on
+a February afternoon&mdash;with her! But he could not well get out of the
+lunch; besides, he was desperately anxious to meet Elena again after
+yesterday's episode, for though he had gone to the Angelieris', she did
+not put in an appearance.</p>
+
+<p>He therefore answered with an inconsolable air&mdash;'How wretchedly
+unfortunate! I am obliged to be at a lunch in a quarter of an hour. I
+accepted the invitation a week ago, but if I had known, I would have
+found some way of getting out of it&mdash;What a nuisance!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, then you must go without losing a moment&mdash;you will be late.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>'I can walk a little further with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mamma, do let us go up the steps,' begged Delfina. 'I went up yesterday
+with Miss Dorothy. You should see it!'</p>
+
+<p>They turned back and crossed the square. A child followed them
+persistently, offering a great branch of flowering almond, which Andrea
+bought and presented to Delfina. Blonde ladies issued from the hotels
+armed with red B&aelig;dekers; clumsy hackney coaches with two horses jogged
+past with a glint of brass on their oldfashioned harness; the
+flower-sellers thrust their overflowing baskets in front of the
+strangers, vociferating at the pitch of their voices.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you promise me,' Andrea said to Donna Maria, as they began to
+ascend the steps&mdash;'will you promise me not to go to the Villa Medici
+without me? Give it up for to-day&mdash;please do.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she seemed preoccupied by sad thoughts, then she answered:
+'Very well, I will give it up.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks!'</p>
+
+<p>Before them the great stairway rose triumphantly, its sun-warmed steps
+giving out a gentle heat, the stone itself having the polished gleam of
+old silver like that of the fountains at Schifanoja. Delfina ran on in
+front with her almond-branch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> and, caught by the breeze of her movement,
+some of its faint pink petals fluttered away like butterflies.</p>
+
+<p>A poignant regret pierced the young man's heart. He pictured to himself
+the delights of a sentimental walk through the quiet glades of the Villa
+Medici in the early hours of the sunny afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>'With whom do you lunch?' asked Donna Maria, after an interval of
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>'With the old Princess Alberoni,' he replied.</p>
+
+<p>He lied to her once more, for some instinct warned him that the name
+Ferentino might arouse some suspicion in Donna Maria's mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye, then,' she said, and held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;I will come up to the Piazza. My carriage is waiting for me there.
+Look&mdash;that is where I live,' and he pointed to the Palazzo Zuccari, all
+flooded with sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Donna Maria's eyes lingered upon it.</p>
+
+<p>'Now there you have seen it, will you come there sometimes&mdash;in spirit?'</p>
+
+<p>'In spirit always.'</p>
+
+<p>'And shall I not see you before Saturday evening?'</p>
+
+<p>'I hardly think so.'</p>
+
+<p>They parted&mdash;she turning with Delfina into the avenue, Andrea jumping
+into his brougham and driving off down the Via Gregoriana.</p>
+
+<p>He arrived at the Ferentinos' a few minutes late. He made his apologies.
+Elena was already there with her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Lunch was served in a dining room gay with tapestries representing
+scenes after the manner of Peter Loar. In the midst of these beautiful
+seventeenth-century grotesques, a brisk fire of wit and sarcasm soon
+began to flash and scintillate. The three ladies were in high spirits
+and prompt at repartee. Barbare la Viti laughed her sonorous masculine
+laugh, throwing back her handsome boyish head and making free play with
+her sparkling black eyes. Elena was in a more than usually brilliant
+vein, and impressed Andrea as being so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> far removed from him, so
+unfamiliar, so unconcerned, that he almost doubted whether yesterday's
+scene had not been all a dream. Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of
+Ferentino aided and abetted the ladies; Lord Heathfield entertained his
+'young friend' by boring him to extinction with questions as to the
+coming sales and giving him minute details of a very rare edition of the
+<i>Metamorphoses</i> of Apuleius&mdash;Roma, 1469&mdash;in folio, which he had acquired
+a day or two ago for fifteen hundred and twenty lire. He broke off every
+now and then to watch Barbarella, and then that gleam of dementia would
+flash into his eyes, and his repulsive hands trembled strangely.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea's irritation, disgust, and boredom at last reached such a pitch
+that he was unable to conceal his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>'You seem out of spirits, Ugenta,' said the princess.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, a little, perhaps&mdash;Miching Mallecho is ill.'</p>
+
+<p>Barbarisi at once overwhelmed him with importunate questions about the
+horse's ailments; and then Lord Heathfield recommenced the story of the
+<i>Metamorphoses</i> from the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess turned to her cousin. 'What do you think, Ludovico,' she
+said with a laugh, 'yesterday, at the concert, we surprised him in a
+flirtation with an Incognita!'</p>
+
+<p>'So we did,' added Elena.</p>
+
+<p>'An Incognita?' exclaimed Ludovico.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but perhaps you can give us further information. She is the wife
+of the new Minister for Guatemala.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aha&mdash;I know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well?'</p>
+
+<p>'For the moment, I only know the Minister. I see him playing at the Club
+every night.'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me, Ugenta, has she been received at court yet?'</p>
+
+<p>'I really do not know, Princess,' Andrea returned with some impatience.</p>
+
+<p>The whole business had become simply intolerable to him. Elena's gaiety
+jarred horribly on him, and her husband's presence was more odious than
+ever. But if he was out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> temper, it was more with himself than with
+the rest of the company. At the root of his irritation lay a dim longing
+after the pleasure he had so lately rejected. Hurt and offended by
+Elena's indifference, his heart turned with poignant regret to the other
+woman, and he pictured her wandering pensive and alone through the
+silent avenues, more beautiful, more noble than ever before.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess rose and led the way into an adjoining room. Barbarella ran
+to the piano, which was entirely enveloped in an immense antique
+caparison of red velvet embroidered with dull gold, and began to sing
+Bizet's Tarantelle dedicated to Christine Nilsson. Elena and Eva leaned
+over her to read the music, while Ludovico stood behind them smoking a
+cigarette. The Prince had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>But Lord Heathfield kept firm hold of Andrea. He had drawn him into a
+window and was discoursing to him on certain little Urbanese '<i>coppette
+amatorie</i>' which he had picked up at the Cavaliere Davila's sale, and
+the rasping voice with its aggravating interrogative inflections, the
+gestures with which he indicated the dimensions of the cups, and his
+glance&mdash;now dull and fishy, now keen as steel under the great prominent
+brow&mdash;in short, the whole man was so unendurably obnoxious to Andrea
+that he clenched his teeth convulsively like a patient under the
+surgeon's knife.</p>
+
+<p>His one absorbing thought was how to get away. His plan was to rush to
+the Pincio in the hope of finding Donna Maria and taking her, after all,
+to the Villa Medici. It was about two o'clock. He looked out of the
+window at the glorious sunshine; he turned back into the room, and saw
+the group of pretty women at the piano, bathed in the red glow struck
+out of the velvet cover by a strong golden ray. With this red glow the
+smoke of the cigarette mingled lightly as the talking and laughter
+mingled with the chords Barbarella Viti struck haphazard on the keys.
+Ludovico whispered a word or two in his cousin's ear, which the Princess
+forthwith communicated to her friends, for there was a renewed burst of
+laughter, ringing and deep, like a string of pearls dropping into a
+silver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> bowl. Then Barbarella took up Bizet's air again in a low voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Tra, la la&mdash;Le papillon s'est envol&eacute;&mdash;Tra, la la&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea was anxiously on the watch for a favourable moment at which to
+interrupt Lord Heathfield's harangue and make his escape. But the
+collector had entered upon a series of rounded periods, each intimately
+connected with the other, without one break, without one pause for
+breath. A single stop would have saved the persecuted listener, but it
+never came, and the victim's torments grew more unbearable every minute.</p>
+
+<p>'Oui! Le papillon s'est envol&eacute;&mdash;Oui! Ah! ah! ah! ah!'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>'Two o'clock already! Excuse me, Marquis, but I must go.'</p>
+
+<p>He left the window and went over to the ladies.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you excuse me, Princess, I have a consultation at two with the
+veterinary surgeons at my stables?'</p>
+
+<p>He took leave in a great hurry. Elena gave him the tips of her fingers,
+Barbarella presented him with <i>fondant</i>, saying&mdash;'Give it to poor
+Mallecho with my love.'</p>
+
+<p>Ludovico offered to accompany him.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no&mdash;stay where you are.'</p>
+
+<p>He bowed and left&mdash;flew down the stairs like lightning and jumped into
+his carriage, shouting to the coachman&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'To the Pincio&mdash;quick!'</p>
+
+<p>He was filled with a frenzied longing to reach Maria Ferr&egrave;s' side, to
+enjoy the delights which he had refused before. The rapid pace of his
+horses was not quick enough for him. He looked out anxiously for the
+Trinit&agrave; de' Monti, the avenue&mdash;the gates.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage flashed through the gates. He ordered the coachman to
+moderate his pace and to drive through each of the avenues. His heart
+gave a bound every time the figure of a woman appeared in the distance
+through the trees. He got out and, on foot, explored the paths forbidden
+to vehicles. He searched every nook and corner&mdash;in vain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Villa Borghese being open to the public, the Pincio lay deserted and
+silent under the languid smile of the February sun. Few carriages or
+foot-passengers disturbed the peaceful solitude of the place. The
+grayish-white trees, tinged here and there with violet, spread their
+leafless branches against a diaphanous sky, and the air was full of
+delicate spider-webs which the breeze shook and tore asunder. The pines
+and cypresses&mdash;all the evergreen trees&mdash;took on something of this
+colourless pallor, seemed to fade and melt into the all-prevailing
+monotone.</p>
+
+<p>Surely something of Donna Maria's sadness still lingered in the
+atmosphere. Andrea stood for several minutes leaning against the
+railings of the Villa Medici, crushed beneath a load of melancholy too
+heavy to be borne.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IVd" id="CHAPTER_IVd"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>In the days that followed, the double pursuit continued with the same
+tortures, or worse, and with the same odious mendacity. By a phenomenon
+which is of frequent occurrence in the moral degradation of men of keen
+intellect, he now had a terrible lucidity of conscience, a lucidity
+without interruptions, without a moment of dimness or eclipse. He knew
+what he was doing and criticised what he had done. With him self-scorn
+went hand in hand with feebleness of will.</p>
+
+<p>But his variable humour, his incertitude, his unaccountable silences and
+equally unaccountable effusions, in short, all the peculiarities of
+manner which such a condition of mind inevitably brings along with it,
+only increased and excited the passionate commiseration of Donna Maria.
+She saw him suffer, and it filled her with grief and tenderness. 'By
+slow degrees I shall cure him,' she thought. But slowly and surely,
+without being aware of it, she was losing her strength of purpose and
+was bending to the sick man's will.</p>
+
+<p>The downward slope was gentle.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-room of the Countess Starnina, an indefinable thrill ran
+through her when she felt Andrea's gaze upon her bare shoulders and
+arms. It was the first time he had seen her in evening dress. Her face
+and her hands were all he knew. This evening he saw how exquisite was
+the shape of her neck and shoulders and of her arms too, although they
+were a little thin.</p>
+
+<p>She was dressed in ivory-white brocade trimmed with sable. A narrow band
+of fur edged the low bodice and imparted an indescribable delicacy to
+the tints of the skin. The line of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> the shoulders, from the neck to the
+top of the arms, had that gracious slope which is such a sure mark of
+physical aristocracy and so rare nowadays. In her magnificent hair,
+arranged in the manner affected by Verocchio for his busts, there was
+not one jewel, not one flower.</p>
+
+<p>At two or three propitious moments, Andrea murmured words of passionate
+admiration in her ear.</p>
+
+<p>'This is the first time we have met in society,' he said to her. 'Give
+me a glove as a souvenir.'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why not, Maria?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no. Be quiet.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, those hands of yours! Do you remember when I copied them at
+Schifanoja? I feel as if I had a right to them; as if you ought to grant
+them to me; of your whole person they are the part that is most
+intimately connected with your soul, the most spiritualised, almost, one
+might say, the purest&mdash;Oh, hands of kindness&mdash;hands of pardon. How
+dearly I should love to possess at least a semblance of their form, some
+token to which their delicate perfume still clings. You will give me a
+glove before you leave?'</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer. The conversation dropped. A short time afterwards,
+on being asked to play, she consented, and drawing off her gloves laid
+them on the music-stand in front of her. Her fingers, tapering and
+glittering with rings, looked very white as she drew off their delicate
+covering. On the ring finger of her left hand blazed a great opal.</p>
+
+<p>She played the two Sonata-Fantasias of Beethoven (Op. 27). The one,
+dedicated to Giulietta Guicciardi, expressed a hopeless renunciation,
+told of an awakening after a dream that had lasted too long. The other,
+from the first bars of the <i>Andante</i>, described by its full smooth
+rhythm the calm that comes after the storm; then, passing through the
+disquietude of the second movement, opened out into an <i>Adagio</i> of
+luminous serenity, and ended in an <i>Allegro Vivace</i> in which there was a
+rising note of courage, almost of fervour.</p>
+
+<p>Though surrounded by an attentive audience, Andrea felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> that she was
+playing for him alone. From time to time, his eyes wandering from the
+fingers of the pianist to the long gloves hanging from the music stand,
+which still retained the form of those hands, still preserved an
+inexpressible charm in the small opening at the wrist where, but a short
+time ago, a tiny morsel of her soft flesh had been visible.</p>
+
+<p>Maria rose amidst a round of applause. She left the piano, but she did
+not take away her gloves. Andrea was tempted to steal them.&mdash;Had she not
+perhaps left them for him?&mdash;But he only wanted one. As a connoisseur in
+amatory matters has said, a pair of gloves is a totally different thing
+from a single one.</p>
+
+<p>Led back to the piano by the insistence of the Countess Starnina, Maria
+removed her gloves from the desk and placed them in a corner of the
+keyboard, in the shadow. She then played Rameau's Gavotte&mdash;<i>the Gavotte
+of the Yellow Ladies</i>&mdash;the never-to-be-forgotten dance of Indifference
+and Love.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea regarded her fixedly with a little trepidation. When she rose,
+she took up one of her gloves. The other she left in the shadowy corner
+of the piano&mdash;for him.</p>
+
+<p>Three days afterwards, when astonished Rome had awakened to find itself
+under a covering of snow, Andrea received a note to the following
+effect&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Tuesday, 2 p. m.</i>&mdash;To-night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, you
+will wait for me in a carriage in front of the Palazzo Barberini,
+outside the gates. If by midnight I am not there, you can go away
+again.&mdash;<i>A stranger</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>The tone of the note was mysterious and romantic. Was it in remembrance
+of the 25th of March two years ago? Lady Heathfield seemed particularly
+fond of the use of carriages in her love affairs. Had she the intention
+of taking up the adventure at the point where it broke off? And why&mdash;<i>A
+stranger</i>? Andrea could not repress a smile. He had just come back from
+a visit to Maria&mdash;a very pleasing visit&mdash;and his heart inclined, for the
+moment, more to the Siennese than to the other. His ear still retained
+the sound of her sweet and gentle words as they stood together at the
+window<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> and watched the snow falling soft as peach or apple blossom on
+the trees of the Villa Aldobrandini, already touched with the
+presentiment of the coming Spring. However, before going out to dinner,
+he gave very particular orders to Stephen.</p>
+
+<p>Eleven o'clock found him in front of the palace, devoured by impatience
+and curiosity. The novelty of the situation, the spectacle of the snowy
+night, the mystery and uncertainty of it all, inflamed his imagination
+and transported him beyond the realities of life.</p>
+
+<p>Over Rome, on that memorable February night, there shone a full moon of
+fabulous size and unheard of splendour. In that immense radiance, the
+surrounding objects seemed to exist only as in a dream, impalpable,
+meteoric, and visible at a great distance by virtue of some fantastic
+irradiation of their own. The snow covered the railings of the gateway,
+concealing the iron and transforming it into a piece of open-work, more
+frail and airy than filigree; while the white-robed Colossi supported it
+as oaks support a spider's web. The garden looked like a motionless
+forest of enormous and mis-shapen lilies all of ice; a garden under some
+lunar enchantment, a lifeless paradise of Selene. Mute, solemn and
+massive the Palazzo Barberini reared its great bulk into the sky, its
+most salient points standing out dazzlingly white and casting a pale
+blue shadow as transparent as light.</p>
+
+<p>He waited, leaning forward on the watch; and under the fascination of
+that marvellous spectacle, he felt the spirits that wait on love awake
+in him, that the lyric summits of his sentiment began to gleam and
+glitter like the frozen shafts of the gateway under the moon. But he
+could not make up his mind which of the two women he would prefer as the
+centre of this fantastic scenery: Elena Heathfield robed in imperial
+purple, or Maria Ferr&egrave;s robed in ermine. And as he lingered pleasurably
+over this uncertainty of choice, he ended by mingling and confounding
+his two anxieties&mdash;the real one for Elena and the imaginary one for
+Maria.</p>
+
+<p>A clock near by struck in the silence with a clear vibrating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> sound, and
+each stroke seemed to break something crystalline in the air. The clock
+of the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti responded to the call, and after that the clock
+of the Quirinal&mdash;then others faintly out of the distance. It was a
+quarter past eleven.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea strained his eyes towards the portico. Would she dare to traverse
+the garden on foot? He pictured the figure of Elena in the midst of all
+this dazzling whiteness, then, in an instant, that of Donna Maria
+appeared to him, obliterating the other, triumphant over the whiteness,
+<i>Candida super nivem</i>. This night of moonlight and snow then was under
+the dominance of Maria Ferr&egrave;s as under some invincible actual influence.
+The image of the pure creature grew symbolically out of the sovereign
+purity of the surrounding aspect of things. The symbol re-acted forcibly
+on the spirit of the poet.</p>
+
+<p>While still watching to see if the other one would come, he gave himself
+up to a vision suggested by the scene before him.</p>
+
+<p>It was a poetic, almost a mystic dream. He was waiting for Donna
+Maria&mdash;she had chosen this night of supernatural purity on which to
+sacrifice her own purity to her lover's desire. All the white things
+about her, cognisant of the great sacrifice about to be accomplished,
+were waiting to cry <i>Ave</i> and <i>Amen</i> at the passage of their sister. The
+silence was alive.</p>
+
+<p>And behold, she comes! <i>Incedit per lilia et super nivem.</i> She comes,
+robed in ermine; her tresses bound about with a fillet; her steps
+lighter than a shadow; the moon and the snow are less pale than
+she&mdash;<i>Ave</i>!</p>
+
+<p>A shadow, azure as the light that tints the sapphire, accompanies her.
+The great mis-shapen lilies bend not as she passes; the frost has
+congealed them, has made them like the asphodels that illumine the paths
+of Hades. And yet, like those of the Christian paradise, they have a
+voice and say with one accord&mdash;<i>Amen</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So be it&mdash;the Beloved glides on to the sacrifice. Already<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> she nears the
+watcher sitting mute and icy, but whose eyes are burning and eloquent.
+And on her hands, the dear hands that close his wounds and open the
+doors of dreams, he presses his kiss.&mdash;So be it.</p>
+
+<p>Then on her lips, the dear lips that know no word of falseness, he lays
+his kiss. Released from the fillet, her hair spreads like a glorious
+flood in which all the shadows of the night put to flight by the moon
+and the snow seem to have taken refuge. <i>Comis suis obumbrabit tibi, et
+sub comis peccavit. Amen.</i></p>
+
+<p>And still the other did not come! Through the silence, through the
+poetry, the hours of men sounded again from the towers and belfries of
+Rome. A carriage or two rolled noiselessly past the Four Fountains
+towards the Piazza or crawled slowly up towards Santa Maria Maggiore;
+and each street-lamp shone yellow as a topaz in the light. It seemed as
+if the night, reaching its highest point, had grown more luminously
+radiant. The filigree of the gateway twinkled and flashed as if its
+silver embroideries were studded with jewels. In the palace, great
+circles of dazzling light shone on the windows like diamond florins.</p>
+
+<p>'What if she does not come?' thought Andrea to himself.</p>
+
+<p>The flood of lyric fervour that had passed over his soul at Maria's name
+had submerged the anxiety of his vigil, had appeased his desire and
+calmed his impatience. For a moment, the thought that she would not come
+only made him smile. But the next, the anguish of uncertainty began
+again worse than ever, and he was tortured by the vision of the joys
+that might have been his, here in the warm carriage where the roses
+breathed so sweet an atmosphere. Besides which, his sufferings were
+further increased, as on New Year's Eve, by a sharp touch of wounded
+vanity; it annoyed him particularly that his delicate preparations for a
+love scene should thus be wasted and useless.</p>
+
+<p>In the carriage, the cold was tempered by the pleasant warmth diffused
+by a metal foot-warmer, full of hot water. A bunch of white roses,
+snowy, moonlike, lay on the bracket<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> in front of the seat. A white
+bear-skin covered his knees. Everything pointed to an intentional
+arrangement of a sort of <i>Symphonie en blanc-majeur</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The clocks struck for the third time. It was a quarter to twelve. The
+vigil had lasted too long&mdash;Andrea was growing tired and cross. In
+Elena's apartments, in the left wing of the palace, there was no light
+but that which came from outside. Was she coming? And if so, in what
+manner? Secretly? Under what pretext? Lord Heathfield was certainly in
+Rome&mdash;how would she explain her nocturnal absence? Once more the soul of
+the former lover was torn with curiosity; once more jealousy gnawed at
+his heart and carnal passion inflamed him. He thought of Musellaro's
+derisive suggestion about the husband, and he determined to have Elena
+again at all costs, both for pleasure and for revenge. Oh, if only she
+would come!</p>
+
+<p>A carriage drove through the gates and into the garden. He leaned
+forward to look at it. He recognised Elena's horses and caught a glimpse
+inside of the figure of a woman. The carriage disappeared into the
+portico. He remained perplexed. She had been out then? She had returned
+alone? He fixed a scrutinising gaze upon the portico. The carriage came
+out, passed through the garden and drove away towards the Via Rasella;
+it was empty.</p>
+
+<p>It wanted but two or three minutes to midnight and she had not come!</p>
+
+<p>It struck the hour. A bitter pang smote the heart of the deluded
+watcher. She was not coming.</p>
+
+<p>Unable to see any cause for her having missed the appointment he turned
+upon her in sudden anger; he even had a suspicion that she might have
+wished to inflict a humiliation, a punishment upon him, or else that she
+had merely indulged in a whim in order to inflame his desire afresh. The
+next moment he called to the coachman&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Piazza del Quirinale.'</p>
+
+<p>He yielded to the attraction of Maria Ferr&egrave;s; he abandoned himself once
+more to the vaguely tender sentiment which,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> ever since his visit in the
+afternoon, had left, as it were, a perfume in his soul and suggested to
+him thoughts and images of poetic beauty. The recent disappointment,
+proving, as he considered, Elena's malice and indifference, urged him
+more strongly than ever towards the love and goodness of the other. His
+regret for the loss of so beautiful a night increased, under the
+influence of the vision he had dreamed just now. And, truth to tell, it
+was one of the most enchanting nights Rome had ever known; one of those
+spectacles that oppress the human soul with deep sadness, because they
+transcend all power of admiration, all possibility of human expression.</p>
+
+<p>The Piazza del Quirinale, magnified by the all-pervading whiteness, lay
+spread out solitary and dazzling, like an Olympian acropolis above the
+silent city. The edifices surrounding it reared their stately
+proportions into the deep sky; Bernini's great portal to the royal
+palace surmounted by the loggia offered an optical delusion by seeming
+to detach itself from the building and stand out all alone in all its
+unwieldy magnificence, like some mausoleum sculptured out of a meteoric
+block of stone. The rich architraves to the Palazzo della Consulta were
+curiously transformed by the accumulated masses of snow. Sublime amidst
+the uniform whiteness, the colossal statues seemed to dominate all
+things. The grouping of the Dioscuri and the horses looked bolder and
+larger in that light; the broad backs of the steeds glittered under
+jewelled trappings, there was a sparkle as of diamonds on the shoulders
+and the uplifted arm of each demi-god.</p>
+
+<p>An august solemnity flowed from the monument. Rome lay plunged in a
+death-like silence, motionless, empty&mdash;a city under a spell. The houses,
+the churches, the spires and turrets, all the confusion and
+intermingling of Christian and Pagan architecture, resolved itself into
+one unbroken forest between the heights of the Janiculum and the Monte
+Mario, drowned in a silvery vapour, far off, infinitely immaterial,
+reminding one a little of a lunar landscape, calling up visions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> of some
+half extinct planet peopled by shades. The dome of St. Peter's, shining
+with a peculiar metallic lustre in the blue atmosphere looked gigantic
+and so close that one might have thought to touch it. And the two
+youthful Heroes, sons of the Swan, radiant with beauty in the vast
+expanse of whiteness as in the apotheosis of their origin, seemed to be
+the immortal Genii of Rome guarding the slumbers of the sacred city.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage stopped in front of the palace and remained there for a
+long time. The poet was once more absorbed in his impossible dream. And
+Maria Ferr&egrave;s was quite near, was perhaps watching and dreaming also,
+perhaps she too felt the grandeur of the night weighing upon her heart
+and crushing it in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the carriage passed her closed door, while the windows reflected
+the full moon gazing at the hanging gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini
+where the trees looked like a&euml;rial miracles. And as he passed, the poet
+threw the bunch of roses on to the snow before Donna Maria's door in
+token of homage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Vd" id="CHAPTER_Vd"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>'I saw&mdash;I guessed&mdash;I had been at the window for a long time, unable to
+tear myself away from the fascination of all that whiteness. I saw the
+carriage pass slowly in the snow. I felt that it was you, before I saw
+you throw the roses. No words can describe to you the tenderness of my
+tears. I wept for you from love and for the roses out of pity. Poor
+roses! It seemed to me that they were alive and must suffer and die in
+the snow. I seemed to hear them call to me and lament like human
+creatures that have been deserted. As soon as your carriage had
+disappeared, I leaned out of the window to look at them. I was on the
+point of going down into the street to pick them up. But a servant was
+still in the hall waiting up for some one. I thought of a thousand plans
+but could find none that was practicable. I was in despair&mdash;You smile?
+Truly, I hardly know what madness had come over me. I watched the
+passers-by anxiously, my eyes full of tears. If any one of them had
+trodden on the roses, he would have trampled upon my heart. And yet in
+all this torment I was happy, happy in your love, in the delicacy of
+your passionate homage, in your gentleness, your kindness.&mdash;When, at
+last I fell asleep, I was sad and happy together; the roses must have
+been nearly dead by that time. After an hour or two of sleep, the sound
+of spades upon the pavement woke me up. They were shovelling away the
+snow just in front of my door. I listened; the noise and the voices
+continued till after daylight and filled me with unutterable
+sadness!&mdash;Poor roses! But they will always live and bloom in my heart.
+There are certain memories that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> can perfume a soul for ever&mdash;Do you
+love me very much, Andrea?'</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated for a moment, and then&mdash;'Do you love only me? Have you
+forgotten all the rest? Do all your thoughts belong to me?'</p>
+
+<p>Her breath came fast and she was trembling.</p>
+
+<p>'I suffer&mdash;at the thought of your former life,&mdash;the past of which I know
+nothing&mdash;of your memories, of all the marks left upon your soul, of that
+in you which I shall never understand never possess. Oh, if I could but
+wipe it all out for you! Incessantly, Andrea, I hear your first, your
+very first words. I believe I shall hear them at the moment of my
+death&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She panted and trembled, shaken by the force of all-conquering passion.</p>
+
+<p>'Every day I love you more, every day more!'</p>
+
+<p>He intoxicated her with words of honied sweetness; he was more fervent
+than herself; he told her of his visions in the night of snow and of his
+despairing desire and some plausible story of the roses and a thousand
+other lyric fancies. He judged her to be on the point of yielding&mdash;he
+saw her eyes swim in melting languor, and on her plaintive mouth that
+nameless contraction which seems like an instinctive dissimulation of
+the physical desire to kiss; he looked at her hands, so delicate and yet
+so strong, the hands of an archangel, and saw them trembling like the
+strings of an instrument expressing all the anguish of her soul. 'If,
+to-day, I could succeed in stealing even the most fleeting kiss from
+her,' he thought, 'I should find myself considerably nearer the goal of
+my desires.'</p>
+
+<p>But, conscious of her peril, she rose hastily with an apology and,
+ringing the bell, ordered tea and sent to ask Miss Dorothy to bring
+Delfina to the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>'It is better so,' she said, turning to Andrea with the traces of her
+agitation still visible in her face; 'forgive me!'</p>
+
+<p>And from that day she avoided receiving him except on Tuesday and
+Saturday when she was at home to every one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, she allowed Andrea to conduct her on long peregrinations
+through the Rome of the Emperors and the Rome of the Popes, through the
+villas, the museums, the churches, the ruins. Where Elena Muti had
+passed, there Maria Ferr&egrave;s passed also. Often enough, the sights they
+visited suggested to the poet the same eloquent effusions which Elena
+had once heard. Often enough, some recollection carried him away
+suddenly from the present and disturbed him strangely.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you thinking of at this moment?' Donna Maria would ask him,
+looking him deep in the eyes with a shade of suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>'Of you&mdash;always of you!' he answered. 'I am sometimes seized with
+curiosity to look into my own soul to see if there remains one tiny
+particle that does not belong to you, one smallest corner still closed
+to your light It is an exploration made for you, as you cannot make it
+for yourself. I may say with truth, Maria, that I have nothing more to
+give you. You have absolute dominion over me. Never, I think, in spirit
+has one human being possessed another so entirely. If my lips were to
+meet yours my whole life would be absorbed in yours&mdash;I believe I should
+die of it.'</p>
+
+<p>She had full faith in his words, for his voice lent them the fire of
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>One day, they were in the Belvedere of the Villa Medici and were
+watching the gold of the sun fade slowly from the sky while the Villa
+Borghese, still bare and leafless, sank gently into a violet mist.
+Touched with sudden melancholy she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Who knows how many times you have come here to feel yourself beloved?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not know,' he answered, like a man lost in a dream, 'I do not
+remember. What are you saying?'</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. Then she rose to read the inscriptions written on the
+pillars of the little temple. They were, for the most part, written by
+lovers, by newly-married couples, by solitary dreamers. All expressed
+some sentiment of love,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> grave or gay; they sang the praises of a beauty
+or mourned a lost delight; they told of some burning kiss or ecstasy of
+languor; they thanked the ancient wooded glades that had sheltered their
+love, pointed out some secret nook to the happy visitor of the morrow,
+described the lingering charms of a sunset they had watched. All of
+them, whether lovers or married, under the fascination of the eternal
+feminine had been seized with lyric fervour in this little lonely
+Belvedere to which they ascended by a flight of steps carpeted with moss
+as thick as velvet. The very walls spoke. An indefinable melancholy
+emanated from these unknown voices of vanished lovers, a sadness that
+seemed almost sepulchral, as if they had been epitaphs in a chapel.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Maria turned to Andrea. 'You have been here too,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not know,' he answered again, looking at her in the same dreamy
+way as before, 'I do not remember. I remember nothing. I love you.'</p>
+
+<p>She read, written in Andrea's hand, an epigram of Goethe's, a distich,
+the one beginning&mdash;<i>Sage, wie lebst du?</i> Say, how livest thou? <i>Ich
+lebe!</i> I live! 'And were it mine to live a hundred, hundred years, my
+only wish would be that to-morrow should be as to-day.' Underneath this
+there was a date: <i>Die ultima februarii</i> 1885, and a name: <i>Helena
+Amycl&aelig;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us go,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>The canopy of branches cast deep shadows over the little moss-carpeted
+stairway.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you take my arm?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No, thank you,' she replied.</p>
+
+<p>They went on in silence. The heart of each was heavy.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she said&mdash;'You were very happy two years ago.'</p>
+
+<p>And he, persisting in his tone of reverie&mdash;'I do not know&mdash;I do not
+remember.'</p>
+
+<p>In the green twilight, the path was mysterious. The trunks and branches
+of the trees were coiled and interlaced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> like serpents; here and there a
+leaf gleamed through the shade like an emerald green eye.</p>
+
+<p>After an interval of silence, she began again&mdash;'Who was that Elena?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not know, I have forgotten. I remember nothing but that I love
+you. I love none but you. I think only of you. I live for you alone. I
+know nothing, I wish for nothing but your love. Every fetter that binds
+me to my former life is broken. Now I am far from the world, utterly
+lost in you. I live in your heart and in your soul; I <i>feel myself</i> in
+every throb of your pulse; I do not touch you, and yet I am as close to
+you as if I held you in my arms, pressed to my lips, to my heart. I love
+you and you love me; and that has been for ages and will last for ages,
+to all eternity. At your side, thinking of you, living in you, I am
+conscious of the infinite&mdash;the eternal&mdash;I love you and you love me. I
+know nothing else&mdash;I remember nothing else.'</p>
+
+<p>On all her sadness, all her suspicions, he poured out a flood of warm
+fond eloquence. And she listened, standing straight and slender in front
+of the balustrade that runs round the wide terrace.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it true? is it true?' she repeated, in a faint voice like the echo
+of a moan out of the depth of her soul&mdash;'is that true?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, it is true&mdash;and that alone is true. All the rest is a dream. I
+love you and you love me. I am yours as you are mine. I know you to be
+so absolutely mine that I ask for no caress; I ask for no proof of your
+love. I can wait. My dearest delight is to obey you. I ask for no
+caresses, but I can feel them in your voice, in your eyes, your
+attitudes, your slightest movement. All that comes to me from you
+intoxicates me like a kiss, and when I touch your hand I know not which
+is greater, the rapture of my senses or the exaltation of my soul.'</p>
+
+<p>He lightly laid his hand on hers. She trembled, drawn by a wild desire
+to throw herself upon his breast to offer him, at last, her lips, her
+kiss, herself. It seemed to her&mdash;for she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> believed blindly in Andrea's
+words&mdash;that by so doing, she would bind him to her finally with an
+indissoluble bond. She felt that she was going to swoon, to die. It was
+as if the tumults of passion from which she had already suffered swelled
+her heart and increased the present storm; as if, into this one moment
+of time were gathered all the varying emotions she had experienced since
+she first knew this man. The roses of Schifanoja bloomed again among the
+shrubs and laurels of the Villa Medici.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall wait, Maria. I shall be true to my promises. I ask nothing of
+you. I wait and look forward to the supreme moment. That moment will
+come, I know it, for the power of love is invincible. And all your
+fears, all your terrors will vanish; and the communion of the body will
+seem to you as pure as the communion of the soul; for all flames are
+alike in purity.'</p>
+
+<p>He clasped Maria's ungloved hand in his. The gardens seemed deserted.
+From the palace of the Accademia came not a sound, not a voice. Clear
+through the silence, they heard the lisp of the fountain in the middle
+of the esplanade; the avenues stretched away towards the Pincio,
+straight and rigid as if enclosed between two walls of bronze, upon
+which the gilding of the sunset still lingered; the absolute immobility
+of all things suggested the idea of a petrified labyrinth; the reeds
+round the basin of the fountain were not less motionless than the
+statues.</p>
+
+<p>'I feel,' said Donna Maria, half-closing her eyes, 'as if I were on one
+of the terraces at Schifanoja&mdash;far, far away from Rome&mdash;alone&mdash;with you.
+When I shut my eyes, I see the sea.'</p>
+
+<p>Born of her love and of the silence, she saw a vision rise up before her
+and spread wide under the setting sun. Andrea's gaze was upon her; she
+said no more, but she smiled faintly. As she uttered the two
+words&mdash;'with you'&mdash;she closed her eyes, but her mouth seemed suddenly to
+grow luminous as if on it were concentrated all the splendour veiled by
+her quivering lids and her eyelashes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I feel as if none of these things existed outside of my consciousness,
+but that you had created them in my soul, for my delight. I am
+profoundly affected with this illusion each time I stand before some
+spectacle of beauty and you are at my side.'</p>
+
+<p>The words came slowly, with pauses in between, as if her voice were the
+halting echo of some other voice imperceptible to the senses, imparting
+to her words a singular accent, a tone of mystery, revealing that they
+proceeded from the innermost depths of her heart; they were no longer
+the ordinary imperfect symbols of thoughts, they were transformed into a
+more intense means of expression, transcendant, quivering with life, of
+infinitely ampler signification.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of planetary music heard in trance.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Andrea thought of Shelley's lines. He repeated them to Maria, feeling
+the contagion of her emotion, penetrated by the charm of the hour and
+the scene.</p>
+
+<p>'Never, in my hours of loftiest spiritual flights, have I attained to
+such heights. You lift yourself above my sublimest dream, shine
+resplendent above my most radiant thoughts; you illumine me with a ray
+that is almost brighter than I can bear.'</p>
+
+<p>She stood up straight and slender against the balustrade, her hands
+clasping the stone, her head high, her face more pallid than on the
+memorable morning when they walked beneath the flowering trees. Tears
+filled her half-closed eyes and glittered upon her lashes, and as she
+gazed before her, she saw the sky all rosy-red through the mist of her
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>The sky seemed to rain roses as on that evening in October when the sun,
+sinking behind the hill at Rovigliano, lit up the deep pools in the
+pine-wood. The Villa Medici, eternally green and flowerless, received
+upon the tops of its rigid arboreal walls this gentle rain of
+innumerable petals showered down from the celestial gardens.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She turned to go down. Andrea followed her. They walked in silence
+towards the stairway; they looked at the wood that stretched between the
+terrace and the Belvedere. The light seemed to stop short at the
+entrance to it, where stood the two guardian statues, unable to pierce
+the further gloom; and the trees looked as if they spread their branches
+in a different atmosphere, or rather in some dark waters at the bottom
+of the sea, like giant marine plants.</p>
+
+<p>She was seized with sudden terror. Hastening towards the steps, she ran
+down five or six and then stopped, dazed and panting. Through the
+silence, she heard the beating of her heart like the roll of distant
+thunder. The Villa Medici was no longer in sight; the stairway was
+enclosed between two walls, damp and gray and with grass growing in the
+cracks, gloomy as a subterranean dungeon. She saw Andrea lean down
+swiftly to kiss her on the lips.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, Andrea&mdash;no!'</p>
+
+<p>He stretched out his hands to draw her to him, to hold her fast.</p>
+
+<p>'No!'</p>
+
+<p>Wildly she seized one of his hands and carried it to her lips; she
+kissed it twice&mdash;thrice, with frenzied passion. Then she fled down the
+steps to the gate like a mad creature.</p>
+
+<p>'Maria! Maria! Stop!'</p>
+
+<p>They stood together before the closed gate, pale, panting, shaken,
+trembling from head to foot, gazing at one another with wide distraught
+eyes, their ears filled with the throb of their mad pulses, a sense of
+choking in their throats. Then suddenly, with one impulse, they were in
+each other's arms, heart to heart, lips to lips.</p>
+
+<p>'Enough&mdash;you are killing me,' she murmured, leaning, half fainting,
+against the gateway, with a gesture of supreme entreaty.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, they stood facing one another without touching. All the
+silence of the Villa seemed to weigh upon them in this narrow spot
+enclosed in its high walls like an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> open tomb. High above them sounded
+the hoarse cawing of the rooks gathering on the roofs of the palaces or
+crossing the sky. Once more, a strange fear possessed Maria's heart. She
+cast a terror-stricken glance up at the top of the walls. Then, with a
+visible effort she said quickly:</p>
+
+<p>'We can go now; will you open the gate!'</p>
+
+<p>And, in her uncontrollable haste to get away, her hand met Andrea's on
+the latch of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>As she passed between the two granite columns and under the jasmin,
+Andrea said&mdash;'Look, the jasmin is just going to blossom!'</p>
+
+<p>She did not turn but she smiled&mdash;a smile that was infinitely sad because
+of the shadow cast upon her heart by the sudden recollection of the name
+she had read in the Belvedere. And while she walked through the
+mysterious gloom of the avenue, and she felt his kiss flame in her
+blood, a ruthless torture graved deep into her heart, that name&mdash;oh,
+that name!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VId" id="CHAPTER_VId"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER VI</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Lord Heathfield opened the great book-case containing his private
+collection, and turning to Sperelli&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'You should design the clasps for this volume,' he said; 'it is in
+quarto and dated from Lampsacus, 1734. The engravings seem to me
+extremely fine. What do you think?'</p>
+
+<p>He handed Andrea the rare volume, which was illustrated with erotic
+vignettes.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is a very notable figure,' he continued, pointing to one of the
+vignettes&mdash;'something that was quite new to me. None of my erotic
+authors mention it.'</p>
+
+<p>He talked incessantly, discussing each detail and following the lines of
+the drawing with a flabby white finger, covered with hairs on the first
+joint and ending in a polished, pointed nail, a little livid like the
+nail of an ape. His voice grated hideously on Sperelli's ear.</p>
+
+<p>'This Dutch edition of Petronius is magnificent. And here is the
+<i>Erotop&oelig;gnion</i> printed in Paris, 1798. Do you know the poem
+attributed to John Wilkes, <i>An Essay on Women</i>? This is an edition of
+1763.'</p>
+
+<p>The collection was very complete. It comprised all the most infamous,
+the most refinedly sensual works that the human mind has produced in the
+course of centuries to serve as a commentary to the ancient hymn in
+honour of the god of Lampsacus, <i>Salve! Sancte pater.</i></p>
+
+<p>The collector took the books down from their shelves and showed them in
+turn to his 'young friend,' never pausing in his discourse. His hands
+grew caressing as he touched each volume bound in priceless leather or
+material. A subtle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> smile played continually round his lips, and a gleam
+as of madness flashed from time to time into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'I also possess a first edition of the Epigrams of Martial&mdash;the Venice
+one, printed by Windelin of Speyer, in folio. This is it. The clasps are
+by a master hand.'</p>
+
+<p>Sperelli listened and looked in a sort of stupor that changed by degrees
+into horror and distress. His eyes were continually drawn to a portrait
+of Elena hanging on the wall against the red damask background.</p>
+
+<p>'That is Elena's portrait by Frederick Leighton. But now, look at this!
+The frontispiece, the headings, the initial letters, the marginal
+ornaments combine all that is most perfect in the matter of erotic
+iconography. Look at the clasps!'</p>
+
+<p>The binding was exquisite. Shark-skin, wrinkled and rough as that which
+surrounds the hilts of Japanese sabres covered the sides and back; the
+clasps and bosses, of richly silvered bronze, were chased with
+consummate elegance, and were worthy to rank with the best work of the
+sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>'The artist, Francis Redgrave, died in a lunatic asylum. He was a young
+genius of great promise. I have all his studies. I will show them to
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>The collector warmed to his subject. He went away to fetch the portfolio
+from the next room. His gait was somewhat jerky and uncertain, like that
+of a man who already carries in his system the germ of paralysis, the
+first touch of spinal disease; his body remained rigid without following
+the movement of his limbs, like the body of an automaton.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea Sperelli followed him with his eyes till he crossed the threshold
+of the room. The moment he was alone, unspeakable anguish rent his soul.
+This room, hung with dark-red damask, exactly like the one in which
+Elena had received him two years ago, seemed to him tragic and sinister.
+These were, perhaps, the very same hangings that had heard Elena say to
+him that day, 'I love you.' The book-case was open, and he could see the
+rows of obscene books, the bizarre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> bindings stamped with symbolic
+decorations. On the wall hung the portrait of Lady Heathfield side by
+side with a copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Nelly O'Brien. And the two
+women looked out of the canvas with the same, self-same piercing
+intensity, the same glow of passion, the same flame of sensual desire,
+the same marvellous eloquence; each had a mouth that was ambiguous,
+enigmatical, sibylline, the mouth of the insatiable absorber of souls;
+and each had a brow of marble whiteness, immaculately, radiantly pure.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Redgrave!' said Lord Heathfield, returning with the portfolio of
+drawings. 'There was a genius for you. There never was an erotic
+imagination to equal his. Look! look! What style! What profound
+knowledge of the potentialities of the human figure for expression.'</p>
+
+<p>He left Andrea's side for a moment in order to close the door. Then he
+returned to the table in the window and began turning over the
+collection under Sperelli's eyes, talking without a pause, pointing out
+with that ape-like finger the peculiar characteristics of each figure.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke in his own language, beginning each sentence with an
+interrogative intonation and ending with a monotonous irritating drop of
+the voice. Certain words lacerated Andrea's ear like the sound of filing
+iron or the shriek of a steel knife over a pane of glass.</p>
+
+<p>And the drawings passed in review before him, appalling pictures which
+revealed the terrible fever that had taken hold upon the artist's hand,
+and the terrible madness that possessed his brain.</p>
+
+<p>'Now here,' said Lord Heathfield, 'is the work which inspired these
+masterpieces. A priceless book&mdash;rarest of the rare! You are not
+acquainted with Daniel Maclisius?'</p>
+
+<p>He handed Andrea the treatise: <i>De verberatione amatoria</i>. He had warmed
+more and more to his subject. His bald temples were flushed, and the
+veins stood out on his great forehead; every minute his mouth twitched a
+little convulsively and his hands, those detestable hands, were
+perpetually on the move, while his arms retailed their paralytic
+immo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>bility. The unclean beast in him appeared in all its brazen
+ugliness and ferocity.</p>
+
+<p>'Mumps! Mumps! are you alone?'</p>
+
+<p>It was Elena's voice. She knocked softly at one of the doors.</p>
+
+<p>'Mumps!'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea started violently; the blood rushed to his head and drew a veil
+of mist before his eyes, and there was a roar in his ears as if he were
+going to be seized with vertigo. In the midst of the fever of excitement
+into which he had been thrown by these books, these pictures, the
+maddening discourses of his host, a furious instinct rose out of the
+blind depths of his being, the same brutal impetus which he had already
+experienced on the race-course after his victory over Rutolo amid the
+acrid exhalations of his steaming horse. The phantasm of a crime of love
+tempted and beckoned to him: to kill this man, take the woman by force,
+wreak his brutal will upon her, and then kill himself. But it passed
+rapidly as it had come.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I am not alone,' answered the husband, without opening the door.
+'In a few minutes I shall have the pleasure of bringing Count Sperelli
+to you&mdash;he is here with me.'</p>
+
+<p>He replaced the book in the book-case, closed the portfolio and carried
+it back into the next room.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea would have given all he possessed not to have to undergo the
+ordeal that awaited him, and yet it attracted him strangely. Once more,
+he raised his eyes to the crimson wall and the dark frame out of which
+Elena's pallid face looked forth, that face with the haunting eyes and
+the sibylline mouth. A penetrating and continuous fascination emanated
+from that imperious image. That strange pallor dominated tragically the
+whole crimson gloom of the apartment. And once again he felt that his
+miserable passion was incurable.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you come into the drawing-room?' asked the husband, reappearing in
+the doorway perfectly calm and composed. 'Then, you will design those
+clasps for me?'</p>
+
+<p>'I will try,' answered Andrea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was quite unable to control his inward agitation. Elena looked at him
+with a provocative smile.</p>
+
+<p>'What were you doing in there?' she asked him, still smiling in the same
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>'Your husband was showing me some unique curiosities.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah!'</p>
+
+<p>There was a sardonic sneer upon her lips, a manifest mocking scorn in
+her voice. She settled herself on a wide divan covered with a Bokhara
+carpet of faded amaranthine hues on which languished great cushions
+embroidered with spreading palms of dull gold. Here she leaned back in
+an easy, graceful attitude, and gazed at Andrea from under her drooping
+eyelids, while she spoke of trivial society matters in a voice that
+insinuated its tones into the young man's heart, and crept through his
+blood like an invisible fire.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three times, he surprised a look which Lord Heathfield fixed upon
+his wife&mdash;a look that seemed surcharged with all the infamies he had
+stirred up just now. Again that criminal thought sped through his mind.
+He trembled in every fibre of his being. He started to his feet, livid
+and convulsed.</p>
+
+<p>'Going already?' exclaimed Lord Heathfield. 'Why, what is the matter?'
+and he smiled a singular smile at his 'young friend.' He knew well the
+effect of his books.</p>
+
+<p>Sperelli bowed. Elena gave him her hand without rising. Her husband
+accompanied him to the door, where he repeated in a low voice&mdash;'You
+won't forget those clasps?'</p>
+
+<p>As Andrea stood in the portico, he saw a carriage coming up the drive. A
+man with a great golden beard nodded to him from the window. It was
+Galeazzo Secinaro.</p>
+
+<p>In a flash, the recollection of the May Bazaar came back to him, and the
+episode of Galeazzo offering Elena a sum of money if she would dry her
+beautiful hands, all wet with champagne, on his beard. He hurried
+through the garden and out into the street. He had a dull confused sense
+as of some deafening noise going on inside his head.</p>
+
+<p>It was an afternoon at the end of April, warm and moist.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sun appeared and disappeared again among the fleecy slow-sailing
+clouds. The languor of the sirocco lay over Rome.</p>
+
+<p>On the pavement in front of him in the Via Sistina, he perceived a lady
+walking slowly in the direction of the Trinit&agrave;. He recognised her as
+Donna Maria Ferr&egrave;s. He looked at his watch; it was on the stroke of
+five; only a minute or two before the accustomed hour of meeting. Maria
+was assuredly on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.</p>
+
+<p>He hastened forward to join her. When he reached her side, he called her
+by name.</p>
+
+<p>She started violently. 'What? You here? I was just going up to you. It
+is five o'clock.'</p>
+
+<p>'It wants a minute or two yet to the hour. I was hurrying on to receive
+you. Forgive me.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you seem quite upset and very pale. Where were you coming from?'</p>
+
+<p>She frowned slightly, regarding him fixedly through her veil.</p>
+
+<p>'From my stables,' Andrea replied, meeting her look unblushingly as
+though he had not a drop of blood left to send to his face. 'A horse
+that I thought a great deal of has been hurt in the knee&mdash;the fault of
+the jockey&mdash;and now it will not be able to run in the Derby on Sunday.
+It has annoyed and upset me very much. Please forgive me, I over-stayed
+the time without noticing it. But it is still a few minutes to five.'</p>
+
+<p>'It does not matter. Good-bye. I am going back.'</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the Piazza del Trinit&agrave;. She stopped and held out her
+hand. A furrow still lingered between her brows. With all her great
+sweetness of temper, she occasionally had moments of angry impatience
+and petulancy that seemed to transform her into another creature.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Maria&mdash;come, be kind! I am going up now to wait for you. Go on as
+far as the gates of the Pincio and then come back. Will you?'</p>
+
+<p>The clock of the Trinit&agrave; de' Monti begun to strike.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'You hear that?' he added.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Very well, I will come.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you so much! I love you.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I love you.'</p>
+
+<p>They parted.</p>
+
+<p>Donna Maria went on across the piazza and into the avenue. Over her
+head, the languid breath of the sirocco sent a broken murmur through the
+green trees. Subtle waves of perfume rose and fell upon the warm, damp
+breeze. The clouds seemed lower; the swallows skimmed close to the
+ground; and in the languorous heaviness of the air there was something
+that melted the passionate heart of the Siennese.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since she had yielded to Andrea's persuasions, her heart had been
+filled with a happiness that was deeply fraught with fear. All her
+Christian blood was on fire with the hitherto undreamed-of raptures of
+her passion, and froze with terror at her sin. Her passion was
+all-conquering, supreme, immense, so despotic that for hours sometimes
+it obliterated all thought of her child. She went so far as to forget,
+to neglect Delfina! And afterwards, she would have a sudden access of
+remorse, of repentance, of tenderness, in which she covered the
+astonished little girl's face with tears and kisses, sobbing in horrible
+despair as over a corpse.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole being quickened at this flame, grew keener, more acute,
+acquired a marvellous sensibility, a sort of clairvoyance, a faculty of
+divination which caused her endless torture. Hardly a deception of
+Andrea's but seemed to send a shadow across her spirit; she felt an
+indefinite sense of disquietude which sometimes condensed itself into a
+suspicion. And this suspicion would gnaw at her heart, embittering
+kisses and caresses, till it was dissipated by the transports and ardent
+passion of her incomprehensible lover.</p>
+
+<p>She was jealous. Jealousy was her implacable tormentor; not jealousy of
+the present but of the past. With the cruelty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> that jealous people
+exercise against themselves, she would have wished to read the secrets
+of Andrea's memory, to find the traces left there by former mistresses,
+to know&mdash;to know&mdash;. The question that most often rose to her lips if
+Andrea seemed moody and silent was, 'What are you thinking about?' And
+yet, at the very moment of asking the question, a shadow would cross her
+eyes and her spirit, an inevitable rush of sadness would rise out of her
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>To-day again, when he turned up so unexpectedly in the street, had she
+not had an instinctive movement of suspicion? With a flash of lucidity,
+the idea had leapt into her mind that Andrea was coming from the Palazzo
+Barberini, from Lady Heathfield.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that Andrea had been this woman's lover; she knew that her name
+was Elena; she knew also that she was the Elena of the inscription&mdash;'Ich
+lebe!' Goethe's distich rang painfully in her heart. That lyric cry gave
+her the measure of Andrea's love for this most beautiful woman. He must
+have loved her boundlessly!</p>
+
+<p>Walking slowly under the trees, she recalled Elena's appearance in the
+concert-hall and the ill-disguised uneasiness of the old lover. She
+remembered her own terrible agitation one evening at the Austrian
+Embassy when the Countess Starnina said to her, seeing Elena pass
+by&mdash;'What do you think of Lady Heathfield? She was, and is still, I
+fancy, a great flame of our friend Sperelli's.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is still, I fancy.' What tortures in a single sentence! She followed
+her rival persistently with her eyes through the throng, and more than
+once her gaze met that of the other, sending a nameless shiver through
+her. Later on in the evening, when they were introduced to one another
+by the Baroness Bockhorst, in the middle of the crowd, they merely
+exchanged an inclination of the head. And that perfunctory salutation
+had been repeated on the rare occasions on which Maria Ferr&egrave;s had joined
+in any social function.</p>
+
+<p>Why should these doubts and suspicions, beaten down and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> stifled under
+the flood of her passion, rise up again now with so much vehemence? Why
+had she not the strength to repress them or put them away from her
+altogether? The least touch brought them up to the surface as lively as
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>Her distress and unhappiness increased with every moment. Her heart was
+not satisfied; the dream that had risen up within her on that mystical
+morning under the flowering trees in sight of the sea, had not come
+true. All that was purest and fairest in that love had remained down
+there in the sequestered glades in the symbolical forest that bloomed
+and bore fruit perpetually in contemplation of the Infinite.</p>
+
+<p>She stood and leaned against the parapet that looks towards San
+Sebastianello. The ancient oaks, their foliage so dark as almost to seem
+black, spread a sombre artificial roof over the fountain. There were
+great rents in their trunks filled up with bricks and mortar like the
+breaches in a wall. Oh, the young arbutus-trees all radiant and
+breathing in the light! The fountain, dripping from the higher into the
+lower basin, moaned at intervals, like a heart that fills with anguish
+and then overflows in a torrent of tears; oh, the melody of the Hundred
+Fountains in the laurel avenue! The city lay as dead, as if buried under
+the ashes of an invisible volcano, silent and funereal as a city ravaged
+by the plague, enormous, shapeless, dominated by the cupola that rose
+out of its bosom like a cloud. Oh, the sea, the tranquil sea!</p>
+
+<p>Her uneasiness increased. An obscure menace emanated from these things.
+She was seized with the feeling of terror she had already experienced on
+so many occasions. Across her pious spirit there flashed once more the
+thought of punishment.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the recollection that her lover awaited her, thrilled her
+to the heart's core; at the thought of his kisses, his caresses, his mad
+endearments, her blood was on fire and her soul grew faint. The thrill
+of passion triumphed over the fear of God. She turned her steps towards
+her lover's house with all the palpitating emotion of her first
+rendezvous.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'At last!' cried Andrea, gathering her into his arms, and drinking the
+breath from her panting lips.</p>
+
+<p>He took one of her hands and held it against his breast.</p>
+
+<p>'Feel my heart. If you had stayed away a minute longer, it would have
+broken.'</p>
+
+<p>But instead of her hand, she laid her cheek upon it. He kissed the white
+nape of her neck.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you hear it beat?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and it speaks to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'What does it tell you?'</p>
+
+<p>'That you do not love me.'</p>
+
+<p>'What does it tell you?' repeated the young man, biting her neck softly
+and preventing her from raising her head.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'That you love me.'</p>
+
+<p>She removed her cloak, her hat and her gloves, and then went to smell
+the bouquets of white lilac that filled the high Florentine vases like
+those of the <i>tondo</i> in the Borghese Gallery. Her step on the carpet was
+extraordinarily light, and nothing could exceed her grace of attitude as
+she buried her face in the delicate tassels of bloom.</p>
+
+<p>She bit off the end of a spray, and holding it between her lips&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Take it,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>They exchanged a long, long kiss in among the perfume.</p>
+
+<p>He drew her closer and said with a tremor in his voice, 'Come.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Andrea&mdash;no; let us stay here. I will make the tea for you.'</p>
+
+<p>She took her lover's hand and twined her fingers into his. 'I don't know
+what is the matter with me. My heart is so full of love that I could
+almost cry.'</p>
+
+<p>The words trembled on her lips; her eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, if only I need not leave you, if I could stay here always!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her heart was so full that it lent an indefinable sadness to her words.</p>
+
+<p>'When I think that you can never know the whole extent of my love! That
+I can never know yours! Do you love me? Tell me, say it a hundred, a
+thousand times&mdash;always&mdash;you love me?'</p>
+
+<p>'As if you did not know!'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I do not know.'</p>
+
+<p>She uttered the words in so low a tone that Andrea hardly caught them.</p>
+
+<p>'Maria!'</p>
+
+<p>She silently laid her head on Andrea's breast, waiting for him to speak,
+as if listening to his heart.</p>
+
+<p>He regarded that hapless head, weighed down by the burden of a sad
+foreboding; he felt the light pressure of that noble, mournful brow upon
+his breast, which was hardened by falsehood, encased in duplicity as in
+a cuirass of steel. He was stirred by genuine emotion; a sense of human
+pity for this most human suffering gripped him by the throat. And yet
+this agitation of soul resolved itself into lying words and lent a
+quiver of seeming sincerity to his voice.</p>
+
+<p>'You do not know!&mdash;Your voice was so low that it died away upon your
+lips; at the bottom of your heart something protested against your
+words; all, all the memories of our love rose up and protested against
+them. Oh! <i>you do not know</i> that I love you!&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She remained leaning against him, listening, trembling, recognising or
+fancying that she recognised in his moving voice the accents of true
+passion, the accents that intoxicated her and that she supposed were
+inimitable. And he went on speaking, almost in her ear, in the silence
+of the room, with his hot breath on her cheek and with pauses that were
+almost sweeter than words. '&mdash;To have one sole thought, continually,
+every hour, every moment&mdash;not to be able to conceive of any happiness
+but the transcendent one that beams upon me from your mere presence&mdash;to
+live throughout the day in the anticipation&mdash;impatient, restless,
+fierce&mdash;of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> moment when I shall see you again, and, after you have
+gone to caress and cherish your image in my heart,&mdash;&mdash;to believe in you
+alone, to swear by you alone, in you alone to put my faith, my strength,
+my pride, my whole world, all that I dream and all that I hope&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her face all bathed in tears. He ceased to speak, and with
+his lips arrested the course of the warm drops that flowed over her
+cheeks. She wept and smiled, caressing his hair with trembling hands,
+shaken with irrepressible sobs.</p>
+
+<p>'My heart, my dearest heart!'</p>
+
+<p>He made her sit down and knelt before her without ceasing to kiss her
+lids. Suddenly he started. He had felt her long lashes tremble on his
+lips like the flutter of an airy wing. Time was, when Elena had
+laughingly given him that caress twenty times in succession. Maria had
+learned it from him, and at that caress he had often managed to conjure
+up the image of <i>the other</i>.</p>
+
+<p>His start made Maria smile; and as a tear still lingered on her
+lashes&mdash;'This one too,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed it away, and she laughed softly without a thought of
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Her tears had ceased, and, reassured, she turned almost gay and full of
+charming graces.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going to make the tea now,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'No, stay where you are.' The image of Elena had suddenly interposed
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>'No, let me get up,' begged Maria, disengaging herself from his
+constraining arms. 'I want you to taste my tea. The aroma will penetrate
+to your very soul.'</p>
+
+<p>She was alluding to some costly tea she had received from Calcutta which
+she had given to Andrea the day before.</p>
+
+<p>She rose and went over to the arm-chair with the dragons in which the
+melting shades of the <i>rosa di gruogo</i> of the ancient dalmatic continued
+to languish exquisitely. The little cups of fine Castel-Durante Majolica
+still glittered on the tea-table.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>While preparing the tea, she said a thousand charming things, she let
+all the goodness and tenderness of her fond heart bloom out with entire
+freedom; she took an ingenuous delight in this dear and secret intimacy,
+the hushed calm of the room with all its accessories of refined luxury.
+Behind her, as behind the Virgin in Botticelli's <i>tondo</i>, rose the tall
+vases crowned with sprays of white lilac, and her archangelic hands
+moved about among the little mythological pictures of Luzio Dolci and
+the hexameters of Ovid beneath them.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you thinking about?' she asked Andrea, who was sitting on the
+floor beside her, leaning his head against the arm of her chair.</p>
+
+<p>'I am listening to you. Go on!'</p>
+
+<p>'I have nothing more to say.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, you have. Tell me a thousand, thousand things&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'What sort of things?'</p>
+
+<p>'The things that you alone know how to say.'</p>
+
+<p>He wanted Maria's voice to lull the anguish caused him by <i>the other</i>;
+to animate for him the image of <i>the other</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you smell that?' she exclaimed, as she poured the boiling water on
+to the aromatic leaves.</p>
+
+<p>A delicious fragrance diffused itself through the air with the steam.</p>
+
+<p>'How I love that!' she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea shivered. Were not those the very words&mdash;and spoken in her very
+tone&mdash;that Elena had used on the evening she offered him her love? He
+fixed his eyes on Maria's mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'Say that again.'</p>
+
+<p>'What?'</p>
+
+<p>'What you just said.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why?'</p>
+
+<p>'The words sound so sweet when you pronounce them&mdash;you cannot understand
+it, of course. Say them again.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, divining nothing, and a little troubled, even a little shy,
+under her lover's strange gaze.</p>
+
+<p>'Well then&mdash;I love that!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'And me?'</p>
+
+<p>'What?'</p>
+
+<p>'And me?&mdash;&mdash;you&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She looked down puzzled at her lover writhing at her feet, his face
+haggard and drawn, waiting for the words he was trying to draw out of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>'And me?&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! you&mdash;&mdash;I love you&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'That is it! That is it!&mdash;Say it again&mdash;again&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She did so, quite unsuspecting. He felt a spasm of inexpressible
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you shut your eyes?' she asked, not because of any suspicion in
+her mind, but to lead him on to explain his emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'So that I may die.'</p>
+
+<p>He laid his head on her knee and remained for some minutes in that
+attitude, silent and abstracted. She gently stroked his hair, his
+brow&mdash;that brow behind which his infamous imagination was working.
+Shadows began to fill the room, and the fragrance of the flowers and the
+aromatic beverage mingled in the air; the outlines of the surrounding
+objects melted into one vague form, harmonious, dim, unsubstantial.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she said: 'Get up, dearest, I must go. It is getting late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Stay a little longer with me,' he entreated.</p>
+
+<p>He drew her over to the divan where the gold on the cushions still
+gleamed through the shadows. There he suddenly clasped her head between
+his hands and covered her face with fierce hot kisses. He let himself
+imagine it was the other face he held, and he thought of it as sullied
+by the lips of her husband; and instead of disgust, was filled with
+still more savage desire of it. All the turbid sensations he had
+experienced in the presence of this man now rose to the surface of his
+consciousness, and with his kisses these vile things swept over the
+cheeks, the brow, the hair, the throat, the lips of Maria.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Let me go&mdash;let me go,' she cried, struggling out of his arms.</p>
+
+<p>She ran across to the tea-table to light the candles.</p>
+
+<p>'You must be good,' she said, panting a little still, and with an air of
+fond reproof.</p>
+
+<p>He did not move from the divan, but looked at her in silence.</p>
+
+<p>She went over to the side of the mantelpiece, where, on the wall, hung
+the little old mirror. She put on her hat and veil before its dim
+surface, that looked so like a pool of dull and stagnant water.</p>
+
+<p>'I am so loath to leave you this evening!' she murmured, oppressed by
+the melancholy of the twilight hour. 'This evening more than ever
+before.'</p>
+
+<p>The violet gleam of the sunset struggled with the light of the candles.
+The lilac in the crystal vases looked waxen white. The cushion in the
+arm-chair retained the impress of the form that had leaned against it.</p>
+
+<p>The clock of the Trinit&agrave; began to strike.</p>
+
+<p>'Heavens! how late! Help me to put on my cloak,' exclaimed the poor
+creature, turning to Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>He only clasped her once more in his arms, kissing her furiously,
+blindly, madly, with a devouring passion, stifling on her lips his own
+insane desire to cry aloud the name of Elena.</p>
+
+<p>At last she managed to gasp in an expiring voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'You are drawing my life out of me.' But his passionate vehemence seemed
+to make her happy.</p>
+
+<p>'My love, my soul, all, all mine!' she said.</p>
+
+<p>And again, blissfully&mdash;'I can feel your heart beating&mdash;so fast, so
+fast.'</p>
+
+<p>At last, with a sigh, 'I must go now.'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea was as lividly pale and convulsed as if he had just committed a
+murder.</p>
+
+<p>'What ails you?' she asked with tender solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to smile. 'I never felt so profound an emotion,' he answered.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought I should have died.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He took the bouquet of flowers from one of the vases and handed it to
+her and went with her towards the door, almost hurrying her departure,
+for this woman's every look and gesture and word was a fresh
+sword-thrust in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-bye, dear heart!' said the hapless creature to him with
+unspeakable tenderness. 'Think of me.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIId" id="CHAPTER_VIId"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER VII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>On the morning of the 20th of May, as Andrea Sperelli was walking along
+the Corso in the radiant sunshine, he heard his name called from the
+doorway of the Club.</p>
+
+<p>On the pavement in front of it was a group of gentlemen amusing
+themselves by watching the ladies pass and talking scandal. They were
+Giulio Musellaro, Ludovico Barbarisi, the Duke of Grimiti, Galeazzo
+Secinaro, Gino Bomminaco, and two or three others.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you heard what happened last night?' Barbarisi asked him.</p>
+
+<p>'No, what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Don Manuel Ferr&egrave;s, the Minister for Guatemala&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Well?'</p>
+
+<p>'Was caught red-handed cheating at cards.'</p>
+
+<p>Sperelli retained his self-command, although some of the men were
+looking at him with a certain malicious curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>'How was that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Galeazzo was there and was playing at the same table.'</p>
+
+<p>Secinaro proceeded to give him the details.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea did not affect indifference, he listened with a grave and
+attentive air. At the end of the story, he said, 'I am extremely sorry
+to hear it.'</p>
+
+<p>After remaining a minute or two longer with the group, he bowed and
+passed on.</p>
+
+<p>'Which way are you going?' asked Secinaro.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going home.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will go with you part of the way.'</p>
+
+<p>They went off together in the direction of the Via de' Condotti. The
+Corso was one glittering stream of sunshine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> from the Piazzo di Venezia
+to the Piazzo del Popolo. Ladies in light spring dress passed along by
+the brilliant shop-windows&mdash;the Princess of Ferentino with Barbarella
+Viti under one big lace parasol; Bianca Dolcebuono; Leonetto Lanza's
+young wife.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know this man&mdash;this Ferr&egrave;s?' asked Galeazzo of Andrea, who had
+not spoken as yet.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I met him last year at Schifanoja, at my cousin Ateleta's. The
+wife is a great friend of Francesca's. That is why the affair annoys me
+so much. We must see that it is hushed up as much as possible. You will
+be doing me the greatest favour if you will help me about it.'</p>
+
+<p>Galeazzo promised his assistance with the most cordial alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>'I think,' said he, 'that the worst of the scandal might be avoided if
+the Minister sends in his resignation to his Government without a
+moment's delay. That is what the President of the Club advised, but
+Ferr&egrave;s refused last night. He blustered and did the insulted. And yet
+the proofs were there, as clear as daylight. He will have to be
+persuaded.'</p>
+
+<p>They continued on the subject as they walked along. Sperelli was
+grateful to Secinaro for his assistance, and the intimate tone of the
+conversation predisposed Secinaro to friendly confidences.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the Via de' Condotti, they caught sight of Lady
+Heathfield strolling along the left side of the street past the Japanese
+shop-windows, with her undulating, rhythmic, captivating walk.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah&mdash;Donna Elena,' said Galeazzo.</p>
+
+<p>Both the men watched her, and both felt the glamour of that rhythmic
+gait.</p>
+
+<p>When they came up to her, they both bowed but passed on. They no longer
+saw her, but she saw them; and for Andrea it was a form of torture to
+have to walk beside a rival under the gaze of the woman he desired, and
+feel that those piercing eyes were perhaps taking a delight in weighing
+the merits of both men. He compared himself with Secinaro.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Galeazzo was of the bovine type, a Lucius Verus with golden hair and
+blue eyes; while amid the magnificent abundance of his golden beard
+shone a full red mouth, handsome, but without the slightest expression.
+He was tall, square-shouldered and strong, with an air of elegance that
+was not exactly refined, but easy and unaffected.</p>
+
+<p>'Well?' Sperelli asked, goaded on by a sort of madness. 'Are matters
+going on favourably?'</p>
+
+<p>He knew he might adopt this tone with a man of this sort.</p>
+
+<p>Galeazzo turned and looked at him half surprised, half suspicious. He
+certainly did not expect such a question from him, and still less the
+airy and perfectly calm tone in which the question was uttered.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, the time that siege of mine has lasted!' groaned the bearded
+prince. 'Ages simply&mdash;I have tried every kind of man&oelig;uvre but always
+without success. I always came too late, some other fellow had always
+been before me in storming the citadel. But I never lost heart. I was
+convinced that sooner or later my turn would come. <i>Attendre pour
+atteindre.</i> And sure enough&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Well?'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Heathfield is kinder to me than the Duchess of Scerni. I shall
+have, I hope, the very enviable honour of being set down after you on
+the list.'</p>
+
+<p>He burst into a rather coarse laugh, showing his splendid teeth.</p>
+
+<p>'I fancy that my doughty deeds in India, which Giulio Musellaro spread
+abroad, have added to my beard several heroic strands of irresistible
+virtue.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, just in these days that beard of yours should fairly quiver with
+memories.'</p>
+
+<p>'What memories?'</p>
+
+<p>'Memories of a Bacchic nature.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't understand.'</p>
+
+<p>'What, have you forgotten the famous May Bazaar of 1884?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Well, upon my word, now that you remind me of it, the third anniversary
+does fall on one of these next days. But you were not there&mdash;who told
+you?</p>
+
+<p>'You want to know more than is good for you, my dear boy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do tell me!'</p>
+
+<p>'Bend your mind rather to making the most skilful use of this
+anniversary and give me news as soon as you have any.'</p>
+
+<p>'When shall I see you again?'</p>
+
+<p>'Whenever you like.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then dine with me to-night at the Club&mdash;about eight o'clock. That will
+give us an opportunity of seeing after the other affair too.'</p>
+
+<p>'All right. Good-bye, Goldbeard. Run!'</p>
+
+<p>They parted in the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the steps, and as
+Elena came across the square in the direction of the Via due Macelli to
+go up to the Quattro Fontane, Secinaro joined her and walked on with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The strain of dissimulation once over, Andrea's heart sank within him
+like a leaden weight. He did not know how he was to drag himself up the
+steps. He was quite assured that, after this, Secinaro would tell him
+everything, and somehow this seemed to him a point to his advantage. By
+a sort of intoxication, a species of madness, resulting from the
+severity of his sufferings, he rushed blindly into new and ever more
+cruel and senseless torments; aggravating and complicating his miserable
+state in a thousand ways; passing from perversion to perversion, from
+aberration to aberration, without being able to hold back or to stop for
+one moment in his giddy descent. He seemed to be devoured by an
+inextinguishable fever, the heat of which made all the germs of human
+lust lying dormant in the hidden depths of his being flourish and grow
+big. His every thought, his every emotion showed the same stain.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, it was the very deception itself that bound him so strongly to
+the woman he deceived. His mind had adapted itself so thoroughly to the
+monstrous comedy that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> was no longer capable of conceiving any other
+way of satisfying his passion. This incarnation of one woman in another
+was no longer a result of exasperated desire, but a deliberate habit of
+vice, and now finally an imperious necessity. From thenceforth, the
+unconscious instrument of his vicious imagination had become as
+necessary to him as the vice itself. By a process of sensual depravity,
+he had almost come to think that the real possession of Elena would not
+afford him such exquisite and violent delight as the imaginary. He was
+hardly able to separate the two women in his thoughts. And just as he
+felt that his pleasure would be diminished by the actual possession of
+the one, so his nerves received a shock if by some lassitude of the
+imagination he found himself in the presence of the other without the
+interposing image of her rival.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he felt crushed to the earth at the thought that Don Manuel's ruin
+meant for him the loss of Maria.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to him that evening, he saw at once that the poor thing
+was ignorant as yet of her misfortune. But the next day, she arrived,
+panting, convulsed, pale as death. She threw herself into his arms, and
+hid her face on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>'You know?' she gasped between her sobs.</p>
+
+<p>The news had spread. Disgrace and ruin were inevitable, irremediable.
+There followed days of hideous torture, during which Maria, left alone
+after the precipitate flight of the gamester, abandoned by the few
+friends she possessed, persecuted by the innumerable creditors of her
+husband, bewildered by the legal formalities of the seizure of their
+effects, by bailiffs, money-lenders and rogues of all sorts, gave
+evidences of a courage that was nothing less than heroic, but failed to
+avert the utter ruin that overwhelmed the family.</p>
+
+<p>From her lover she would receive no assistance of any kind; she told him
+nothing of the martyrdom she was enduring even when he reproached her
+for the brevity of her visits. She never complained; for him she always
+managed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> to call up a less mournful smile; still obeyed the dictates of
+her lover's capricious passion, and lavished upon her ruthless destroyer
+all the treasures of her fond heart.</p>
+
+<p>Her presentiments had not deceived her. Everything was falling in ruins
+around her. Punishment had overtaken her without a moment's warning.</p>
+
+<p>But she never regretted having yielded to her lover; never repented
+having given herself so utterly to him, never bewailed her lost purity.
+Her one sorrow&mdash;stronger than remorse, or fear, or any other trouble of
+mind&mdash;was the thought that she must go away, must be separated from this
+man who was the life of her life.</p>
+
+<p>'My darling, I shall die. I am going away to die far from
+you&mdash;alone&mdash;all alone&mdash;and you will not be there to close my eyes&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled as she spoke with certainty and resignation. But Andrea
+endeavoured to kindle an illusive hope in her breast, to sow in her
+heart the seeds of a dream that could only lead to future suffering.</p>
+
+<p>'I will not let you die! You will be mine again and for a long time to
+come. We have many happy days of love before us yet!'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke of the immediate future.&mdash;He would go and establish himself in
+Florence; from there he could go over as often as he liked to Sienna
+under the pretext of study&mdash;could pass whole months there copying some
+Old Master or making researches in ancient chronicles. Their love should
+have its hidden nest in some deserted street, or beyond the city, in the
+country, in some villa decorated with rural ornaments and surrounded by
+a meadow. She would be able to spare an hour now and then for their
+love. Sometimes she would come and spend a whole week in Florence, a
+week of unbroken happiness. They would air their idyll on the hillside
+of Fiesole in a September as mild as April, and the cypresses of
+Montughi would not be less kind to them than the cypresses of
+Schifanoja.</p>
+
+<p>'Would it were true! Would it were true!' sighed Maria.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'You don't believe me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, I believe you; but my heart tells me that all these sweet
+things will remain a dream.'</p>
+
+<p>She made Andrea take her in his arms and hold her there for a long time;
+and she leaned upon his breast, silently crouching into his embrace as
+if to hide herself, with the shiver of a sick person or of one who seeks
+protection from some threatening danger. She asked of Andrea only the
+delicate caresses that in the language of affection she called 'kisses
+of the soul' and that melted her to tears sweeter than any more carnal
+delights. She could not understand how in these moments of supreme
+spirituality, in these last sad hours of passion and farewell her lover
+was not content to kiss her hands.</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;no, dear love,' she besought him, half repelled by Andrea's crude
+display of passion, 'I feel that you are nearer to me, closer to my
+heart, more entirely one with me, when you are sitting at my side, and
+take my hand in yours and look into my eyes and say the things to me
+that you alone know how to say. Those other caresses seem to put us far
+away from each other, to set some shadow between you and me&mdash;&mdash;I don't
+know how to express my thought properly&mdash;&mdash;And afterwards it leaves me
+so sad, so sad&mdash;I don't know what it is&mdash;&mdash;I feel then so tired&mdash;but a
+tiredness that has something evil about it&mdash;&mdash;!'</p>
+
+<p>She entreated him, humbly, submissively, fearing to make him angry. Then
+she fell to recalling memories of things recent and passed, down to the
+smallest details, the most trivial words, the most insignificant facts,
+which all had a vast amount of significance for her. But it was towards
+the first days of her stay at Schifanoja that her heart returned most
+fondly.</p>
+
+<p>'You remember? You remember?'</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly the tears filled her downcast eyes.</p>
+
+<p>One evening Andrea, thinking of her husband, asked her&mdash;'Since I knew
+you, have you always been <i>wholly</i> mine?'</p>
+
+<p>'Always.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I am not speaking of the soul&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Hush!&mdash;--yes, always wholly yours.'</p>
+
+<p>And he, who had never before believed one of his mistresses on this
+point, believed Maria without a shadow of doubt as to the truth of her
+assertion.</p>
+
+<p>He believed her even while he deceived and profaned her without remorse;
+he knew himself to be boundlessly loved by a lofty and noble spirit,
+that he was face to face with a grand and all-absorbing passion, and
+recognised fully both the grandeur of that passion and his own vileness.
+And yet under the lash of his base imaginings he would go so far as to
+hurt the mouth of the fond and patient creature, to prevent himself from
+crying aloud upon her lips the name that rose invincibly to his; and
+that loving and pathetic mouth would murmur, all unconscious, smiling
+though it bled&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Even thus you do not hurt me.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIIId" id="CHAPTER_VIIId"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER VIII</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>It wanted but a few days now to their parting. Miss Dorothy had taken
+Delfina to Sienna, and then returned to help her mistress in the last
+and most trying arrangements and to accompany her on the journey. In the
+mother's house in Sienna the truth of the story was not known, and
+Delfina of course knew nothing. Maria had merely written that Don Manuel
+had been suddenly recalled by his government. And she made ready to
+go&mdash;to leave these rooms, so full of cherished things, to the hands of
+the public auctioneers who had already drawn up the inventory and fixed
+the date of the sale for the 20th of June, at ten in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the 9th, as she was leaving Andrea, she missed a
+glove. While looking for it she came upon a volume of Shelley, the one
+which Andrea had lent her in Schifanoja, the dear and affecting book in
+which, before the excursion to Vicomile, she had underlined the words</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And forget me, for I can <i>never</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be thine.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She took up the book with visible emotion and turned over the pages till
+she came to the one which bore the mark of her underlining.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Never!</i>' she murmured with a shake of the head. 'You remember? And
+hardly eight months have passed since.'</p>
+
+<p>She pensively turned over a few more leaves and read other verses.</p>
+
+<p>'He is our poet,' she went on. 'How often you promised to take me to the
+English Cemetery! You remember, we were to take flowers for his grave.
+Shall we go? You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> might take me before I leave. It will be our last walk
+together.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let us go to-morrow,' he answered.</p>
+
+<p>The next evening, when the sun was already declining, they went in a
+closed carriage; on her knees lay a bunch of roses. They drove along the
+foot of the leafy Aventino and caught a glimpse of the boats laden with
+Sicilian wine anchored in the port of Ripa Grande.</p>
+
+<p>In the neighbourhood of the cemetery they left the carriage and went the
+rest of the way to the gates on foot and in silence. At the bottom of
+her heart, Maria felt that not only was she here to lay flowers on the
+tomb of a poet, but that in this place of death she would weep for
+something of herself irreparably lost. A <i>Fragment</i> of Shelley, read in
+the sleepless watches of the night echoed through her spirit as she
+gazed at the cypresses pointing to the sky on the other side of the
+white wall.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Death is here, and Death is there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death is busy everywhere;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All around, within, beneath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above, is death&mdash;and we are death.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death has set his mark and seal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On all we are and all we feel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On all we know and all we fear&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">First our pleasures die, and then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our hopes, and then our fears: and when<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These are dead, the debt is due,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dust claims dust&mdash;and we die too.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All things that we love and cherish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like ourselves must fade and perish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such is our rude mortal lot:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love itself would, did they not&mdash;&mdash;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As she passed through the gateway she put her arm through Andrea's and
+shivered.</p>
+
+<p>The cemetery was solitary and deserted. A few gardeners were engaged in
+watering the plants along by the wall, swing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>ing their watering-cans
+from side to side with an even and continuous motion and in silence.</p>
+
+<p>The funeral cypresses stood up straight and motionless in the air; only
+their tops, gilded by the sun, trembled lightly. Between the rigid,
+greenish-black trunks rose the white tombs&mdash;square slabs of stone,
+broken pillars, urns, sarcophagi. From the sombre mass of the cypresses
+fell a mysterious shadow, a religious peace, a sort of human kindness,
+as limpid and beneficent waters gush from the hard rock. The unchanging
+regularity of the trees and the chastened whiteness of the sepulchral
+monuments affected the spirit with a sense of solemn and sweet repose.
+But between the stiff ranks of the trees, standing in line like the deep
+pipes of an organ, and interspersed among the tombs, graceful oleanders
+swayed their tufts of pink blossom; roses dropped their petals at every
+light touch of the breeze, strewing the ground with their fragrant snow;
+the eucalyptus shook its pale tresses&mdash;now dark, now silvery white;
+willows wept over the crosses and crowns; and, here and there, the
+cactus displayed the glory of its white blooms like a swarm of sleeping
+butterflies or an aigrette of wonderful feathers. The silence was
+unbroken save by the cry, now and then, of some solitary bird.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea pointed to the top of the hill.</p>
+
+<p>'The poet's tomb is up there,' he said, 'near that ruin to the left,
+just below the last tower.'</p>
+
+<p>She dropped his arm and went on in front of him through the narrow paths
+bordered with low myrtle hedges. She walked as if fatigued, turning
+round every few minutes to smile back at her lover. She was dressed in
+black and wore a black veil that cast over her faint and trembling smile
+a shadow of mourning. Her oval chin was paler and purer than the roses
+she carried in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Once, as she turned, one of the roses shed its petals on the path.
+Andrea stooped to pick them up. She looked at him and he fell on his
+knees before her.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Adorata!</i>' he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>A scene rose up before her, vividly as a picture.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'You remember,' she said, 'that morning at Schifanoja when I threw a
+handful of leaves down to you from the higher terrace? You bent your
+knee to me while I descended the steps. I do not know how it is, but
+that time seems to me so near and yet so far away! I feel as if it had
+happened yesterday, and then again, a century ago. But perhaps, after
+all it only happened in a dream.'</p>
+
+<p>Passing along between the low myrtle hedges, they at last reached the
+tower near which lies the tomb of the poet and of Trelawny. The jasmin
+climbing over the old ruin was in flower, but of the violets nothing was
+left but their thick carpet of leaves. The tops of the cypresses, which
+here just reached the line of vision, were vividly illumined by the last
+red gleams of the sun as it sank behind the black cross of the Monte
+Testaccio. A great purple cloud edged with burning gold sailed across
+the sky in the direction of the Aventino&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'These are two friends whose lives were undivided.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So let their memory be, now they have glided<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under their grave; let not their bones be parted<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Maria repeated the last line. Then, moved by a delicate
+inspiration&mdash;'Please unfasten my veil,' she said to Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned her head back slightly so that he might untie the knot, and
+Andrea's fingers touched her hair&mdash;that magnificent hair, in the dense
+shadow of which he had so often tasted all the delights of his
+perfidious imagination, evoked the image of her rival.</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>She then drew the veil from before her face and looked at Andrea with
+eyes that were a little dazed. She looked very beautiful. The shadows
+round her eyes were darker and deeper, but the eyes themselves burned
+with a more intense light. Her hair clung to her temples in heavy
+hyacinthine curls tinged with violet. The middle of her forehead, which
+was left free, gleamed, by contrast, in moonlike purity. Her features
+had fined down and lost something of their materiality through stress of
+love and sorrow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She wound the veil about the stems of the roses, tied the two ends
+together with much care, and then buried her face in the flowers,
+inhaling their perfume. Then she laid them on the simple stone that
+bears the poet's name engraved upon it. There was an indefinable
+expression in the gesture, which Andrea could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>As they moved away, he suddenly stopped short, and looking back towards
+the tower, 'How did you manage to get those roses?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, but her eyes were wet.</p>
+
+<p>'They are yours&mdash;those of that snowy night&mdash;they have bloomed again this
+evening. Do you not believe it?'</p>
+
+<p>The evening breeze was rising, and behind the hill the sky was
+overspread with gold, in the midst of which the purple cloud dissolved,
+as if consumed by fire. Against this field of light, the serried ranks
+of the cypresses looked more imposing and mysterious than before. The
+Psyche at the end of the middle avenue seemed to flush with pale tints
+as of flesh. A crescent moon rose over the pyramid of Cestius, in a deep
+and glassy sky, like the waters of a calm and sheltered bay.</p>
+
+<p>They went through the centre avenue to the gates. The gardeners were
+still watering the plants, and two other men held a velvet and silver
+pall by the two ends, and were beating it vigorously, while the dust
+rose high and glittered in the air.</p>
+
+<p>From the Aventine came the sound of bells.</p>
+
+<p>Maria clung to her lover's arm, unable to control her anguish, feeling
+the ground give way beneath her feet, her life ebb from her at every
+step. Once inside the carriage, she burst into a passion of tears,
+sobbing despairingly on her lover's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall die!'</p>
+
+<p>But she did not die. Better a thousand times for her that she had!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IXd" id="CHAPTER_IXd"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER IX</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Two days after this, Andrea was lunching with Galeazzo Secinaro at a
+table in the Caff&eacute; di Roma. It was a hot morning. The place was almost
+empty; the waiters nodded drowsily among the buzzing flies.</p>
+
+<p>'And so,' the bearded prince went on, 'knowing that she had a fancy for
+strange and out-of-the-way situations, I had the courage to&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>He was relating in the crudest terms the extremely audacious means by
+which he had at last succeeded in overcoming Lady Heathfield's
+resistance. He exhibited neither reserve nor scruples, omitting no
+single detail, and praising the acquisition to the connoisseur. He only
+broke off, from time to time, to put his fork into a piece of juicy red
+meat, or to empty a glass of red wine. His whole bearing was expressive
+of robust health and strength.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea Sperelli lit a cigarette. In spite of all his efforts, he could
+not bring himself to swallow a mouthful of food, and with the wine
+Secinaro poured out for him, he seemed to be drinking poison.</p>
+
+<p>There came a moment at last, when the prince, in spite of his
+obtuseness, had a qualm of doubt, and he looked sharply at Elena's
+former lover. Except his want of appetite, Andrea gave no outward sign
+of inward agitation; with the utmost calm he puffed clouds of smoke into
+the air, and smiled his habitual, half-ironical smile, at his jocund
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>The prince continued: 'She is coming to see me to-day for the first
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>'To you&mdash;to-day?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Yes, at three o'clock.'</p>
+
+<p>The two men looked at their watches.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we go?' asked Andrea.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us,' assented Galeazzo rising. 'We can go up the Via de' Condotti
+together. I want to get some flowers. As you know all about it, tell
+me&mdash;what flowers does she like best?'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea laughed. An abominable answer was on the tip of his tongue, but
+he restrained himself and replied unmoved&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Roses, at one time.'</p>
+
+<p>In front of the Barcaccia they parted.</p>
+
+<p>At that hour the Piazza di Spagna had the deserted look of high summer.
+Some workmen were repairing a main water-pipe, and a heap of earth dried
+by the sun threw up clouds of dust in the hot breath of the wind. The
+stairway of the Trinit&agrave; gleamed white and deserted.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, slowly, Andrea went up, standing still every two or three steps,
+as if he were dragging a terrible weight after him. He went into his
+rooms and threw himself on his bed, where he remained till a quarter to
+three. At a quarter to three he got up and went out. He turned into the
+Via Sistina, on through the Via Quattro Fontane, passed the Palazzo
+Barberini and stopped before a book-stall to wait for three o'clock. The
+bookseller, a little wrinkled, dried-up old man, like a decrepit
+tortoise, offered him books, taking down his choicest volumes one by
+one, and spreading them out under his eyes, speaking all the time in an
+insufferable nasal monotone. Three o'clock would strike directly; Andrea
+looked at the titles of the books, keeping an eye on the gates of the
+palace, while the voice of the bookseller mingled confusedly with the
+loud thumping of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>A lady passed through the gates, went down the street towards the
+piazza, got into a cab, and drove away through the Via del Tritone.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea went home. There he threw himself once more on his bed, and
+waited till Maria should come, keeping himself in a state of such
+complete immobility, that he seemed not to be suffering any more.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At five Maria came.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know,' she said, panting, 'I can stay with you the whole
+evening&mdash;till to-morrow. It will be our first and last night of love. I
+am going on Tuesday.'</p>
+
+<p>She sobbed despairingly, and clung to him, her lips pressed convulsively
+to his.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't let me see the light of another day&mdash;kill me!' she moaned.</p>
+
+<p>Then, catching sight of his discomposed face, 'You are suffering?' she
+exclaimed. 'You too&mdash;you think we shall never meet again?'</p>
+
+<p>He had almost insuperable difficulty in speaking, in answering her. His
+tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, the words failed him. He had an
+instinctive desire to hide his face from those observant eyes, to avoid
+her questions at all cost. He was neither capable of consoling her nor
+of practising fresh deceptions.</p>
+
+<p>'Hush!' he whispered in a choking, almost irrecognisable voice.</p>
+
+<p>Crouching at her feet, he laid his head in her lap and remained like
+that for a long time without speaking, while she laid her tender hands
+upon his temples and felt the wild, irregular beating of his arteries.
+She realised that he was suffering fiercely, and in his pain forgot all
+thought of her own, grieving now only for his grief&mdash;only for him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he rose, and clasped her with such mad vehemence to him that
+she was frightened.</p>
+
+<p>'What has come to you! What is it?' she cried, trying to look in his
+eyes, to discover the reason of his sudden frenzy. But he only buried
+his face deeper in her bosom, her neck, her hair&mdash;anywhere out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>All at once, she struggled free of his embrace, her whole form convulsed
+with horror, her face ghastly and distraught as if she had at that
+moment torn herself from the arms of Death.</p>
+
+<p>That name! That name!&mdash;She had heard that name!</p>
+
+<p>A deep and awful silence fell upon her soul, and in it there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> suddenly
+opened one of those great gulfs into which the whole universe seems to
+be hurled at the touch of one thought. She heard nothing more. Andrea
+might writhe and supplicate and despair as he would&mdash;in vain.</p>
+
+<p>She heard nothing. Some instinct directed her actions. She found her
+things and put them on.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea lay upon the floor, sobbing, frenzied, mad.</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious that she was preparing to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>'Maria! Maria!</p>
+
+<p>He listened.</p>
+
+<p>'Maria!'</p>
+
+<p>He only heard the sound of the door closing behind her&mdash;she was gone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_Xd" id="CHAPTER_Xd"></a><a href="#toc">CHAPTER X</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>At ten o'clock in the morning of June 20th the sale began of the
+furniture and hangings belonging to His Excellency the Minister
+Plenipotentiary for Guatemala.</p>
+
+<p>It was a burning hot morning. Summer blazed already over Rome. Up and
+down the Via Nationale ran the tram-cars, drawn by horses with funny
+white caps over their heads to protect them against the sun. Long lines
+of heavily-laden carts encumbered the road, while the blare of trumpets
+mingled with the cracking of whips and the hoarse cries of the carters.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea could not make up his mind to cross the threshold of that house,
+but wandered about the street a long time, weighed down by a horrible
+sense of lassitude, a lassitude so overwhelming and desperate as to be
+almost a physical longing for death.</p>
+
+<p>At last, seeing a porter come out of the house with a piece of furniture
+on his shoulder, he decided to go in. He ran rapidly up the stairs. From
+the landing already he could hear the voice of the auctioneer.</p>
+
+<p>The sale was going on in the largest room of the suite&mdash;the one in which
+the Buddha had stood. The buyers were gathered round the auctioneer's
+table. They were, for the most part, shopkeepers, second-hand furniture
+dealers and the lower classes generally. There being little competition
+in summer when town was empty, the dealers rushed in, sure of obtaining
+costly articles for next to nothing. A vile odour permeated the hot air
+exhaled by the crowd of dirty and perspiring people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Andrea felt stifled. He wandered into the other rooms, where nothing had
+been left but the wall hangings, the curtains, and the porti&egrave;res, the
+other things having been collected in the sale room. Although he was
+walking on a thick carpet, he heard his footsteps as distinctly as if
+the boards had been bare.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself presently in a semicircular room. The walls were deep
+red, with here and there a sparkle of gold, giving the impression of a
+temple or a tomb, a sad and mysterious sanctuary fit for praying in, or
+for dying. The crude, hard light blazing in through the open windows
+seemed like a violation.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to the auction room. Again he breathed the nauseating
+atmosphere. He turned round, and in a corner of the room perceived the
+Princess of Ferentino and Barbarella Viti. He bowed and went over to
+them.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Ugenta, what have you bought?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing? Why, I should have thought you would buy everything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, why?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it was just an idea of mine&mdash;a romantic idea.'</p>
+
+<p>The princess laughed and Barbarella joined in.</p>
+
+<p>'We are going. It is impossible to stay any longer in this perfume.
+Good-bye, Ugenta&mdash;console yourself!'</p>
+
+<p>Andrea went to the auctioneer's table. The man recognised him.</p>
+
+<p>'Does the Signor Conte wish for anything in particular?'</p>
+
+<p>'I will see,' Andrea answered.</p>
+
+<p>The sale proceeded rapidly. He looked about him at the low faces of the
+dealers, felt their elbows pushing him, their feet touching his, their
+horrid breath upon him. Nausea gripped his throat.</p>
+
+<p>'Going&mdash;going&mdash;gone!'</p>
+
+<p>The stroke of the hammer rang like a knell through his heart and set his
+temples throbbing painfully.</p>
+
+<p>He bought the Buddha, a great carved cabinet, some china,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> some pieces
+of drapery. Presently he heard the sound of voices, and laughter, and
+the rustle of feminine skirts. He turned round to see Galeazzo Secinaro
+entering, accompanied by Lady Heathfield and followed by the Countess
+Lucoli, Gino Bomminaco and Giovanella Daddi. They were all laughing and
+talking noisily.</p>
+
+<p>He did his best to conceal himself from them in the crowd that besieged
+the auctioneer's table. He shuddered at the thought of being discovered.
+Their voices and laughter reached him over the heads of the perspiring
+people through the suffocating heat. Fortunately the gay party very soon
+afterwards took themselves off.</p>
+
+<p>He forced himself a passage through the closely packed bodies,
+repressing his disgust as well as he could, and making the most
+tremendous efforts to ward off the faintness that threatened to overcome
+him. There was a bitter and sickening taste in his mouth. He felt that
+from the contact of all these unclean people he was carrying away with
+him the germs of obscure and irremediable diseases. Physical torture
+mingled with his moral anguish.</p>
+
+<p>When he got down into the street in the full blaze of noon-day, he had a
+touch of giddiness. With an unsteady step, he set off in search of a
+cab. He found one in the Piazza del Quirinale and drove straight home.</p>
+
+<p>Towards evening, however, a wild desire came over him to revisit those
+dismantled rooms. He went upstairs and entered, on the pretext of asking
+if the furniture he had bought had been sent away yet.</p>
+
+<p>A man answered him: the things had just gone, the Signor Conte must have
+passed them on his way here.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly anything remained in the rooms. The crimson splendour of the
+setting sun gleamed through the curtainless windows and mingled with the
+noises of the street. Some men were taking down the hangings from the
+walls, disclosing a paper with great vulgar flowers, torn here and there
+and hanging in strips. Others were engaged in taking up and rolling the
+carpets, raising a cloud of dust that glittered in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> sunlight. One of
+them sang scraps of a lewd song. Dust and tobacco-smoke mingled and rose
+to the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>Andrea fled.</p>
+
+<p>In the Piazza del Quirinale a brass band was playing in front of the
+royal palace. Great waves of metallic music spread through the glowing
+air. The obelisk, the fountain, the statues looked enormous and seemed
+to glow as if impregnated with flame. Rome, immense and dominated by a
+battle of clouds, seemed to illumine the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Half-demented, Andrea fled; through the Via del Quirinale, past the
+Quattro Fontane and the gates of the Palazzo Barberini with its many
+flashing windows and, at last, reached the Cassa Zuccari.</p>
+
+<p>There the porters were just taking his purchases off a cart,
+vociferating loudly. Several of them were carrying the cabinet up the
+stairs with a good deal of difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>He went in. As the cabinet occupied the whole width of the staircase, he
+could not pass. So he had to follow it, slowly, slowly, step by step, up
+to his door.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<hr style='width: 85%;' />
+
+<p class="center">MODERN LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS<br /><br />
+COMPLETE LIST OF TITLES IN</p>
+
+<h2>THE MODERN LIBRARY</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>For convenience in ordering please use number at right of title</i></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+
+<table summary="buyme" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
+<tr><td align="center">AUTHOR<br />&nbsp;</td><td align="center">TITLE AND NUMBER<br />&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>AIKEN, CONRAD </td><td> Modern American Poetry 127</td></tr>
+<tr><td>ANDERSON, SHERWOOD</td><td> Poor White 115</td></tr>
+<tr><td>ANDERSON, SHERWOOD</td><td> Winesburg, Ohio 104</td></tr>
+<tr><td>ANDREYEV, LEONID</td><td> The Seven That Were Hanged; and the Red Laugh 45</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BALZAC</td><td> Short Stories 40</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BAUDELAIRE</td><td> Prose and Poetry 70</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BEARDSLEY, AUBREY</td><td> 64 Reproductions 42</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BEEBE, WILLIAM</td><td> Jungle Peace 30</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BEERBOHM, MAX</td><td> Zuleika Dobson 116</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BIERCE, AMBROSE</td><td> In the Midst of Life 133</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BLAKE, WILLIAM</td><td> Poems 91</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BRONTE, EMILY</td><td> Wuthering Heights 106</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BROWN, GEORGE DOUGLAS</td><td> The House with the Green Shutters 129</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BUTLER, SAMUEL</td><td> Erewhon 136</td></tr>
+<tr><td>BUTLER, SAMUEL</td><td> The Way of All Flesh 13</td></tr>
+<tr><td>CABELL, JAMES BRANCH</td><td> Beyond Life 25</td></tr>
+<tr><td>CABELL, JAMES BRANCH</td><td> The Cream of the Jest 126</td></tr>
+<tr><td>CARPENTER, EDWARD</td><td> Love's Coming of Age 51</td></tr>
+<tr><td>CARROLL, LEWIS</td><td> Alice in Wonderland, etc. 79</td></tr>
+<tr><td>CELLINI, BENVENUTO</td><td> Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini 3</td></tr>
+<tr><td>CHEKHOV, ANTON</td><td> Rothschild's Fiddle, etc. 31</td></tr>
+<tr><td>CHESTERTON, G. K.</td><td> Man Who Was Thursday 35</td></tr>
+<tr><td>CRANE, STEPHEN</td><td> Men, Women and Boats 102</td></tr>
+<tr><td>D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE</td><td> Flame of Life 65</td></tr>
+<tr><td>D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE</td><td> The Child of Pleasure 98</td></tr>
+<tr><td>D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE</td><td> The Maidens of the Rocks 118</td></tr>
+<tr><td>D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE</td><td> The Triumph of Death 112</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DAUDET, ALPHONSE</td><td> Sapho 85</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DEFOE, DANIEL</td><td> Moll Flanders 122</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DOSTOYEVSKY</td><td> Poor People 10</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DOUGLAS, NORMAN</td><td> Old Calabria 141</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DOUGLAS, NORMAN</td><td> South Wind 5</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DOWSON, ERNEST</td><td> Poems and Prose 74</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DREISER, THEODORE</td><td> Free, and Other Stories 50</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DUMAS, ALEXANDRE</td><td> Camille 69</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DUNSANY, LORD</td><td> A Dreamer's Tales 34</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DUNSANY, LORD</td><td> Book of Wonder 43</td></tr>
+<tr><td>ELLIS, HAVELOCK</td><td> The New Spirit 95</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FABRE, JEAN HENRI</td><td> The Life of the Caterpillar 107</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FLAUBERT</td><td> Madame Bovary 28</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FLAUBERT</td><td> Temptation of St. Anthony 92</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FRANCE, ANATOLE</td><td> Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard 22</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FRANCE, ANATOLE</td><td> The Queen Pedauque 110</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FRANCE, ANATOLE</td><td> The Red Lily 7</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FRANCE, ANATOLE</td><td> Thais 67</td></tr>
+<tr><td>FRENSSEN, GUSTAV</td><td> Jorn Uhl 101</td></tr>
+<tr><td>GAUTIER, THEOPHILE</td><td> Mlle. De Maupin 53</td></tr>
+<tr><td>GEORGE, W. L.</td><td> A Bed of Roses 75</td></tr>
+<tr><td>GILBERT, W. S.</td><td> The Mikado, Iolanthe, etc, 26</td></tr>
+<tr><td>GILBERT, W. S.</td><td> Pinafore and Other Plays 113</td></tr>
+<tr><td>GISSING, GEORGE</td><td> New Grub Street 125</td></tr>
+<tr><td>GISSING, GEORGE</td><td> Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft 46</td></tr>
+<tr><td>GONCOURT, E. AND J. DE</td><td> Ren&eacute;e Mauperin 76</td></tr>
+<tr><td>GORKY, MAXIM</td><td> Creatures That Once Were Men and Other Stories 48</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DE GOURMONT, REMY</td><td> A Night in the Luxembourg 120</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DE GOURMONT, REMY</td><td> A Virgin Heart 131</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HARDY, THOMAS</td><td> Jude the Obscure 135</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HARDY, THOMAS</td><td> The Mayor of Casterbridge 17</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HARDY, THOMAS</td><td> The Return of the Native 121</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL</td><td> The Scarlet Letter 93</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HEARN, LAFCADIO</td><td> Some Chinese Ghosts 130</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HECHT, BEN</td><td> Erik Dorn 29</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HUDSON, W. H.</td><td> Green Mansions 89</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HUDSON, W. H.</td><td> The Purple Land 24</td></tr>
+<tr><td>HUXLEY, ALDOUS</td><td> A Virgin Heart 131</td></tr>
+<tr><td>IBSEN, HENRIK</td><td> A Doll's House, Ghosts, etc. 6</td></tr>
+<tr><td>IBSEN, HENRIK</td><td> Hedda Gabler, Pillars of Society, The Master Builder 36</td></tr>
+<tr><td>IBSEN, HENRIK</td><td> The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, The League of Youth 54</td></tr>
+<tr><td>JAMES, HENRY</td><td> Daisy Miller, etc. 63</td></tr>
+<tr><td>JAMES, WILLIAM</td><td> The Philosophy of William James 114</td></tr>
+<tr><td>JOYCE JAMES</td><td> Dubliners 124</td></tr>
+<tr><td>KIPLING, RUDYARD</td><td>Soldiers Three 71</td></tr>
+<tr><td>LATZKO, ANDREAS</td><td> Men in War 88</td></tr>
+<tr><td>LAWRENCE, D. H.</td><td> The Rainbow 128</td></tr>
+<tr><td>LAWRENCE, D. H.</td><td> Sons and Lovers 109</td></tr>
+<tr><td>LEWISOHN, LUDWIG</td><td> Upstream 123</td></tr>
+<tr><td>LOTI, PIERRE</td><td> Mme. Chrysantheme 94</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MACY, JOHN</td><td> The Spirit of American Literature 56</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MAETERLINCK, MAURICE</td><td> Pelleas and Melisande, etc. 11</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DE MAUPASSANT, GUY</td><td> Love and Other Stories 72</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DE MAUPASSANT, GUY</td><td> Mademoiselle Fifi, and Twelve Other Stories 8</td></tr>
+<tr><td>DE MAUPASSANT, GUY</td><td> Une Vie 57</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MELVILLE, HERMAN</td><td> Moby Dick 119</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MEREDITH, GEORGE</td><td> Diana of the Crossways 14</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MEREDITH, GEORGE</td><td> The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 134</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MEREJKOWSKI, DMITRI</td><td> The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci 132</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MISCELLANEOUS</td><td> A Modern Book of Criticism 81</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Best Ghost Stories 73</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Best American Humorous Short</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Stories 87</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Best Russian Short Stories 18</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Contemporary Science 99</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Evolution in Modern Thought 37</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Outline of Psychoanalysis 66</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The Woman Question 59</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MOLIERE</td><td> Plays 78</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MOORE, GEORGE</td><td> Confessions of a Young Man 16</td></tr>
+<tr><td>MORRISON, ARTHUR</td><td> Tales of Mean Streets 100</td></tr>
+<tr><td>NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH</td><td> Ecce Homo and the Birth of Tragedy 68</td></tr>
+<tr><td>NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH</td><td> Thus Spake Zarathustra 9</td></tr>
+<tr><td>NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH</td><td> Beyond Good and Evil 20</td></tr>
+<tr><td>NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH</td><td> Genealogy of Morals 62</td></tr>
+<tr><td>O'NEILL, EUGENE</td><td> Seven Plays of the Sea 111</td></tr>
+<tr><td>PATER, WALTER</td><td> The Renaissance 86</td></tr>
+<tr><td>PATER, WALTER</td><td> Marius the Epicurean 90</td></tr>
+<tr><td>PAINE, THOMAS</td><td> Writings 108</td></tr>
+<tr><td>PEPYS, SAMUEL</td><td> Samuel Pepys' Diary 103</td></tr>
+<tr><td>POE, EDGAR ALLEN</td><td> Best Tales 82</td></tr>
+<tr><td>PREVOST, ANTOINE</td><td> Manon Lescaut 85</td></tr>
+<tr><td>RENAN, ERNEST</td><td> The Life of Jesus 140</td></tr>
+<tr><td>RODIN</td><td> 64 Reproductions 41</td></tr>
+<tr><td>RUSSELL, BERTRAND</td><td> Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell 137</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SALTUS, EDGAR</td><td> The Imperial Orgy 139</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR</td><td> Anatol, Green Cockatoo, etc. 32</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR</td><td> Bertha Garlan 39</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SCHOPENHAUER</td><td> Studies in Pessimism 12</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SCHREINER, OLIVE</td><td> The Story of an African Farm 132</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SHAW, G. B.</td><td> An Unsocial Socialist 15</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SPINOZA</td><td> The Philosophy of Spinoza 60</td></tr>
+<tr><td>STEVENSON, ROBERT L.</td><td> Treasure Island 4</td></tr>
+<tr><td>STIRNER, MAX</td><td> The Ego and His Own 49</td></tr>
+<tr><td>STRINDBERG, AUGUST</td><td> Married 2</td></tr>
+<tr><td>STRINDBERG, AUGUST</td><td> Miss Julie, The Creditor, etc. 52</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SUDERMANN, HERMANN</td><td> Dame Care 33</td></tr>
+<tr><td>SWINBURNE, CHARLES</td><td> Poems 23</td></tr>
+<tr><td>THOMPSON, FRANCIS</td><td> Complete Poems 38</td></tr>
+<tr><td>TOLSTOY, LEO</td><td> Redemption and Other Plays 77</td></tr>
+<tr><td>TOLSTOY, LEO</td><td> The Death of Ivan Ilyitch and Four Other Stories 64</td></tr>
+<tr><td>TURGENEV, IVAN</td><td> Fathers and Sons 21</td></tr>
+<tr><td>TURGENEV, IVAN</td><td> Smoke 80</td></tr>
+<tr><td>VAN LOON, HENDRIK W.</td><td> Ancient Man 105</td></tr>
+<tr><td>VILLON FRANCOIS</td><td> Poems 58</td></tr>
+<tr><td>VOLTAIRE</td><td> Candide 47</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WELLS, H. G.</td><td> Ann Veronica 27</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WHITMAN, WALT</td><td> Poems 97</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WILDE, OSCAR</td><td> An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance 84</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WILDE, OSCAR</td><td> De Profundis 117</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WILDE, OSCAR</td><td> Dorian Gray 1</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WILDE, OSCAR</td><td> Poems 19</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WILDE, OSCAR</td><td> Fairy Tales, Poems in Prose 61</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WILDE, OSCAR</td><td> Pen, Pencil and Poison 96</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WILDE, OSCAR</td><td> Salome, The Importance of Being Ernest, etc 83</td></tr>
+<tr><td>WILSON, WOODROW</td><td> Selected Addresses and Papers 55</td></tr>
+<tr><td>YEATS, W. B.</td><td> Irish Fairy and Folk Tales 44</td></tr>
+<tr><td>ZOLA, EMILE</td><td> Nana 142</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
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+End of Project Gutenberg's The Child of Pleasure, by Gabriele D'Annunzio
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Child of Pleasure, by Gabriele D'Annunzio
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Child of Pleasure
+
+Author: Gabriele D'Annunzio
+
+Commentator: Ernest Boyd
+
+Translator: Georgina Harding
+              Arthur Symons
+
+Release Date: December 4, 2006 [EBook #20015]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILD OF PLEASURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: although a number of obvious typographical errors
+in the printed work have been corrected, the original orthography of the
+book has been retained. This includes a number of compound words,
+normally hyphenated, which retain their hyphenlessness.]
+
+
+
+
+                         _The_
+                    CHILD OF PLEASURE
+
+                   GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
+
+                     TRANSLATED BY
+                    GEORGINA HARDING
+
+                  VERSES TRANSLATED BY
+                      ARTHUR SYMONS
+
+                     INTRODUCTION BY
+                       ERNEST BOYD
+            [Illustration: The Modern Library logo]
+                   THE MODERN LIBRARY
+                 PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK
+        _Manufactured in the United States of America
+          Bound for_ THE MODERN LIBRARY _by H. Wolff_
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It is characteristic of the atmosphere of legend in which Gabriele
+d'Annunzio has lived that even the authenticity of his name has been
+disputed. It was said that his real name was Gaetano Rapagnetta, and the
+curious will find amongst the Letters of James Huneker the boast that he
+was the first person to reveal to America the fact that d'Annunzio's
+name was "Rapagnetto"--a purely personal contribution to the legend.
+Yet, the plain fact, as proven by his birth certificate, is that the
+author of "The Child of Pleasure" was born at Pescara, on the 12th of
+March, 1863, the son of Francesco Paolo d'Annunzio and Luisa de
+Benedictis. _Il Piacere_, to give this novel its Italian name, was
+published when d'Annunzio was only twenty-six years of age, and except
+for an unimportant and imitative volume of short stories, it was his
+first sustained prose work. It is the book which at once made the
+novelist famous in his own country and very soon afterwards in England
+and France, where it was the first of his works to be translated. In
+America d'Annunzio was already known as the author of a powerful
+realistic novelette, "Episcopo & Co.," which was published in Chicago in
+1896, two years before "The Child of Pleasure" appeared in London. As
+has so often happened since, America led the way in introducing into the
+English language a writer who is one of the foremost figures in
+Continental European literature.
+
+In order to realize the sensation which Gabriele d'Annunzio created, it
+is necessary to glance back at the opinions of some of his early
+champions in foreign countries. Ouida claims, I think rightly, that her
+article in the _Fortnightly Review_, which was reprinted in her
+"Critical Studies," was the first account in English of the author and
+his work. In the main, although besprinkled with moral asides, it is,
+with one exception, as good an essay as any that has since been written
+on the subject. Ouida was sure that the wickedness of d'Annunzio was
+such that the only work of his which will become known to the English
+public in general will be the _Vergini delle Rocce_, because "(as far as
+it has gone) it is not indecent. The other works could not be reproduced
+in English." In proof of her contentions Ouida disclosed the fact that
+the French versions of the trilogy, "The Child of Pleasure," "The
+Victim," and "The Triumph of Death," were bowdlerized. At the same time
+she obligingly referred her readers to some of the choicer passages in
+the original, such as Chapter X of "The Child of Pleasure," where she
+claimed that "ingenuities of indecency" had been gratuitously
+introduced. For the guidance of those interested in such matters I may
+explain that, by a coincidence, the "ingenuity" in question is almost
+identical with that which was cited in the earlier part of _La Garconne_
+as proof that Victor Margueritte was unworthy of the Legion of Honor.
+
+After Ouida in England came the venerable Vicomte Melchior de Voguee in
+France, who is best known to readers in this country for his standard
+tome on the Russian novel. In the austere pages of the _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_ he carefully explained to his readers that d'Annunzio's lewdness
+must not be confused with the obscenities of Zola, whereat Ouida
+protested that they were alike in their complacent preoccupation with
+mere filth. The Frenchman is the sounder critic, it must be said, for
+while d'Annunzio frequently parallels some of the most unclean--in the
+literal, not the moral sense--scenes and incidents in Zola, his attitude
+about sex is as unlike Zola's as that of the late W. D. Howells. Only in
+"Nana" did Zola describe the life and emotions of a woman whose whole
+life is given up to love, and then, as we know, he chose a singularly
+crude and professional person, using her career as a symbol of the
+Second Empire. D'Annunzio has never described women with any other
+reason for existence but love, yet none of his heroines has poor Nana's
+uninspiring motives. They are amateurs with a skill undreamed of in
+Nana's philosophy; they believe in love for art's sake. Consequently,
+the French critic was right in insisting that Zola and d'Annunzio are
+two very different persons, although confounded in an identical obloquy
+by the moralists. He is, however, not quite so subtle when he tries to
+argue from this that, in the conventional sense, d'Annunzio is more
+moral.
+
+At this point I will cite an unexpectedly intelligent witness, one of
+the early admirers of d'Annunzio in English, and the author of an essay
+on him which is assuredly the best which has appeared in that language.
+This is what Henry James has to say of "The Child of Pleasure" in his
+"Notes on Novelists": "Count Andrea Sperelli is a young man who pays,
+pays heavily, as we take it we are to understand, for an unbridled
+surrender to the life of the senses; whereby it is primarily a picture
+of that life that the story gives us. He is represented as inordinately,
+as quite monstrously, endowed for the career that from the first absorbs
+and that finally is to be held, we suppose to engulf him; and it is a
+tribute to the truth with which his endowment is presented that we
+should scarce know where else to look for so complete and convincing an
+account of such adventures. Casanova de Seingalt is of course infinitely
+more copious, but his autobiography is cheap loose journalism compared
+with the directed, finely-condensed iridescent epic of Count Andrea."
+
+It would be difficult to find, couched in such euphemistically
+appreciative language, so accurate a summary of the intention and
+quality of this book. Casanova is pale, diffuse, and unconvincing,
+indeed, beside the d'Annunzio who so early gave his full measure as the
+supreme novelist of sensual pleasure in this book. As Arthur Symons so
+well says, "Gabriele d'Annunzio comes to remind us, very definitely, as
+only an Italian can, of the reality and the beauty of sensation, of the
+primary sensations; the sensations of pain and pleasure as these come to
+us from our actual physical conditions; the sensation of beauty as it
+comes to us from the sight of our eyes and the tasting of our several
+senses; the sensation of love, which, to the Italian, comes up from a
+root in Boccaccio, through the stem of Petrarch, to the very flower of
+Dante. And so he becomes the idealist of material things, while seeming
+to materialize spiritual things. He accepts, as no one else of our time
+does, the whole physical basis of life, the spirit which can be known
+only through the body."
+
+D'Annunzio has declared that the central male character in all three
+novels, Andrea Sperelli in "The Child of Pleasure," Tullio Hermil in
+"The Intruder" and Giorgio Aurispa in "The Triumph of Death," are
+projections of himself. They are as autobiographical as Stelio Effrena
+in "The Fire of Life," which is generally accepted as an elaboration of
+the poet's life with Eleonora Duse. His attitude, therefore, is clearly
+defined in the passage where he says: "In the tumult of contradictory
+impulses Sperelli had lost all sense of will power and all sense of
+morality. In abdicating, his will had surrendered the sceptre to his
+instincts; the aesthetic was substituted for the moral sense. This
+aesthetic sense, which was very subtle, very powerful and always active,
+maintained a certain equilibrium in the mind of Sperelli. Intellectuals
+such as he, brought up in the religion of Beauty, always preserve a
+certain kind of order, even in their worst depravities. The conception
+of Beauty is the axis of their inmost being: all their passions turn
+upon that axis." He is, in other words, the re-incarnation of Don Juan,
+pursuing in woman an elusive and impossible ideal.
+
+If d'Annunzio had not gone into the adventure of the war, with its
+sequel at Fiume, we might have continued to enjoy the spectacle of the
+adventures of this restless soul amongst feminine masterpieces. As a
+soldier and a statesman his prestige in the English-speaking world is
+low, and we are apt to forget while reading the political bombast of the
+years of the war and the period after the Armistice that it differs in
+no respect from all other patriotic claptrap, except that it is the work
+of the greatest living master of Italian prose. Of this fact his early
+novels are a needed reminder to a generation which is making its
+acquaintance with Italian writers of to-day through the intermediary of
+a converted anti-clerical, who cannot even retell the story of Christ
+without branding himself a vulgarian. In the prim days when young
+d'Annunzio first flaunted his carnal delights and sorrows before a world
+not yet released from Victorian stuffiness, the word "vulgar" was a
+polite English epithet for "fleshly," an adjective much beloved by
+indignant gentlemen who were permitting their wrath to triumph over
+their desire to be respectable. It is a word which we apply nowadays to
+the writings of a vulgarian like Papini, whose name is now as familiar
+to the general public as d'Annunzio's was when "The Child of Pleasure"
+was first translated. That is a measure of progress in this connection
+which justifies the hope that the "idealist of material things" will
+find again an audience which can understand and appreciate his quest.
+
+D'Annunzio has nothing to offer the sterile theorists of the new
+illiterate literature, who are as incapable of appreciating his refined
+and subtle perversities as they are of admiring the beautiful form in
+which his full-blooded and exuberant imagination clothes his
+conceptions. He is an aesthete, but his aestheticism has never expressed
+itself in barren theory, but has always turned to life itself. He
+realized at the outset of his career that life is a physical thing,
+which we must compel to surrender all that it can offer us, which the
+artist must bend and shape to his own creative purposes. It has been
+said that d'Annunzio had a philosophy and Nietzsche and Tolstoy were
+invoked as influences, but there is as little of Tolstoy's moralizing in
+"The Intruder" as of Nietzsche's pessimistic idealism in "The Child of
+Pleasure" or "The Triumph of Death." Whatever conclusions may be drawn
+from the problem of the Eternal Feminine as postulated in all his
+novels--and that is the only problem which he confronts--it is hardly to
+be dignified by the name of a philosophy. One gathers that men can be
+exalted and destroyed by the attraction of women, but the author
+remains to the end--as late certainly as 1910, when the last of the
+novels in the first mood, _Forse che si, forse che no_, appeared--of the
+opinion that they are the one legitimate preoccupation of the artist in
+living. Elena Muti in "The Child of Pleasure," Foscarina in "The Flame
+of Life," Ippolita in "The Triumph of Death" are superb incarnations of
+the one and ever varied problem which troubles the world in which
+d'Annunzio lives.
+
+An American critic, Mr. Henry Dwight Sedgwick, once demanded in tones of
+passionate scorn that d'Annunzio be tried before a jury of
+"English-speaking men," and he called the tale: "Colonel Newcome! Adam
+Bede! Bailie Jarvie! Tom Brown! Sam Weller!"--notes of exclamation
+included, from which one was to conclude that the creator of Sperelli,
+Hermil and Aurispa would slink away discomfited at the very sound of
+those names. Yet, on the other hand, can one imagine Andrea and Elena,
+Giorgio and Ippolita arguing with our advanced thinkers of the moment:
+Is Monogamy Feasible? or Can Men and Women be Friends? D'Annunzio is not
+to be approached either in a mood of radical earnestness or of
+evangelical fervor. He must be regarded as an artist of sensations, an
+Italian of the Renaissance set down in the middle of a drab century. He
+began his life by a quest for perfect physical pleasure through all the
+senses, and inaugurated its last phase with a gesture of military
+courage which was not only a retort to those who, like Croce, had called
+him a dilettante, but an earnest of his conviction that he was a great
+artist of the lineage which bred men who were simultaneously great men
+of action.
+
+Ernest Boyd.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Andrea Sperelli dined regularly every Wednesday with his cousin the
+Marchesa d'Ateleta.
+
+The salons of the Marchesa in the Palazzo Roccagiovine were much
+frequented. She attracted specially by her sparkling wit and gaiety and
+her inextinguishable good humour. Her charming and expressive face
+recalled certain feminine profiles of the younger Moreau and in the
+vignettes of Gravelot. There was something Pompadouresque in her manner,
+her tastes, her style of dress, which she no doubt heightened purposely,
+tempted by her really striking resemblance to the favourite of Louis XV.
+
+One Tuesday evening, in a box at the Valle Theatre, she said laughingly
+to her cousin, 'Be sure, you come to-morrow, Andrea. Among the guests
+there will be an interesting, not to say _fatal_, personage. Forewarned
+is forearmed--Beware of her spells--you are in a very weak frame of mind
+just now.'
+
+He laughed. 'If you don't mind, I prefer to come unarmed,' he replied,
+'or rather in the guise of a victim. It is a character I have assumed
+for many an evening lately, but alas, without result so far.'
+
+'Well, the sacrifice will soon be consummated, _cugino mio_.'
+
+'The victim is ready!'
+
+The next evening, he arrived at the palace a few minutes earlier than
+usual, with a wonderful gardenia in his button-hole and a vague
+uneasiness in his mind. His _coupe_ had to stop in front of the
+entrance, the portico being occupied by another carriage, from which a
+lady was alighting. The liveries, the horses, the ceremonial which
+accompanied her arrival all proclaimed a great position. The Count
+caught a glimpse of a tall and graceful figure, a scintillation of
+diamonds in dark hair and a slender foot on the step. As he went
+upstairs he had a back view of the lady.
+
+She ascended in front of him with a slow and rhythmic movement; her
+cloak, lined with fur as white as swan's-down, was unclasped at the
+throat, and slipping back, revealed her shoulders, pale as polished
+ivory, the shoulder-blades disappearing into the lace of the corsage
+with an indescribably soft and fleeting curve as of wings. The neck rose
+slender and round, and the hair, twisted into a great knot on the crown
+of her head, was held in place by jewelled pins.
+
+The harmonious gait of this unknown lady gave Andrea such sincere
+pleasure that he stopped a moment on the first landing to watch her. Her
+long train swept rustling over the stairs; behind her came a servant,
+not immediately in the wake of his mistress on the red carpet, but at
+the side along the wall with irreproachable gravity. The absurd contrast
+between the magnificent creature and the automaton following her brought
+a smile to Andrea's lips.
+
+In the anteroom while the servant was relieving her of her cloak, the
+lady cast a rapid glance at the young man who entered.
+
+The servant announced--'Her Excellency the Duchess of Scerni!' and
+immediately afterwards--'Count Sperelli-Fieschi d'Ugenta!' It pleased
+Andrea that his name should be coupled so closely with that of the lady
+in question.
+
+In the drawing-room were already assembled the Marchese and Marchesa
+d'Ateleta, the Baron and Baroness d'Isola and Don Filippo del Monte. The
+fire burned cheerily on the hearth, and several low seats were
+invitingly disposed within range of its warmth, while large leaf plants
+spread their red-veined foliage over the low backs.
+
+The Marchesa, advanced to meet the two new arrivals with her delightful
+ready laugh.
+
+'Ah,' she said, 'a happy chance has forestalled me and made it
+unnecessary for me to tell you one another's names. Cousin Sperelli,
+make obeisance before the divine Elena.'
+
+Andrea bowed profoundly. The Duchess held out her hand with a frank and
+graceful gesture.
+
+'I am very glad to know you, Count,' she said, looking him full in the
+face. 'I heard so much about you last summer at Lucerne from one of your
+friends--Giulio Musellaro. I must confess I was rather curious--Besides,
+Musellaro lent me your exquisite "Story of the Hermaphrodite" and made
+me a present of your etching "Sleep"--a proof copy--a real gem. You have
+a most ardent admirer in me--please remember that.'
+
+She spoke with little pauses in between. Her voice was so warm and
+insinuating in tone that it almost had the effect of a caress, and her
+glance had that unconsciously voluptuous and disturbing expression which
+instantly kindles the desire of every man on whom it rests.
+
+'Cavaliere Sakumi!' announced the servant, as the eighth and last guest
+made his appearance.
+
+He was one of the secretaries to the Japanese Legation, very small and
+yellow, with prominent cheek-bones and long, slanting, bloodshot eyes
+over which the lids blinked incessantly. His body was disproportionately
+large for his spindle legs, and he turned his toes in as he walked. The
+skirts of his coat were too wide, there was a multitude of wrinkles in
+his trousers, his necktie bore visible evidence of an unpractised hand.
+It was as if a _daimio_ had been taken out of one of those cuirasses of
+iron and lacquer, so like the shell of some monstrous crustacean, and
+thrust into the clothes of a European waiter. And yet, with all his
+ungainliness and apparent stupidity there was a glint of malice in his
+slits of eyes and a sort of ironical cunning about the corners of his
+mouth.
+
+Arrived in the middle of the room, he bowed low. His gibus slipped from
+his hand and rolled over the floor.
+
+At this, the Baroness d'Isola, a tiny blonde with a cloud of fluffy
+curls all over her forehead, vivacious and grimacing as a young monkey,
+called to him in her piping voice:
+
+'Come over here, Sakumi--here, beside me.'
+
+The Japanese cavalier advanced with a succession of bows and smiles.
+
+'Shall we see the Princess Isse this evening?' asked Donna Francesca
+d'Ateleta, who had a mania for gathering in her drawing-rooms all the
+most grotesque specimens of the exotic colonies of Rome, out of pure
+love of variety and the picturesque.
+
+The Asiatic replied in a barbarous jargon, a scarcely intelligible
+compound of English, French, and Italian.
+
+For a moment everybody was speaking at once--a chorus through which now
+and then the fresh laughter of the Marchesa rang like silver bells.
+
+'I am sure I have seen you before--I cannot remember when and I cannot
+remember where, but I am certain I have seen you,' Andrea Sperelli was
+saying to the duchess as he stood before her. 'When I saw you going
+upstairs in front of me, a vague recollection rose up in my mind,
+something that took shape from the rhythm of your movements as a picture
+grows out of a melody. I did not succeed in making the recollection
+clear, but when you turned round, I felt that your profile answered
+incontestably to that picture. It could not have been a divination,
+therefore it must have been some obscure phenomenon of memory. I must
+have seen you somewhere before--who knows--perhaps in a dream--perhaps
+in another world, a previous existence--'
+
+As he pronounced this last decidedly hackneyed, not to say silly remark,
+Andrea laughed frankly as if to forestall the lady's smile, whether of
+incredulity or irony. But Elena remained perfectly serious. Was she
+listening, or was she thinking of something else? Did she accept that
+kind of speech, or was she, by her gravity, amusing herself at his
+expense? Did she intend assisting him in the scheme of seduction he had
+begun with so much care, or was she going to shut herself up in
+indifference and silence? In short, was she or was she not the sort of
+woman to succumb to his attack? Perplexed, disconcerted, Andrea examined
+the mystery from all sides. Most men, especially those who adopt bold
+methods of warfare, are well acquainted with this perplexity which
+certain women excite by their silence.
+
+A servant threw open the great doors leading to the dining-room.
+
+The Marchesa took the arm of Don Filippo del Monte and led the way.
+
+'Come,' said Elena, and it seemed to Andrea that she leaned upon his arm
+with a certain abandon--or was it merely an illusion of his
+desire?--perhaps. He continued in doubt and suspense, but every moment
+that passed drew him deeper within the sweet enchantment, and with every
+instant he became more desperately anxious to read the mystery of this
+woman's heart.
+
+'Here, cousin,' said Francesca, pointing him to a place at one end of
+the oval table, between the Baron d'Isola and the Duchess of Scerni with
+the Cavaliere Sakumi as his _vis-a-vis_. Sakumi sat between the Baroness
+d'Isola and Filippo del Monte. The Marchesa and her husband occupied the
+two ends of the table, which glittered with rare china, silver, crystal
+and flowers.
+
+Very few women could compete with the Marchesa d'Ateleta in the art of
+dinner giving. She expended more care and forethought in the preparation
+of a menu than of a toilette. Her exquisite taste was patent in every
+detail, and her word was law in the matter of elegant conviviality. Her
+fantasies and her fashions were imitated on every table of the Roman
+upper ten. This winter, for instance, she had introduced the fashion of
+hanging garlands of flowers from one end of the table to the other, on
+the branches of great candelabras, and also that of placing in front of
+each guest, among the group of wine glasses, a slender opalescent Murano
+vase with a single orchid in it.
+
+'What a diabolical flower!' said Elena Muti, taking up the vase and
+examining the orchid which seemed all blood-stained.
+
+Her voice was of such rich full _timbre_ that even her most trivial
+remarks acquired a new significance, a mysterious grace, like that King
+of Phrygia whose touch turned everything to gold.
+
+'A symbolical flower--in your hands,' murmured Andrea, gazing at his
+neighbour, whose beauty in that attitude was really amazing.
+
+She was dressed in some delicate tissue of palest blue, spangled with
+silver dots which glittered through antique Burano lace of an
+indefinable tint of white inclining to yellow. The flower, like
+something evil generated by a malignant spell, rose quivering on its
+slender stalk out of the fragile tube which might have been blown by
+some skilful artificer from a liquid gem.
+
+'Well, I prefer roses,' observed Elena, replacing the orchid with a
+gesture of repulsion, very different from her former one of curiosity.
+She then joined in the general conversation.
+
+Donna Francesca was speaking of the last reception at the Austrian
+Embassy.
+
+'Did you see Madame de Cahen?' asked Elena. 'She had on a dress of
+yellow tulle covered with humming birds with ruby eyes--a gorgeous
+dancing bird-cage. And Lady Ouless--did you notice her?--in a white
+gauze skirt draped with sea-weed and little red fishes, and under the
+sea-weed and fish another skirt of sea-green gauze--Did you see it?--a
+most effective aquarium!' and she laughed merrily.
+
+Andrea was at a loss to understand this sudden volubility These
+frivolous and malicious things were uttered by the same voice which, but
+a few moments, ago had stirred his soul to its very depths; they came
+from the same lips which, in silence, had seemed to him like the mouth
+of the Medusa of Leonardo, that human flower of the soul rendered divine
+by the fire of passion and the anguish of death. What then was the true
+essence of this creature? Had she perception and consciousness of her
+manifold changes, or was she impenetrable to herself and shut from her
+own mystery? In her expression, her manifestation of herself, how much
+was artificial and how much spontaneous? The desire to fathom this
+secret pierced him even through the delight experienced by the proximity
+of the woman whom he was beginning to love. But his wretched habit of
+analysis for ever prevented him losing sight of himself, though every
+time he yielded to its temptation he was punished, like Psyche for her
+curiosity, by the swift withdrawal of love, the frowns of the beloved
+object and the cessation of all delights. Would it not be better to
+abandon oneself frankly to the first ineffable sweetness of new-born
+love? He saw Elena in the act of placing her lips to a glass of pale
+gold wine like liquid honey. He selected from among his own glasses the
+one the servant had filled with the same wine, and drank at the same
+moment that she did. They replaced their glasses on the table together.
+The similarity of the action made them turn to one another, and the
+glance they exchanged inflamed them far more than the wine.
+
+'You are very silent,' said Elena, affecting a lightness of tone which
+somewhat disguised her voice. 'You have the reputation of being a
+brilliant conversationalist--exert yourself therefore a little!'
+
+'Oh cousin! cousin!' exclaimed Donna Francesca with a comical air of
+commiseration, while Filippo del Monte whispered something in his ear.
+
+Andrea burst out laughing.
+
+'Cavaliere Sakumi; we are the silent members of this party--we must wake
+up!'
+
+The long narrow eyes of the Asiatic--redder than ever now that the wine
+had kindled a deeper crimson on his high cheek-bones--glittered with
+malice. All this time he had done nothing but gaze at the Duchess of
+Scerni with the ecstatic look of a _bonze_ in presence of the divinity.
+His broad flat face, which might have come straight out of a page of
+O-kou-sai, the great classical humorist, gleamed red among the chains of
+flowers like a harvest moon.
+
+'Sakumi is in love,' said Andrea in a low voice, and leaning over
+towards Elena.
+
+'With whom?'
+
+'With you--have you not observed it yet?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Well, look at him.'
+
+Elena looked across at him. The amorous gaze of the disguised _daimio_
+suddenly affected her with such ill-disguised mirth that the Japanese
+felt deeply hurt and humiliated.
+
+'See,' she said, and to console him she detached a white camellia and
+threw it across the table to the envoy of the Rising Sun,--'find some
+comparison in praise of me!'
+
+The Oriental carried the flower to his lips with a ludicrous air of
+devotion.
+
+'Ah--ah--Sakumi!' cried the little Baroness d'Isola, 'you are unfaithful
+to me!'
+
+He stammered a few words while his face flamed. Everybody laughed
+unrestrainedly, as if the foreigner had been invited solely to provide
+entertainment for the other guests. Andrea turned laughing towards
+Elena.
+
+Her head was raised and a little thrown back, and she was gazing
+furtively at the young man under her eyelashes with one of those
+indescribably feminine glances which seem to absorb--almost one would
+say drink in--all that is most desirable, most delectable in the man of
+their choice. The long lashes veiled the soft dark eyes which were
+looking at him a little side-long, and her lower lip had a scarcely
+perceptible tremor. The full ray of her glance seemed to rest upon his
+lips as the most attractive point about him.
+
+And in truth his mouth was very attractive. Pure and youthful in outline
+and rich in colouring, a little cruel when firmly closed, it reminded
+one irresistibly of that portrait of an unknown gentleman in the
+Borghese gallery, that profound and mysterious work of art in which the
+fascinated imagination has sought to recognise the features of the
+divine Cesare Borgia depicted by the divine Sanzio. As soon as the lips
+parted in a smile the resemblance vanished, and the square, even
+dazzlingly white teeth lit up a mouth as fresh and jocund as a child's.
+
+The moment Andrea turned, Elena withdrew her eyes, though not so quickly
+but that the young man caught the flash. His delight was so poignant
+that it sent the blood flaming to his face.
+
+'She is attracted by me!' he thought to himself, inwardly exulting in
+the assurance of having found favour in the eyes of this rare creature.
+'This is a joy I have never experienced before!' he said to himself.
+
+There are certain glances from a woman's eye which a lover would not
+exchange for anything else she can offer him later. He who has not seen
+that first love-light kindle in a limpid eye has never touched the
+highest point of human bliss. No future moment can ever approach that
+one.
+
+The conversation around them grew more animated, and Elena asked
+him--'Are you staying the winter in Rome?'
+
+'The whole winter--and longer,' was Andrea's reply, to whom the simple
+question seemed to open up a promise.
+
+'Ah, then you have set up a home here?'
+
+'Yes, in the Casa Zuccari--_domus aurea_.'
+
+'At the Trinita de' Monti?--Lucky being!'
+
+'Why lucky?'
+
+'Because you live on a spot I have a great liking for.'
+
+'You are quite right I always think--don't you?--that there the most
+perfect essence of Rome is concentrated as in a cup.'
+
+'Quite true! I have hung up my heart--both Catholic and Pagan--as an
+_ex-voto_ between the obelisk of the Trinita and the column of the
+Conception.'
+
+She laughed as she spoke. A sonnet to this suspended heart rose
+instantly to his lips, but he did not give it utterance, for he was in
+no mood to continue their conversation in this light vein of false
+sentiment, which broke the sweet spell she had been weaving about him.
+He was silent therefore.
+
+She, too, remained a moment pensive, and then threw herself with renewed
+vivacity into the general conversation, prodigal of wit and laughter,
+flashing her teeth and her _bon mots_ at all in turn. Francesca was
+retailing spicily a piece of gossip about the Princess di Ferentino on
+the subject of a recent, and somewhat risky, adventure of hers with
+Giovanella Daddi.
+
+'By the by--the Ferentino announces another charity bazaar for
+Epiphany,' said the Baroness d'Isola. 'Does anybody know anything about
+it yet?'
+
+'I am one of the patronesses,' said Elena Muti.
+
+'And you are a most valuable patroness,' broke in Don Filippo del Monte,
+a man of about forty, almost bald, a keen sharpener of epigrams, whose
+face seemed a sort of Socratic mask; the right eye was forever on the
+move, and flashed with a thousand changing expressions, while the left
+remained stationary and glazed behind the single eye-glass, as if he
+used the one for expressing himself and the other for seeing. 'At the
+May bazaar, you brought in a perfect shower of gold.'
+
+'Oh, the May bazaar--what a mad affair that was!' exclaimed the
+Marchesa.
+
+While the servants were filling the glasses with iced champagne, she
+added, 'Do you remember, Elena, our stalls were close together?'
+
+'Five louis d'or a drink--five louis d'or a bite!' Don Filippo called,
+in the voice of a street-hawker. Elena and the Marchesa burst out
+laughing.
+
+'Why yes, of course, Filippo, you cried the wares,' said Donna
+Francesca. 'Now what a pity you were not there, _cugino mio_! For five
+louis you might have eaten fruit out of which I had had the first bite,
+and have drunk champagne out of the hollow of Elena's hands for five
+more.'
+
+'How scandalous!' broke in the Baroness d'Isola, with a horrified
+grimace.
+
+'Ah, Mary, I like that! And did you not sell cigarettes that you lighted
+up first yourself for a louis?' cried Francesca through her laughter.
+Then she became suddenly grave. 'Every deed, with a charitable object in
+view, is sacred,' she observed sententiously. 'By merely biting into
+fruit, I collected at least two hundred louis.'
+
+'And you?' Andrea Sperelli turned to Elena with as constrained
+smile--'With your human drinking-cup--how much did you get?'
+
+'I?--oh, two hundred and seventy louis.'
+
+Everybody was full of fun and laughter, excepting the Marchese
+d'Ateleta, who was old, and afflicted with incurable deafness; was
+padded and painted--in a word, artificial from head to foot. He was very
+like one of the figures one sees at a wax work show. From time to
+time--usually the wrong one--he would give vent to a little dry cackling
+laugh, like the rattle of some rusty mechanism inside him.
+
+'However,' Elena resumed, 'you must know, that after a certain point in
+the evening, the price rose to ten louis, and at last, that lunatic of a
+Galeazzo Secinaro came and offered me a five hundred lire note, if I
+would dry my hands on his great golden beard!'
+
+As was ever the case at the d'Ateletas', the dinner increased in
+splendour towards the end; for the true luxury of the table is shown in
+the dessert. A multitude of choice and exquisite things, delighting the
+eye no less than the palate, were disposed with consummate art in
+various crystal and silver-mounted dishes. Festoons of camellias and
+violets hung between the vine-wreathed eighteenth century candelabras,
+round which sported fairies and nymphs, and on the wall-hangings more
+fairies and nymphs, and all the charming figures of the pastoral
+mythology--the Corydons, the Phylises, the Rosalinds--animated with
+their sylvan loves one of those sunny Cytherean landscapes originated by
+the fanciful imagination of Antoine Watteau.
+
+The slightly erotic excitement, which is apt to take hold upon the
+spirits at the end of a dinner graced by fair women and flowers,
+betrayed itself in the tone of the conversations, and the reminiscences
+of this bazaar, at which the ladies--urged on by a noble spirit of
+emulation in collecting the largest sums--employed the most unheard of
+audacities to attract buyers.
+
+'And did you accept it?' asked Andrea of the Duchess.
+
+'I sacrificed my hands on the altar of Benevolence,' she replied.
+'Twenty-five louis more to my account!'
+
+'_All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand._' He
+laughed as he quoted Lady Macbeth's words, but, in reality, his heart
+was sore with a confused, ill-defined pain, that bore a strong
+resemblance to jealousy. And suddenly he became aware of something
+excessive, almost--it might be--a touch of the courtesan, defacing the
+manners of the great lady. Certain inflections of her voice, certain
+tones of her laughter, here a gesture, there an attitude, certain
+glances, exhaled a charm that was perhaps a trifle too Aphrodisiac. She
+was, besides, somewhat over-lavish with the visible favours of her
+graces, and the air she breathed was continually surcharged with the
+desire she herself excited.
+
+Andrea's heart swelled with bitterness; he could not take his eyes off
+Elena's hands. Out of those hands, so delicately, ideally white and
+transparent, with their faint tracery of azure veins--from those rosy
+hollowed palms, wherein a chiromancer would have discovered many an
+intricate crossing of lines, ten, twenty different men had drunk at a
+price. He could _see_ the heads of these unknown men bending over her
+and drinking the wine. But Secinaro was one of his friends--a great
+handsome jovial fellow, imperially bearded like a very Lucius Verus, and
+a most formidable rival to have. He felt as if the dinner would never
+come to an end.
+
+'You are such an innovator,' Elena was saying to Donna Francesca, as she
+dipped her fingers into warm water in a pale blue finger-glass rimmed
+with silver, 'Why do you not revive the ancient fashion of having the
+water offered to one after dinner with a basin and ewer? The modern
+arrangement is very ugly, do you not think so, Sperelli?'
+
+Donna Francesca rose. Every one followed her example. Andrea, with a
+bow, offered his arm to Elena and she looked at him without smiling as
+she slowly laid her hand on his arm. Her last words were gaily and
+lightly spoken, but her gaze was so grave and profound that the young
+man felt it sink into his very soul.
+
+'Are you going to the French Embassy to-morrow evening?' she asked him.
+
+'Are you?' Andrea asked in return.
+
+'I am.'
+
+'So am I.'
+
+They smiled at one another like two lovers.
+
+'Sit down,' she added as she sank into a seat.
+
+The seat was far from the fire, with its back to the curve of a grand
+piano which was partially draped in some rich stuff. At one end of the
+divan, a tall bronze crane held in his beak a tray hanging by three
+chains like one side of a pair of scales, and on it lay a new book and a
+little Japanese scimitar--a _waki-gashi_--the scabbard and hilt
+encrusted with silver chrysanthemums.
+
+Elena took up the book, which was only half cut, read the title, and
+then replaced it on the tray which swung to and fro. The scimitar fell
+to the ground. As both she and Andrea stooped to pick it up, their hands
+met. She straightened herself up and examined the beautiful weapon with
+some curiosity, retaining it in her hand while Andrea talked about the
+new novel, insinuating into his remarks general arguments upon love; and
+her fingers wandered absently over the chasing of the weapon, her
+polished nails seeming a repetition of the delicate gems that sparkled
+in her rings.
+
+Presently, after a pause, Elena said without looking at him: 'You are
+very young--have you often been in love?'
+
+He answered by another question--'Which do you consider the truest,
+noblest way of love--to imagine you have discovered every aspect of the
+eternal Feminine combined in one woman, or to run rapidly over the lips
+of woman as you run your fingers over the keys of a piano, till, at
+last, you find the sublime chord of harmony?'
+
+'I really cannot say--and you?'
+
+'Nor I either--I am unable to solve the great problem of sentiment.
+However, by personal instinct, I have followed the latter plan and have
+now, I fear, struck the grand chord--judging, at least, by an inward
+premonition.'
+
+'You fear?'
+
+'_Je crains ce que j'espere._'
+
+He instinctively employed this language of affected sentiment to cloak
+his really strong emotion, and Elena felt herself caught by his voice as
+in a golden net and drawn forcibly out of the life surrounding them.
+
+'Her Excellency the Princess di Micigliano!' announced a footman.
+
+'Count di Gissi!'
+
+'Madame Chrysoloras!'
+
+'The Marchese and the Marchesa Massa d'Alba!'
+
+The rooms began to fill rapidly. Long shimmering trains swept over the
+deep red carpet, white shoulders emerged from bodices starred with
+diamonds, embroidered with pearls, covered with flowers, and in nearly
+every coiffure glittered those marvellous hereditary gems for which the
+Roman nobility are so much envied.
+
+'Her Excellency the Princess of Ferentino!'
+
+'His Excellency the Duke of Grimiti!'
+
+The guests formed themselves in various groups, the rallying points of
+gossip and of flirtation. The chief group, composed exclusively of men,
+was in the vicinity of the piano, gathered round the Duchess of Scerni,
+who had risen to her feet, the better to hold her own against her
+besiegers. The Princess of Ferentino came over to greet her friend with
+a reproach.
+
+'Why did you not come to Nini Santamarta's to-day? We all expected you.'
+
+She was tall and thin with extraordinary green eyes sunk deep in their
+shadowy sockets. Her dress was black, the bodice open in a point back
+and front, and in her hair, which was _blond cendre_, she wore a great
+diamond crescent like Diana. She waved a huge fan of red feathers
+hastily to and fro as she spoke.
+
+'Nini is at Madame Van Hueffel's this evening.'
+
+'I am going there later on for a little while, so I shall see her,'
+answered the Duchess.
+
+'Oh, Ugenta,' said the Princess turning to Andrea, 'I was looking for
+you to remind you of our appointment. To-morrow is Thursday and Cardinal
+Immenraet's sale begins at twelve. Will you fetch me at one?'
+
+'I shall not fail, Princess.'
+
+'I simply must have that rock crystal.'
+
+'Then you must be prepared for competition.'
+
+'From whom?'
+
+'My cousin for one.'
+
+'And who else?'
+
+'From me,' said Elena.
+
+'You?--Well, we shall see.'
+
+Several of the gentlemen asked for further enlightenment.
+
+'It is a contest between ladies of the 19th century for a rock crystal
+vase which belonged to Niccolo Niccoli,' Andrea explained with
+solemnity; 'a vase, on which is engraved the Trojan Anchises untying one
+of the sandals of Venus Aphrodite. The entertainment will be given
+gratis, at one o'clock to-morrow afternoon, in the Public Sale-rooms of
+the Via Sistina. Contending parties--the Princess of Ferentino, the
+Duchess of Scerni and the Marchesa d'Ateleta.'
+
+Everybody laughed, and Grimiti asked, 'Is betting permitted?'
+
+'The odds! The odds!' yelled Don Filippo del Monte, imitating the
+strident voice of the bookmaker Stubbs.
+
+The Princess gave him an admonitory tap on the arm with her red fan, but
+the joke seemed to amuse them hugely and the betting began at once.
+Hearing the bursts of laughter, other ladies and gentlemen joined the
+group in order to share the fun. The news of the approaching contest
+spread like lightning and soon assumed the proportions of a society
+event.
+
+'Give me your arm and let us take a turn through the rooms,' said Elena
+to Andrea Sperelli.
+
+As soon as they were in the west room, away from the noisy crowd,
+Andrea pressed her arm and murmured, 'Thanks.'
+
+She leaned on him, stopping now and again to reply to some greeting. She
+seemed fatigued, and was as pale as the pearls of her necklace. Each
+gentleman addressed her with some hackneyed compliment.
+
+'How stupid they all are! it makes me feel quite ill,' she said.
+
+As they turned, she saw Sakumi was following them noiselessly, her
+camellia in his button-hole, his eyes full of yearning not daring to
+come nearer. She threw him a compassionate smile.
+
+'Poor Sakumi!'
+
+'Did you not notice him before?' asked Andrea.
+
+'No.'
+
+'While we were sitting by the piano, he was in the recess of the window,
+and never took his eyes off your hands when you were playing with the
+weapon of his native country--now reduced to being a paper-cutter for a
+European novel.'
+
+'Just now, do you mean?'
+
+'Yes, just now. Perhaps he was thinking how sweet it would be to perform
+_Hara-Kiri_ with that little scimitar, the chrysanthemums on which
+seemed to blossom out of the lacquer and steel under the touch of your
+fingers.'
+
+She did not smile. A veil of sadness, almost of suffering, seemed to
+have fallen over her face; her eyes, faintly luminous under the white
+lids, seemed drowned in shadow, the corners of her mouth drooped
+wearily, her right arm hung straight and languid at her side. She no
+longer held out her hand to those who greeted her; she listened no
+longer to their speeches.
+
+'What is the matter?' asked Andrea.
+
+'Nothing--I must go to the Van Hueffels' now. Take me to Francesca to
+say good-bye, and then come with me down to my carriage.'
+
+They returned to the first drawing-room, where Luigi Gulli, a young man,
+swarthy and curly-haired as an Arab, who had left his native Calabria in
+search of fortune, was executing, with much feeling, Beethoven's sonata
+in C# minor. The Marchesa d'Ateleta, a patroness of his, was standing
+near the piano, with her eyes fixed on the keys. By degrees, the sweet
+and grave music drew all these frivolous spirits within its magic
+circle, like a slow-moving but irresistible whirlpool.
+
+'Beethoven!' exclaimed Elena in a tone of almost religious fervour, as
+she stood still and drew her arm from Andrea's.
+
+She had halted beside one of the great palms and, extending her left
+hand, began very slowly to put on her glove. In that attitude her whole
+figure, continued by the train, seemed taller and more erect; the shadow
+of the palm veiled and, so to speak, spiritualised the pallor of her
+skin. Andrea gazed at her in a kind of rapture, increased by the pathos
+of the music.
+
+As if drawn by the young man's impetuous desire, Elena turned her head a
+little, and smiled at him--a smile so subtle, so spiritual, that it
+seemed rather an emanation of the soul than a movement of the lips,
+while her eyes remained sad and as if lost in a far away dream. Thus
+overshadowed they were verily the eyes of the Night, such as Leonardo da
+Vinci might have imagined for an allegorical figure after having seen
+Lucrezia Crevelli at Milan.
+
+During the second that the smile lasted, Andrea felt himself absolutely
+alone with her in the crowd. An immense wave of pride flooded his heart.
+
+Elena now prepared to put on the other glove.
+
+'No, not that one,' he entreated in a low voice.
+
+She understood, and left her hand bare.
+
+He was hoping to kiss that hand before she left. And suddenly he had a
+vision of the May Bazaar, and the men drinking champagne out of those
+hollowed palms, and for the second time that night he felt the keen stab
+of jealousy.
+
+'We will go now,' she said, taking his arm once more.
+
+The sonata over, conversation was resumed with fresh vigour. Three or
+four new names were announced, amongst them that of the Princess Isse,
+who entered smiling, with funny little tottering steps, in European
+dress, her oval face as white and tiny as a little _netske_ figurine. A
+stir of curiosity ran round the room.
+
+'Good-night, Francesca,' said Elena, taking leave of her hostess, 'I
+shall see you to-morrow.'
+
+'Going so soon?'
+
+'I am due at the Van Hueffels'. I promised to go.'
+
+'What a pity! Mary Dyce is just going to sing.'
+
+'I must go--good-bye!'
+
+'Well, take this, and good-bye. Most amiable of cousins, please look
+after her.'
+
+The Marchesa pressed a bunch of double violets into her hand and hurried
+away to receive the Princess Isse very graciously. Mary Dyce, in a red
+dress, slender and undulating as a tongue of fire, began to sing.
+
+'I am so tired!' murmured Elena, leaning wearily on Andrea's arm.
+'Please ask for my cloak.'
+
+He took her cloak from the attendant, and in helping her to put it on,
+touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and felt her shiver.
+The words of one of Schumann's songs was borne to them on Mary Dyce's
+passionate soprano, _Ich kann's nicht fassen, nicht glauben!_
+
+They descended the stairs in silence. A footman preceded them to call
+the duchess's carriage. The stamping of the horses rang through the
+echoing portico. At every step, Andrea felt the pressure of Elena's arm
+grow heavier; she held her head high, and her eyes were half closed.
+
+'As you ascended these stairs, my admiration followed you, unknown to
+you. Now, as you come down, my love accompanies you,' he said softly,
+almost humbly, faltering a little between the two last words.
+
+She made no reply, but she lifted the bunch of violets to her face, and
+inhaled the perfume. In so doing, the wide sleeve of her evening cloak
+slipped back over her arm beyond her elbow, thrilling the young man's
+senses almost beyond control. His lips trembled, and he with difficulty
+restrained the burning words that rose to them.
+
+The carriage was standing at the foot of the great stairway; a footman
+held open the door.
+
+'To Madame Van Hueffel's,' said the duchess to him, while Andrea helped
+her in.
+
+The man left the door and returned to his seat beside the coachman. The
+horses stamped, striking out sparks from the stones.
+
+'Take care!' cried Elena, holding out her hand to the young man. Her
+eyes and her diamonds flashed through the gloom.
+
+'Oh, to be in there with her in the shadow--to press my lips to her
+satin neck under the perfumed fur of her mantle!'
+
+'Take me with you!' he would like to have cried.
+
+But the horses plunged. 'Oh, take care!' Elena repeated.
+
+He kissed her hand--pressing his lips to it as if to leave the mark of
+his burning passion. He closed the door and the carriage rolled rapidly
+away under the porch, and out to the Forum.
+
+And thus ended Andrea Sperelli's first meeting with the Duchess of
+Scerni.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The gray deluge of democratic mud, which swallows up so many beautiful
+and rare things, is likewise gradually engulfing that particular class
+of the old Italian nobility in which from generation to generation were
+kept alive certain family traditions of eminent culture, refinement and
+art.
+
+To this class, which I should be inclined to denominate Arcadian because
+it shone with greatest splendour in the charming atmosphere of the
+eighteenth century life, belonged the Sperelli. Urbanity, hellenism,
+love of all that was exquisite, a predilection for out-of-the-way
+studies, an aesthetic curiosity, a passion for archaeology, and an
+epicurean taste in gallantry were hereditary qualities of the house of
+Sperelli. An Alessandro Sperelli brought in 1466 to Frederic of Aragon,
+son of Ferdinand King of Naples, and brother to Alfonso Duke of
+Calabria, a manuscript in folio containing the 'less rude' poems of the
+old Tuscan writers which Lorenzo de Medici had promised him at Pisa in
+1465; and in concert with the most erudite scholars of his time, that
+same Alessandro wrote a Latin elegy on the death of the divine
+Simonetta--sad and melting numbers after the manner of Tibullus. Another
+Sperelli--Stefano,--was during the same century in Flanders, in the
+midst of all the pomp, the extravagant elegance, the almost fabulous
+magnificence of the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, where
+he remained, having allied himself with a Flemish family. A son of his,
+named Giusto, learned painting under the direction of Gossaert, in whose
+company he came to Italy in the suite of Philip of Burgundy, the
+ambassador of the Emperor Maximilian to Pope Julius II. in 1508. He
+settled in Florence, where the chief branch of his family continued to
+flourish, and had for his second master Piero di Cosimo, that jocund and
+facile painter and vivid and harmonious colourist, under whose brush the
+pagan deities came to life again. This Giusto was by no means a mediocre
+artist, but he consumed all his forces in the vain effort to reconcile
+his primary Gothic education with the newly awakened spirit of the
+Renaissance. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century the Sperelli
+family migrated to Naples. There a Bartolomeo Sperelli published in 1679
+an astrological treatise: _De Nativitatibus_; in 1720 a Giovanni
+Sperelli wrote for the theatre an opera bouffe entitled _La Faustina_
+and also a lyrical tragedy entitled _Progne_; 1756 a Carlo Sperelli
+brought out a book of amatory verses in which much licentious persiflage
+was expressed with the Horatian elegance so much affected at that
+period. A better poet, and moreover a man of exquisite gallantry, was
+Luigi Sperelli, attached to the court of the _lazzaroni_ king of Naples
+and his queen Caroline. His Muse was very charming, and affected a
+certain epicurean melancholy. He loved much and with a fine
+discrimination, and had innumerable adventures--some of them famous--as,
+for instance, that with the Marchesa di Bugnano who poisoned herself out
+of jealousy, and with the Countess of Chesterfield who died of
+consumption, and whom he mourned in a series of odes, sonnets and
+elegies--very moving, if perhaps somewhat overladen with metaphor.
+
+Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi d'Ugenta, sole heir to the family, carried
+on its traditions. He was, in truth, the ideal type of the young Italian
+nobleman of the nineteenth century, a true representative of a race of
+chivalrous gentlemen and graceful artists, the last scion of an
+intellectual line.
+
+He was, so to speak, thoroughly impregnated with art. His early youth,
+nourished as it was by the most varied and profound studies, promised
+wonders. Up to his twentieth year, he alternated between severe study
+and long journeys, in company with his father, and could thus complete
+his extraordinary aesthetic education under paternal direction, without
+the restrictions and constraints imposed by tutors. And it was to his
+father that he owed his taste for everything pertaining to art, his
+passionate cult of the Beautiful, his paradoxical disdain of prejudice,
+and his keen appetite for the sensuous.
+
+That father, who had grown up in the midst of the last expiring
+splendours of the Bourbon court of Naples, understood life on a large
+scale, was profoundly initiated into all the arts of the voluptuary,
+combined with a certain Byronic leaning towards fantastic romanticism.
+His marriage had occurred under _quasi_ tragic circumstances, the finale
+of a mad passion; then, after disturbing and undermining the conjugal
+peace in every possible fashion, he had separated from his wife, and,
+keeping his son always with him, had travelled about the whole of
+Europe.
+
+Andrea's education had thus been a living one; that is to say, derived
+less from books than from the study of life as he had seen it. His mind
+was corrupted not only by over-refined culture, but also by actual
+experiments, and in him curiosity grew keener in proportion as his
+knowledge grew wider. From the beginning, he had ever been prodigal of
+his powers, for the great nervous force with which nature had endowed
+him was inexhaustible in providing him with the treasures he dispensed
+so lavishly. But the expansion of that energy caused in him the
+destruction of another force: the moral one, which his own father had
+not scrupled to repress in him. And he never perceived that his whole
+life was a steady retrogression of all his faculties, of his hopes, his
+joys--a species of gradual renunciation--and that the circle was slowly
+but inexorably narrowing round him.
+
+Among other fundamental maxims his father had given him the following:
+You must _make_ your own life as you would any other work of art. The
+life of a man of intellect should be of his own designing. Herein lies
+the only true superiority.
+
+Again: Never, let it cost what it may, lose the mastery over yourself
+even in the most intoxicating rapture of the senses. _Habere non haberi_
+is the rule from which the man of intellect should never swerve.
+
+And again--Regret is the idle pastime of an unoccupied mind. The best
+method, therefore, to avoid regret is to keep the mind constantly
+occupied with new fancies, fresh sensations.
+
+Unfortunately, however, these _voluntary_ axioms, which from their
+ambiguity might just as easily be interpreted as lofty moral rules, fell
+upon an _involuntary_ nature; that is to say, one in which the will
+power was extremely feeble.
+
+Another seed sown by the paternal hand had borne evil fruit in Andrea's
+spirit--the seed of sophistry. Sophistry, said this imprudent teacher,
+is at the bottom of all human pleasure or pain. Therefore, quicken and
+multiply your sophisms and you quicken and multiply your own pleasure or
+your own pain. It is possible that the whole science of life consists in
+obscuring the truth. The word is a very profound matter in which
+inexhaustible treasure is concealed for the man who knows how to use it.
+The Greeks, who were artists in words, were the most refined
+voluptuaries of antiquity. The sophists flourished in the greatest
+number during the age of Pericles, the Golden Age of pleasure.
+
+This germ had found a favourable soil in the unhealthy culture of the
+young man's mind. By degrees, insincerity--rather towards himself than
+towards others--became such a habit of Andrea's mind, that finally he
+was incapable of being wholly sincere or of regaining dominion over
+himself.
+
+The death of his father left him alone at the age of twenty, master of a
+considerable fortune, separated from his mother, and at the mercy of his
+passions and his tastes. He spent fifteen months in England. His mother
+married again, and he returned to Rome from choice.
+
+Rome was his passion--not the Rome of the Caesars, but the Rome of the
+Popes--not the Rome of the Triumphal Arches, the Forums, the Baths, but
+the Rome of the Villas, the Fountains, the Churches. He would have given
+all the Colosseums in the world for the Villa Medici, the Campo Vaccino
+for the Piazza di Spagna, the Arch of Titus for the Fountain of the
+Tortoises. The princely magnificence of the Colonnas, the Dorias, the
+Barberinis, attracted him far more than the ruins of imperial grandeur.
+It was his dream to possess a palace crowned by a cornice of Michael
+Angelo's, and with frescos by the Carracci like the Farnese palace--a
+gallery of Raphaels, Titians and Domenichini like the Borghese; a villa
+like that of Alessandro Albani, where deep shadowy groves, red granite
+of the East, white marble from Luni, Greek statues and Renaissance
+pictures should weave an enchantment round some sumptuous amour of his.
+In an album of 'Confessions' at his cousin's, the Marchesa d'Ateleta,
+against the question--'What would you most like to be?' he had written,
+'A Roman prince.'
+
+Arriving in Rome about the end of September, he set up his 'home' in the
+Palazzo Zuccari, near the Trinita de' Monti, where the obelisk of Pius
+VI. marks with its shadow the passing hours. The whole of October was
+devoted to furnishing them. When the rooms were all finished and
+decorated to his taste, he passed some days of invincible melancholy and
+loneliness in his new abode. It was a St. Martin's summer, a 'Springtime
+of the Dead,' calmly sad and sweet, in which Rome lay all golden, like a
+city of the Far East, under a milk-white sky, diaphanous as the
+firmament reflected in Southern seas.
+
+All this languor of atmosphere and light, in which things seemed to lose
+their substance and reality, oppressed the young man with an infinite
+weariness, an inexpressible sense of discontent, of discomfort, of
+solitude, emptiness and home-sickness, mostly, no doubt, the result of
+the change of climate and customs.
+
+It was just this, that he was entering upon a new phase of life. Would
+he find therein the woman and the work capable of dominating his heart
+and becoming an object in life to him? Within himself he felt neither
+the conviction of power nor the presage of fame or happiness. Though
+penetrated, impregnated with art, as yet he had not produced anything
+remarkable. Eager in the pursuit of pleasure and of love, he had never
+yet really loved or really enjoyed whole-heartedly. Tortured by
+aspirations after an Ideal, and abhorring pain both by nature and
+education, he was vulnerable on every side, accessible to pain at every
+point.
+
+In the tumult of his conflicting inclinations, he had lost all guiding
+will-power and moral perception. Will, in abdicating had yielded the
+sceptre to instinct and the aesthetic sense was substituted for the
+moral. But, it was nevertheless precisely to his aesthetic sense--in him
+most subtle and powerful--that he owed a certain strength and
+equilibrium of mind, so that one might say his existence was a perpetual
+struggle between contrary forces, enclosed within the limits of that
+equilibrium. Men of intellect, educated in the cult of the beautiful,
+preserve a certain sense of order even in their worst depravities. The
+conception of the beautiful is, so to speak, the axis of their being,
+round which all their passions revolve.
+
+Over this sadness, the recollection of Constance Landbrooke still
+floated like a faded perfume. His love for Conny had been a very
+delicate affair, for she was a very sweet little creature. She was like
+one of Lawrence's creations, with all the dainty feminine graces so dear
+to that painter of furbelows and laces and velvets, of lustrous eyes and
+pouting lips, a very re-incarnation of the little Countess of
+Shaftesbury. Lively, chattering, never still, lavish of infantile
+diminutives and silvery peals of laughter, easily moved to sudden
+caresses and as sudden melancholies and quick bursts of anger, she
+contributed to her share of love a vast amount of movement, much variety
+and many caprices. But Conny Landbrooke's melodious twitterings had left
+no more mark on Andrea's heart than the light musical echo left in one's
+ear for a time by some gay ritornella. More than once in some pensive
+hour of twilight melancholy, she had said to him with a mist of tears
+before her eyes--'I know you do not love me.' And in truth he did not
+love her, she did not by any means satisfy his longings. His ideal was
+less northern in character. Ideally he felt himself attracted by those
+courtesans of the sixteenth century, over whose faces there would appear
+to be drawn some indefinable veil of sorcery, some transparent mask of
+enchantment, some divine nocturnal spell.
+
+The moment Andrea set eyes on the Duchess of Scerni, he said to
+himself--'_This_ is my Ideal Woman!' and his whole soul went out to her
+in a transport of joy, in the presentiment of the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The next day the public sale-room of the Via Sistina was thronged with
+fashionable people, come to look on at the famous contest.
+
+It was raining hard; the light in the low-roofed damp rooms was dull and
+gray. Along the walls were ranged various pieces of carved furniture,
+several large diptychs and triptychs of the Tuscan school of the
+fourteenth century; four pieces of Flemish tapestry representing the
+Story of Narcissus hung from ceiling to floor; Metaurensian majolicas
+occupied two long shelves; stuffs--for the most part ecclesiastical--lay
+spread out on chairs or heaped up on tables; antiquities of the rarest
+kind--ivories, enamels, crystals, engraved gems, medals, coins,
+breviaries, illuminated manuscripts, silver of delicate workmanship were
+massed together in high cabinets behind the auctioneer's table. A
+peculiar musty odour, arising from the clamminess of the atmosphere and
+this collection of ancient things, pervaded the air.
+
+When Andrea Sperelli entered the room with the Princess di Ferentino, he
+looked about him rapidly with a secret tremor--Is _she_ here? he said to
+himself.
+
+She was there, seated at the table between the Cavaliere Davila and Don
+Filippo del Monte. Before her on the table lay her gloves and her muff,
+to which a little bunch of violets was fastened. She held in her hand a
+little bas-relief in silver, attributed to Caradosso Foppa, which she
+was examining with great attention. Each article passed from hand to
+hand along the table while the auctioneer proclaimed its merits in a
+loud voice, those standing behind the line of chairs leaning over to
+look.
+
+The sale began.
+
+'Make your bids, gentlemen! make your bids!' cried the auctioneer from
+time to time.
+
+Some amateur encouraged by this cry bid a higher sum with his eye on his
+competitors. The auctioneer raised his hammer.
+
+'Going--Going--Gone!'
+
+He rapped the table. The article fell to the last bidder. A murmur went
+round the assemblage, then the bidding recommenced. The Cavaliere
+Davila, a Neapolitan gentleman of gigantic stature and almost femininely
+gentle manners, a noted collector and connoisseur of majolica, gave his
+opinion on each article of importance. Three lots in this sale of the
+Cardinal's effects were really of 'superior' quality: the Story of
+Narcissus, the rock-crystal goblet, and an embossed silver helmet by
+Antonio del Pollajuolo presented by the City of Florence to the Count of
+Urbino in 1472 for services rendered during the taking of Volterra.
+
+'Here is the Princess,' said Filippo del Monte to the Duchess.
+
+Elena rose and shook hands with her friend.
+
+'Already in the field!' exclaimed the Princess.
+
+'Already.'
+
+'And Francesca?'
+
+'She has not come yet.'
+
+Four or five young men--the Duke of Grimiti, Roberto Casteldieri,
+Ludovico Barbarisi, Gianetto Rutolo--drew up round them. Others joined
+them. The rattle of the rain against the windows almost drowned their
+voices.
+
+Elena held out her hand frankly to Sperelli as to everybody else, but
+somehow he felt that that handshake set him at a distance from her.
+Elena seemed to him cold and grave. That instant sufficed to freeze and
+destroy all his dreams; his memories of the preceding evening grew
+confused and dim, the torch of hope was extinguished. What had happened
+to her?--She was not the same woman. She was wrapped in the folds of a
+long otter-skin coat, and wore a toque of the same fur on her head.
+There was something hard, almost contemptuous, in the expression of her
+face.
+
+'The goblet will not come on for some time yet,' she observed to the
+Princess, as she resumed her seat.
+
+Every object passed through her hands. She was much tempted by a centaur
+cut in a sardonyx, a very exquisite piece of workmanship, part, perhaps,
+of the scattered collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent. She took part in
+the bidding, communicating her offers to the auctioneer in a low voice
+without raising her eyes to him. Presently the competition stopped; she
+obtained the intaglio for a good price.
+
+'A most admirable acquisition,' observed Andrea Sperelli from behind her
+chair.
+
+Elena could not repress a slight start. She took up the sardonyx and
+handed it to him to look at over her shoulder without turning round. It
+was really a very beautiful thing.
+
+'It might be the centaur copied by Donatello,' Andrea added.
+
+And in his heart, with his admiration for the work of art, there rose up
+also a sincere admiration for the noble taste of the lady who now filled
+all his thoughts. 'What a rare creature both in mind and body!' he
+thought. But the higher she rose in his imagination, the further she
+seemed removed from him in reality. All the security of the preceding
+evening was transformed into uneasiness, and his first doubts re-awoke.
+He had dreamed too much last night with waking eyes, bathed in a
+felicity that knew no bounds, while the memory of a gesture, a smile, a
+turn of the head, a fold of her raiment held him captive as in a net.
+Now all this imaginary world had tumbled miserably about his ears at the
+touch of reality. In Elena's eyes there had been no sign of that special
+greeting to which he had so ardently looked forward; she had in no wise
+singled him out from the crowd, had offered him no mark of favour. Why
+not? He felt himself slighted, humiliated. All these fatuous people
+irritated him, he was exasperated by the things which seemed to engross
+Elena's attention, and more particularly by Filippo del Monte, who
+leaned towards her every now and then to whisper something to
+her--scandal no doubt. The Marchesa d'Ateleta now arrived, cheerful as
+ever. Her laugh, out of the centre of the circle of men who hastened to
+surround her, caused Don Filippo to turn round.
+
+'Ah--so the trinity is complete!' he exclaimed, rising from his seat.
+
+Andrea instantly slipped into it at Elena Muti's side. As the subtle
+perfume of the violets reached him, he murmured--
+
+'These are not those of last night, are they?'
+
+'No,' she answered coldly.
+
+In all her varying moods, changeful and caressing as the waves of the
+sea, there always lay a hidden menace of rebuff. She was often taken
+with fits of cold restraint. Andrea held his tongue, bewildered.
+
+'Make your bids, gentlemen,' cried the auctioneer.
+
+The bids rose higher. Antonio del Pollajuolo's silver helmet was being
+hotly contested. Even the Cavaliere Davila entered the lists. The very
+air seemed gradually to become hotter; the feverish desire to possess so
+beautiful an object seemed to spread like a contagion.
+
+In that year the craze for _bibelots_ and _bric-a-brac_ reached the
+point of madness. The drawing-rooms of the nobility and the upper middle
+classes were crammed with curios; every lady must needs cover the
+cushions of her sofas and chairs with some piece of church vestment, and
+put her roses into an Umbrian ointment pot, or a chalcedony jar. The
+sale-rooms were the favourite meeting-places, and every sale crowded. It
+was the fashion for the ladies when they dropped in anywhere for tea in
+the afternoon, to enter with some such remark as--'I have just come from
+the sale of the painter Campos' things. Tremendous bidding! Such
+Hispano-Moresque plaques! I secured a jewel belonging to Maria
+Leczinska. Look!'
+
+The bidding continued. Fashionable purchasers crowded round the table,
+vieing with each other in artistic and critical comparisons between the
+Giottoesque Nativities and Annunciations. Into this atmosphere of
+mustiness and antiquity the ladies brought the perfume of their furs,
+and more especially of the violets which each one wore on her muff,
+according to the then prevailing charming fashion, and their presence
+diffused a delicious air of warmth and fragrance. Outside, the rain
+continued to fall, and the light to fade. Here and there a little flame
+of gas struggled feebly with such daylight as remained.
+
+'Going--going--gone!' The stroke of the hammer put Lord Humphrey
+Heathfield in possession of the Florentine helmet. The bidding then
+began for smaller articles, which passed in turn from hand to hand down
+the long table. Elena handled them carefully, examined them, and placed
+them in front of Andrea without remark. There were enamels, ivories,
+eighteenth century watches, Milanese goldsmiths' work of the time of
+Ludovico the Moor, Books of Hours inscribed in gold letters on pale blue
+vellum. These precious things seemed to increase in value under the
+touch of Elena's fingers; her little hands had a faint tremor of
+eagerness when they came in contact with some specially desirable
+object. Andrea watched them intently, and his imagination transformed
+every movement of her hands into a caress. 'But why did she place each
+thing upon the table instead of passing it to him?'
+
+He forestalled her next time by holding out his hand. And from
+thenceforth the ivories, the enamels, the ornaments passed from the
+hands of the lady to those of her lover, to whom they communicated an
+ineffable thrill of delight. He felt that thus some particle of the
+charm of the beloved woman entered into these objects, just as a portion
+of the virtue of the magnet enters into the iron. It was, in truth, the
+magnetic sense of love--one of those acute and profound sensations which
+are rarely felt but at love's beginning, and which, differing
+essentially from all others, seem to have no physical or moral seat, but
+to exist in some neutral element of our being--an element that is
+intermediate, and the nature of which is unknown.
+
+'Here again is a rapture I have never felt before,' thought Andrea.
+
+A kind of torpor seemed creeping over him. Little by little, he was
+losing consciousness of time and place.
+
+'I recommend this clock to your notice,' Elena was saying to him, with a
+look the full significance of which he did not for the first moment
+understand.
+
+It was a small Death's-head, carved in ivory with extraordinary power
+and anatomical skill. Each jaw was furnished with a row of diamonds, and
+two rubies flashed from the deep eye-sockets. On the forehead was
+engraved, _Ruit Hora_; and on the occiput _Tibi_, _Hippolyta_. It opened
+like a box, the hinging being almost imperceptible, and the ticking
+inside lent an indescribable air of life to the diminutive skull. This
+sepulchral jewel, the offering of some unknown artist to his mistress,
+had doubtless marked many an hour of rapture, and served as a warning
+symbol to their amorous souls.
+
+Could a lover wish for anything more exquisite and more suggestive? 'Has
+she any special reason for recommending this to me?' thought Andrea, all
+his hopes reviving on the instant. He threw himself into the bidding
+with a sort of fury. Two or three others bid against him, notably
+Giannetto Rutolo, who, being in love with Donna Ippolita Albonico, was
+attracted by the dedication: _Tibi, Hippolyta_.
+
+Presently Rutolo and Sperelli were left alone in the contest. The
+bidding rose higher than the actual value of the article, which forced a
+smile from the auctioneer. At last, vanquished by his adversary's
+determination, Giannetto Rutolo was silent.
+
+'Going--going--!'
+
+Donna Ippolita's lover, a little pale, cried one last sum. Sperelli
+named a higher--there was a moment's silence. The auctioneer looked from
+one to the other, then he raised his hammer and slowly, still looking at
+the two--'Going--going--gone!'
+
+The Death's-head fell to the Conte d'Ugenta. A murmur ran round the
+room. A sudden flood of light burst through the windows, lit up the
+gleaming gold backgrounds of the triptychs, and played over the
+sorrowfully patient brow of the Siennese Madonna and the glittering
+steel scales on the Princess di Ferentino's little grey hat.
+
+'When is the goblet coming on?' asked the princess impatiently.
+
+Her friends consulted the catalogue. There was no hope of the goblet for
+that day. The unusual amount of competition made the sale go slowly.
+There was still a long list of smaller articles--cameos, medallions,
+coins. Several antiquaries and Prince Stroganow disputed each piece
+hotly. The rest felt considerably disappointed. The Duchess of Scerni
+rose to go.
+
+'Good-bye, Sperelli,' she said. 'I shall see you again this
+evening--perhaps.'
+
+'Why perhaps?'
+
+'I do not feel well.'
+
+'What is the matter?'
+
+She turned away without replying, and took leave of the others. Many of
+them followed her example and left with her. The young men were making
+fun of the 'spectacle manque.' The Marchesa d'Ateleta laughed, but the
+princess was evidently thoroughly out of temper. The footmen waiting in
+the hall called for the carriages as if at the door of a theatre or
+concert hall.
+
+'Are you not coming on to Laura Miano's?' Francesca asked the duchess.
+
+'No, I am going home.'
+
+She waited on the pavement for her brougham to come up. The rain was
+passing over; patches of blue were beginning to appear between the great
+banks of white cloud; a shaft of sunshine made the wet flags glitter.
+Flooded by this pale rose splendour, her magnificent furs falling in
+straight symmetrical folds to her feet, Elena was very beautiful. As
+Andrea caught a glimpse of the inside of her brougham, all cosily lined
+with white satin like a little boudoir, with its shining silver
+foot-warmer for the comfort of her small feet, his dream of the
+preceding evening came back to him--'Oh, to be there with her alone,
+and feel the warm perfume of her breath mingling with the
+violets--behind the mist-dimmed windows through which one hardly sees
+the muddy streets, the gray houses, the dull crowd!'
+
+But she only bowed slightly to him at the door, without even a smile,
+and the next moment the carriage had flashed away in the direction of
+the Palazzo Barberini, leaving the young man with a dim sense of
+depression and heartache.
+
+She only said 'perhaps,' so it was quite possible that she would not be
+at the Palazzo Farnese that evening. What should he do then? The thought
+that he might not see her was intolerable; already every hour he passed
+far from her weighed heavily on his spirits. 'Am I then so deeply in
+love with her already?' he asked himself. His spirit seemed imprisoned
+within a circle in which the phantoms of all his sensations in presence
+of this woman surged and wheeled around him. Suddenly there would emerge
+from this tangle of memory, with singular precision, some phrase of
+hers, an inflection of her voice, an attitude, a glance, the seat where
+they had sat, the finale of the Beethoven sonata, a burst of melody from
+Mary Dyce, the face of the footman who had held back the
+_portiere_--anything that happened to have caught his attention at the
+moment--and these images obscured by their extreme vividness the actual
+life around him. He pleaded with her; said to her in thought what he
+would say to her in reality by and by.
+
+Arrived in his own rooms, he ordered tea of his man-servant, installed
+himself in front of the fire and gave himself up to the fictions of his
+hope and his desire. He took the little jewelled skull out of its case
+and examined it carefully. The tiny diamond teeth flashed back at him in
+the firelight, and the rubies lit up the shadowy orbits. Behind the
+smooth ivory brow time pulsed unceasingly--_Ruit Hora_. Who was the
+artist who had contrived for his Hippolyta so superb and bold a fantasy
+of Death, at a period too when the masters of enamelling had been wont
+to ornament with tender idylls the little watches destined to warn
+Coquette of the time of the rendezvous in the parks of Watteau? The
+modelling gave evidence of a masterly hand--vigorous and full of
+admirable style; altogether it was worthy of a fifteenth century artist
+as forcible as Verrocchio.
+
+'I recommend this clock to your consideration.' Andrea could not help
+smiling a little at Elena's words uttered in so peculiar a tone after so
+cold a silence. He was assured that she intended him to put the
+construction upon her words which he had afterwards done, but then why
+retire into impenetrable reserve again--why take no further notice of
+him--what ailed her? Andrea lost himself in a maze of conjecture.
+Nevertheless, the warm atmosphere of the room, the luxurious chair, the
+shaded lamp, the fitful gleams of firelight, the aroma of the tea--all
+these soothing influences combined to mitigate his pain. He went on
+dreamingly, aimlessly, as if wandering through a fantastic labyrinth.
+With him reverie sometimes had the effect of opium--it intoxicated him.
+
+'May I take the liberty of reminding the Signor Conte that he is
+expected at the Casa Doria at seven o'clock,' observed his valet in a
+subdued and discreet murmur, one of his offices being to jog his
+master's memory. 'Everything is ready.'
+
+He went into an adjoining octagonal room to dress, the most luxurious
+and comfortable dressing-room any young man of fashion could possibly
+desire. On a great Roman sarcophagus, transformed with much taste into a
+toilet table, were ranged a selection of cambric handkerchiefs, evening
+gloves, card and cigarette cases, bottles of scent, and five or six
+fresh gardenias in separate little pale blue china vases--all these
+frivolous and fragile things on this mass of stone, on which a funeral
+_cortege_ was sculptured by a masterly hand!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+At the Casa Doria, speaking of one thing and another, the Duchess
+Angelieri remarked--'It seems that Laura Miano and Elena Muti have
+quarrelled.'
+
+'About Giorgio perhaps?' returned another lady laughing.
+
+'So they say. The story began this summer at Lucerne--'
+
+'But Laura was not at Lucerne,'
+
+'Exactly--but her husband was--'
+
+'I believe it is a pure invention,' broke in the Florentine countess
+Donna Bianca Dolcebuono--'Giorgio is in Paris now.'
+
+Andrea heard it all in spite of the chattering of the little Contessa
+Starnina, who sat at his right hand, and never gave him a moment's
+peace. Bianca Dolcebuono's words did little to ease the smart of his
+wound. At least, he would have liked to know the whole story. But the
+Duchess Angelieri did not resume the thread of her discourse, and other
+conversations crossed and recrossed the table under the great gorgeous
+roses from the Villa Pamfili.
+
+Who was this Giorgio? A former lover? Elena had spent part of the summer
+at Lucerne,--she had just come from Paris. After the sale she had
+refused to go to Laura Miano's. A fierce desire assailed him to see her,
+to speak to her again. The invitation at the Palazzo Farnese was for ten
+o'clock--half past ten found him there waiting anxiously.
+
+He waited long. The rooms filled rapidly; the dancing began. In the
+Carracci gallery the divinities of fashionable Rome vied in beauty with
+the Ariadnes, the Galateas, the Auroras, the Dianas of the frescos;
+couples whirled past; heads glittering with jewels drooped or raised
+themselves, bosoms panted, the breath came fast through parted crimson
+lips.
+
+'You are not dancing, Sperelli?' asked Gabriella Barbarisi, a girl brown
+as the _oliva speciosa_, as she passed him on the arm of her partner,
+fanning herself and smiling to show a dimple she had at the corner of
+her mouth.
+
+'Yes--later on,' Andrea responded hastily--'later on.'
+
+Heedless of introductions or greetings, his torment increased with every
+moment of this fruitless expectation, and he roamed aimlessly from room
+to room. That 'perhaps' made him sadly afraid that Elena would not come.
+And supposing she really did not? When was he likely to see her again?
+Donna Bianca Dolcebuono passed, and, almost without knowing why, he
+attached himself to her side, saying a thousand agreeable things to her,
+feeling some slight comfort in her society. He had the greatest desire
+to speak to her about Elena, to question her, to reassure himself; but
+the orchestra struck up a languorous mazurka and the Florentine countess
+was carried off by her partner.
+
+Thereupon, Andrea joined a group of young men near one of the
+doors--Ludovico Barbarisi, the Duke di Beffi, Filippo del Gallo and Gino
+Bomminaco. They were watching the couples, and exchanging observations
+not over refined in quality. One of them turned to Andrea as he came up.
+
+'Why, what has become of you this evening? Your cousin was looking for
+you a moment ago. There she is dancing with my brother now.'
+
+'Look!' exclaimed Filippo del Gallo--'the Albonico has come back, she is
+dancing with Giannetto.'
+
+'The Duchess of Scerni came back last week,' said Ludovico; 'what a
+lovely creature!'
+
+'Is she here?'
+
+'I have not seen her yet,'
+
+Andrea's heart stopped beating for a moment, fearing that something
+would be said against her by one or other of these malicious tongues.
+But the passing of the Princess Isse on the arm of the Danish Minister
+diverted their attention. Nevertheless, his desire for further knowledge
+was so intense, that it almost drove him to lead back the conversation
+to the name of his lady-love. But he was not quite bold enough. The
+mazurka was over; the group broke up. 'She is not coming! She is not
+coming!' His secret anxiety rose to such a pitch that he half thought of
+leaving the place altogether; the contact of this laughing, careless
+throng was intolerable.
+
+As he turned away, he saw the Duchess of Scerni entering the gallery on
+the arm of the French ambassador. For one instant their eyes met, but
+that one glance seemed to draw them to each other, to penetrate to the
+very depths of their souls. Both knew that each had only been looking
+for the other, and at that moment there seemed to fall a silence upon
+both hearts, even in the midst of the babel of voices, and all their
+surroundings to vanish and be swept away by the force of their own
+absorbing thought.
+
+She advanced along the frescoed gallery where the crowd was thinnest,
+her long white train rippling like a wave over the floor behind her. All
+white and simple, she passed slowly along, turning from side to side in
+answer to the numerous greetings, with an air of manifest fatigue and a
+somewhat strained smile which drew down the corners of her mouth, while
+her eyes looked larger than ever under the low white brow, her extreme
+pallor imparting to her whole face a look so ethereal and delicate as to
+be almost ghostly. This was not the same woman who had sat beside him at
+the Ateleta's table, nor the one of the Sale Rooms, nor the one standing
+waiting for a moment on the pavement of the Via Sistina. Her beauty at
+this moment was of ideal nobility, and shone with additional splendour
+among all these women heated with the dance, over-excited and restless
+in their manner. The men looked at her and grew thoughtful; no mind was
+so obtuse or empty that she did not exercise a disturbing influence upon
+it, inspire some vague and indefinable hope. He whose heart was free
+imagined with a thrill what such a woman's love would be; he who loved
+already conceived a vague regret, and dreamed of raptures hitherto
+unknown; he who bore a wound dealt by some woman's jealousy or
+faithlessness suddenly felt that he might easily recover.
+
+Thus she advanced amid the homage of the men, enveloped by their gaze.
+Arrived at the end of the gallery, she joined a group of ladies who were
+talking and fanning themselves excitedly under the fresco of Perseus
+turning Phineus to stone. They were the Princess di Ferentino, Hortensa
+Massa d'Alba, the Marchesa Daddi-Tosinghi and Bianca Dolcebuono.
+
+'Why so late?' asked the latter.
+
+'I hesitated very much whether to come at all--I don't feel well.'
+
+'Yes, you look very pale.'
+
+'I believe I am going to have neuralgia badly again, like last year.'
+
+'Heaven forefend!'
+
+'Elena, do look at Madame de la Boissiere,' exclaimed Giovanella Daddi
+in her queer husky voice; 'doesn't she look like a camel with a yellow
+wig!'
+
+'Mademoiselle Vanloo is losing her head over your cousin,' said Hortensa
+Massa d'Alba to the Princess as Sophie Vanloo passed on Ludovico
+Barbarisi's arm. 'I heard her say just now when they passed me in the
+mazurka--_Ludovic, ne faites plus ca en dansant; je frissonne toute_--'
+
+The ladies laughed in chorus, fluttering their fans. The first notes of
+a Hungarian waltz floated in from the next room. The gentlemen came to
+claim their partners. At last Andrea was able to offer Elena his arm and
+carry her off.
+
+'I thought I should have died waiting for you! If you had not come I
+should have gone to find you--anywhere. When I saw you come in I could
+scarcely repress a cry. This is only the second evening I have met you,
+and yet I feel as if I had loved you for years. The thought of you and
+you alone is now the life of my life.'
+
+He uttered his burning words of love in a low voice, looking straight
+before him, and she listened in a similar attitude, apparently quite
+impassive, almost stony. Only a sprinkling of people remained in the
+gallery. Between the busts of the Caesars along the walls, lamps with
+milky globes shaped like lilies shed an even, tempered light. The
+profusion of palms and flowering plants gave the whole place the look of
+a sumptuous conservatory. The music floated through the warm-scented air
+under the vaulted roof and over all this mythology like a breeze though
+an enchanted garden.
+
+'Can you love me?' he asked: 'tell me if you think you can ever love
+me.'
+
+'I came only for you,' she returned slowly.
+
+'Tell me that you will love me,' he repeated, while every drop of blood
+seemed to rush in a tumult of joy to his heart.
+
+'Perhaps----' she answered, and she looked into his face with that same
+look which, on the preceding evening, had seemed to hold a divine
+promise, that ineffable gaze which acts like the velvet touch of a
+loving hand. Neither of them spoke; they listened to the sweet and
+fitful strains of the music, now slow and faint as a zephyr, now loud
+and rushing like a sudden tempest.
+
+'Shall we dance?' he asked with a secret tremor of delight at the
+prospect of encircling her with his arm.
+
+She hesitated a moment before replying. 'No; I would rather not.'
+
+Then, seeing the Duchess of Bugnare, her aunt, entering the gallery with
+the Princess Alberoni and the French ambassadress, she added hurriedly,
+'Now--be prudent, and leave me.'
+
+She held out her gloved hand to him and advanced alone to meet the
+ladies with a light firm step. Her long white train lent an additional
+grace to her figure, the wide and heavy folds of brocade serving to
+accentuate the slenderness of her waist. Andrea, as he followed her with
+his eyes, kept repeating her words to himself, 'I came for you alone--I
+came for you alone!' The orchestra suddenly took up the waltz measure
+with a fresh impetus. And never, through all his life, did he forget
+that music, nor the attitude of the woman he loved, nor the sumptuous
+folds of the brocade trailing over the floor, nor the faintest shadow on
+the rich material, nor one single detail of that supreme moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Elena left the Farnese palace very soon after this, almost stealthily,
+without taking leave of Andrea or of any one else. She had therefore not
+stayed more than half an hour at the ball. Her lover searched for her
+through all the rooms in vain. The next morning, he sent a servant to
+the Palazzo Barberini to inquire after the duchess, and learned from him
+that she was ill. In the evening he went in person, hoping to be
+received; but a maid informed him that her mistress was in great pain
+and could see no one. On the Saturday, towards five o'clock, he came
+back once more, still hoping for better luck.
+
+He left his house on foot. The evening was chill and gray, and a heavy
+leaden twilight was settling over the city. The lamps were already
+lighted round the fountain in the Piazza Barberini like pale tapers
+round a funeral bier, and the Triton, whether being under repair or for
+some other reason, had ceased to spout water. Down the sloping roadway
+came a line of carts drawn by two or three horses harnessed in single
+file, and bands of workmen returning home from the new buildings. A
+group of these came swaying along arm in arm, singing a lewd song at the
+pitch of their voices.
+
+Andrea stopped to let them pass. Two or three of the debased,
+weather-beaten faces impressed themselves on his memory. He noticed that
+a carter had his hand wrapped in a blood-stained bandage, and that
+another, who was kneeling in his cart, had the livid complexion, deep
+sunken eyes and convulsively contracted mouth of a man who has been
+poisoned. The words of the song were mingled with guttural cries, the
+cracking of whips, the grinding of wheels, the jingling of horse bells
+and shrill discordant laughter.
+
+His mental depression increased. He found himself in a very curious
+mood. The sensibility of his nerves was so acute that the most trivial
+impression conveyed to them by external means assumed the gravity of a
+wound. While one fixed thought occupied and tormented his spirit, the
+rest of his being was left exposed to the rude jostling of surrounding
+circumstances. Groups of sensations rushed with lightning rapidity
+across his mental field of vision, like the phantasmagoria of a magic
+lantern, startling and alarming him. The banked-up clouds of evening,
+the form of the Triton surrounded by the cadaverous lights, this sudden
+descent of savage looking men and huge animals, these shouts and songs
+and curses aggravated his condition, arousing a vague terror in his
+heart, a foreboding of disaster.
+
+A closed carriage drove out of the palace garden. He caught a glimpse of
+a lady bowing to him, but he failed to recognise her. The palace rose up
+before him, vast as some royal residence. The windows of the first floor
+gleamed with violet reflections, a pale strip of sunset sky rested just
+above it; a brougham was turning away from the door.
+
+'If I could but see her!' he thought to himself, standing still for a
+moment. He lingered, purposely to prolong his uncertainty and his hope.
+Shut up in this immense edifice she seemed to him immeasurably far
+away--lost to him.
+
+The brougham stopped, and a gentleman put his head out of the window and
+called--'Andrea!'
+
+It was the Duke of Grimiti, a near relative of his.
+
+'Going to call on the Scerni?' asked the duke with a significant smile.
+
+'Yes,' answered Andrea, 'to inquire after her--she is ill, you know.'
+
+'Yes, I know--I have just come from there. She is better.'
+
+'Does she receive?'
+
+'Me--no. But she may perhaps receive you.' And Grimiti laughed
+maliciously through the smoke of his cigarette.
+
+'I don't understand,' Andrea answered coldly.
+
+'Bah!' said the duke. 'Report says you are high in favour. I heard it
+last night at the Pallavicinis', from a lady, a great friend of
+yours--give you my word!'
+
+Andrea turned on his heel with a gesture of impatience.
+
+'_Bonne chance_!' cried the duke.
+
+Andrea entered the portico. In reality he was delighted and flattered
+that such a report should be circulated already. Grimiti's words had
+suddenly revived his courage like a draught of some cordial. As he
+mounted the steps, his hopes rose high. He waited for a moment at the
+door to allow his excitement to calm down a little. Then he rang.
+
+The servant recognised him and said at once: 'If the Signor Conte will
+have the kindness to wait a moment I will go and inform _Mademoiselle_.'
+
+He nodded assent, and began pacing the vast ante-chamber, which seemed
+to echo the violent beating of his heart. Hanging lamps of wrought iron
+shed an uncertain light over the stamped leather panelling of the walls,
+the carved oak chests, the antique busts on pedestals. Under a
+magnificently embroidered baldachin blazed the ducal arms: a unicorn on
+a field gules. A bronze card-tray, heaped with cards, stood in the
+middle of a table, and happening to cast his eye over them, Andrea
+noticed the one which Grimiti had just left lying on the top--_Bonne
+chance!_--The ironical augury still rang in his ears.
+
+Mademoiselle now made her appearance. 'The duchess is feeling a little
+better,' she said. 'I think the Signor Conte might see her for a moment.
+This way, if you please.'
+
+She was a woman past her first youth, rather thin and dressed in black,
+with a pair of gray eyes that glittered curiously under the curls of her
+false fringe. Her step and her movements generally were light, not to
+say furtive, as of one who is in the habit of attending upon invalids
+or of executing secret orders.
+
+'This way, Signor Conte.'
+
+She preceded Andrea though the long flight of dimly-lighted rooms, the
+thick soft carpets deadening every sound; and even through the almost
+uncontrollable tumult of his soul, the young man was conscious of an
+instinctive feeling of repulsion against her, without being able to
+assign an adequate reason for it.
+
+Arrived in front of a door concealed by two pieces of tapestry of the
+Medicean period, bordered with deep red velvet, she stopped.
+
+'I will go first and announce you. Please to wait here.'
+
+A voice from within, which he recognised as Elena's, called,
+'Christina!'
+
+At the sound of her voice coming thus unexpectedly, Andrea began to
+tremble so violently that he thought to himself--'I am sure I am going
+to faint.' He had a dim presentiment of some more than mortal happiness
+in store for him which should exceed his utmost expectations, his
+wildest dreams--almost beyond his powers to support. She was there--on
+the other side of that door. All perception of reality deserted him. It
+seemed to him that he had already imagined--in some picture, some
+poem--a similar adventure, under the self-same circumstances, with these
+identical surroundings and enveloped in the same mystery, but of which
+_another_--some fiction of his own brain--was the hero. And now, by some
+strange trick of the imagination, the fictitious was confounded with the
+real, causing him an indescribable sense of confusion and bewilderment.
+On each of the pieces of tapestry was a large symbolical figure--Silence
+and Slumber--two Genii, tall and slender, which might have been designed
+by Primaticcio of Bologna, guarding the door. And he--he himself--stood
+before the door waiting, and on the other side of it was his divine
+lady. He almost thought he could hear her breathe.
+
+At last Mademoiselle returned. Holding back the heavy draperies she
+smiled, and in a low voice said:
+
+'Please go in.'
+
+She effaced herself, and Andrea entered the room.
+
+He noticed first of all that the air was very hot, almost stifling, and
+that there was a strong odour of chloroform. Then, through the
+semi-darkness, he became aware of something red--the crimson of the wall
+paper and the curtains of the bed--and then he heard Elena's languid
+voice murmuring, 'Thank you so much for coming, Andrea--I feel better
+now.'
+
+He made his way to her with some difficulty, being unable to distinguish
+things very clearly in the half light.
+
+She smiled wanly at him from among the pillows out of the gloom. Across
+her forehead and round her face, like a nun's wimple, lay a band of
+white linen which was scarcely whiter than the cheeks it encircled, such
+was her extreme pallor. The outer angles of her eyelids were contracted
+by the pain of her inflamed nerves, the lower lids quivering
+spasmodically from time to time, and the eyes were dewy and infinitely
+melting as if veiled by a mist of unshed tears under the trembling
+lashes.
+
+A flood of pity and tenderness swept over the young man's heart when he
+came close to her and could see her clearly. Very slowly she drew one
+hand from under the coverlet and held it out to him. He bent over it
+till he half knelt on the edge of the couch and rained kisses thick and
+fast upon that burning, fevered hand, and the white wrist with its
+hurrying pulse.
+
+'Elena--Elena--my love!'
+
+Elena had closed her eyes, as if to resign herself more wholly to the
+ecstasy that penetrated to the most hidden fibre of her being. Then she
+turned her hand over that she might feel those kisses on her palm, on
+each finger, all round her wrist, on every vein, in every pore.
+
+'Enough!' she murmured at last, opening her eyes again, and passed her
+languid hand softly over Andrea's hair.
+
+Her caress, though light, was so ineffably tender, that to the lover's
+soul it had the effect of a rose leaf falling into a full cup of water.
+His passion brimmed over. His lips trembled under a confused torrent of
+words which rose to them but which he could not express. He had the
+violent and divine sensation as of a new life spreading in widening
+circles round him beyond all physical perception.
+
+'What bliss!' said Elena, repeating her fond gesture, and a tremor ran
+through her whole person, visible through the coverlet.
+
+But when Andrea made as if to take her hand again--'No,' she entreated,
+'do not move--stay as you are, I like to have you so.'
+
+She gently pressed his head down till his cheek lay against her knee.
+She gazed at him a little, still with that caressing touch upon his
+head, and then in a voice that seemed to faint with ecstasy she
+murmured, lingering over the syllables--
+
+'How I love you!'
+
+There was an ineffable seduction in the way she pronounced the words--so
+liquid, so enthralling on a woman's lips.
+
+'Again!' whispered her lover, whose senses were languishing with passion
+under the touch of those hands, the sound of that caressing voice. 'Say
+it again--go on speaking.'
+
+'I love you,' repeated Elena, noticing that his eyes were fixed upon her
+lips, and being perhaps aware of the fascination that emanated from them
+while pronouncing the words.
+
+With a sudden movement she raised herself from the pillows, and taking
+Andrea's head between her two hands, she drew him to her, and their lips
+met in a long and passionate kiss.
+
+Afterwards she fell back again, and lying with her arms stretched
+straight along the coverlet at her sides, she gazed at Andrea with wide
+open eyes, while one by one the great tears gathered slowly, and
+silently rolled down her cheeks.
+
+'What is it, Elena--tell me--What is it?' asked her lover, clasping her
+hands and leaning over her to kiss away the tears.
+
+She clenched her teeth and bit her lips to keep back the sobs.
+
+'Nothing--nothing--go now, leave me--please! You shall see me
+to-morrow--go now.'
+
+Her voice and her look were so imploring that Andrea obeyed.
+
+'Good-bye,' he said, and kissed her tenderly on the lips, carrying away
+upon his own the taste of her salt tears. 'Good-bye! Love me--and do not
+forget.'
+
+As he crossed the threshold, he seemed to hear her break into sobs
+behind him. He went on a little unsteadily, like a man who is not sure
+of his sight. The odour of chloroform lingered in his nostrils like the
+fumes of an intoxicating vapour; but, with every step he took, some
+virtue seemed to go out of him, to be dissipated in the air. The rooms
+lay empty and silent before him. 'Mademoiselle' appeared at a door
+without any warning sound of steps or rustle of garments, like a ghost.
+
+'This way Signor Conte, you will not be able to find your way.'
+
+She smiled in an ambiguous and irritating manner, her gray eyes
+glittering with ill-concealed curiosity. Andrea did not speak. Once more
+the presence of this woman annoyed and disturbed him, arousing an
+undefined sense of repulsion and anger in him.
+
+No sooner was he outside the door than he drew a deep breath like a man
+relieved from some heavy burden. The gentle splash of the fountain came
+through the trees, broken now and then by some clearer, louder sound;
+the whole firmament glittered with stars, veiled here and there by long
+trailing strips of cloud like tresses of pale hair; carriage lamps
+flitted rapidly hither and thither, the life of the great city sent up
+its breath into the keen air, bells were ringing far and near. At last,
+he had the full consciousness of his overwhelming felicity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Thus began for them a bliss that was full, frenzied, for ever changing
+and for ever new; a passion that wrapped them round and rendered them
+oblivious of all that did not minister immediately to their mutual
+delight.
+
+'What a strange love!' Elena said once, recalling those first days--her
+illness, her rapid surrender--'My heart was yours from the first moment
+I saw you.'
+
+She felt a certain pride in the fact.
+
+'And when, on that evening, I heard my name announced immediately after
+yours,' her lover replied, 'I don't know why, but I suddenly had the
+firm conviction that my life was bound to yours--for ever!'
+
+And they really believed what they said. Together they re-read Goethe's
+Roman elegy--_Lass dich, Geliebte, nicht reu'n, dass du mir so schnell
+dich ergeben!_--Have no regrets, my Beloved, that thou didst yield thee
+so soon--'Believe me, dearest, I do not attribute one base or impure
+thought to you. Cupid's darts have varying effects--some inflict but a
+slight scratch, and the poison they insinuate lingers for years before
+it really touches the heart, while others, well feathered and armed with
+a sharp and penetrating point, pierce to the heart's core at once and
+send the fever racing through the blood. In the old heroic days of the
+loves of the gods and goddesses desire followed upon sight. Think you
+that the goddess of Love considered long in the grove of Ida that day
+Anchises found favour in her eyes? And Luna?--had she hesitated, envious
+Aurora would soon have wakened her handsome shepherd.'
+
+For them, as for Faustina's divine singer, Rome was illumined by a new
+light. Wherever their footsteps strayed they left a memory of love. The
+forgotten churches of the Aventine--Santa Sabina with its wonderful
+columns of Parian marble, the charming garden of Santa Maria del
+Priorata, the campanile of Santa Maria in Cosmedin piercing the azure
+with its slender rose-coloured spire grew to know them well. The villas
+of the cardinals and the princes--the Villa Pamfili mirrored in its
+fountains and its lakes, all sweetness and grace, where every shady
+grove seems to harbour some noble idyll; the Villa Albani, cold and
+silent as a church, with its avenues of sculptured marble and
+centenarian trees; where in the vestibules, under the porticos and
+between the granite pillars, Caryatides and Hermes, symbols of
+immobility, gaze at the immutable symmetry of the verdant lawns; and the
+Villa Medici--like a forest of emerald green spreading away in a fairy
+tale, and the Villa Ludovici--a little wild--redolent of violets,
+consecrated by the presence of that Juno adored by Goethe in the days
+when the plane-trees and the cypresses, that one might well have thought
+immortal, had already begun to tremble with the foreboding of sale and
+death--all the patrician villas, the crowning glory of Rome, became well
+acquainted with their love. The picture and sculpture galleries too--the
+room in the Borghese where, before Correggio's 'Danae' Elena smiled as
+at her own reflection; and the Mirror Room, where her image glided among
+the Cupids of Ciro Ferri and the garlands of Mario de' Fiori; the
+chamber of Heliodorus, where Raphael has succeeded in making the dull
+walls throb and palpitate with life; and the apartments of the Borgias,
+where the great fantasia of Penturicchio unfolds its marvellous web of
+history, fable, dreams, caprices and audacities; and the Galatea Room,
+through which is diffused an ineffable freshness, a perennial serenity
+of light and grace; and the room where the Hermaphrodite, that gentle
+monster, offspring of the loves of a nymph and a demi-god, extends his
+ambiguous form amidst the sparkle of polished stone--all these
+unfrequented abodes of Beauty were well acquainted with them.
+
+They echoed fervently the sublime cry of the poet--_Eine Welt zwar bist
+du, O Rom!_ Thou art a world in thyself, oh Rome! But as without love
+the world would not be the world, so Rome without love would not be
+Rome, and the stairway of the Trinita, glorified by the slow ascension
+of the Day, became the Stairway of Felicity by the ascent of Elena the
+Fair on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+'At times,' Elena said to him, 'my feeling for you is so delicate, so
+profound, that it becomes--how shall I describe it?--maternal almost!'
+
+Andrea laughed, for she was his senior by barely three years.
+
+'And at times,' he rejoined, 'I feel the communion of our spirits to be
+so chaste that I could call you sister while I kiss your hands.'
+
+These fallacious ideas of purity and loftiness of sentiment were but the
+reaction after more carnal delights, when the soul experiences a vague
+yearning for the ideal. At such times too, the young man's aspirations
+towards the art he so much loved were apt to revive. The desire to give
+pleasure to his mistress by his literary or artistic efforts drove him
+to work. He accordingly wrote _La Simona_, and executed his two
+engravings: _The Zodiac_ and _Alexander's Bowl_.
+
+For the execution of his art, he chose by preference, the most
+difficult, exact, and incorruptible vehicles--verse and engraving; and
+he aimed at adhering strictly to, and reviving, the traditional Italian
+methods, by going back to the poets of the _stil novo_, and the painters
+who were precursors of the Renaissance. His tendencies were essentially
+towards form; his mind more occupied by the expression of his thought
+than the thought itself. Like Taine, he considered it a greater
+achievement to write three really fine lines, than to win a pitched
+battle. His _Story of the Hermaphrodite_ imitated in its structure
+Poligiano's _Story of Orpheus_ and contained lines of extraordinary
+delicacy, power and melody, particularly in the choruses of hybrid
+monsters--the Centaurs, Sirens and Sphinxes. His new tragedy, _La
+Simona_, of moderate length, possessed a most singular charm. Written
+and rhymed though it was, on the ancient Tuscan rules, it might have
+been conceived by an English poet of Elizabeth's time, after a story
+from the _Decameron_, and it breathed something of the strange and
+delicious charm of certain of the minor dramas of Shakespeare.
+
+On the frontispiece of the single copy, the author had signed his work:
+A. S. CALCOGRAPHUS AQUA FORTI SIBI TIBI FECIT.
+
+Copper had greater attractions for him than paper, nitric acid than ink,
+the graving-tool than the pen. One of his ancestors before him, Giusto
+Sperelli, had tried his hand at engraving. Certain plates of his,
+executed about 1520, showed distinct evidences of the influence of
+Antonio del Pollajuolo by the depth and acidity, so to speak, of the
+design. Andrea used the Rembrandt method _a tratti liberi_ and the
+_maniera nera_ so much affected by the English engravers of the school
+of Green, Dixon, and Earlom. He had formed himself on all models, had
+studied separately the effects sought after by each engraver, had
+schooled himself under Albrecht Duerer and Parmigianino, Marc' Antonio
+and Holbein, Hannibal Carracci, MacArdell, Guido, Toschi and Audran; but
+once his copper plate before him, his one aim was to light up, by
+Rembrandtesque effects, the elegance in design of the fifteenth-century
+Florentines of the second generation, such as Botticelli, Ghirlandajo
+and Filippino Lippi.
+
+One of Andrea's most precious possessions was a bed-cover of finest silk
+in faded blue, round the border of which circled the twelve signs of the
+Zodiac, each with its appropriate legend: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer,
+Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius,
+Pisces--in gothic characters. A flaming golden sun occupied the centre;
+the animal figures, drawn in somewhat archaic style, as one sees in
+mosaics, were extraordinarily brilliant. The whole thing was worthy to
+grace an Emperor's bed, and had, in fact, formed part of the trousseau
+of Bianca Maria Sforza, niece of Ludovico the Moor, when she espoused
+the Emperor Maximilian.
+
+One of the engravings represented Elena asleep under this celestial
+counterpane. The rounded limbs appeared outlined under the silken folds,
+the head thrown carelessly back towards the edge of the couch, the hair
+rippling in a torrent to the floor, one arm hanging down, the other
+stretched along her side. The parts which were left uncovered, the face,
+the neck, the shoulders, and the arms, were extremely luminous, and the
+stile had reproduced most effectively the glitter of the embroidery in
+the half-light and the mysterious quality of the symbols. A tall white
+hound, Famulus, brother to the one which lays its head on the knee of
+the Countess of Arundel in Rubens' picture, stretched his muzzle towards
+the lady, guarding her slumbers, and was designed with much felicitous
+boldness of foreshortening. The background of the room was sumptuous and
+shadowy.
+
+The other engraving referred to an immense silver basin which Elena had
+inherited from her aunt Flaminia.
+
+This basin was historical, and was known as Alexander's Bowl. It had
+been given to the Princess of Bisenti by Caesar Borgia on his departure
+for France, when he went to carry the Papal Bill of divorce and
+dispensation to Louis XII. The design for the figures running round it
+and the two which rose over the edge at either side were attributed to
+Raphael.
+
+It was called the Bowl of Alexander because it purported to be a
+reproduction of the prodigious vessel out of which the famous King of
+Macedonia was wont to drink at his splendid festivals. Groups of archers
+surrounded its base, their bows stretched, in the admirable attitudes of
+those painted by Raphael aiming their arrows at Hermes in the fresco of
+that room in the Borghese decorated by John of Bologna. They were in
+pursuit of a great Chimera, which emerged over the edge of the bowl in
+guise of a handle, while on the opposite side bounded the youthful
+Bellerophon, his bow at full stretch against the monster. The ornaments
+of the base and the edge were of rare elegance. The inside was gilded,
+the metal sonorous as a bell, and weighed three hundred pounds. Its
+shape was extremely harmonious.
+
+Never had Andrea Sperelli experienced so intensely both the delight and
+the anxiety of the artist who watches the blind and irreparable action
+of the acid; never before had he brought so much patience to bear upon
+the delicate work of the dry point. The fact was, that like Lucas of
+Leyden, he was a born engraver, possessed of an admirable knowledge, or,
+more properly speaking, a rare instinct as to the most minute
+particularity of time and degree, which may aid in varying the efficacy
+of the acid on copper. It was not only practice, industry, and
+intelligence, but more especially this inborn, well-nigh infallible
+instinct which warned him of the exact instant at which the corrosion
+had proceeded far enough to give such and such a value to the shadows
+as, in the artist's intention, the engraving required. It was just this
+triumph of mind over matter, this power of infusing an aesthetic spirit
+into it, as it were, this mysterious correspondence between the throb of
+his pulses and the progressive gnawing of the acid that was his pride,
+his torment, and his joy.
+
+In his dedication of these works to her, Elena felt herself deified by
+her lover as was Isotta di Rimini by the medals which Sigismondo
+Malatesta caused to be struck in her honour; and yet, on those days when
+Andrea was at work, she would become moody and taciturn, as if under the
+influence of some secret grief, or she would give way to such sudden
+bursts of tenderness, mingled with tears and half-suppressed sobs, that
+the young man was startled and, not understanding her, became
+suspicious.
+
+One evening, they were returning on horseback from the Aventine down the
+Via di Santa Sabina, their eyes still filled with a vision of imperial
+palaces flaming under the setting sun that burned red through the
+cypresses and seemed to cover them with golden dust. They rode in
+silence, for Elena seemed out of spirits, and her depression had
+communicated itself to her lover. As they passed the church of Santa
+Sabina, Andrea reined up his horse.
+
+'Do you remember?' he said.
+
+Some fowls, picking about peacefully in the grass, skurried away at the
+barking of Famulus. The whole place was as quiet and unassuming as the
+purlieus of a village church, but the walls had that singular luminous
+glow which the buildings of Rome seem to give out at 'Titian's hour.'
+
+Elena drew up beside him.
+
+'That day--how long ago it seems now!' she said with a little tremor in
+her voice.
+
+In truth, the memory of it had already dropped away into the gulf of
+time as if their love had endured for years. Elena's words raised that
+illusion in Andrea's mind, but, at the same time, a certain uneasiness.
+She began recalling the details of their visit to Santa Sabina one
+afternoon in January under a prematurely mild sun. She dwelt insistently
+upon the most trivial incidents, breaking off from time to time as if
+following a separate train of thought, distinct from the words she
+uttered. Andrea fancied he caught a note of regret in her voice. Yet,
+what had she to regret? Surely their love had many a sweeter day before
+it still--the Spring had come again to Rome. Doubting and perplexed, he
+ceased to listen to her. The horses went on down the hill at a walk,
+side by side, snorting noisily from time to time, and putting their
+heads together, as if exchanging confidences. Famulus sped on before, or
+bounded after them, perpetually on the gallop.
+
+'Do you remember,' Elena went on, 'do you remember the Brother who came
+to open the gates for us when we rang the bell?'
+
+'Yes--yes.'
+
+'And how perfectly aghast he looked when he saw who it was? He was such
+a little, little red-faced man without any beard. When he went to get
+the keys of the church, he left us alone in the vestibule--and you
+kissed me--do you remember?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And all those barrels in the vestibule! And the smell of wine while the
+Brother was explaining the legends carved on the cypress-wood door. And
+then about the Madonna of the Rosary--do you remember?--his explanation
+made you laugh, and I could not help laughing too, and the poor man was
+so put out, that he would not open his mouth again, not even to thank
+you at the last--'
+
+There was a little pause. Then she began again.
+
+'And at Sant' Alexio, where you would not let me look at the cupola
+through the keyhole. How we laughed then too!'
+
+Renewed silence. Along the road towards them came a party of men
+carrying a coffin, and followed by a hired conveyance full of tearful
+relatives. They were on their way to the Jewish cemetery. It was a grim
+and silent funeral. The men with their hooked noses and rapacious eyes
+were all as like one another as brothers. The two horses separated to
+let the procession pass, keeping close to the wall on either side, and
+the lovers looked at each other across the dead, their spirits sinking
+lower with every moment.
+
+When presently they rejoined one another, Andrea said--'Tell me--what is
+the matter? What is on your mind?'
+
+She hesitated a moment before replying, keeping her eyes on her horse's
+neck and stroking it with the end of her riding whip, irresolute and
+very pale.
+
+'You have something on your mind,' persisted the young man.
+
+'Very well then--yes--and I had better tell you and get it over. I am
+going away next Wednesday. I do not know for how long--perhaps for a
+long time--perhaps for ever. I cannot say. We must break with one
+another. It is entirely my fault. But do not ask me why--do not ask me
+anything, I entreat you--I could not answer you.'
+
+Andrea looked at her incredulously. The thing seemed to him so utterly
+impossible that it did not affect him painfully.
+
+'Of course you are only joking, Elena?'
+
+She shook her head; there was a lump in her throat, and she could not
+speak. She suddenly set her horse into a trot.
+
+Behind them the bells of Santa Sabina and Santa Prisca began to ring
+through the twilight. They trotted on in silence, awakening the echoes
+under the arches and among the temples--all the solitary and desolate
+ruins on their way. They passed San Giorgio in Velabo on their left,
+which still retained a gleam of rosy light on its campanile; they passed
+the Roman Forum, the Forum of Nerva already full of blue shadow like
+that which hovers over the glaciers at night, and stopped at last at the
+Arco dei Pantani, where their grooms and carriages awaited them.
+
+Hardly was Elena out of the saddle, than she held out her hand to Andrea
+without meeting his eyes. She seemed in a great hurry to be gone.
+
+'Well?' said Andrea as he helped her into the carriage.
+
+'To-morrow--not this evening--I cannot----'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The Campagna stretched away before them under an ideal light, as a
+landscape seen in dreams, where the objects seem visible at a great
+distance by virtue of some inward irradiation which magnifies their
+outlines.
+
+The closed carriage rolled along smoothly at a brisk trot; the walls of
+ancient patrician villas, grayish-white and dim, slid past the windows
+with a continuous and gentle motion. Great iron gateways came in view
+from time to time, through which you caught a glimpse of an avenue of
+lofty beech trees, or some verdant cloister inhabited by antique
+statues, or a long green arcade pierced here and there by a laughing ray
+of pale sunshine.
+
+Wrapped in her ample furs, her veil drawn down, her hands encased in
+thick chamois leather gloves, Elena sat and mutely watched the passing
+landscape. Andrea breathed with delight the subtle perfume of heliotrope
+exhaled by the costly fur, while he felt Elena's arm warm against his
+own. They felt themselves far from the haunts of men--alone--although
+from time to time the black carriage of a priest would flit past them,
+or a drover on horseback, or a herd of cattle.
+
+Just before they reached the bridge she said--'Let us get out here.'
+
+Here in the open country the light was translucent and cold as the
+waters of a spring, and when the trees waved in the wind their
+undulation seemed to communicate itself to all the surrounding objects.
+
+She clung close to his arm, stumbling a little on the uneven ground. 'I
+am going away this evening,' she said,--'this is the last time----'
+
+There was a moment's silence; then in plaintive tones, and with frequent
+pauses in between, she began to speak of the necessity of her departure,
+the necessity of their rupture. The wind wrenched the words from her
+lips, but she continued in spite of it, till Andrea interrupted her by
+seizing her hand.
+
+'Don't!' he cried--'be quiet.'
+
+They walked on struggling against the fierce gusts of wind.
+
+'Don't go--don't leave me! I want you--want you always.'
+
+He had managed to unfasten her glove and laid hold of her bare wrist
+with a caressing insistent clasp that was full of tormenting desire.
+
+She threw him one of those glances that intoxicate like wine. They were
+quite near the bridge now, all rosy under the setting sun. The river
+looked motionless and steely throughout its sinuous length. Reeds swayed
+and shivered on the banks, and some stakes, fixed in the clay of the
+river-bed to fasten nets, shook with the motion of the water.
+
+He then endeavoured to move her by reminiscences. He recalled those
+first days--the ball at the Farnese palace, a certain hunting party out
+in the Campagna, their early morning meetings in the Piazza di Spagna in
+front of the jewellers' windows, or in the quiet and aristocratic Via
+Sistina when she came out of the Barberini palace followed by the flower
+girls offering her baskets of roses.
+
+'Do you remember--do you remember?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And that evening--quite at the beginning, when I brought in such a mass
+of flowers.--You were alone--beside the window--reading. You remember?'
+
+'Yes--yes.'
+
+'I came in. You scarcely turned your head and you spoke quite harshly to
+me--what was the matter?--I do not know. I laid the flowers upon the
+tables and waited. You spoke of trivial things at first, with
+indifference--without interest. I thought to myself bitterly--"She is
+tired of me already--she does not love me." But the scent of the flowers
+was very strong--the room was full of it. I can see you now--how you
+suddenly seized the whole mass in your two hands and buried your face in
+it, drinking in the perfume. When you lifted it again all the blood
+seemed to have left your face, and your eyes were swimming in a kind of
+ecstasy----'
+
+'Go on--go on!' said Elena feverishly, as she leaned over the parapet
+fascinated by the rushing waters below.
+
+'Afterwards, you remember on the sofa--I smothered you in flowers--your
+face, your bosom, your shoulders, and you raised yourself out of them
+every moment to offer me your lips, your throat, your half closed lids.
+And between your skin and my lips I felt the rose leaves soft and cool.
+I kissed your throat and a shiver ran through you, and you put out your
+hands to keep me away.--Oh, then--your head was sunk in the cushions,
+your breast hidden under the roses, your arms bare to the elbow--nothing
+in this world could be so dear and sweet as the little tremor of your
+white hands upon my temples--do you remember?'
+
+'Yes--go on.'
+
+He went on with ever-increasing fervour. Carried away by his own
+eloquence, he was hardly conscious of what he said. Elena, her back
+turned to the light, leaned nearer and nearer to him. Under them the
+river flowed cold and silent; long slender rushes, like strands of hair,
+bent with every gust and trailed on the surface of the water.
+
+He had ceased to speak, but they were gazing into one another's eyes and
+their ears were filled with a low continuous murmur which seemed to
+carry away part of their life's being--as if something sonorous had
+escaped from their very brains and were spreading away in waves of sound
+till it filled the whole air about them.
+
+Elena rose from her stooping posture. 'Let us go on,' she said. 'I am so
+thirsty--where can we get some water?' They crossed the bridge to a
+little inn on the other side, in front of which some carters were
+unharnessing their horses with much lively invective. The setting sun
+lit up the group of men and beasts vividly.
+
+The people at the inn showed not the faintest sign of surprise at the
+entry of the two strangers. Two or three men shivering with ague, morose
+and jaundiced, were crouching round a square brazier. A red-haired
+bullock-driver was snoring in a corner, his empty pipe still between his
+teeth. A pair of haggard, ill-conditioned young vagabonds were playing
+at cards, fixing one another in the pauses with a look of tigerish
+eagerness. The woman of the inn, corpulent to obesity, carried in her
+arms a child which she rocked heavily to and fro.
+
+While Elena drank the water out of a rude earthenware mug, the woman,
+with wails and plaints, drew her attention to the wretched infant.
+
+'Look, signora mia--look at it!'
+
+The poor little creature was wasted to a skeleton, its lips purple and
+broken out, the inside of its mouth coated with a white eruption. It
+looked as if life had abandoned the miserable little body, leaving but a
+little substance for fungoid growths to flourish in.
+
+'Feel, dear lady,--its hands are icy cold. It cannot eat, it cannot
+drink--it does not sleep any more----'
+
+The mother broke into loud sobs. The ague-stricken men looked on with
+eyes full of utter prostration, while the sound of the weeping only drew
+an impatient movement from the two youths.
+
+'Come away--come away!' said Andrea, taking Elena by the arm and
+dragging her away, after throwing a piece of money on the table.
+
+They returned over the bridge. The river was lighted up by the flames of
+the dying day, and in the distance the water looked smooth and
+glistening as if great spots of oil or bitumen were floating on it. The
+Campagna, stretching away like an ocean of ruins, was of a uniform
+violet tint. Nearer the town the sky flushed a deep crimson.
+
+'Poor little thing!' murmured Elena in a tone of heartfelt compassion,
+and pressing closer to Andrea.
+
+The wind had risen to a gale. A flock of crows swept across the burning
+heavens, very high up, croaking hoarsely.
+
+A sudden passionate exaltation suddenly filled the souls of the two at
+sight of this vast solitude. Something tragic and heroic seemed to enter
+into their love and the hill-tops of their passion to catch the blaze of
+the stormy sunset. Elena stood still.
+
+'I can go no further,' she gasped.
+
+The carriage was still at some distance, standing motionless where they
+had left it.
+
+'A little further, Elena, just a step or two! Shall I carry you?'
+
+Then, seized with a sort of frenzy, he burst out again--Why was she
+going away? Why did she want to break with him? Surely their destinies
+were indissolubly knit together now? He could not live without
+her--without her eyes, her voice, the constant thought of her. He was
+saturated through and through with love of her--his whole blood was on
+fire as with some deadly poison. Why was she running away from him?--He
+would hold her fast--would suffocate her on his heart first----No--it
+could not, must not be--never!
+
+Elena listened, with bent head to meet the blast, but she did not
+answer. Presently she raised her hand and beckoned to the coachman. The
+horses pawed and pranced as they started.
+
+'Stop at the Porta Pia,' she called to the man, and entered the carriage
+with her lover. Then she turned and with a sudden gesture yielded
+herself to his desire, and he kissed her greedily--her lips, her brow,
+her hair, her eyes--rapidly, without giving himself time to breathe.
+
+'Elena! Elena!'
+
+A vivid gleam of crimson light reflected from the red brick houses
+penetrated the carriage. The ringing trot of several horses came nearer
+along the road.
+
+Leaning against her lover's shoulder with ineffable tenderness she
+said--'Good-bye, dear love--good-bye--good-bye!'
+
+As she raised herself again, ten or twelve red-coated horsemen passed
+to right and left of the carriage returning from a fox hunt. One of
+them, the Duke di Beffi, bent low over his saddle to peer in at the
+window as he rode by.
+
+Andrea said no more. His whole soul was weighed down by hopeless
+depression. The first impulse of revolt over, the childish weakness of
+his nature almost led him to give way to tears. He wanted to cast
+himself at her feet, to humble himself, to beg and entreat, to move this
+woman to pity by his tears. He felt giddy and confused; a subtle
+sensation of cold seemed to grip the back of his head and penetrate to
+the roots of his hair.
+
+'Good-bye,' repeated Elena for the last time, and the carriage stopped
+under the archway of the Porta Pia to let him get out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Their final farewells _au grand air_, by Elena's desire, did nothing
+towards dissipating Andrea's suspicions. 'What could be her secret
+reasons for this abrupt departure?' He tried in vain to penetrate the
+mystery; he was oppressed with doubt and fear.
+
+During the first days, the anguish of his loss was so cruelly poignant
+that he thought he must die of it. His jealousy, lulled to sleep by the
+persistent ardour of Elena's affection, awoke now with redoubled vigour,
+and the suspicion that a man was at the bottom of this enigmatical
+affair increased his sufferings a hundredfold. Sometimes he would be
+seized with sullen anger against the absent woman, a bitter rancour,
+almost a desire for revenge, as if she had mystified and duped him in
+order to give herself to another. Then again he would feel that he did
+not long for her, did not love her any more, had never loved her. But
+these fits of oblivion were but of short duration. The Spring had come
+again to Rome in a riot of colour and sunshine. The city of limestone
+and brick absorbed the light as a parched forest the rain, the papal
+fountains rose into a limpid sapphire sky, the Piazza di Spagna was
+fragrant as a rose-garden, and above the great flight of steps, alive
+with little children, the Trinita de' Monti shone in a blaze of gold.
+
+Excited by the re-awakened beauty of Rome, all that still remained of
+Elena's fascination in his blood and his spirit revived and re-kindled.
+He was stirred to his very depths by sudden invincible pain, by
+implacable inward tumults, by indefinable languors, almost like some
+strange renewal of his adolescence.
+
+Andrea's liaison with Elena Muti had been perfectly well known, as
+sooner or later every adventure and every flirtation becomes known in
+Roman society, or the society of any other city for the matter of that.
+Precautions are useless. To the initiated a look, a gesture, a smile
+suffices to betray the secret. Besides which, in every society there are
+certain persons who make it their business in life to ferret out and
+follow up the traces of a love affair with an assiduity only to be
+equalled by the hunter of rare game. They are ever on the watch, though
+not apparently so; never, by any chance, miss a murmured word, the
+faintest smile, a tremor, a blush, a lightning glance. At balls or any
+large gatherings, where there is more probability of imprudence, they
+are ubiquitous, with ear stretched to catch a fragment of dialogue, and
+eye keenly on the watch to note a stolen hand-clasp, a tremulous sigh,
+the nervous pressure of delicate fingers on a partner's shoulder.
+
+One such terrible trapper, for example, was Don Filippo del Monte. But
+to tell the truth, Elena Muti did not trouble herself overmuch about
+what society said of her covering her every audacity with the mantle of
+her beauty, her wealth, and her ancient name; and she went on her way
+serenely, surrounded by adulation and homage, by reason of a certain
+good-natured tolerance which is one of the most pleasing qualities of
+Roman society, amounting almost to an article of faith.
+
+In any case, Andrea's connection with the Duchess of Scerni had
+instantly raised him enormously in the estimation of the women. An
+atmosphere of favour surrounded him and his successes became
+astonishing. Moreover, he owed something to his reputation as a
+mysterious artist, and two sonnets which he wrote in the Princess di
+Ferentino's album became famous, in which, as in an ambiguous diptych,
+he lauded in turn a diabolical and an angelic mouth--the one that
+destroys souls and the other that sings 'Ave!'
+
+He responded, without a moment's hesitation, to every advance. No longer
+restrained by Elena's complete dominion over him, his energies returned
+to their original state of disorder. He passed from one liaison to
+another with incredible frivolity, carrying on several at the same time,
+and weaving without scruple a great net of deceptions and lies, in which
+to catch as much prey as possible. The habit of duplicity undermined his
+conscience, but one instinct remained alive, implacably alive in
+him--the repugnance at all this which attracted without holding him
+captive. His will, as useless to him now as a sword of indifferently
+tempered steel, hung as if at the side of an inebriated or paralysed
+man.
+
+One evening, at the Dolcebuonos', when he had outstayed the rest of the
+guests in the drawing-room, full of flowers and still vibrating with a
+_Cachoucha_ of Raff's, he had spoken of love to Bianca. He did it almost
+without thinking, attracted instinctively by the reflected charm of her
+being a friend of Elena's. Maybe too, that the little germ of sympathy
+sown in his heart by her kindly championship at the dinner in the Doria
+palace was now bearing fruit. Who can say by what mysterious process
+some contact--whether spiritual or material--- between a man and a woman
+may generate and nourish in them a sentiment which, latent and
+unsuspected for long, may suddenly wake to life through unforeseen
+circumstances? It is the same phenomenon so often encountered in our
+mental world, when the germ of an idea or a shadowy fancy suddenly
+reappears before us after a long interval of unconscious development as
+a finished picture, a complex thought. The same law governs all the
+varying activities of our being; and the activities of which we are
+conscious form but a small part of the whole.
+
+Donna Bianca Dolcebuono was the ideal type of Florentine beauty, such as
+Ghirlandajo has given us in the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni at Santa
+Maria Novella. Her face was fair and oval, with a broad white brow, a
+sweet and expressive mouth, a nose a trifle _retrousse_ and eyes of that
+deep hazel so dear to Firenzuola. She was fond of wearing her hair
+parted and arranged in full puffs half way over her cheeks in the quaint
+old style. Her name suited her admirably for into the artificial life of
+fashionable society she brought a great natural sweetness of temper,
+much indulgence for the failings of others, courtesy accorded
+impartially to high and low, and a most melodious voice.
+
+On hearing Andrea's hackneyed phrases, she exclaimed in graceful
+surprise--
+
+'What, have you forgotten Elena so soon?'
+
+Then after a few days of engaging hesitation, it pleased her to yield to
+his solicitations, and she often spoke of Elena to the faithless young
+lover, but with perfect frankness and without jealousy.
+
+'But why did she go away sooner than usual this year?' she asked him one
+day with a smile.
+
+'I have no idea,' answered Andrea, not without a touch of impatience and
+bitterness.
+
+'Then it is all over between you--quite over?'
+
+'For pity's sake, Bianca, let us talk about ourselves,' he retorted
+sharply. The subject disturbed and irritated him.
+
+She remained pensive for a moment, as if seeking to unravel some enigma,
+then she smiled and shook her head with a little fugitive shadow of
+melancholy in her eyes.
+
+'Such is love!' she sighed, and returned Andrea's kisses.
+
+In her he seemed to possess all those charming women of whom Lorenzo the
+Magnificent sang:
+
+    'And on every side we find,
+    Absence, as men say, estranges,
+    Fancy ranges as the eye ranges,
+    Out of sight is out of mind.
+
+    Love departs and is not love:
+    As from sight the eye departs
+    Even so do hearts from hearts;
+    And at other hands we prove
+    Fancies love as the eyes rove,
+    Parted pleasures come again.'
+
+When the summer came, and she was on the point of leaving Rome, she
+said to him, without seeking to conceal her gentle emotion--
+
+'When we meet again I know you will not love me any more. That is love.
+But think of me always as a friend.'
+
+He did not love her, certainly; nevertheless during the heat and tedium
+of the days that followed, certain cadences of that dulcet voice
+returned to him like a haunting melody, suggesting visions of a garden,
+fresh with splashing fountains, where Bianca wandered in company with
+other fair women playing on the viol and singing as in a vignette of the
+'Dream of Polyphilo.'
+
+And Bianca passed and was succeeded by others--sometimes two at a time;
+but it was finally the little ivory Death's-head which had belonged to
+the Cardinal Immenraet, the funereal jewel dedicated to an unknown
+Ippolita, that suggested to him the caprice of tempting Donna Ippolita
+Albonico.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Donna Ippolita Albonico had a great air of princely nobility in her
+whole person, and bore some resemblance to Maria Maddalena of Austria,
+wife of Cosimo II. of Medici, whose portrait by Suttermans is at
+Florence in the possession of the Corsinis. She affected a sumptuous
+style of dress--brocades, velvets, laces--and the high Medici collars
+which seemed the most appropriate setting to her superb and imperial
+head.
+
+One day at the races, when seated beside her, Andrea was suddenly seized
+with the whim to get her to promise to come to the Palazzo Zuccari and
+receive the mysterious little clock dedicated to her namesake. Hearing
+his audacious words, she frowned, wavering between curiosity and
+prudence; but as he, nothing daunted, persevered in the attack, an
+irrepressible smile quivered on her lips. Under the shadow of her large
+hat with its white plumes, and with her lace-flounced parasol as a
+background, she was marvellously handsome.
+
+'_Tibi, Hippolyta!_ Then you will come? I shall be on the look-out for
+you all the afternoon, from two o'clock till evening--Is that settled?'
+
+'You must be mad!'
+
+'What have you to fear? I swear that I will not rob Your Majesty of so
+much as a glove. You shall remain seated as on a throne, as befits your
+regal state, and even in taking a cup of tea, you shall not lay aside
+the invisible sceptre you carry for ever in your imperial right hand. On
+these conditions is the grace accorded?'
+
+'No.'
+
+But she smiled nevertheless, flattered by this exaltation of the regal
+aspect of her beauty, wherein she gloried. And Sperelli continued to
+tempt her, always in a tone of banter or entreaty, but adding to the
+seduction of his voice a gaze so subtle, so penetrating and disturbing
+that, at length, Donna Ippolita, half offended and blushing faintly,
+said to him--
+
+'I will not have you look at me like that.'
+
+Few persons besides themselves remained upon the stand. Ladies and
+gentlemen strolled up and down across the grass, along the barrier, or
+surrounded the victorious horse or the yelling bookmakers, under the
+inconstant rays of the sun that came and went between the floating
+archipelago of clouds.
+
+'Let us go down,' she said, unaware of Giannetto Rutolo leaning with
+watchful eyes upon the railing of the staircase.
+
+As they passed him, Sperelli called back over his shoulder--
+
+'Addio, Marchese--see you again soon. Our race is on directly.'
+
+Rutolo bowed profoundly to Donna Ippolita, and a deep flush rose
+suddenly to his face. He seemed to have caught a touch of derision in
+Sperelli's greeting. Leaning on the railing, he followed the retreating
+couple with hungry eyes. He was obviously suffering.
+
+'Rutolo, be on your guard!' said the Contessa di Lucoli with a malicious
+laugh as she passed down the stairs on the arm of Don Filippo del Monte.
+
+The blow struck home. Donna Ippolita and the Conte d'Ugenta having
+penetrated as far as the umpire's stand were now retracing their steps.
+The lady held her sunshade over her shoulder, twirling the handle
+languidly in her fingers; the white cupola stood out round her head like
+a halo, and the lace frills rose and fluttered incessantly. Within this
+revolving circle, she laughed from time to time at what her companion
+said, and a delicate flush stained the noble pallor of her face.
+Sometimes they would both stand still.
+
+Under pretext of examining the horses now entering the race-course,
+Giannetto turned his field-glass upon the two. His hands trembled
+visibly. Every smile, every movement, every glance of Ippolita's was a
+sword-thrust in his heart. When he dropped his glass, he was deadly
+pale. He had surprised a look in the eyes that met Sperelli's which he
+knew full well of old. Everything seemed crumbling to ruins around him.
+The love of years was over--irrevocably lost--slain by that glance. The
+sun was the sun no longer, life was not life any more.
+
+The grand stand was rapidly refilling; the signal for the third race was
+about to be given. The ladies stood up on their seats. A murmur ran
+along the tiers like a breeze over a sloping garden. The bell rang. The
+horses started like a flight of arrows.
+
+'I shall ride in your honour, Donna Ippolita,' said Andrea Sperelli as
+he look leave of her to get ready for the next race, which was for
+gentlemen riders--'_Tibi, Hippolyta, Semper!_'
+
+She pressed his hand warmly for luck, never remembering that Giannetto
+Rutolo was also among the competitors. When, a moment later, she noticed
+him going down the stairs, pale and alone, the unconcealed cruelty of
+indifference shone in her beautiful dark eyes. The old love had fallen
+away from her like a useless garment, and had given place to the new.
+This man was nothing to her, had no claims of any kind upon her now that
+she no longer loved him. It is inconceivable how quickly a woman regains
+entire possession of her own heart once she has ceased to love a man.
+
+'He has stolen her from me!' he thought to himself, as he made his way
+to the Jockey Club tent, and the grass seemed to give beneath his feet
+like sand. At a little distance in front of him walked the other with a
+firm and elastic step. In his long gray overcoat his tall and shapely
+figure had that peculiar and inimitable air of elegance which only
+breeding can give. He was smoking, and Giannetto Rutolo, coming up
+behind him, caught the delicate aroma of the cigarette with every puff,
+causing him an intolerable nausea as if it had been poison.
+
+The Duke di Beffi and Paolo Caligaro were at the entrance, already in
+racing dress. The duke was making gymnastic movements to test the
+elasticity of his leather breeches and the strength of his knees. Little
+Caligaro was execrating last night's rain, which had made the ground
+heavy.
+
+'You have a very good chance with _Miching Mallecho_, I consider,' he
+remarked to Sperelli when he came up.
+
+Giannetto Rutolo heard this forecast with a bitter pang. He had founded
+a vague hope on the event of his own victory. He represented to himself
+the advantage he might gain over his enemy by a victorious race and a
+successful duel. As he changed his clothes his every movement betrayed
+his preoccupation.
+
+'Here is a man who before getting on horseback sees the grave open
+before him,' said the duke, laying his hand on the young man's shoulder
+with a serio-comic air--'_Ecce homo novus_.'
+
+Andrea Sperelli, who felt in the best of spirits at that moment, gave
+vent to one of those frank bursts of laughter which were the most
+engaging trait of his youth.
+
+'What are you laughing at?' demanded Rutolo, lividly pale, glaring at
+him from under frowning brows.
+
+'It seems to me, my dear fellow,' returned Sperelli unmoved 'that you
+are a little out of temper----'
+
+'And if I am?'
+
+'You are at liberty to think what you like about my laughing.'
+
+'Then I think it is idiotic.'
+
+Sperelli bounded to his feet and made a stride forward with uplifted
+whip. By a miracle, Paolo Caligaro managed to catch his arm. Violent
+words followed. Don Marc Antonio Spada appeared upon the scene and heard
+the altercation.
+
+'That's enough, boys--you both know what you have to do
+to-morrow--you've got to ride now.'
+
+The two adversaries finished their dressing in silence and then went
+out. The news of the quarrel had already spread through the enclosure
+and up to the grand stand, increasing the excitement of the race. With
+a refinement of perfidy, the Contessa di Lucoli repeated it to Donna
+Ippolita.
+
+The latter gave no sign of inward perturbation. 'I am sorry to hear
+that,' was her only comment, 'I thought they were friends.'
+
+The crowd surged round the bookmakers. _Miching Mallecho_, the horse of
+the Conte d'Ugenta, and _Brummel_, that of the Marchese Rutolo, were the
+favourites; then came the Duke di Beffi's _Satirist_ and Caligaro's
+_Carbonilla_. However, the best judges had not overmuch confidence in
+the two first, thinking that the nervous excitement of their riders must
+inevitably tell upon the racing.
+
+But Andrea Sperelli was perfectly calm, not to say gay.
+
+His sense of superiority over his rival gave him assurance; moreover,
+his romantic taste for any adventure savouring of peril, inherited from
+his Byronic father, shed a halo of glory round the situation, and all
+the inborn generosity of his young blood awoke at the prospect of
+danger.
+
+With a beating heart, he went forward to meet his horse as to a friend
+who was bringing him the news of some great good fortune. He stroked its
+nose fondly, and the glances of the animal's eye, an eye that flashed
+with the inextinguishable fire of noblest breeding, intoxicated him like
+a woman's magnetic gaze.
+
+'Mallecho,' he whispered as he caressed the horse, 'this is a great
+day--we must win!'
+
+His trainer, a little red-faced man, who was engaged in scrutinising the
+other horses as they were led past by their grooms, answered in his
+rough husky voice,--'There's no doubt but you will!'
+
+Miching Mallecho was a superb bay from the stables of the Baron de
+Soubeyran, and combined extreme elegance of build with extraordinary
+strength of muscle. His fine and shining coat, under which the tracery
+of veins was distinctly visible on chest and flank, seemed almost to
+exhale a fiery vapour, so intense was the creature's vitality. A
+splendid jumper, he had often carried his master in the hunting-field
+over every obstacle of the Roman countryside, irrespective of the nature
+of the ground, never refusing the highest gate, the most forbidding
+wall, for ever at the tail of the hounds. A word from his rider had more
+effect on him than the spur, a caress made him quiver with delight.
+
+Before mounting, Andrea carefully examined every strap and buckle, then
+with a smile he vaulted into the saddle. As he watched his master move
+away the trainer expressed his confidence in an eloquent gesture.
+
+A crowd of bettors pressed round the indicator. Andrea felt that every
+eye was upon him. Gazing eagerly at the stand to the right, he tried to
+catch sight of Ippolita Albonico, but could distinguish no one among the
+multitude of ladies. The Marchesa d'Ateleta, who had heard of the
+quarrel, made him a sign of reproof from afar.
+
+'How is the betting on Mallecho?' he asked of Ludovico Barbarisi.
+
+As he moved towards the starting-post, he reflected calmly on the means
+he would employ for winning, and considered his three rivals critically,
+calculating the strength and science of each of them. Paolo Caligaro was
+a tricky devil, as thoroughly versed in all the knavery of the stable as
+any jockey; but Carbonilla, although fast, had little staying power. The
+Duke di Beffi, a rider of the 'haute ecole' style, who had come off
+victorious in more than one race in England, was mounted on an animal of
+uncertain temper which would probably refuse some of the jumps.
+Giannetto Rutolo, on the contrary, was riding a well-bred and
+well-trained horse, but though he was a very capable rider he was too
+impetuous; moreover, this was the first time he had taken part in a
+public race. Besides, he must be in a terrible state of nervous
+irritation, as was apparent from numerous signs.
+
+As he looked at him, Andrea thought to himself--'I have no doubt that my
+victory to-day would influence the course of the duel to-morrow. In both
+instances, he will lose his head--it behoves me to keep calm on both
+fields----' Then--'I wonder what Donna Ippolita feels about it?' There
+seemed to be an unusual silence round about him. With his eye he
+measured the distance that separated him from the first hurdle; he
+noticed a shining stone on the course; he observed that Rutolo was
+watching him, and a tremor ran through him from head to foot.
+
+The bell gave the signal, but Brummel was off too soon and the start was
+no good. The second time too they made a false start, and again through
+Brummel's fault. Sperelli and the duke exchanged a furtive smile.
+
+The third start was successful. Brummel instantly detached himself from
+the group and swept along by the palings. The other three horses
+followed abreast for a moment or so, and cleared the first hurdle and
+then the second very well. Each of the three riders played a different
+game. The Duke di Beffi tried to keep with the group, so that Satirist
+might be induced to follow the example of the other horses at the
+obstacles; Caligaro moderated Carbonilla's pace in order to save up her
+strength for the last five hundred yards. Sperelli increased his speed
+gradually with the intention of catching up with his adversary in the
+neighbourhood of the most difficult obstacle. In effect, Mallecho soon
+distanced his two companions and began to press Brummel very closely.
+
+Rutolo heard the rapidly approaching hoof-thuds behind him and was
+seized with such nervousness that his sight seemed to fail him.
+Everything swam before his eyes as if he were on the point of swooning.
+He made a frightful effort to keep his spurs at his horse's sides,
+overcome by terror at the thought that his senses might leave him. There
+was a muffled roar in his ears, and through that roar he caught the
+hard, clear sound of Andrea Sperelli's 'Hi!'
+
+More susceptible to the voice than any other mode of urging, Mallecho
+simply devoured the intervening space; he was not more than two or three
+lengths behind Brummel--was on the point of joining--of passing him.
+
+'Hi!'
+
+A high barrier intersected the course. Rutolo actually did not see it,
+having lost all sense of his surroundings, and only preserved a furious
+instinct to remain glued to his horse and force it along, never mind
+how. Brummel jumped, but receiving no aid from his rider, caught his
+hind legs against the barrier, and came down so awkwardly on the other
+side that the rider lost his stirrups, without, however, coming out of
+the saddle, and he continued to run. Andrea Sperelli now took the lead,
+Giannetto Rutolo, without having recovered his stirrups, being second,
+with Paolo Caligaro close upon his heels; the duke, retarded by a
+refusal from Satirist, came last. In this order they passed the grand
+stand. They heard a confused clamour but it soon died away.
+
+The spectators held their breath in suspense. From time to time,
+somebody would remark aloud on the various incidents of the running. At
+every change in the order of the horses numerous exclamations sounded
+through the continuous murmur, and the ladies thrilled visibly. Donna
+Ippolita Albonico, mounted on a seat, with her hands on the shoulders of
+her husband who stood below her, watched the race with marvellous
+self-control and without a trace of apparent emotion, unless the
+over-tight compression of her lips and a scarcely perceptible furrow
+between her brows might have revealed the effort to an observant eye. At
+a certain moment, however, she drew her hands away from her husband's
+shoulder, fearful of betraying herself by some involuntary movement.
+
+'Sperelli is down!' announced the Contessa di Lucoli in a loud voice.
+
+Mallecho, in jumping, had slipped on the wet grass and come down on his
+knees, but recovered himself in an instant. Andrea had gone over his
+head, but was none the worse, and with lightning rapidity was back in
+the saddle as Rutolo and Caligaro came up with him. Brummel performed
+prodigies, in spite of the wounded leg, and showed the quality of his
+blood. Carbonilla was at last putting out all her speed, guided with
+consummate skill by her rider. There were still about eight hundred
+yards to the winning post.
+
+Sperelli saw victory escaping him and gathered up all his forces to
+grasp it again. Standing in the stirrups, bent low over his horse's
+neck, he uttered from time to time that short, sharp, ringing word which
+always acted so effectively upon the noble creature. While Brummel and
+Carbonilla, fatigued by the heaviness of the ground, began to lose the
+pace, Mallecho steadily increased the vehemence of his rush and had
+nearly reconquered his former position, scenting victory already with
+his fiery nostrils. Flying over the last obstacle, he passed
+Brummel--his head was level with Carbonilla's shoulder--a hundred yards
+from the post he skirted the barrier--on--on--leaving Caligaro's black
+mare ten lengths behind. The bell rang--a furious clapping of hands,
+like the pelting of hail-stones, and then a dull roar spread through the
+great crowd on the green sward under the flood of brilliant sunshine.
+
+As he entered the enclosure, Andrea Sperelli thought to
+himself--'Fortune is with me to-day, but how will it be to-morrow?' And
+feeling the breath of triumph surge round him, a vague sense of
+resentment rose up in him against the possibilities of the morrow. He
+would have preferred to face it to-day and get it over, that he might
+enjoy a double victory and then taste the fruit offered to him by the
+hand of Ippolita Albonico. He was possessed, for the moment, by that
+inexplicable intoxication which results--with certain men of
+intellect--from the exercise of their physical powers, the experience of
+their courage and the revelation of their inherent brutality. The
+substratum of primitive ferocity which exists at the bottom of most of
+us rushes to the surface, on occasion, with curious vehemence, and under
+the skin-deep varnish of modern civilisation, our hearts swell sometimes
+with a nameless sanguinary fury, and visions of carnage rise up before
+us. Inhaling the hot and acrid exhalations of his horse, Andrea Sperelli
+felt that none of the delicate perfumes affected by him up till now, had
+ever afforded him such intense enjoyment.
+
+He had scarcely quitted the saddle, before he found himself surrounded
+by friends of both sexes, eager to congratulate him. Mallecho, breathing
+hard, smoking and covered with foam, snorted and stretched his neck,
+shaking the bridle. His sides rose and fell with a deep continuous
+movement, as if they must burst; his muscles vibrated under skin like a
+bow-string after the shot; his eyes, dilated and bloodshot, had the
+cruel glare of those of a beast of prey; his coat, now showing great
+patches of darker colour, ran down with rivulets of perspiration. The
+incessant trembling of his whole body was pitiable to see, like the
+suffering of a human being.
+
+'Poor fellow!' murmured one of the ladies.
+
+Andrea examined his knees to see if he had taken any hurt from his fall.
+They were sound. Then patting him softly on the neck, he said in an
+indefinable tone of gentleness--'Go, Mallecho, go----'
+
+And he followed him with his eyes till he disappeared.
+
+Directly he had changed his clothes, he went in search of Ludovico
+Barbarisi and the Baron di Santa Margherita.
+
+Both instantly accepted the office of arranging preliminaries with
+Rutolo. He begged them to hasten matters as much as possible.
+
+'Fix it all by this evening. To-morrow by one o'clock I absolutely must
+be free. But let me sleep till nine to-morrow morning. I dine with the
+Ferentinos, then I shall look in at the Palazzo Giustiniani, and after
+that I shall go to the Club, but it will be late--You will know where to
+find me. Many thanks, my dear fellows, and _a rividerci_.'
+
+He repaired to the grand stand, but avoided approaching Donna Ippolita
+at once. He smiled, feeling every feminine eye upon him. Many
+a fair hand was held out, many a sweet voice called him
+familiarly--'Andrea'--some of them even a little ostentatiously. The
+ladies who had bet upon his horses told him the amount of their
+winnings, others asked curiously if he were really going to fight.
+
+It seemed to him that in one day he had reached the summit of
+adventurous glory. He had come out victor in a record race, had gained
+the graces of a new love, magnificent and serene as a Venetian
+Dogaressa, had provoked a man to mortal combat and now was passing calm
+and courteous--but neither more so nor less than usual--amid the openly
+adoring smiles of all these fair women.
+
+'See the conquering hero comes!' cried Ippolita's husband with
+outstretched hand and pressing Andrea's with unusual warmth.
+
+'Yes, indeed; quite a hero!' echoed Donna Ippolita in the superficial
+tone of necessary compliment, affecting ignorance of the real drama.
+
+Sperelli bowed and passed on, feeling strangely embarrassed by
+Albonico's excessive friendliness. A suspicion crossed his mind that he
+was grateful to him for having provoked a quarrel with his wife's lover,
+and the cowardice of the man brought a supercilious smile to his lips.
+
+Returning from the races on the Prince di Ferentino's mail coach, he
+espied Giannetto Rutolo tearing back to Rome in a little two-wheeled
+trap behind a great fast-trotting roan; bending forward with head down,
+a cigar between his teeth and utterly regardless of the injunctions of
+the police to keep in the line. Rome rose up before them, black against
+a band of saffron light, and in the violet sky above that light the
+statues on the Basilica of San Giovanni stood out exaggeratedly large.
+And Andrea then fully realised the pain he was inflicting on this man's
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+At the Palazzo Giustiniani that evening, Andrea said to Ippolita
+Albonico, 'Well then, it is a fixed thing that I expect you to-morrow
+between two and five?'
+
+She would like to have said: 'Then you are not going to fight
+to-morrow?' but she did not dare.
+
+'I have promised,' she replied.
+
+A minute or two afterwards, her husband came up to Andrea and taking his
+arm with much effusion, began asking particulars about the duel. He was
+a youngish man, slim, with very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and
+projecting teeth. He had a slight stammer.
+
+'Well, well--so it is to come off to-morrow, is it?'
+
+Andrea could not repress his disgust, and let his arm hang loosely at
+his side to show that he was in no mood for these familiarities. Seeing
+the Baron di Santa Margherita enter the room, he disengaged himself
+quickly.
+
+'Excuse me, Count,' he said, 'I want to speak to Santa Margherita.'
+
+The Baron met him with the assurance that all was in order. 'Very
+good--at what hour?'
+
+'Half-past ten at the Villa Sciarra. Rapiers and fencing-gloves, _a
+outrance_.'
+
+'Whom else have you got for seconds?'
+
+'Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo de Souza. We settled everything as
+quickly as possible, avoiding formalities. Giannetto had got his seconds
+already. We arranged the proceedings at the Club without any fuss. Try
+not to be too late in going to bed--you must be dead tired.'
+
+But, heedless of this good advice, on leaving the Palazzo Giustiniani,
+Andrea betook himself to the Club, where Santa Margherita came upon him
+at two o'clock in the morning, and, forcing him to leave the
+card-tables, bore him off on foot to the Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+'My dear boy,' he said reproachfully as they walked along, 'you are
+really foolhardy. In a case like this, the smallest imprudence might
+lead to fatal results. To preserve his full strength and activity, a
+good swordsman should have as much care for his person as a tenor has
+for his voice. The wrist is as delicate an organ as the throat--the
+articulations of the legs as sensitive as the vocal chords. The
+mechanism suffers from the smallest disturbance; the instrument gets out
+of gear and will not answer to the player. After a night of play or
+drink, Camillo Agrippa himself could not thrust straight, and his
+parries were neither sure nor rapid. An error of a hair's breadth will
+suffice to let three inches of steel into one's body.' They were at the
+top of the Via Condotti, and in the distance they could see the Piazza
+di Spagna, lighted up by the full moon, the stairway bathed in silver,
+and the Trinita de' Monti rising into the soft blue.
+
+'Certainly,' continued the Baron, 'you have great advantages over your
+adversary, amongst others, a cool head--also you have been out before. I
+saw you in Paris in your affair with Gauvaudan--you remember? A grand
+duel that! You fought like a god!'
+
+Andrea laughed, much gratified. The praise of this unrivalled duellist
+made his heart swell with pride, and infused fresh vigour into his
+muscles. Instinctively, he grasped his walking stick, and repeated the
+famous pass which pierced the arm of the Marquis de Gauvaudan the
+previous winter.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'it was a direct return hit after a parry of "contre de
+tierce."'
+
+'On the floor, Giannetto Rutolo is a skilful swordsman, but in the open
+he gets confused. He has only been out once before with my cousin
+Cassibile, and he came off badly. He does far too much of the one,
+two,--one, two, three business in attacking. Stop thrusts and hits with
+a _half volte_ would be useful to you. It was just in that way that my
+cousin touched him in the second round. And those thrusts are your
+special _forte_. Keep a sharp look-out and try to keep your distance.
+And do not forget that you have to do with a man whom, as I hear, you
+have robbed of his mistress, and to whom you lifted your whip.'
+
+They had reached the Piazza di Spagna. The Barcaccia splashed and
+gurgled softly, glistening under the moon that was mirrored in its
+waters. Four or five hackney carriages stood in a line with their lamps
+lighted. From the Via del Babuino came a tinkle of bells, and the dull
+tramp of hoofs, as of a herd in motion.
+
+At the foot of the steps the Baron took leave of him.
+
+'Good-bye then, till to-morrow. I shall be with you a little before nine
+with Ludovico. You must make a pass or so, just to unstiffen the
+muscles. We will see about the doctor. Off with you now and get a good
+sleep.'
+
+Andrea mounted the steps. At the first broad landing, he stood still to
+listen to the tinkle of the approaching bells. In truth, he did feel
+rather tired, and even a little heartsick. Now that the excitement
+called up by the conversation on fencing, and the recollection of his
+former doughty deeds in that line had subsided, a sense of
+dissatisfaction had come upon him, confusedly, as yet, and mingled with
+doubt and regret. After being on the stretch throughout the violent
+feverish incidents of the day, his nerves relaxed under the balmy
+influences of the spring night. Why should he, without any excuse of
+passion, out of mere caprice, from pure vanity and arrogance, have taken
+pleasure in awakening the hatred, and deeply wounding the heart of a
+fellow man? The thought of the horrid pain that must be torturing his
+adversary filled him with a sort of compassion. Elena's image flashed
+before him, and he called to mind the anguish he had endured the year
+before, what time he had lost her--his jealousy, his anger, his nameless
+torments. Then, as now, the nights were serene and calm, and filled
+with perfume, and yet how they weighed upon his spirit! He inhaled the
+fragrant breath of the roses blooming in the little gardens about, and
+watched the flock of sheep passing through the Piazza below.
+
+The mass of thick white fleece advanced with a continuous undulating
+motion, a compact and unbroken surface, like a muddy wave pouring over
+the pavement. A sharp quavering bleat would mingle with the tinkling
+bells to be answered by other voices, fainter and more timid; from time
+to time, the mounted shepherds, riding at either side or behind the
+flock, gave a sharp word of command, or used their long staves. The
+splendour of the moonlight lent to this passage of flocks through the
+midst of the slumbering city the mystery of things seen in a dream.
+
+Andrea recalled one serene February night when, on coming away from a
+ball at the English Embassy, he and Elena had met a flock of sheep in
+the Via Venti Settembre which obliged their carriage to stop. Elena, her
+face pressed to the window, watched the sheep crowding against the
+carriage wheels, and pointed to the little lambs with childish delight;
+and he with his face close to hers, his eyes half closed, listened to
+the pattering hoofs, the bleating, the tinkling bells.
+
+Why should these recollections of Elena come back to him just now?--He
+resumed his way slowly up the steps, his feet heavy with fatigue, his
+knees giving way beneath him. Suddenly the thought of death flashed
+across his mind. 'What if I were killed, or received such a wound as to
+maim me for life?' But his thirst for life and pleasure caused his whole
+being to revolt against such a sinister possibility. 'I _must_ come off
+victorious!' he said to himself. And he began reviewing all the
+advantages that would fall to him from this second victory: the prestige
+of his success, the fame of his prowess, Ippolita's kisses, new loves,
+new pleasures, the gratification of new whims.
+
+Presently, however, he bethought him of the necessary precautions for
+insuring his bodily vigour. He went to bed and slept soundly till he
+was awakened by the arrival of his seconds; took his customary
+shower-bath; had a strip of linoleum laid down and invited Santa
+Margherita and then Barbarisi to exchange a few passes with him, during
+which he executed with precision several stop thrusts.
+
+'In capital form!' the Baron congratulated him.
+
+Sperelli then took two cups of tea and some biscuits, donned a very easy
+pair of trousers, comfortable shoes with low heels and a very slightly
+starched shirt; he prepared his gloves by moistening the palm slightly
+and rubbing in powdered resin; arranged a leather strap for fastening
+the guard to his wrist; examined the blade and the point of both
+rapiers; omitted no precaution, no detail.
+
+When all was to his satisfaction--'Let us be going now,' he said;
+'better be on the ground before the others. What about the doctor?'
+
+'He will be waiting for us there.'
+
+On the way down stairs they met Grimiti, who had come on behalf of the
+Marchesa d'Ateleta.
+
+'I shall follow you to the Villa and then bring the news as quickly as
+possible to Francesca,' said he.
+
+They all went down together. The Duke jumped into his buggy and the
+others entered a closed carriage. Andrea made no show of indifference or
+good spirits--to make jokes before engaging in a serious duel seemed to
+him execrably bad taste--but he was perfectly calm. He smoked and
+listened composedly to Santa Margherita and Barbarisi, who were
+discussing--apropos of a recent case in France--whether it was
+legitimate or not to use the left hand against an adversary. Now and
+again, he leaned forward to look out of the window.
+
+On this May morning Rome shone resplendent under the caressing sun. Here
+a fountain lit up with its silvery laughter a little piazzetta still
+plunged in shadow; there the open gates of a palace disclosed a vista of
+courtyard with a background of portico and statues; from the baroque
+architecture of a brick church hung the decorations for the month of
+Mary. Under the bridge, the Tiber gleamed and glistened as it hurried
+away between the gray-green houses towards the island of San Bartolomeo.
+After a short ascent, the whole city spread out before them, immense,
+imperial, radiant, bristling with spires and columns and obelisks,
+crowned with cupolas and rotundas, clean cut out of the blue like a
+citadel.
+
+'_Ave Roma, moriturus te salutat!_' exclaimed Andrea Sperelli, throwing
+away the end of his cigarette. 'Though, to tell the truth, my dear
+fellows.' he added, 'a sword-thrust would decidedly inconvenience me
+this morning.'
+
+They had reached the Villa Sciarra, already partially profaned by the
+builders of modern houses, and were passing through an avenue of tall
+and slender laurels bordered by hedges of roses. Santa Margherita,
+putting his head out of the window, caught sight of another carriage
+standing in the drive before the villa.
+
+'They are waiting for us,' he said.
+
+He consulted his watch--ten minutes yet to the hour agreed upon. He got
+out of the carriage and went across with the other seconds and the
+surgeons to the opponents. Andrea stayed behind in the avenue. He went
+over, in his own mind, certain points of attack and defence he hoped to
+employ successfully, but the miracles of light and shadow playing
+fitfully through the interlacing laurels distracted his attention. While
+his mind was occupied with the position of the wound he intended
+inflicting, his eyes were attracted by the reeds shivering in the
+morning breeze, and the trees, tender as the amorous allegories of
+Petrarch, sighed gently over a head that was wholly absorbed in plans of
+dealing a mortal blow.
+
+Barbarisi came to call him.
+
+'Everything is ready,' he said. 'The caretaker has opened the villa for
+us--we have the rooms on the ground floor at our disposal--most
+convenient. Come and undress.'
+
+Andrea followed him. While he undressed, the two surgeons opened their
+surgical cases and displayed the array of glittering steel instruments
+within. One of them was a youngish man, pale, bald, and with feminine
+hands and a hard mouth, with a continual and visible contraction of the
+lower jaw, which was extraordinarily developed. The other was a thickset
+man of mature years with a freckled face, bushy red beard and the neck
+of an ox. The one seemed the antithesis of the other, and their
+disparity excited Sperelli's curiosity and attention. They set out upon
+a table bandages and carbolic acid for disinfecting the weapons. The
+smell of the acid diffused itself through the room.
+
+As soon as Sperelli was ready, he went out accompanied by his second and
+the surgeons. Once again, the view of Rome seen through the laurels
+attracted his eyes and made his heart beat fast. He was full of
+impatience. He wished he could put himself on guard at that very
+instant, and hear the signal for the attack. He seemed to have the
+decisive thrust, the victory in his hand.
+
+'Ready?' asked Santa Margherita advancing to meet him.
+
+'Quite ready.'
+
+The spot chosen for the encounter was a path at the side of the villa,
+in the shade, and covered with fine rolled gravel. Rutolo was already
+stationed there, at the further end, with Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo
+di Souza. Everybody wore a grave, not to say solemn, air. The two
+adversaries were placed opposite to one another and their eyes met.
+Santa Margherita, who had the direction of the combat, noticed that
+Rutolo's shirt was very stiffly starched and the collar too high. He
+remarked upon it to Casteldieri who exchanged a few words with his
+principal, and Sperelli saw the blood rush to his adversary's face while
+he proceeded resolutely to divest himself of his shirt. Andrea with cold
+composure followed his example. He then turned up his trousers and Santa
+Margherita handed him the glove, the strap and the rapier. He armed
+himself with scrupulous care, and shook his weapon slightly to see that
+he had it well in hand. The movement brought out the play of his biceps
+very visibly bearing witness to long practice of the arm and the
+strength it had thereby acquired.
+
+When the two combatants measured their swords for the distance, that of
+Giannetto Rutolo shook convulsively. After the usual set phrases as to
+the honour and good faith of the combatants, Santa Margherita gave the
+word in a ringing powerful voice.
+
+'Gentlemen--on guard!'
+
+The duellists threw themselves on guard simultaneously; Rutolo, with a
+stamp of the foot, Sperelli, bending forward lightly. Rutolo was of
+medium height, very slender, all nerves, with an olive face, to which
+the curled moustaches and the little pointed beard a la Charles I. in
+Van Dyck's pictures lent a certain piquant and dashing air. Sperelli was
+taller, more dignified, admirable of attitude, calm and collected,
+perfectly balanced between grace and strength, his whole person
+proclaiming the _grand seigneur_. They looked each other full in the
+eye, and each experienced a curious internal thrill at the sight of the
+bare flesh against which he pointed his sharp blade. Through the silence
+came the fresh murmur of the fountain mingled with the rustle of the
+breeze among the climbing rose-bushes, where innumerable yellow and
+white roses nodded their fragrant heads.
+
+'Play!' cried the Baron.
+
+Andrea was prepared for an impetuous attack from Rutolo, but the latter
+did not move. For about a minute, they stood watching each other closely
+without ever crossing swords, almost motionless. Sperelli bending his
+knees still more, on guard with the point low, assumed the tierce guard
+and sought to provoke his adversary by the insolent challenge of his
+eyes and by stamping his foot. Rutolo made a step forward with a menace
+of straight thrust, accompanying it with a cry after the manner of
+certain Sicilian fencers. The duel began.
+
+Sperelli avoided any decisive movement, restricting himself to parrying
+only, forcing his opponent to discover his intentions, to exhaust all
+his methods, to bring out his whole repertoire of sword-play. His
+parries were neat and rapid, never yielding a foot of ground, admirable
+in precision, as if he were taking part in a fencing match in the school
+with blunt foils; whereas Rutolo attacked him warmly, accompanying each
+thrust with a hoarse cry like that of the wood-cutters when they use
+their hatchets.
+
+'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita, whose vigilant eye marked every flash of
+the blades.
+
+He went up to Rutolo, 'You are touched, if I am not mistaken,' he said.
+
+True, Rutolo had a scratch on the forearm, but so slight that there was
+no need even of sticking-plaster. Nevertheless, he was breathing hard,
+and his livid pallor bore witness to his suppressed anger.
+
+'I know my man thoroughly now,' whispered Sperelli with a smile to
+Barbarisi. 'You watch the second round. I mean to pink him on the right
+breast.'
+
+As he spoke, he absently rested the point of his rapier on the ground.
+The bald young surgeon with the strong jaw immediately came up to him
+with a sponge soaked in carbolic acid and proceeded to purify the weapon
+again.
+
+'Good heavens!' Andrea exclaimed in a low voice to Barbarisi, 'he has
+all the air of a _jettatore_. This rapier is certain to break.'
+
+A thrush began to sing somewhere in the trees. Here and there a rose
+scattered its petals on the breeze. Some low-lying fleecy clouds rose to
+meet the sun, broke up into airy flakes and gradually dispersed.
+
+'On guard!'
+
+Conscious of his inferiority, Rutolo determined to hamper his opponent's
+play, to attack him at close quarters and so break his continuity of
+action. For this he enjoyed the advantage of shorter stature and a frame
+which, being wiry, thin and flexible, offered but little mark to the
+other's weapon.
+
+Andrea foresaw that Rutolo would adopt this plan. He stood on guard,
+bent like a taut bow, watching for the right moment.
+
+'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita.
+
+A streak of blood showed on Rutolo's breast. The rapier had penetrated,
+just under the right breast, almost to the rib. The surgeons hurried
+over, but the wounded man instantly turned to Casteldieri, and with a
+tremor of anger in his voice said roughly:--
+
+'It is a mere scratch. I shall go on.'
+
+He refused to go inside to have the wound-dressed. The bald doctor,
+after squeezing the small hole, which scarcely bled, and sponging it
+with antiseptic lotion, applied a simple piece of lint and said:--
+
+'You may go on now.'
+
+At Casteldieri's invitation, the Baron gave the word without delay for
+the third round.
+
+'On guard!'
+
+Sperelli perceived his danger. Directly in front of him stood his
+adversary, his knees firmly bent, masked, as it were, behind his rapier,
+his whole strength resolutely collected for one supreme effort. His eyes
+had a singular glitter, and the calf of his left leg quivered
+perceptibly under the excessive tension of the muscles. This time, in
+order to avoid the shock of his opponent's impetus, Andrea determined to
+throw himself to one side and repeat the thrust which Cassibile had
+employed so successfully, the white patch of lint on Rutolo's breast
+serving him as a mark. It was there he proposed wounding him again, but,
+this time, the rapier should enter the intercostal space and not be
+deterred by the rib. The silence all about them deepened, the spectators
+felt the homicidal desire that animated the two men, and were seized
+with apprehension, their hearts sinking at the thought that doubtless
+they would have to carry away a dead or dying man. The sun, veiled by
+fleecy cloudlets, shed a milky light over the scene, the trees rustled
+fitfully, the thrush sang on invisible.
+
+'Play!'
+
+Rutolo charged his adversary with a double derobe. Sperelli parried and
+returned, giving way a step. Rutolo followed up furiously with a rush of
+rapid thrusts, nearly all in the low line, without uttering the usual
+cries. Sperelli, nothing daunted by this onslaught, and wishing to avoid
+an actual hand-to-hand fight, parried vigorously, and returned with such
+directness that he might, had he so wished, have run his adversary
+through the body each time. Rutolo's leg was bleeding near the groin.
+
+'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita the moment he perceived it.
+
+But in the same instant Sperelli, parrying low quarte and not
+encountering his adversary's blade, received a thrust full in the
+breast. He fell back into Barbarisi's arms and fainted.
+
+'Wound penetrating the thorax through the fourth intercostal space on
+the right side with superficial wound of the lung,' pronounced the
+bull-necked surgeon, after his examination in the room to which they had
+conveyed the wounded man.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Convalescence is a purification, a new birth. Never is life so sweet as
+after the pangs of physical suffering, and never is the human soul so
+inclined towards purity and faith as after having had a glimpse into the
+abyss of death.
+
+After his terrible wound, after a long, slow, agonising struggle, Andrea
+Sperelli came back to life renewed in body and spirit--like another man,
+like a creature risen out of the icy waters of death, with a mind swept
+bare of all that has gone before. The past had receded into the dim
+perspective, the troubled waters had calmed, the mud sunk to the bottom;
+his soul was cleansed. He returned to the bosom of Mother Nature, and he
+felt her re-inforce him maternally with goodness and with strength.
+
+The guest of his cousin at her villa of Schifanoja, Andrea returned to
+life again in sight of the sea. The convalescent drew his breath in
+harmony with the deep, calm breath of the ocean; his mind was
+tranquillised by the serenity of the horizon. Little by little, in these
+hours of enforced idleness and retirement, his spirit expanded, bloomed
+out, erected itself slowly, like the grass trodden under foot on the
+pathway, and he returned to truth and simple faith, became natural and
+free of heart, open to the knowledge and disposed to the contemplation
+of pure things.
+
+August was drawing to a close. An ecstatic serenity reigned over the
+sea; the waters were so transparent that they repeated every image with
+absolute fidelity, and their ultimate line melted so imperceptibly into
+the sky that the two elements seemed as one, impalpable and
+supernatural. The wide amphitheatre of hills, clothed with olives,
+oranges and pines and all the noblest forms of Italian vegetation,
+embraced the silent sea, and seemed not a multiplicity of things, but a
+single vast object under the all-pervading sunshine.
+
+Lying on the grass, or sitting on a rock or under a tree, the young man
+felt the river of life flow within him; as in a trance, he seemed to
+feel the whole universe throb and palpitate in his breast; in a species
+of religious rapture, he felt that he possessed the infinite. That which
+he experienced was ineffable, divine. The vista before him opened out by
+degrees into a profound and long continued vision, the branches of the
+trees overhead supported the firmament, filling the blue, and shining
+like the garlands of immortal poets. And he gazed and listened and
+breathed with the sea and the earth, placid as a god.
+
+Where were now all his vanities and his cruelties, his schemes and his
+duplicities? What had become of all his loves and his illusions, his
+disappointments and his disgusts, and the implacable reaction after
+pleasure? He remembered none of them. His spirit had renounced them all,
+and with the absence of desire, he had found peace.
+
+Desire had abandoned its throne and intellect was free to follow its
+proper course, and reflect the objective world purely from the outside
+point of view; things appeared clearly and precisely under their true
+form, in their true colours, in all their real significance and beauty;
+every personal sentiment was in abeyance.
+
+'_Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht--Man freut sich ihrer Pracht._'
+
+One desires not the stars, but rejoices in their splendour--and for the
+first time in his life the young man really recognised the poetic
+harmony of summer skies at night.
+
+These were the last nights of August, and there was no moon. Innumerable
+in the deep starry vault, the constellations throbbed and palpitated
+with ardent life. The two Bears, Hercules, Cassiopeia, glittered with so
+rapid a palpitation that they seemed almost to approach the earth, to
+penetrate the terrestrial atmosphere. The Milky Way flowed wide like a
+regal aerian river, a confluence of the waters of Paradise, over a bed
+of crystal between starry banks. Brilliant meteors cleft the motionless
+air from time to time, gliding lightly and silently as a drop of water
+over a sheet of glass. The slow and solemn respiration of the sea
+sufficed to measure the peace of the night without disturbing it, and
+the pauses were almost sweeter than the music.
+
+In every aspect of the things around him he beheld some analogy to his
+own inner life. The landscape became to him a symbol, an emblem, a sign
+to guide him through the labyrinthine passes of his own soul. He
+discovered secret affinities between the visible life around him and the
+intimate life of his desires and memories. 'To me, high mountains are a
+_feeling_'--and as the mountains were to Byron, so the sea was to him a
+_sentiment_.
+
+Oh, that limpid September sea! Calm and guileless as a sleeping child,
+it lay outstretched beneath the pearly sky--now green, the delicate and
+precious green of malachite, the little red sails upon it like
+flickering tongues of fire, now intensely--almost one might call it
+heraldically--blue, and veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, with
+pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it
+took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the
+greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate,
+and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the
+background of a Giotto picture.
+
+Forgotten sensations of early youth came back to him, that impression of
+freshness which the salt breath of the sea infuses into young blood, the
+indescribable effects produced by the changing lights and shadows, the
+tints, the smell of the salt water upon the unsullied soul. The sea was
+not only a delight to his eyes, but also an inexhaustible wellspring of
+peace, a magic fount of youth wherein his body regained health, and his
+spirit nobility. The ocean had for him the mysterious attraction of a
+mother country, and he abandoned himself to it with filial confidence,
+as a feeble child might sink into the arms of an omnipotent mother. And
+he received comfort and encouragement; for who ever confided his pain,
+his yearnings or his dreams to her in vain?
+
+For him the sea had ever a profound word, some sudden revelation, some
+unlocked for enlightenment, some unexpected significance. She revealed
+to him, in the secret recesses of his soul, a wound still gaping though
+quiescent, and she made it bleed again, but only to heal it with balm
+that was doubly sweet. She re-awakened the dragon that slumbered within
+him, till he felt once more the terrible grip of its claws, and then she
+slew it once for all and buried it deep in his heart never to rise
+again. No corner of his being but lay open to the great Consolatrix.
+
+But at times, under the continuous dominion of this influence, under the
+persistent tyranny of this fascination, the convalescent was conscious
+of a sort of bewilderment and fear, as if both the dominion and
+fascination were insupportable to his weak state. The incessant colloquy
+between him and the sea gave him a vague sense of prostration, as if the
+sublime language were beyond his restricted powers, so eager to grasp
+the meaning of the incomprehensible.
+
+But this period of visions, of abstractions, of pure contemplativeness
+was of short duration. By degrees, he began to resume his attitude of
+self-consciousness, to recover the sensation of his personality, to
+return to his original frame of mind. One day at the hour of high noon,
+the vast and terrible silence when all life seems suspended, a sudden
+glimpse into his own heart revealed shuddering abysses, inextinguishable
+desires, ineffaceable memories, accumulations of suffering and
+regret--all the wretchedness he had gone through, all the inevitable
+scars of his vices, all the results of his passions. He seemed to be
+witnessing the shipwreck of his whole life. A thousand voices cried to
+him for succour, imploring aid, cursing death--voices that he knew, that
+he had listened to in days gone by. But they cried and implored and
+cursed in vain, feeling that they were perishing, choked by the hungry
+waves; then the voices grew faint, broken, irrecognisable--and died away
+into silence.
+
+He was alone. Of all his youth, of all his boasted fulness of inner
+life, of all his ideality, not a vestige remained; within--a black and
+yawning abyss, around him--impassive nature, endless source of pain to
+solitary souls. Every hope was dead, every voice mute, every anchor
+gone--what use was life?
+
+Suddenly the image of Elena rose up before him, then that of other women
+whom he had known and loved. Each of them smiled a hostile smile, and
+each one, as she vanished, seemed to carry away something of him--what,
+he could not definitely say. An unspeakable distress weighed upon him,
+an icy breath of age swept over him, a tragic, warning voice rang
+through his heart--Too late! Too late!
+
+All his recent comfort and peace seemed now a vain delusion, a dream
+that had flown, a pleasure enjoyed by some other spirit. Every wound he
+had ruthlessly dealt to his soul's dignity bled afresh; every
+degradation he had inflicted upon his conscience started out and spread
+like a leprosy. Every violation he had committed upon his ideality
+roused an endless, despairing, terrible remorse in him. He had lied too
+flagrantly, had deceived, debased himself beyond all power of redress.
+He loathed himself and all his evil works--Shame! Shame! Nothing could
+wipe out those dishonouring stains, no balm could ever heal those
+wounds, he must for ever endure the torment of that
+self-loathing.--Shame!----
+
+His eyes filled with tears, and dropping his head upon his arms he
+abandoned himself to the weight of his misery, prostrate as a man who
+has no hope of salvation.
+
+With the new day, he awoke to new life, one of those awakenings, so
+fresh and limpid, that are only vouchsafed to adolescence in its
+triumphant springtide. It was a marvellous morning--only to breathe the
+air was pure delight. The whole earth rejoiced in the living light; the
+hills were wrapped about with a diaphanous silvery veil and seemed to
+quiver with life, the sea appeared to be traversed by rivulets of milk,
+by rivers of crystal and of emerald, by a thousand currents forming the
+rippling intricacies of a watery labyrinth. A sense of nuptial joy and
+religious grace emanated from the concord between earth and sky.
+
+And he breathed and gazed and listened, not a little surprised During
+his sleep the fever had left him. He had slumbered, lulled by the voice
+of the waters as if by the voice of a faithful friend--and he who sleeps
+to the sound of that lullaby enjoys a repose that is full of healing
+peace.
+
+He gazed and listened mutely, fondly, letting the flood of immortal life
+penetrate to his heart's core. Never had the sacred music of a great
+master--an Offertory of Haydn, a Te Deum of Mozart--produced in him the
+emotion caused now by the simple chimes of the distant village churches,
+as they greeted the rising of the sun into the heavens. His soul swelled
+and overflowed with unspeakable emotion. Some vision, vague but sublime,
+hovered over him like a rippling veil through which gleamed the
+splendour of the mysterious treasure of ultimate felicity. Up till now,
+he had always known exactly what he wished for, and had never found any
+pleasure in desiring vainly. Now, he could not have named his desire,
+but he had no doubts that the thing wished for was infinitely sweet,
+since the very act of wishing was bliss. The words of the Chimera in
+'The King of Cyprus'--old world, half-forgotten verses, recurred to him
+with all the force of a caressing appeal--
+
+                                   'Would'st thou fight?
+    Would'st kill? would'st thou behold rivers of blood?
+    Great heaps of gold? white herds of captive women?
+    Slaves? other, and far other spoils? Would'st thou
+    Bid marble breathe? Would'st thou set up a temple?
+    Would'st fashion an immortal hymn? Would'st (hearken,
+    Hearken, O youth, hearken!)--would'st thou divinely
+    Love?'
+
+He smiled faintly to himself. 'Whom should I love?--Art?--a woman?--what
+woman?' Elena seemed far removed from him, lost to him, a
+stranger--dead. The others--still further off, dead for evermore.
+Therefore he was free. But why renew a pursuit so useless and so
+perilous? Why stretch out his hand again towards the tree of knowledge?
+'The tree of knowledge has been plucked--all's known!' as Byron said in
+Don Juan. What he desired, at the bottom of his heart, was to give
+himself freely, gratefully to some higher and purer being. But where to
+find that being was the question.
+
+Truly his salvation in the future lay rather in the practice of caution,
+prudence, sagacity. His tone of mind seemed to him admirably expressed
+in a sonnet of a contemporary poet, whom, from a certain affinity of
+literary tastes and similar aesthetic education, he particularly
+affected--
+
+    'I am as one who lays himself to rest
+    Under the shadow of a laden tree;
+    Above his head hangs the ripe fruit, and he
+    Is weary of drawing bow or arbalest.
+
+    He shakes not the fair bough that lowliest
+    Droops, neither lifts he hand, nor turns to see;
+    But lies, and gathers to him indolently
+    The fruits that drop into his very breast.
+
+    In that juiced sweetness, over-exquisite,
+    He bites not deep; he fears the bitterness;
+    Yet sets it to his lips, that he may smell,
+
+    Sucks it with pleasure, not with greediness,
+    And he is neither grieved nor glad at it.
+    This is the ending of the parable.'
+
+Art! Art! She was the only faithful mistress--forever young--immortal;
+there was the Fountain of all pure joys, closed to the multitude but
+freely open to the elect; that was the precious Food which makes a man
+like unto a god! How could he have quaffed from other cups after having
+pressed his lips to that one?--how have followed after other joys when
+he had tasted that supreme one?
+
+'But what if my intellect has become decadent?--if my hand has lost its
+cunning? What if I am no longer _worthy_?' He was seized with such panic
+at the thought, that he set himself wildly to find some immediate means
+of proving to himself the irrational nature of his fears. He would
+instantly compose some difficult verses, draw a figure, engrave a plate,
+solve some problem of form. Well--and what then? Might not the result be
+entirely fallacious? The slow decay of power may be imperceptible to the
+possessor--that is the terrible thing about it. The artist who loses his
+genius little by little is unaware of his progressive feebleness, for as
+he loses his power of production he also loses his critical faculty, his
+judgment. He no longer perceives the defects of his work--does not know
+that it is mediocre or bad. That is the horror of it! The artist who has
+fallen from his original high estate is no more conscious of his
+failings than the lunatic is aware of his mental aberration.
+
+Andrea was seized with terror. Better--far better be dead! Never, as at
+this moment, had he so fully grasped the divine nature of that _gift_,
+never had the _spark_ of genius appeared to him so sacred. His whole
+being was shaken to its foundations by the mere suggestion that that
+gift might be destroyed, that spark extinguished. Better to die!
+
+He lifted his head and shook off his inertia, then he went down to the
+park and walked slowly under the trees, unable to form a definite plan.
+A light breeze rippled through the tree tops, now and again the leaves
+rustled as if a band of squirrels were passing through them; patches of
+blue sky gleamed between the branches like eyes beneath their lids.
+Arrived at a favourite spot of his, a sort of tiny _lucus_ presided over
+by a four-fronted Hermes plunged in quadruple meditation, he stopped and
+seated himself on the grass, with his back against the pedestal of the
+statue and his face turned to the sea. Before him the tree-trunks,
+straight but of uneven height, like the pipes of the great god Pan,
+intercepted his view of the sea; all around him the acanthus spread the
+exquisite grace of its foliage, symmetrical as the capitals of
+Callimachus.
+
+He thought of the words of Salamis in the _Story of the Hermaphrodite_,
+
+    'Noble acanthus, in the woods of Earth
+    Tokens of peace, high-flowering coronals,
+    Of most pure form; O ye, the slender basket
+    That Silence weaves with light, untroubled hand
+    To gather up the flowers of woody dreams,
+    What virtue have ye poured on this fair youth
+    Out of those dusky and sweet-smelling leaves?
+    Naked he sleeps; his arm supports his head.'
+
+Other lines came back to him, and yet others--a riot of verse. His soul
+was filled with the music of rhymes and rhythmic measures. He was
+overjoyed; coming to him thus spontaneously and unexpectedly, this
+poetic agitation caused him inexpressible happiness. And he gave ear to
+the music, delighting himself in rich imagery, in rare epithets, in the
+luminous metaphors, the exquisite harmonies, the subtle refinements
+which distinguished his metrical style and the mysterious artifices of
+the endecasyllabic verse learned from the admirable poets of the
+fourteenth century, and more especially from Petrarch. Once more the
+magic spell of versification subjugated his soul, and he felt the full
+force of the sentiment of a contemporary poet--Verse is everything!
+
+A perfect line of verse is absolute, immutable, deathless. It encloses a
+thought as within a clearly marked circle which no force can break; it
+belongs no more to the poet, it belongs to all and yet to none, as do
+space, light, all things intransitory and perpetual. When the poet is
+about to bring forth one of these deathless lines he is warned by a
+divine torrent of joy which sweeps over his soul.
+
+Andrea half closed his eyes to prolong this delicious tremor which with
+him was ever the forerunner of inspiration, and more especially of
+poetic inspiration, and he determined in a moment upon the metrical form
+into which he would pour his thoughts, like wine into a cup--the sonnet.
+
+While composing Andrea studied himself curiously. It was long since he
+had made verses. Had this interval of idleness been harmful to his
+technical capacities? It seemed to him that the lines, rising one by one
+out of the depths of his brain, had a new grace. The consonance came of
+itself, and ideas were born of the rhymes. Then suddenly some obstacle
+would intercept the flow, a line would rebel and the whole verse would
+be displaced like a shaken puzzle; the syllables would struggle against
+the constraint of the measure; a musical and luminous word which had
+taken his fancy had to be excluded by the severity of the rhythm, do
+what he would to retain it, and the verse was like a medal which has
+turned out imperfect through the inexperience of the caster, who has not
+calculated the proper quantity of metal necessary for filling the mould.
+With ingenious patience he poured the metal back into the crucible and
+began all over again. Finally the verse came out full and clear, and the
+whole sonnet lived and breathed like a free and perfect creature.
+
+Thus he composed--now slow, now fast--with a delight never felt before.
+As the day grew, the sea cast luminous darts between the trees as
+between the columns of a jasper portico. Here Alma Tadema would have
+depicted a Sappho with hyacinthine locks, seated at the foot of the
+marble Hermes, singing to a seven-stringed lyre and surrounded by a
+chorus of maidens with locks of flame, all pallid and intent, drinking
+in the pure harmony of the verses.
+
+Having accomplished the four sonnets, he heaved a sigh and proceeded to
+recite them silently but with inward emphasis. Then he wrote them on the
+quadrangular pedestal of the Hermes, one on each surface in the
+following order--
+
+
+I
+
+    'Four-fronted Hermes, to thy four-fold sense
+    Have these my marvellous tidings been made known?
+    Suave spirits, singing on their way, have flown
+    Forth from my heart, light-hearted; and from thence
+
+    Have cast forth every foul intelligence,
+    And every foul stream dammed, and overthrown
+    The old unguarded bridges, stone by stone,
+    And quenched the flame of my impenitence.
+
+    Singing, the spirits ascend; I know the voice,
+    The hymn; and, inextinguishable and vast,
+    Delighting laughters from my heart arise.
+
+    Pale, but a king, I bid my soul rejoice
+    To hearken my heart's laughter, as at last
+    Low in the dust the conquered evil lies.
+
+
+II
+
+    The glad soul laughs, because its loves have fled,
+    Because the conquered evil bites the dust
+    Which into intertangled fires had thrust,
+    As into fiery thickets, feet now led
+
+    Into the circle human sorrows tread;
+    It leaves the treacherous labyrinths of lust,
+    Where the fair pagan monsters lure the just,
+    In hyacinth robes, a novice, garmented.
+
+    Now may no Sphinx with golden nails ensnare,
+    No Gorgon freeze it out of snaky folds,
+    No Siren lull it on a sleepy coast;
+
+    But, at the circle's summit, see, a fair
+    White woman, in the act of worship, holds
+    In her pure hands the sacrificial Host.
+
+
+III
+
+    Beyond all harm, all ambush, and all hate,
+    Tranquil of face, and strong at heart, she stands,
+    And knows till death, and scorns, and understands
+    All evil things that on her passage wait.
+
+    _Thou hast in ward and keeping every gate,
+    The winds breathe sweetness at thy sweet commands,
+    Might'st thou but take, when with these restless hands
+    I lay at thine untroubled feet my fate!_
+
+    _Even now there shines before me in thy meek
+    And holy hands the Host, like to a sun.
+    Have I attained, have I then paid the price?_
+
+    She, that is favourable to all that seek,
+    Lifting the Host, declares: _Now is begun
+    And ended the eternal sacrifice!_
+
+
+IV
+
+    _For I_, she saith, _am the unnatural Rose,
+    I am the Rose of Beauty. I instil
+    The drunkenness of ecstasy, I fill
+    The spirit with my rapture and repose_.
+
+    _Sowing with tears, sorrowful still are those
+    That with much singing gather harvest still.
+    After long sorrow, this my sweetness will
+    Be sweeter than all sweets thy spirit knows._
+
+    So be it, Madonna; and from my heart outburst
+    The blood of tears, flooding all mortal things,
+    And the immortal sorrow be yet whole;
+
+    Let the depths swallow me, let there as at first
+    Be darkness, so I see the glimmerings
+    Of light that rain on my unconquered soul!
+
+            Die XII. Septembris MDCCCLXXXVI.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Schifanoja was situated on the heights at that point where the chain of
+hills, after following the curving coast line, took a landward bend and
+sloped away towards the plain. Notwithstanding that it had been built in
+the latter half of the eighteenth century--by the Cardinal Alfonso
+Carafa d'Ateleta--the villa showed a certain purity of architectural
+design. It was a square building of two stories, with arched colonnades
+alternating with the apartments, which imparted to the whole edifice a
+look of lightness and grace. It was a real summer palace, open on all
+sides to the breath of the sea. At the side towards the sloping gardens,
+a wide hall opened on to a noble double flight of steps leading to a
+platform like a vast terrace, surrounded by a stone balustrade and
+adorned by two fountains. At either end of this terrace, other flights
+of steps interrupted by more terraces led by easy stages almost to the
+sea, affording a full view from the level ground of their seven-fold
+windings through superb verdure and masses of roses. The special glories
+of Schifanoja were its cypresses and its roses. Roses were there of
+every kind and for every season, enough '_pour en tirer neuf ou dix
+muytz d'eaue rose_' as the poet of the _Vergier d'honneur_ would have
+said. The cypresses, sharp-pointed and sombre, more hieratic than the
+Pyramids, more enigmatic than the obelisks, were in no respect inferior
+either to those of the Villa d'Este, or the Villa Mondragone or any of
+the giants growing round the glorious Roman villas.
+
+The Marchesa d'Ateleta was in the habit of spending the summer and part
+of the autumn at Schifanoja; for, though a thorough woman of the world,
+she was fond of the country and its freedom, and liked to keep open
+house there for her friends. She had lavished every care and attention
+upon Andrea during his illness; had been to him like an elder sister,
+almost a mother, and untiring in her devotion. She cherished a profound
+affection for her cousin, was ever ready to excuse or pardon, was a good
+and frank friend to him, capable of understanding many things, always at
+his beck and call, always cheerful, always bright and witty. Although
+she had overstepped the thirties by a year, she had lost nothing of her
+youth, vivacity and great personal charm, for she possessed the secret
+of Madame de Pompadour's fascination, that '_beaute sans traits_' which
+lights up with unexpected graces. Moreover, she possessed that rare gift
+commonly called tact. A fine feminine sense of the fitness of things was
+an infallible guide to her. In her relations with a host of
+acquaintances of either sex she always succeeded in steering her course
+discreetly; she never committed an error of taste, never weighed heavily
+on the lives of others, never arrived at an inopportune moment nor
+became importunate, no deed or word of hers but was entirely to the
+point. Her treatment of Andrea during the somewhat trying period of his
+convalescence was beyond all praise. She did her utmost to avoid
+disturbing or annoying him, and, what is more, managed that no one else
+should; she left him complete liberty, pretended not to notice his whims
+and melancholies; never worried him with indiscreet questions; made her
+company sit as lightly as possible on him at obligatory moments, and
+even went so far as to refrain from her usual witty remarks in his
+presence to save him the trouble of forcing a smile.
+
+Andrea recognised her delicacy and was profoundly grateful.
+
+Returning from the garden with unwonted lightness of heart on that
+September morning after writing his sonnets on the Hermes, he
+encountered Donna Francesca on the steps, and, kissing her hand, he
+exclaimed in laughing tones:
+
+'Cousin Francesca, I have found the Truth and the Way!
+
+'Alleluja!' she returned, lifting up her fair rounded arms,--'Alleluja!'
+
+And she continued on her way down to the garden while Andrea went on to
+his room with heart refreshed.
+
+A little while afterwards there came a gentle knock at the door and
+Francesca's voice asking--'May I come in?'
+
+She entered with the lap of her dress and both arms full of great
+clusters of dewy roses, white, yellow, crimson, russet brown. Some were
+wide and transparent like those of the Villa Pamfili, all fresh and
+glistening, others were densely petalled, and with that intensity of
+colouring which recalls the boasted magnificence of the dyes of Tyre and
+Sidon; others again were like little heaps of odorous snow, and gave one
+a strange desire to bite into them and eat them. The infinite gradations
+of red, from violent crimson to the faded pink of over-ripe
+strawberries, mingled with the most delicate and almost imperceptible
+variations of white, from the immaculate purity of freshly fallen snow
+to the indefinable shades of new milk, the sap of the reed, dull silver,
+alabaster and opal.
+
+'It is a _festa_ to-day,' she said, her laughing face appearing over the
+flowers that covered her whole bosom up to the throat.
+
+'Thanks! Thanks!' Andrea cried again and again as he helped her to empty
+the mass of bloom on to the table, all over the books and papers and
+portfolios--'_Rosa rosarum!_'
+
+Her hands once free, she proceeded to collect all the vases in the room
+and fill them with roses, arranging each cluster with rare artistic
+skill. While she did so, she talked of a thousand things with her usual
+blithe volubility, almost as if compensating herself for the parsimony
+of words and laughter she had exercised up till now, out of regard for
+Andrea's taciturn melancholy.
+
+Presently she remarked, 'On the 15th we expect a beautiful guest, Donna
+Maria Ferres y Capdevila, the wife of the Plenipotentiary for Guatemala.
+Do you know her?'
+
+'I think not,'
+
+'No, I do not suppose you could. She only returned to Italy a few months
+ago, but she will spend next winter in Rome because her husband has been
+appointed to that post. She is a very dear friend of mine--we knew each
+other as children, and were three years together at the Convent of the
+Annunciation in Florence. She is younger than I am.'
+
+'Is she an American?'
+
+'No, an Italian. She is from Sienna. She comes of the Bandinelli family,
+and was baptized with water from the "Fonte Gaja." For all that, she is
+rather melancholy by nature, but very sweet. The story of her marriage
+is not a very cheerful one. Ferres is a most unsympathetic person.
+However, they have a little girl--a perfect darling--you will see; a
+little white face with enormous eyes and masses of dark hair. She is
+very like her mother--Look, Andrea, is not that rose just like velvet?
+And this--I could eat it--look--it is like glorified cream. How
+delicious!'
+
+She went on picking out the different roses and chatting pleasantly. A
+wave of perfume, intoxicating as century-old wine, streamed from the
+massed flowers; some of the petals dropped and hung in the folds of
+Francesca's gown; beneath the window the dark shaft of a cypress pierced
+the golden sunshine, and through Andrea's memory ran persistently, like
+a phrase of music, a line from Petrarch:--
+
+_'Cosi partia le rose e le parole._'
+
+Two days afterwards he repaid his cousin by presenting her with a sonnet
+curiously fashioned on an antique model and inscribed on vellum with
+illuminated ornaments in the style of those that enliven the missals of
+Attavante and of Liberale of Verona.
+
+    'Ferrara, for its d'Estes glorious,
+    Where Cossa strove in triumphs to recall
+    Cosimo Tura's triumphs on the wall,
+    Saw never feast more fair and plenteous.
+
+    Monna Francesca plucked and bore to us
+    Such store of roses, and so shed on all,
+    That heaven had lacked for such a coronal
+    The little angels it engarlands thus.
+
+    She spoke, and shed the roses in such showers,
+    And such a loveliness was seen in her,
+    _This_ said I, _is some Grace the sun discloses._
+
+    I trembled at the sweetness of the flowers.
+    A verse of Petrarch mounted in the air:
+    _She scatters words and scatters with them roses_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+On the following Wednesday, the 15th of September, the new guest
+arrived.
+
+The Marchesa, accompanied by Andrea and her eldest son, Fernanindo,
+drove over to Rovigliano, the nearest station, to meet her. As they
+drove along the road shadowed by lofty poplars, the Marchesa spoke to
+Andrea of her friend with much affection.
+
+'I think you will like her,' she remarked in conclusion.
+
+Then she began to laugh as if at some sudden thought.
+
+'Why do you laugh?' asked Andrea.
+
+'I am making a comparison.'
+
+'What comparison?'
+
+'Guess.'
+
+'I can't.'
+
+'Well, I was thinking of another introduction I gave you about two years
+ago, which I accompanied by a delightful prophecy--you remember?'
+
+'Ah--ha--'
+
+'And I laughed because this time again there is an unknown lady in
+question and this time too I may play the part of--an involuntary
+providence.'
+
+'Oh--oh!'
+
+'But this case is very different, or rather the difference lies in the
+heroine of the possible drama.'
+
+'You mean--'
+
+'That Maria Ferres is a _turris eburnea_.'
+
+'And I am now a _vas spirituale_.'
+
+'Ah yes, I had forgotten that you had, at last, found the Truth and the
+Way--"'The glad soul laughs because its loves have fled--'"
+
+'What--you are quoting my verses?'
+
+'I know them by heart.'
+
+'How sweet of you!'
+
+'However, I confess, my dear cousin, that your "fair white woman"
+holding the Host in her pure hands seems to me a trifle suspicious. She
+has, to my mind, too much of the air of a hollow shape, a robe without a
+body inside it, at the mercy of whatever soul, be it angel or demon,
+that chooses to enter it and offer you the communion.
+
+'But this is sacrilege--rank sacrilege!'
+
+'Ah, you had better take care! Watch that figure and use plenty of
+exorcisms--But there, I am prophesying again! Really, it seems a
+weakness of mine.'
+
+'Here we are at the station.'
+
+They both laughed, and all three entered the little station to wait for
+the train, which was due in a few minutes. Fernandino a sickly-looking
+boy of twelve, was carrying a bouquet which he was to present to Donna
+Maria. Andrea, put in excellent spirits by his little conversation with
+his cousin, took a tea-rose from the bouquet and stuck it in his
+button-hole, then cast a rapid glance over his light summer clothes and
+noticed with complaisance that his hands had become whiter and thinner
+since his illness. But he did it all without reflection, simply from an
+instinct of harmless vanity which had suddenly awakened in him.
+
+'Here comes the train,' said Fernandino.
+
+The Marchesa hurried forward to greet her friend, who was already
+leaning out of the carriage window waving her hand and nodding. Her head
+was enveloped in a large gray gauze veil which half covered her large
+black hat.
+
+'Francesca! Francesca!' she cried with a little tremor of joy in her
+voice.
+
+The sound of that voice made a singular impression on Andrea--it
+reminded him vaguely of a voice he knew--but whose?
+
+Donna Maria left the carriage with a rapid and light step, and with a
+pretty grace raised her veil above her mouth to kiss her friend.
+Suddenly Andrea was struck by the profound charm of this slender,
+graceful, veiled woman of whose face he saw only the mouth and chin.
+
+'Maria, let me present my cousin to you--Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi
+d'Ugenta.'
+
+Andrea bowed. The lady's lips parted in a smile that was rendered
+mysterious from the rest of the face being concealed by the veil.
+
+The Marchesa then introduced Andrea to Don Manuel Ferres y Capdevila;
+then, stroking the hair of the little girl who was gazing at the young
+man with a pair of wide-open, astonished eyes, 'This is Delfina,' she
+said.
+
+In the carriage, Andrea sat opposite to Donna Maria and beside her
+husband. She kept her veil down still; Fernandino's bouquet lay in her
+lap and from time to time she raised it to her face to inhale the
+perfume while she answered the Marchesa's questions. Andrea was right;
+there were tones in her voice exactly like Elena's. He was seized with
+impatient curiosity to see her face--its expression and colouring.
+
+'Manuel,' she was saying, 'has to leave on Friday. He will come back for
+me later on.'
+
+'Much later, let us hope,' said Donna Francesca cordially. 'A month, at
+the very least, eh, Don Manuel? The best plan would be to wait and all
+go on the same day. We are at Schifanoja till the first of November.'
+
+'If my mother were not expecting me, nothing would delight me more than
+to stay with you. But I have promised faithfully to be in Sienna for the
+17th of October--Delfina's birthday.'
+
+'What a pity! on the 20th there is the Festival of the Donations at
+Rovigliano--so very beautiful and peculiar.'
+
+'What is to be done? If I do not keep my promise, my mother will be
+dreadfully disappointed. She adores Delfina.'
+
+The husband took no part whatever in the conversation, he seemed a very
+taciturn man. He was of middle height, inclined to be stout and bald,
+and his skin of a most peculiar hue--something between green and violet,
+in which the whites of the eyes gleamed as they moved like the enamel
+eyes of certain antique bronze heads. His moustache, which was harsh and
+black and cut evenly like the bristles of a brush, shadowed a coarse and
+sardonic mouth. He appeared to be about forty, or rather more. In his
+whole appearance there was something disagreeably hybrid and morose,
+that indefinable air of viciousness which belongs to the later
+generations of bastard races brought up in the midst of moral disorder.
+
+'Look, Delfina--orange trees, all in flower!' exclaimed Donna Maria,
+stretching out her hand to pluck a spray as they passed.
+
+Near Schifanoja, the road lay between orange groves, the trees being so
+high that they afforded a pleasant shade, through which the sea-breeze
+sighed and fluttered, so laden with perfume that one might almost have
+quaffed it like a draught of cool water.
+
+Delfina was kneeling on the carriage seat and leaned out to catch at the
+branches. Her mother wound an arm about her to keep her from falling
+out.
+
+'Take care! Take care! You will tumble--wait a moment till I untie my
+veil. Would you mind helping me, Francesca?'
+
+She bent her head towards her friend to let her unfasten the veil from
+her hat, and in doing so the bouquet of roses fell at her feet. Andrea
+promptly picked them up, and as he rose from his stooping position, he
+at last saw her whole face uncovered.
+
+It was an oval face, perhaps the least trifle too long, but hardly worth
+mentioning--that aristocratic oval which the most graceful portrait
+painters of the fifteenth century were rather fond of exaggerating. The
+refined features had that subtle expression of suffering and lassitude
+which lends the human charm to the Virgins of the Florentine _tondi_ of
+the time of Cosimo. A soft and tender shadow, the fusion of two
+diaphanous tints--violet and blue, lay under her eyes, which had the
+leonine irises of the brown-haired angels. Her hair lay on her forehead
+and temples like a heavy crown, and was gathered into a massive coil on
+her neck. The shorter locks in front were thick and waving as those that
+cover the head of the Farnese Antinous. Nothing could exceed the charm
+of that delicate head, which seemed to droop under its burden as under
+some divine chastisement.
+
+'Dio mio!' she sighed, endeavouring to lighten with her hands the weight
+of tresses gathered up and compressed under her hat. 'My head aches as
+if I had been hanging by the hair for an hour. I cannot keep it fastened
+up for long together, it tires me so. It is a perfect slavery.'
+
+'Do you remember at school,' broke in Francesca, 'how we were all wild
+to comb your hair? It led to furious quarrels every day. Fancy,
+Andrea--at last it came to bloodshed! Oh, I shall never forget the scene
+between Carlotta Fiordelise and Gabriella Vanni. It got to be sheer
+monomania. To comb Maria Bandinelli's hair was the one ambition in life
+of every school-girl there--big or little. The epidemic spread through
+the whole school, and resulted in scoldings, punishments, and finally
+threats to have your hair cut off. Do you remember, Maria? Our very
+souls were enthralled by the magnificent black plait that hung like a
+rope to your heels!'
+
+Donna Maria smiled a mournful, dreamy smile. Her lips were slightly
+parted, the upper one projecting the least little bit beyond the under
+one; the corners of her mouth drooped plaintively, the soft curve losing
+itself in shadow which gave her an expression both sad and kind, but
+with a dash of that pride which reveals the moral elevation of those who
+have suffered much and been strong.
+
+To Andrea the story of these girls enamoured of a plait of hair,
+enflamed with passion and jealousy, wild to pass a comb or their fingers
+through the living treasure, seemed a charming and poetic episode of
+convent life, and in his imagination, this woman with the sumptuous hair
+became vaguely illumined like the heroine of some Christian legend of
+the childhood of a saint destined for martyrdom and future canonisation.
+At the same time, it struck him what rich and varied lines might be
+afforded to the design of a female figure by the undulating masses of
+that black hair.
+
+Not that it was really black, as Andrea perceived next day at dinner,
+when a ray of sunshine touched the lady's head, bringing out sombre
+violet lights, reflections as of tempered steel or burnished silver.
+Notwithstanding its density too, it was perfectly light, each hair
+seeming to stand apart as if permeated by and breathing the air. Her
+conversation revealed keen intelligence and a delicate mind, much
+refinement of taste and pleasure in the aesthetic. She possessed abundant
+and varied culture, a vivid imagination, and the rich, descriptive
+language of one who has seen many lands, lived under widely different
+climes, known many people. To Andrea, she seemed to exhale some exotic
+charm, some strange fascination, some spell born of the phantoms of the
+far off things she had looked upon, the scenes she still preserved
+before her mind's eye, the memories that filled her soul; as if she
+still bore about her some traces of the sunshine she had basked in, the
+perfumes she had inhaled, the strange dialects she had heard--all the
+magic of these countries of the Sun.
+
+That evening, in the great room opening off the hall, she went over to
+the piano, and opening it, she said: 'Do you still play, Francesca?'
+
+'Oh, no,' replied the Marchesa, 'I have not practised for years. I feel
+that listening to others is decidedly preferable. However, I affect to
+be a patroness of Art, and during the winter I gladly preside at the
+execution of a little good music. Is that not so, Andrea?'
+
+'My cousin is too modest, Donna Maria; she does something more than
+merely patronise--she is a reviver of good taste. Only last February,
+thanks to her, we were made acquainted with a quintett, a quartett, and
+a trio of Boccherini, and besides that with a quartett of
+Cherubini--music that was well-nigh forgotten, but admirable and always
+new. Boccherini's adagios and minuets are deliciously fresh; only the
+finales seem to me a trifle antiquated. I am sure you must know
+something of his.'
+
+'I remember having heard one of his quintetts four of five years ago at
+the Conservatoire in Brussels, and I thought it magnificent--in the very
+newest style and full of unexpected episodes. I remember perfectly that
+in certain passages the quintett was reduced to a duet by employing the
+unison, but the effects produced by the difference in the tone of the
+instruments was something marvellous! I cannot recall anything the least
+like it in other instrumental compositions.'
+
+She discussed music with all the subtlety of a true connoisseur, and in
+describing the sentiments aroused in her by some particular composition,
+or the entire work of a master, she expressed herself most felicitously.
+
+'I have played and heard a great deal of music,' she said, 'and of every
+symphony, every sonata, every nocturne I have a separate and distinct
+picture, an impression of shape and colour, of a figure, a group, a
+landscape, so that each of my favourite compositions has a name
+corresponding to the picture;--for instance, the Sonata of the Forty
+Daughters-in-law of Priam; the Nocturne of the Sleeping Beauty in the
+Wood, the Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies, the Gigue of the Mill, the
+Prelude of the Drops of Water, and so on.'
+
+She laughed softly, a laugh which surprised one with its ineffable grace
+on that plaintive mouth.
+
+'You remember, Francesca, the multitude of notes with which we afflicted
+the margins of our favourite pieces at school. One day, after a most
+serious consultation, we changed the title of every piece of Schumann's
+we possessed, and each title had a long explanatory note. I have the
+papers still. Now, when I play the _Myrthen_ or the _Albumblaetter_, all
+these mysterious annotations are quite incomprehensible to me; my
+emotions and my point of view have changed completely, but there is a
+delicate pleasure in comparing the sentiments of the present with those
+of the past, the new picture and the old. It is a pleasure very similar
+to that of re-reading one's diary, only perhaps rather more mournful and
+intense. A diary is generally the description of real events, a
+chronicle of days happy or otherwise, the gray or rosy traces left by
+time in its flight; the notes written in youth on the margin of a piece
+of music are, on the contrary, fragments of the secret poems of a soul
+that is just breaking into bloom, the lyric effusions of our ideality as
+yet untouched, the story of our dreams. What language? What a flow of
+words! You remember, Francesca?'
+
+She talked with perfect freedom, even with a touch of spiritual
+exaltation, like a person long condemned to intercourse with inferiors,
+who has the irresistible desire to open her mind and heart to a breath
+of the higher life. Andrea listened to her and was conscious of a
+pleasing sense of gratitude towards her. It seemed to him that in
+speaking of these things in his presence, she offered him a kindly proof
+of friendship, and permitted him to draw nearer to her. He thereby
+caught a glimpse of her inner world, less through the actual words she
+uttered than by the modulations of her voice. And again he recognised
+the accents of _the other_.
+
+It was an ambiguous voice, a voice with double chords in it, so to
+speak. The more virile tones, deep and slightly veiled, would soften,
+brighten, become feminine, as it were, by a transition so harmonious
+that the ear of the listener was at once surprised, delighted, and
+perplexed by it. The phenomenon was so singular that it sufficed by
+itself to occupy the mind of the listener independently of the sense of
+the words, so that after a few minutes the mind yielded to the
+mysterious charm and remained suspended between expectation and desire
+to hear the sweet cadence, as if waiting for a melody played upon an
+instrument. It was the feminine note in this voice which recalled _the
+other_.
+
+'You sing?' asked Andrea half shyly.
+
+'A little,' she replied.
+
+'Then please sing a little,' entreated Donna Francesca.
+
+'Very well, but I can only give you a sort of idea of the music, for,
+during the last year, I have almost lost my voice.'
+
+In the adjoining room, Don Manuel was silently playing cards with the
+Marchese d'Ateleta. In the drawing-room the light of the lamps shone
+softly red through a great Japanese shade. The sea-breeze, entering
+through the pillars of the hall, shook the high Karamanieh curtains and
+wafted the perfume of the garden on its wings. Beyond the pillars was a
+vista of tall cypresses, massive and black as ebony against a diaphanous
+sky throbbing with stars.
+
+'As we are on the subject of old music,' said Donna Maria seating
+herself at the piano, 'I will give you an air of Paisiello's out of
+_Nina Pazza_, an exquisite thing.'
+
+She accompanied herself as she sang. In the fervour of the song, the two
+tones of her voice blended into one another like two precious metals
+combining to make a single one--sonorous, warm, caressing, vibrating.
+Paisiello's melody--simple, pure and spontaneous, full of delicious
+languor and winged sadness, with a delicately light
+accompaniment--issued from that plaintive mouth and rose with such a
+flame of passion that the convalescent was moved to the depths of his
+being, and felt the notes drop one by one through his veins, as if all
+the blood in his body had stopped in its course to listen. A cold shiver
+stirred the roots of his hair, shadows, thick and rapid, passed before
+his eyes, he held his breath with excitement. In the weak state of his
+nerves his sensations were so poignant that it was all he could do to
+keep back his tears.
+
+'Oh, dearest Maria!' exclaimed Donna Francesca, kissing her fondly on
+the hair when she stopped.
+
+Andrea could not utter a word; he remained seated where he was, with his
+back to the light and his face in shadow.
+
+'Please go on,' said Francesca.
+
+She sang an Arietta by Antonio Salieri, then she played a Toccata by
+Leonardo Leo, a Gavotte by Rameau, a Gigue by Sebastian Bach. Under her
+magic fingers the music of the eighteenth century lived again--so
+melancholy in its dance airs, that sound as if they were intended to be
+danced to in a languid afternoon of a Saint Martin's summer, in a
+deserted park, amid silent fountains and statueless pedestals, on a
+carpet of dead roses by pairs of lovers on the point of ceasing to love
+one another.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+'Let down a rope of your hair to me that I may climb up,' Andrea called
+laughingly from the terrace below to Donna Maria, where she stood
+between two pillars of the loggia opening out of her rooms.
+
+It was morning, and she had come out into the sun to dry her wet hair,
+which hung round her like a heavy mantle, and accentuated the soft
+pallor of her face. The black border of the vivid orange-coloured awning
+hung above her head like a frieze, such as one sees round the antique
+Greek vases of the Campagna. Had she had a garland of narcissus on her
+brows and at her side a great nine-stringed lyre with bas-reliefs of
+Apollo and a greyhound, she might have been taken for a pupil of the
+school of Mytilene, or a Lesbian musician in repose as imagined by a
+Pre-Raphaelite.
+
+'You send me up a madrigal,' she answered in the same playful tone, but
+drawing back a little from view.
+
+'Very well, I will go and write one in your honour on the marble
+balustrade of the lowest terrace. Come down and read it when you are
+ready.'
+
+Andrea proceeded slowly to descend the steps leading to the lower level.
+In that September morning his soul seemed to dilate with every breath he
+drew. A certain sanctity seemed to pervade the air; the sea shone with a
+splendour of its own, as if the sources of magic rays lay in its depths;
+the whole landscape was steeped in sunshine.
+
+He stood still from time to time. The thought that Donna Maria was
+perhaps watching him from the loggia disturbed him curiously, made his
+heart beat fast and flutter timidly, as if he were a boy in love for
+the first time. It was unspeakable bliss merely to breathe the same warm
+and limpid air that she did. An immense wave of tenderness flooded his
+heart and communicated itself to the trees, the rocks, the sea, as if to
+beings who were his friends and confidants. He was filled with a desire
+to worship humbly and purely; to bend his knee and clasp his hands and
+offer up to some one this vague mute adoration which he would have been
+at a loss to explain. He felt as if the goodness of all created things
+was being poured out upon him and mingling with all he possessed of
+goodness into one jubilant stream.
+
+'Can it be that I love her?' he asked himself. But he dared not look
+closely into his soul, lest the delicate enchantment should disperse and
+vanish like a dream at break of day.
+
+'Do I love her? And what does she think? And if she comes alone, shall I
+tell her that I love her?' He took pleasure in thus asking himself
+questions which he did not answer, intercepting the reply of his heart
+by another question, prolonging his uncertainty--at once so tormenting
+and so sweet. 'No, no--I shall not tell her that I love her. She is far
+above all the others.'
+
+Arrived at the lowest terrace, he turned round and looked up, and there
+in the loggia, in the full blaze of the sun, he could just make out the
+indistinct outline of a woman's form. Had she followed him with her eyes
+and her thoughts down the long flights of steps? A childish impulse made
+him suddenly pronounce her name aloud on the deserted terrace. 'Maria!
+Maria!' he repeated, listening to his own voice. No word, no name had
+ever seemed to him so sweet, so melodious so caressing. How happy he
+would be if she would only allow him to call her Maria, like a sister.
+
+This woman--so spiritual, so soulful--inspired him with the highest
+sentiment of devotion and humility. If he had been asked what he
+considered the sweetest possible task, he would have answered in all
+sincerity--'To obey her.' Nothing in the world would have mortified him
+so much as to be accounted by her a commonplace man. By no other woman
+had he so ardently desired to be praised, admired, understood,
+appreciated in his tastes, his cultivation, his artistic aspirations,
+his ideals, his dreams, all the noblest parts of his spirit and his
+life. And his highest ambition was to fill her heart.
+
+She had now been ten days at Schifanoja, and in those ten days how
+entirely she had subjugated him! They had conversed sometimes for hours
+seated on the terrace or on one of the numerous marble benches scattered
+about the grounds or in the long rose-bordered avenues, while Delfina
+sped like a little gazelle through the winding paths of the orange
+groves. In her conversation she displayed a charming flow of language,
+many gems of delicate yet keen observation, occasionally affording
+glimpses of her inner self with a candour that was full of grace; and
+when speaking of her travels, she would often, by a single picturesque
+phrase, call up before Andrea's eyes wide vistas of distant lands and
+seas. On his part, he did his utmost to show himself to the best
+advantage, to impress upon her the wide range of his culture, the
+refinement of his taste, the exquisite keenness of his susceptibilities,
+and his heart swelled with pride when she said in tones of unfeigned
+sincerity after reading his _Story of the Hermaphrodite_--
+
+'No music has ever carried me away like this poem, nor has any statue
+ever given me such an impression of harmonious beauty. Certain lines
+haunt me persistently, and will continue to do so for long, I am
+sure--they are so intense.'
+
+As he sat now on the marble balustrade, he was thinking of these words
+of hers. Donna Maria was no longer in the loggia, the awning concealed
+the whole space between the pillars. Perhaps she would soon be
+down--should he write the madrigal he had promised her? But even the
+slight effort necessary for writing the lines thus in hot haste seemed
+intolerable to him here in the wide and opulent garden, blossoming under
+the September sunshine in a sort of magical Spring. Why disturb these
+rare and delicious emotions by a hurried search after rhymes? why
+reduce this far reaching sentiment to a brief metrical sigh?
+
+He resolved to break his promise and remained as he was, idly watching
+the sails on the distant horizon, like fiery torches outshining the sun.
+
+But as time went on, he grew restless and nervous, turning round every
+minute to see if a feminine form had not appeared between the columns of
+the vestibule which gave access to the steps--'Was this then a love
+tryst? Did he expect her to join him here for some secret interview? Had
+she any idea of his agitation?'
+
+His heart gave a great throb--it was she!
+
+She was alone. Slowly she descended the steps, and when she reached the
+first terrace she stopped beside the fountain. Andrea followed her
+intently with his eyes; her every movement, every attitude sent a
+delicious thrill through him, as if each one of them had some special
+significance, were a form of individual expression. Thus she passed down
+the succession of steps and terraces, appearing and disappearing, now
+completely hidden by the rose-bushes, now only her head or her rounded
+bust visible above them. Sometimes the thickly interlaced boughs hid her
+for several minutes, then, where the bushes were thinner, the colour of
+her dress would show through them and the pale straw of her hat would
+catch the sunlight. The nearer she came the more slowly she walked,
+loitering among the verdant shrubs, stopping to gaze at the cypresses,
+stooping to gather a handful of fallen leaves. From the last terrace but
+one, she waved her hand to Andrea standing waiting for her at the foot
+of the steps, and threw down to him the leaves she had gathered, which
+first rose fluttering in the air like a cloud of butterflies and then
+floated down--now fast, now slow,--noiseless as snowflakes on the
+stones.
+
+'Well?' she asked, leaning over the balustrade, 'what have you got for
+me?'
+
+Andrea bent his knee to the step and lifted his clasped hands.
+
+'Nothing!' he was obliged to confess. 'I implore you to forgive me;
+but, this morning, you and the sun together filled the whole world for
+me with sweetness and light. _Adoremus!_
+
+The confession was perfectly sincere, as was the adoration also, though
+both were uttered in a tone of banter. Donna Maria evidently felt the
+sincerity, for she coloured slightly as she said with peculiar
+earnestness--
+
+'No--don't--please don't kneel.'
+
+He rose, and she offered him her hand, adding, 'I will forgive you this
+time because you are an invalid.'
+
+She wore a dress of a curious indefinable dull rusty red, one of those
+so-called aesthetic colours one meets with in the pictures of the Early
+Masters or of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was arranged in a multitude of
+straight regular folds beginning immediately under the arms, and was
+confined at the waist by a wide blue-green ribbon, of the pale tinge of
+a faded turquoise, that fell in a great knot at her side. The sleeves
+were very full and soft, and were gathered in closely at the wrist.
+Another ribbon of the same shade, but much narrower, encircled her neck
+and was tied at the left side in a small bow, and a similar ribbon
+fastened the end of the prodigious plait which fell from under her straw
+hat, round which was twined a wreath of hyacinths like that of Alma
+Tadema's Pandora. A great Persian turquoise, her sole ornament, shaped
+like a scarabeus and engraved with talismanic characters, fastened her
+dress at the throat.
+
+'Let us wait for Delfina,' she said, 'and then, what do you say to our
+going as far as the gate of the Cybele? Would that suit you?'
+
+She was full of delicate consideration for the convalescent Andrea was
+still very pale and thin, which made his eyes look extraordinarily
+large, the somewhat sensual expression of his mouth forming a singular
+and not unattractive contrast to the upper part of his face.
+
+'Yes,' he replied, 'and I am deeply grateful to you.' Then, after a
+moment's hesitation--'Do you mind if I am rather silent this morning?'
+
+'Why do you ask me that?'
+
+'Because I feel as if I had lost my tongue and could find nothing to
+say; and yet silence becomes burdensome and annoying if it is prolonged.
+That is why I ask if, during our walk, you will allow me to be silent
+and only listen to you.'
+
+'Why, then, we will be silent together,' she said with a little smile.
+
+She looked up towards the villa with evident impatience--'What a long
+time Delfina is!'
+
+'Was Francesca up when you came out?' asked Andrea.
+
+'Oh no, she is incredibly lazy--ah, there is Delfina, do you see her?'
+
+The little girl came hurrying down, followed by her governess. Though
+not visible on the flight of steps, she appeared upon the terraces which
+she traversed at a run, her hair floating over her shoulders in the
+breeze from under a broad-brimmed straw hat wreathed with poppies. On
+the last step she opened her arms wide to her mother and covered her
+face with kisses. After this she said--'Good morning, Andrea,' and
+presented her forehead to his kiss with childlike and adorable grace.
+
+She was a fragile creature, highly strung and vibrating as an instrument
+fashioned of sentient material, her flesh so delicately transparent as
+to seem incapable of concealing or even veiling the radiance of the
+spirit that dwelt within it like a flame in a precious lamp.
+
+'Heart's dearest!' murmured her mother, gazing at her with a look in
+which was concentrated all the tenderness of a soul wholly occupied by
+this one absorbing affection. But at those words, that look, that
+caress, Andrea felt a sudden stab of jealousy, something like a rebuff,
+as if her heart were turning away from him, eluding him, becoming
+inaccessible.
+
+The governess asked permission to return to the villa, and the three
+turned into a path bordered by orange-trees. Delfina ran on in front
+with her hoop, her straight slender little legs in their long black
+stockings, moving with rhythmic grace.
+
+'You seem a little out of spirits now,' said Donna Maria to her
+companion, 'and only a little while ago, when you came down, you seemed
+so bright. Is something troubling you?--do you not feel so well?'
+
+She put these questions in an almost sisterly manner soberly and kindly,
+inviting his confidence. A timid desire, a vague temptation assailed the
+invalid to slip his arm through hers, and let her lead him in silence
+through the flickering shadows and the perfumes, over the flower-strewn
+ground, down the pathways measured off at intervals by ancient
+moss-grown statues. He seemed, all at once, to have returned to the
+first days of his illness, those never-to-be-forgotten days of happy
+languor and semi-unconsciousness, and felt as if he had great need of a
+friendly support, an affectionate, a familiar arm. The desire grew so
+intense that the words which would give it voice rushed to his lips.
+However he merely replied--
+
+'No, Donna Maria, thank you, I feel quite well. It is only that the
+September weather rather affects me.'
+
+She looked at him as if she rather doubted the sincerity of his reply;
+but, to avoid an awkward silence after his evasive remark, she asked--
+
+'Which of the neutral months do you like best--April or September?'
+
+'Oh, September. It is more feminine, more discreet, more
+mysterious--like a Spring seen in a dream. Then all the plants slowly
+lose their vital forces, and, at the same time, some of their reality.
+Look at the sea over there--has it not more the appearance of an
+atmosphere than of a solid mass of water? And never, to my mind, does
+the union of sea and sky seem so mystical, so profound as in September.'
+
+They had very nearly reached the end of the path. Why should Andrea be
+suddenly seized with a tremor of nervous fear on approaching the spot
+where, a fortnight ago, he had written the sonnets on his deliverance?
+Why this struggle between hope and anxiety lest she should discover them
+and read them? Why did some of the lines keep running in his mind to
+the exclusion of others, as if they expressed his actual sentiments at
+that moment, his aspirations, the new dream he carried in his heart?
+
+'I lay at thine untroubled feet my fate!'
+
+It was true! It was true! He loved her, he laid his whole life at her
+feet--was conscious of but one desire--humble and absorbing--to be the
+earth between her footsteps.
+
+'How beautiful it is here!' exclaimed Donna Maria, as she entered the
+demesne of the four-fronted Hermes, into the paradise of the acanthus.
+'But what a strange scent!'
+
+The whole air was full of the odour of musk, as from the unseen presence
+of some musk-breathing insect or animal. The shadows were deep and
+mysterious, the rays of light which pierced the foliage, already touched
+by the finger of autumn, seemed like shafts of moonlight shining through
+the storied windows of a cathedral. A mixed sentiment, partly Pagan,
+partly Christian, seemed to emanate from this sylvan retreat, as from a
+mythological picture painted by an early Christian artist.
+
+'Oh look, look, Delfina!' her mother exclaimed in the excited tones of
+one who suddenly comes upon a thing of beauty.
+
+Delfina had skilfully woven little sprays of orange blossom into a
+garland, and now, with the fancifulness of childhood, she was eager that
+it should encircle the head of the marble deity. She could not reach it,
+but did her best to accomplish her object by standing on tip-toe and
+stretching her arm to its utmost extent; her slender, elegant and
+vivacious little figure offering a striking contrast to the rigid,
+square and solemn form of the statue, like a lily-stem against an oak.
+All her efforts were, however, fruitless.
+
+Smilingly, her mother came to her aid. Taking the wreath from the
+child's hand, she placed it on the pensive brows of the god. As she did
+so, her eyes fell involuntarily upon the inscriptions.
+
+'Who has been writing verses here.--You?' she asked, turning to Andrea
+in surprise and pleasure. 'Yes--I recognise your hand.'
+
+Forthwith, she knelt upon the grass to read with eager curiosity. While
+Donna Maria read the words in a low voice, Delfina leaned upon her
+mother's shoulder, one arm about her neck, cheek pressed to cheek. The
+two figures thus bending over the pedestal of the tall flower-wreathed
+statue, in the uncertain light, surrounded by the emblematical acanthus,
+formed a group so harmonious in line and colouring that the poet stood a
+moment lost in pure aesthetic pleasure and admiration.
+
+But the next moment the old obscure sense of jealousy was upon him once
+more. The fragile little creature clinging to the mother, indissolubly
+connected with her mother's very being, seemed to him an enemy, an
+insurmountable obstacle rising up against his love, his desires, his
+hopes. He was not jealous of the husband, but he was of the daughter. It
+was not the body but the soul of this woman that he longed to possess,
+and to possess it wholly, undivided, with all its tenderness, all its
+joys, its hopes, its fears, its pain, its dreams--in short the sum total
+of her spiritual being, and be able to say--'I am the life of her life.'
+
+But instead, it was the daughter who possessed all this incontestably,
+absolutely, continuously. When her idol left her side, even for a short
+time, the mother seemed to miss some essential element of her existence.
+Her face was instantaneously and visibly transfigured when, after a
+brief absence, that childish voice fell upon her ear once more. At
+times, unconsciously and as if by some occult correspondence, some law
+of common vital accordance, she would repeat a gesture of the child's, a
+smile, an attitude, a pose of the head. Again, when the child was in
+repose or asleep, she had moments of contemplation so intense that she
+seemed to have lost all sense of her surroundings and to have absorbed
+herself into the creature she was contemplating. When she spoke to her
+darling, every word was a caress, and the plaintive lines vanished from
+her mouth. Under the child's kisses, her lips quivered and her eyes
+filled with ineffable happiness like the eyes of an ecstatic at a
+beatific vision. If she happened to be conversing with other people or
+listening to their talk, she would appear to have sudden lapses of
+attention, momentary absence of mind, and this was for her daughter--for
+her--always for her.
+
+Who could ever break that chain? Could any one ever succeed in
+conquering a part--even the very smallest atom of that heart? Andrea
+suffered as under an irreparable loss, some forced renunciation, some
+shattered hope. At this moment, this very moment, was not the child
+stealing something from him?
+
+For Delfina was playfully constraining her mother to remain upon her
+knees. She hung with all her weight round Donna Maria's neck, crying
+through her laughter--
+
+'No--no--no--you shall not get up!'
+
+And whenever her mother opened her mouth to speak, she clapped her
+little hands over it to prevent her, made her laugh, bandaged her eyes
+with the long plait--played a hundred pranks.
+
+Watching her, Andrea felt, that by all this playful commotion, she was
+dispelling from her mother all that his verses had possibly instilled
+into her mind.
+
+When, at last, Donna Maria succeeded in freeing herself from her darling
+tyrant, she saw his annoyance in his face, and hastened to say--'Forgive
+me, Andrea, Delfina is sometimes taken with these fits of wildness.'
+
+With a deft hand she re-arranged the disordered folds of her dress.
+There was a faint flush under her eyes and her breath came quickly.
+
+'And forgive her too,' she continued with a smile to which the unwonted
+animation of colour lent a singular light, 'out of consideration for her
+unconscious homage, for it was she who had the happy inspiration to
+place a nuptial wreath over your verses which sing of nuptial communion.
+That sets a seal upon the alliance.'
+
+'My thanks both to you and to Delfina,' answered Andrea. It was the
+first time she had called him by his Christian name, and the unexpected
+familiarity, combined with her gentle words, restored his confidence.
+Delfina had run off down one of the paths.
+
+'These verses are a spiritual record, are they not?' Donna Maria
+resumed. 'Will you give them to me that I may not forget them?'
+
+His natural impulse was to answer--'They are yours by right to-day, for
+they speak of you and to you----' But he only said--
+
+'You shall have them.'
+
+They continued their way towards the Cybele, but as they were leaving
+the little enclosure, Donna Maria suddenly turned round towards the
+Hermes as if some one had called her; her brow seemed heavy with
+thought.
+
+'What are you thinking about?' Andrea asked her almost timidly.
+
+'I was thinking about you,' she replied.
+
+'What were you thinking about me?'
+
+'I was thinking of your past life, of which I know nothing whatever. You
+have suffered greatly?'
+
+'I have greatly sinned.'
+
+'And loved much?'
+
+'I do not know. Perhaps it was not love that I felt. Perhaps I have yet
+to learn what love is--really I cannot say.'
+
+She did not answer. They walked on in silence for a little way. To their
+right, the path was bordered by high laurels, alternating at regular
+intervals with cypress trees, and in the background, through the
+fluttering leaves, the sea rippled and laughed, blue as the flower of
+the flax. On their left ran a kind of parapet like the back of a long
+stone bench, ornamented throughout its whole length with the Ateleta
+shield and arms and a griffin alternately, under each of which again was
+a sculptured mask through whose mouth a slender stream of water fell
+into a basin below, shaped like a sarcophagus and ornamented with
+mythological subjects in low relief. There must have been a hundred of
+these mouths, for the walk was called the avenue of the Hundred
+Fountains, but many of them were stopped up by time and had ceased to
+spout, while others did very little. Many of the shields were broken and
+moss had obliterated the coats of arms; many of the griffins were
+headless and the figures on the sarcophagi appeared through a veil of
+moss like fragments of silver work through an old and ragged velvet
+cover. On the water in the basins--more green and limpid than
+emerald--maiden-hair waved and quivered, or rose leaves, fallen from the
+bushes overhead, floated slowly while the surviving waterpipes sent
+forth a sweet and gurgling music that played over the murmur of the sea
+like the accompaniment to a melody.
+
+'Do you hear that?' said Donna Maria, standing still to listen,
+attracted by the charm of the sound. 'That is the music of salt and of
+sweet waters!'
+
+She stood in the middle of the path, finger on lip, leaning a little
+towards the fountains, in the attitude of one who listens and fears to
+be disturbed. Andrea, who was next the parapet, turned and saw her thus
+against a background of delicate and feathery verdure such as an Umbrian
+painter would have given to an Annunciation or a Nativity.
+
+'Maria!' he murmured, his heart filling with fond adoration,
+'Maria!--Maria--!'
+
+It afforded him untold pleasure to mingle the soft accents of her name
+with the music of the waters. She did not look at him, but she laid her
+finger on her lips as a sign to him to be silent.
+
+'Forgive me,' he said, unable to control his emotion--'but I cannot help
+myself--it is my soul that calls to you.'
+
+A strange nervous exaltation had taken possession of him, all the
+hill-tops of his soul had caught the lyric glow and flamed up
+irresistibly; the hour, the place, the sunshine, everything about them
+suggested love--from the extreme limits of the sea to the humble little
+ferns of the fountains--all seemed to him part of the same magic circle
+whose central point was this woman.
+
+'You can never know,' he went on in a subdued voice as if fearful of
+offending her--'You can never know how absolutely my soul is yours.'
+
+She grew suddenly very pale, as if all the blood in her veins had rushed
+to her heart. She did not speak, she did not look at him.
+
+'Delfina!' she cried, with a tremor of agitation in her voice.
+
+There was no answer; the little girl had wandered off among the trees at
+the end of the long avenue.
+
+'Delfina,' she repeated, louder than before, in a sort of terror.
+
+In the pause that followed her cry the songs of the two waters seemed to
+make the silence deeper.
+
+'Delfina!'
+
+There was a rustling in the leaves as if from the passage of a little
+kid, and the child came bounding through the laurel thicket, carrying in
+her hands her straw hat heaped to the brim with little red berries she
+had gathered. Her exertions and the running had brought a deep flush to
+her cheeks, broken twigs were sticking in her frock, and some leaves
+hung trembling in the meshes of her ruffled hair.
+
+'Oh mamma, come quick--do come with me!'
+
+She began dragging her mother away--'There is a perfect forest over
+there--heaps and heaps of berries! Come with me, mamma, do come--'
+
+'No, darling, I would rather not--it is getting late.'
+
+'Oh, do come!'
+
+'But it is late.'
+
+'Come! Come!'
+
+Donna Maria was obliged to give in and let herself be dragged along by
+the hand.
+
+'There is a way of reaching the arbutus wood without going through the
+thicket,' said Andrea.
+
+'Do you hear, Delfina? There is a better way.'
+
+'No, mamma, I want you to come with me.'
+
+Delfina pulled her mother along towards the sea through the laurel
+thicket, and Andrea followed, content to be able to gaze without
+restraint at the beloved figure in front of him, to devour her with his
+eyes, to study her every movement and her rhythmic walk, interrupted
+every moment by the irregularities of the path, the obstacles presented
+by the trees and their interlaced branches. But while his eyes feasted
+on these things, his mind was chiefly occupied in recalling the one
+attitude, the one look--oh, that pallor, that sudden pallor just now
+when he had proffered those few low words! And the indefinable tone of
+her voice when she called Delfina.
+
+'Is it far now?' asked Donna Maria.
+
+'No, no, mamma, we are just there--here it is!'
+
+As they neared the spot a sort of shyness came over Andrea. Since those
+words of his he had not met Maria's eye. What did she think? What were
+her feelings? What would her eyes say when, at last, she looked at him?
+
+'Here it is!' cried the little girl.
+
+The laurels had grown thinner, affording a freer view of the sea, and
+the next moment the mass of arbutus flushed rosy-red before them like a
+forest of coral with large tassels of blossom at the end of their
+branches.
+
+'What a glory!' murmured Maria.
+
+The marvellous wilderness bloomed and bore fruit in a deep and sunny
+space curved like an amphitheatre, in which all the delicious sweetness
+of that aromatic shore seemed gathered up and concentrated. The stems,
+tall and slender, crimson for the most part, but here and there yellow,
+bore great shining green leaves, all motionless in the calm air.
+Innumerable tassels of blossom, like sprays of lily-of-the-valley, white
+and dewy, hung from the young boughs, while the maturer ones were loaded
+with red or orange-yellow fruit. And all this wondrous pomp of blossom
+and fruit, of green leaves and rosy stems displayed against the
+brilliant blue of the sea, like a garden in a fairy tale, intense and
+fantastic as a dream.
+
+'What a marvel!'
+
+Donna Maria advanced slowly, no longer led by Delfina, who, wild with
+delight, rushed about with no thought but for stripping the whole wood.
+
+Andrea plucked up his courage.
+
+'Can you forgive me?' he asked anxiously. 'I did not mean to offend you.
+Indeed, seeing you so far above me, so pure, so unapproachable, I
+thought that never in this world could I reveal my secret to you, never
+ask anything of you, never put myself in your way. Since ever I saw you,
+I have thought of you night and day, but without hope, without any
+definite end in view. I know that you do not love me, that you never can
+love me. And yet, believe me, I would renounce every promise that life
+may have in store for me, just for the hope of living in a little corner
+of your heart----'
+
+She continued to advance slowly under the sun-flecked trees, while the
+delicate tassels of pink and white blossom swayed gently above her head.
+
+'Believe me, Maria--only believe me! If I were bidden at this moment to
+give up every desire and every ambition, the dearest memories of the
+past and the most flattering promises of the future, and to live solely
+in the thought of and for you--without a to-morrow, without a yesterday,
+without other ties or attachments, far from the world, lost to
+everything but you, till death--to all eternity--I would not hesitate
+for one instant. You have looked at me and talked to me, have smiled and
+answered; you have sat at my side pensive and silent; side by side with
+me you have lived your own inner life, that inscrutable and inaccessible
+existence of which I know nothing--can never know anything--- and your
+soul has taken full and absolute possession of mine to its deepest
+depths, but without ever a thought, without being aware of it, as the
+ocean swallows up a river.--What is my love to you? What is any one's
+love to you? The word has too often been profaned, and the sentiment too
+often a make-believe.--I do not offer you love. But surely you will not
+refuse the humble tribute of devotion that my spirit offers up to a
+being nobler and higher than itself.'
+
+She walked on at the same slow pace, her head bent, her face bloodless,
+towards a seat at the further end of the wood and facing the sea.
+
+It was a wide semicircle of white marble with a back running round the
+entire length and, for sole ornamentation, a lion's paw at each end as a
+support. It recalled those antique seats on which, in some island of the
+Archipelago or in Greece or Pompeii, ladies reclined and listened to a
+reading from the poets, under the shade of the oleanders, within sight
+of the sea. Here the arbutus cast the shadow of its blossom and its
+fruit, and in contrast to the marble, the coral of the stems seemed more
+vivid than elsewhere.
+
+'I care for everything that interests you; you possess all those things
+after which I am seeking. Pity from you would be more precious to me
+than passionate love from any other woman. Your hand upon my heart--I
+know--would cause a second youth to spring up in me far purer than the
+first and stronger. The ceaseless vacillation which makes up the sum of
+my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and
+restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and
+repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven
+of refuge against the doubts which contaminate every ideal, and weaken
+the will. There are men more unfortunate, but I doubt if in the whole
+wide world there was ever one less happy than I.'
+
+He was making use of Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of
+sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his
+melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own
+voice--with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it--served to augment
+his emotions.
+
+'I do not venture to tell you all my thoughts. At your side, during the
+few days since I first met you, I have had moments of oblivion so
+complete as almost to make me feel that I was back in the first days of
+my convalescence, when the sense of another world was still present with
+me. The past, the future were obliterated--as if the former had never
+been, and the latter never would be. The whole world was without form
+and void. Then, something like a dream, dim but stupendous, rose upon my
+soul--a fluttering veil, now impenetrable, now transparent, and yielding
+intermittent glimpses of a splendid but unattainable treasure. What did
+you know or care about me in such moments? Doubtless your spirit was far
+away from me. And yet, your mere bodily presence was sufficient to
+intoxicate me--I felt it flowing through my veins like blood, taking
+hold upon my soul with superhuman force----'
+
+She sat silent and motionless, gazing straight before her, her figure
+erect, her hands rigidly clasped in her lap, in the attitude of one who
+makes a supreme effort to brace himself against his own weakness. Only
+her mouth--the expression of the lips she vainly strove to keep
+firm--betrayed a sort of anguished rapture.
+
+'I dare not tell you all I feel.--Maria, Maria, can you forgive me?--say
+that you forgive me.'
+
+Two little hands came suddenly from behind the seat and clasped
+themselves over the mother's eyes, and a voice panting with fun and
+mischief cried--
+
+'Guess who it is--guess who it is!'
+
+She smiled, and allowed herself to be drawn backwards by Delfina's
+clinging fingers, and instantly, with preternatural clearness, Andrea
+saw that smile wipe away all the obscure, delicious pain from her lips,
+efface every sign that might be construed into an avowal, put to flight
+the least lingering shadow of uncertainty that he might possibly have
+converted into a gleam of hope. He sat there like a man who has expected
+to drink from an overflowing cup and suddenly finds it has nothing but
+the empty air to offer to his thirsty lips.
+
+'Guess!'
+
+The little girl covered her mother's head with loud, quick kisses, in a
+kind of frenzy, even hurting her a little.
+
+'I know who it is--I know who it is,' cried Donna Maria--'Let me go!'
+
+'What will you give me if I do?'
+
+'Anything you like.'
+
+'Well, I want a pony to carry back my berries to the house. Come and see
+what a heap I have collected.'
+
+She ran round the seat and pulled her mother by the hand. Donna Maria
+rose rather wearily, and as she stood up she closed her eyes for a
+moment as if overcome by sudden giddiness. Andrea rose too, and both
+followed in Delfina's wake.
+
+The mischievous child had stripped half the wood of fruit. The lower
+branches had not a single berry left. With the aid of a stick, picked up
+goodness knows where, she had reaped a prodigious harvest and then piled
+up the fruit into one great heap, so intense in colouring against the
+dark soil, that it looked like a heap of glowing embers. The flowers had
+apparently not attracted her; there they hung, white and pink and yellow
+and translucent, more delicate than the flowering locks of the acacia,
+more graceful than the lily-of-the-valley, all bathed in dim golden
+light.
+
+'Oh Delfina! Delfina!' exclaimed Donna Maria, looking round upon the
+devastation, 'what have you done!'
+
+The child laughed and clapped her hands with glee in front of the
+crimson pyramid.
+
+'You will have to leave it all here.'
+
+'No--no--'
+
+At first she refused, but she thought for a moment, and then said, half
+to herself with beaming eyes: 'The doe will come and eat them.'
+
+She had probably noticed the beautiful creature moving about in the
+park, and the thought of having collected so much food for it pleased
+her and fired her imagination, already full of stories in which deer are
+beneficent and powerful fairies who repose on silken cushions and drink
+from jewelled cups. She remained silent and absorbed, picturing to
+herself the beautiful tawny animal browsing on the fruit under the
+flowering trees.'
+
+'Come,' said Donna Maria, 'it is getting late.'
+
+Holding Delfina by the hand, she walked on till they came to the edge of
+the wood. Here she stopped to look at the sea, which, catching the
+reflection of the clouds, was like a vast undulating, glittering sheet
+of silk.
+
+Without a word, Andrea plucked a spray of blossom, so full that the twig
+it hung from bent beneath its weight, and offered it to Donna Maria. As
+she took it from his hand she looked at him, but she did not open her
+lips.
+
+They passed on down the avenue, Delfina talking, talking incessantly;
+repeating the same things over and over again, infatuated about the doe,
+inventing long monotonous tales in which she ran one fairy story into
+another, losing herself in labyrinths of her own creation, as if the
+sparkling freshness of the morning air had gone to her head. And round
+about the doe she grouped the children of the king, Cinderellas, fairy
+queens, magicians, monsters--all the familiar personages of those
+imaginary realms, crowding them in tumultuously with the kaleidoscopic
+rapidity of a dream. Her prattle sounded like the warbling of a bird;
+full of sweet modulations, with now and then a rapid succession of
+melodious notes that were not words,--a continuation of the wave of
+music already set in motion, like the vibrations of a string during a
+pause--when in the childish mind, the connection between the idea and
+its verbal expression met with a momentary interruption.
+
+The other two neither spoke nor listened. To them the little girl's
+bird-like twittering covered the murmur of their own thoughts, and if
+Delfina stopped for a moment's breathing space, they felt as strangely
+perturbed and apprehensive as if the silence might disclose or lay bare
+their souls.
+
+The avenue of the Hundred Fountains stretched away before them in
+diminishing perspective; a peacock, perched upon one of the shields,
+took flight at their approach, scattering the rose leaves into a
+fountain below. A few steps further on, Andrea recognised the one beside
+which Donna Maria had stood, and listened to the music of the waters.
+
+In the retreat of the Hermes the smell of musk had evaporated. The
+statue, all pensive under its garland, was flecked with patches of
+sunshine which filtered through the surrounding foliage. Blackbirds
+piped and answered one another.
+
+Taken with a sudden fancy, Delfina exclaimed, 'Mamma, I want the wreath
+again.'
+
+'No, leave it there--why should you take it away?'
+
+'I want it for Muriella.'
+
+'But Muriella will spoil it.'
+
+'Do, please, give it me.'
+
+Donna Maria looked at Andrea. He slowly went up to the statue, lifted
+the wreath and handed it to Delfina. In the exaltation of their spirits,
+this simple little episode had all the mysterious significance of an
+allegory--was in some way symbolical. One of his own lines ran
+persistently in Andrea's head--
+
+'Have I attained, have I then paid the price?'
+
+The nearer they approached the end of the pathway, the fiercer grew the
+pain at his heart; he would have given half his life for a word from the
+woman he loved. A dozen times she seemed on the point of speaking, but
+she did not.
+
+'Look, mamma, there are Fernandino and Muriella and Ricardo,' cried
+Delfina, catching sight of Francesca's children; and she started off
+running towards them and waving her wreath.
+
+'Muriella! Muriella! Muriella!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Maria Ferres had always remained faithful to her girlhood's habit of
+setting down daily in her journal the passing thoughts, the joys, the
+sorrows, the fancies, the doubts, the aspirations, the regrets and the
+hopes--all the events of her spiritual life as well as the various
+incidents of her outward existence, compiling thereby a sort of
+Itinerary of the Soul which she liked occasionally to study, both for
+guidance on the path still to be pursued and also to follow the traces
+of things long dead and forgotten.
+
+Perpetually denied, by force of circumstances, the relief of
+self-expansion, enclosed within the magic circle of her purity as in a
+tower of ivory for ever incorruptible and inaccessible, she found solace
+and refreshment in the daily outpourings she confided to the white pages
+of her private book. Therein she was free to make her moan, to abandon
+herself to her griefs, to seek to decipher the enigma of her own heart,
+to interrogate her conscience; here she gained courage in prayer,
+tranquillised herself by meditation, laid her troubled spirit once more
+in the hands of the Heavenly Father. And from every page shone the same
+pure light--the light of Truth.
+
+'_September 15th_ (Schifanoja).--How tired I feel! The journey was
+rather fatiguing and the unaccustomed sea air makes my head ache at
+first. I need rest, and I already seem to have a foretaste of the
+sweetness of sleep and the happiness of awaking in the morning in the
+house of a friend and to the pleasures of Francesca's cordial
+hospitality at Schifanoja with its lovely roses and its tall cypress
+trees. I shall wake up to the knowledge that I have some weeks of peace
+before me--twenty days, perhaps even more, of congenial intellectual
+companionship. I am very grateful to Francesca for her invitation. To
+see her again was like meeting a sister. How much and how profoundly I
+have changed since the dear old days in Florence!
+
+'Speaking to-day of my hair, Francesca began recalling stories of our
+absurd childish passions and melancholies in those days; of Carlotta
+Fiordelise and Gabriella Vanni and various incidents of that distant
+school life which seems to me now as though I had never lived it, but
+only read it of it in some old forgotten book or seen it in a dream. My
+hair has not fallen, but for every hair of my head there has been a
+thorn in my destiny.
+
+'But why let my sad thoughts get the upper hand over me again? And why
+let memory cause me pain? It is useless to lament over a grave which
+never gives back its dead. Would to Heaven I could remember that, once
+for all!
+
+'Francesca is still young, and has retained the frank and charming
+gaiety which, in our school days, exercised such a strange fascination
+over my somewhat gloomy temperament. She has one great and rare virtue:
+though she is light-hearted herself, she can enter into the troubles of
+others and knows how to lighten them by her kindly sympathy and pity.
+She is above all things a woman of high intelligence and refined tastes,
+a perfect hostess and a friend who never palls upon one. She is perhaps
+a trifle too fond of witty _mots_ and sparkling epigrams, but her darts
+are always tipped with gold, and she aims them with inimitable grace.
+Among all the women of the great world I have ever known there is
+certainly not one to compare with her, and of all my friends, she is the
+one I care for most.
+
+'Her children are not like her, they are not handsome. But the youngest,
+Muriella, is a dear little thing, with the sweet laugh and the eyes of
+her mother. She did the honours of the house to Delfina with all the air
+of a little lady; she has certainly inherited her mother's perfect
+manner.
+
+'Delfina seems to be happy. She has already explored the greater part of
+the grounds, as far as the sea, and has run down all the flights of
+steps. She came to tell me about all the wonderful things she had
+seen--panting, swallowing half the words, her eyes looking almost
+dazzled. She spoke continually of her new friend Muriella--a pretty name
+that sounds still prettier from her lips.
+
+'She is fast asleep. When her eyes are closed, her lashes cast a long,
+long shadow on her cheeks. Francesca's cousin was struck by their length
+this evening and quoted a beautiful line from Shakespeare's Tempest on
+Miranda's eyelashes.
+
+'The scent of the flowers is too strong in this room. Delfina was
+anxious to keep the bouquet of roses by her bedside, but now that she is
+asleep I shall take them away and put them out into the loggia in the
+fresh air.
+
+'I am tired, and yet I have written four pages; I am sleepy, and yet I
+would gladly prolong this languor of soul, lulled by I know not what
+unwonted sense of tenderness diffused around me. It is so long--so
+long--since I have felt myself surrounded by a little kindness!
+
+'I have just carried the vase of roses into the loggia and stayed there
+a few moments to listen to the voices of the night, moved by the regret
+of losing in the blindness of sleep the hours that pass under so
+beautiful a sky. How strange is the harmony between the song of the
+fountains and the murmur of the sea! The cypresses seemed to be the
+pillars of the firmament; the stars shining just above them tipped their
+summits with fire.
+
+'_September 16th._--A delightful afternoon, spent almost entirely in
+conversation with Francesca in the loggia, on the terraces, in the
+avenues, at the various points of outlook of this villa, which looks as
+if it had been built by a princely poet to drown a grief. The name of
+the Palace at Ferrara suits it admirably.
+
+'Francesca gave me a sonnet of Count Sperelli's to read--a trifle, but
+of rare literary charm, and inscribed on vellum. Sperelli has a mind of
+a very high order, and is most intense. To-day at dinner, he said
+several very beautiful things. He is recovering from a terrible wound
+received in a duel in Rome last May. In all his actions, his looks, his
+words, there is that affectionate and charming licence which is the
+prerogative of the convalescent, of those who have newly escaped the
+clutches of death. He must be very young, but he has gone through much
+and lived fast. He bears the evidences of it.... A charming evening of
+conversation and music all by ourselves after dinner. I talked too much,
+or, at any rate, with two much eagerness. But Francesca listened and
+encouraged me, and so did Count Sperelli. That is just the delightful
+part of a conversation not on common subjects--to feel the same degree
+of warmth animating the minds of all present. Only then do one's words
+have the true ring of sincerity and give real pleasure, both to the
+speaker and the hearer.
+
+'Francesca's cousin is a most cultivated judge of music. He greatly
+admires the masters of the eighteenth century, Domenico Scarlatti being
+his special favourite. But his most ardent devotion is reserved for
+Sebastian Bach. He does not care much for Chopin, and Beethoven affects
+him too profoundly and perturbs his spirit.
+
+'He listened to me with a singular expression, almost as if dazed or
+distressed. I nearly always addressed myself to Francesca, but I felt
+his eyes upon me with an insistence which embarrassed but did not offend
+me. He must still be weak and ill and a prey to his nerves. Finally he
+asked me--"Do you sing?" in the same tone in which he would have
+said--"Do you love me?"
+
+'I sang an air of Paisiello's and another by Salieri, and I played a
+little eighteenth century music. I was in good voice and my touch on the
+piano happy.
+
+'He gave me no word of thanks or praise, but remained perfectly silent.
+I wonder why?
+
+'Delfina was in bed by that time. When I went upstairs afterwards to see
+her, I found her asleep, but with her eyelashes wet as if with tears.
+Poor darling! Dorothy told me that my voice could be heard distinctly up
+here, and that Delfina had wakened from her first sleep and begun to
+sob, and wanted to come down.
+
+'She is asleep again now, but from time to time her little bosom heaves
+with a suppressed sob which sends a vague distress into my own heart,
+and a desire to respond to that involuntary sob, to this grief which
+sleep cannot assuage. Poor darling!
+
+'Who is playing the piano downstairs, I wonder? With the soft pedal
+down, some one is trying over that gavotte of Rameau's, so full of
+bewitching melancholy, that I was playing just now. Who can it be?
+Francesca came up with me--it is late.
+
+'I went out and leaned over the loggia. The room opening into the
+vestibule is dark, but there is light in the room next to it, where
+Manuel and the Marchese are still playing cards.
+
+'The gavotte has stopped, some one is going down the steps into the
+garden.
+
+'Why should I be so alert, so watchful, so curious? Why should every
+sound startle me to-night?
+
+'Delfina has wakened and is calling me.
+
+'_September 17th._--Manuel left this morning. We accompanied him to the
+station at Rovigliano. He will return about the 10th of October to fetch
+me, and we all go on to Sienna, to my mother. Delfina and I will
+probably stay at Sienna till after the New Year. I shall see the Loggia
+of the Pope and the Fonte Gaja, and my beautiful black and white
+Cathedral once more--that beloved dwelling-place of the Blessed Virgin,
+where a part of my soul has ever remained to pray in a spot that my
+knees know well.
+
+'I always have a vision of that spot clearly before me, and when I go
+back I shall kneel on the exact stone where I always used to. I know it
+as well as if my knees had left a deep hollow there. And there too I
+shall find that portion of my soul which still lingers there in prayer
+beneath the starry blue vault above, which is mirrored in the marble
+floor like a midnight sky in a placid lake.
+
+'Assuredly nothing there is changed. In the costly chapel, full of
+palpitating shadow and mysterious gloom, alive with the glint of
+precious marble, the lamps burned softly, all their light seemingly
+gathered into the little globe of oil that fed the flame as into some
+limpid topaz. Little by little, under my intent gaze, the sculptured
+stone grew less coldly white, took on warm ivory tints, became gradually
+penetrated by the pallid life of the celestial beings, and over the
+marble forms crept the faint transparency of angelic flesh.
+
+'Ah, how fervent and spontaneous were my prayers then! When I absorbed
+myself in meditation, I seemed to be walking through the secret paths of
+my soul as in a garden of delight, where nightingales sang in the
+blossoming trees and turtle-doves cooed beside the running waters of
+Grace divine.
+
+'_September 18th._--A day of nameless torture. Something seems to be
+forcing me to gather up, to re-adjust, to join together the fragments of
+a dream, half of which is being confusedly realised outside of me, and
+the other half going on equally confusedly in my own heart. And try as I
+will, I cannot succeed in piecing it completely together.
+
+'_September 19th._--Continued torture. Long ago, some one sang to me but
+never finished the song. Now some one is taking up the strain at the
+point where it broke off, but meanwhile, I have forgotten the beginning.
+And my spirit loses itself in vain gropings after the old melody, nor
+can it find any pleasure in the new.
+
+'_September 20th._--To-day, after lunch, Andrea Sperelli invited me and
+Francesca to come to his room and look at some drawings that had arrived
+for him yesterday from Rome.
+
+'It would not be too much to say that an entire Art has passed before
+our eyes to-day--an art studied and analysed by the hand of a master
+draughtsman. I have never experienced a more intense pleasure.
+
+'The drawings are Sperelli's own work--studies, sketches, notes,
+mementos of every gallery in Europe; they are, so to speak, his
+breviary, a wonderful breviary in which each of the Old Masters has his
+special page, affording a condensed example of his manner, bringing out
+the most lofty and original beauties of his work, the _punctum saliens_
+of his entire productions. In going through the large collection, not
+only have I received a distinct impression of the various schools, the
+movements, the influences which have combined to develop the art of
+painting in various countries, but I feel that I have had a glimpse into
+the spirit, the essential meaning of the art of each individual painter.
+I am as if intoxicated with art, my brain is full of lines and figures,
+but in the midst of the apparent confusion there stand out clearly
+before me the women of the early masters, those never-to-be-forgotten
+heads of Saints and Virgins which smiled down upon my childish piety in
+old Sienna from the frescoes of Taddeo and Simone.
+
+'No masterpiece of art, however advanced and brilliant, leaves upon the
+mind so strong and enduring an impression. All these slender forms,
+delicate and drooping as lily-buds, these grave and noble attitudes for
+receiving a flower offered by an angel, placing the fingers on an open
+book, bending over the Holy Infant, or supporting the body of Christ; in
+the act of blessing, of agonising, of ascending into Heaven--all these
+things, so pure, so sincere, so profoundly touching, affect the soul to
+its depths and imprint themselves for ever on the memory.
+
+'Thus, one by one, the women of the Early Masters passed in review
+before us. Francesca and I were seated on a low couch with a great stand
+before us, on which lay the portfolio containing the drawings which the
+artist, seated opposite, slowly turned over, commenting on each in
+succession. I watched his hand as he took up a sheet and placed it with
+peculiar care on the other side of the portfolio, and each time I felt a
+sort of thrill, as if that hand were going to touch me--Why?--
+
+'Presently, his position doubtless becoming uncomfortable, he knelt on
+the floor, and in that attitude continued turning over the drawings. In
+speaking, he nearly always addressed himself to me, not at all with the
+air of imparting instruction, but as if discussing the pictures with a
+person as familiar with the subject as he was himself; and, at the
+bottom of my heart, I was conscious of a sense of complacency mingled
+with gratitude. Whenever I exclaimed in admiration, he looked at me with
+a smile which I can still see, but cannot define. Two or three times,
+Francesca rested her arm on his shoulder in unconscious familiarity.
+Looking at the head of the first-born of Moses, copied from Botticelli's
+fresco in the Sistine Chapel, she said--"It has a look of you when you
+are in one of your melancholy moods."--And when we came to the head of
+the Archangel Michael from Perugino's Madonna of Pavia, she
+remarked---"It is a little like Giulia Moceto, is it not?" He did not
+answer, but only turned the page over rather sooner than usual. Upon
+which she added with a laugh--"Away with the pictures of sin!"
+
+'This Giulia Moceto is, I suppose, some one he was once in love with.
+The page once turned, I had a wild, unreasoning desire to look at the
+Michael again and examine the face more closely. Was it merely artistic
+curiosity?
+
+'I cannot say, I dare not pry into my heart, I prefer to temporise, to
+deceive myself; I have not the courage to face the battle, I am a
+coward.
+
+'And yet the present is so sweet. My imagination is as excited as if I
+had drunk strong tea. I have no desire to go to bed. The night is soft
+and warm as if it were August, the sky is cloudless but dimly veiled,
+the breathing of the sea comes slow and deep, but the fountains fill up
+the pauses. The loggia attracts me--shall we go out and dream a little,
+my heart and I?--dream of what?
+
+'The eyes of the Virgins and the Saints pursue me--deep-set, long and
+narrow, with meekly downcast lids, from under which they gaze at one
+with that charmed look--innocent as the dove, and yet a little side-long
+like the serpent. "Be ye harmless as doves and wise as serpents," said
+Our Lord--
+
+'Yes, be wise--go, say your prayers, and then, to bed and sleep----
+
+'_September 21st._--Alas, must the heavy task ever painfully begin again
+from the beginning, the steep path be climbed, the battle that was won
+fought over again!
+
+'_September 22nd._--He has given me one of his poems, _The Story of the
+Hermaphrodite_, the twenty-first of the twenty-five copies, printed on
+vellum and with two proof engravings of the frontispiece.
+
+'It is a remarkable work, enclosing a mystic and profound idea, although
+the musical element predominates, entrancing the soul by the unfamiliar
+magic of its melody, which envelopes the thoughts that shine out like a
+glister of gold and diamonds through a limpid stream. Certain lines
+pursue me incessantly and will continue to do so for long, no
+doubt--they are so intense.... Every day and every hour he subjugates me
+more and more, mind and soul--against my will, despite my resistance.
+His every word and look, his slightest action sinks into my heart.
+
+'_September 23rd._--When we converse with one another, I sometimes feel
+as if his voice were an echo of my soul. At times, a sudden wild frenzy
+comes over me, a blind desire, an unreasoning impulse to make some
+remark, utter some word that would betray my secret weakness. I only
+save myself from it by a miracle, and then there falls an interval of
+silence, during which I am shaken with inward terror. Then, when I do
+speak again, it is to say something trivial in the lightest tone I can
+command, but I feel as if a flame were rushing over my face--that I am
+going to blush. If he were to seize this moment to look me boldly in the
+eyes, I should be lost!
+
+'I played a good deal this evening, chiefly Bach and Schumann. As on the
+first evening, he sat in a low chair to the right but a little behind
+me. From time to time, at the end of each piece, he rose and leaned over
+me, turning the pages to point out another Fugue or Intermezzo. Then he
+would sit down again and listen, motionless, profoundly absorbed, his
+eyes fixed on me, forcing me to _feel_ his presence.
+
+'Did he understand, I wonder, how much of myself, of my thoughts and
+griefs found voice in the music of others?
+
+'It is a threatening night. A hot moist wind blows over the garden and
+its dull moaning dies away in the darkness only to begin again more
+loudly. The tops of the cypresses wave to and fro under an almost inky
+sky in which the stars burn with feeble ray. A band of clouds spans the
+heavens from side to side, ragged, contorted, blacker than the sky, like
+the tragic locks of a Medusa. The sea is invisible through the darkness,
+but it sobs as if in measureless and uncontrollable grief--forsaken and
+alone.
+
+'Why this unreasoning terror? The night seems to warn me of approaching
+disaster, a warning that finds its echo in a dim remorse within my
+heart.
+
+'But I always take comfort from my daughter, she heals my fever like
+some blessed balm.
+
+'She is asleep now, shaded from the lamp which shines with the soft
+radiance of the moon. Her face--white with dewy freshness of a white
+rose, seems half buried in the masses of her dark hair. One would think
+the eyelids were too delicately transparent to veil the splendour of her
+eyes. As I lean over her and gaze at her, all the sinister voices of the
+night are silenced for me, and the silence is measured only by her
+gentle respiration.
+
+'She feels the vicinity of her mother. The longer I contemplate her, the
+more does she assume in my eyes the aspect of some ethereal creature, of
+a being formed of "such stuff as dreams are made of."
+
+'She shall grow up nourished and enwrapped by the flame of my love--of
+my great, my _only_ love----
+
+'_September 24th._--I can form no resolve--I can decide upon no plan of
+action. I am simply abandoning myself a little to this new sentiment,
+shutting my eyes to the distant peril, and my ears to the warning voice
+of conscience, with the shuddering temerity of one who, in gathering
+violets, ventures too near the edge of a precipice at the foot of which
+roars a hungry torrent.
+
+'He shall never know anything from my lips, I shall never know anything
+from his. Our two souls will mount together, for a brief space, to the
+mountain-tops of the Ideal, will drink side by side at the perennial
+fountains, and then each go on its separate way, encouraged and
+refreshed.
+
+'How still the air is this afternoon! The sea has the faint milky-blue
+tints of the opal, of Murano glass, with here and there a patch like a
+mirror dimmed by a breath.
+
+'I am reading Shelley, a favourite poet with him, that divine Ariel
+feeding upon light and speaking with the tongues of angels. It is
+night----
+
+'_September 25th._--_Mio Dio! Mio Dio!_ His voice when he spoke my
+name--the tremor in it--oh, I thought my heart was breaking in my bosom,
+and that I must inevitably lose consciousness.--"You will never know,"
+he said--"never know how utterly my soul is yours."
+
+'We were in the avenue of the fountains--I was listening to the sound of
+the water; but from that moment, I heard nothing more. Everything around
+me seemed to flee away, carrying my life with it, and the earth to open
+beneath my feet. I made a superhuman effort to control myself. Delfina's
+name rose to my lips and I was seized with a wild impulse to fly to her
+for protection, for safety. Three times I cried that name, but in the
+intervals my heart ceased to beat and the breath died away upon my lips.
+
+'_September 26th._--Was it true? Was it not merely some illusion of my
+overwrought and distracted spirit? Why should that hour yesterday seem
+to me so far away, so _unreal_?
+
+'He spoke a second time, at greater length, close to my side while I
+walked on under the trees as in a dream.--Under the trees was it? It
+seemed to me rather that I was walking through the hidden pathways of my
+soul, among flowers born of my imagination, listening to the words of an
+invisible spirit that yet was part of myself.
+
+'I can still hear the sweet and dreadful words--"I would renounce all
+that the future may hold for me to live in a small corner of your
+heart--Far from the world, wholly lost in the thought of you--until
+death, to all eternity"--And again--"Pity from you would be far dearer
+to me than love from any other woman. Your mere presence suffices to
+intoxicate me--I feel it flowing into my veins like my life's blood and
+filling my soul with rapture beyond all telling."
+
+'_September 27th._--When he gathered the spray of blossom at the
+entrance to the wood and offered it to me, did I not, in my heart, call
+him--_Life of my life_?
+
+'When, in the avenue, we passed again by the fountain where he first
+spoke to me, did I not call him _Life of my life_?
+
+'When he took the wreath from off the Hermes and gave it back to my
+child, did he not give me to understand that the woman exalted in these
+verses had fallen from her high estate, and that I, I alone, was all his
+hope? And once more I called him _Life of my life_.
+
+'_September 28th._--How long I have been in finding peace!
+
+'From that moment onwards, what hours of struggle and travail I have
+had, how painfully I have striven to penetrate the real state of my
+mind, to see things in their true light, bring a calm and fair judgment
+to bear upon what has happened, to recognise and determine upon my duty!
+But I continually evaded myself, my mind became confused, my will was
+but a broken reed on which to lean, every effort was vain. By a sort of
+instinct, I have avoided being alone with him, kept close to Francesca
+or my child, or stayed here in my room as in a haven of refuge. When my
+eyes did meet his, I seemed to read in them a profound and imploring
+sadness. Does he not know how deeply, deeply, deeply I love him?
+
+'He does not know it, nor ever will. That is my firm resolve--that is my
+duty. Courage!
+
+'Help me, oh my God!
+
+'_September 29th._--Why did he speak? Why did he break the enchanted
+silence in which I let my soul be steeped, almost without regret or
+fear? Why tear away the veil of uncertainty and put me face to face with
+his unveiled love? Now I have no further excuse for temporising, for
+deluding myself. The danger is there--certain, undeniable, manifest--it
+attracts me to its dizzy edge like a precipice. One moment of weakness,
+of languor, and I am lost.
+
+'I ask myself--am I sincere in my pain and regret at this unexpected
+revelation? How is it that I think perpetually of those words? And why,
+when I repeat them to myself, does a wave of ineffable rapture sweep
+over my soul? Why do I thrill to the heart's core at the imagined
+prospect of hearing more--more such words?
+
+'Night. The agitation of my soul takes the forms of questions,
+riddles--I ask myself endless questions to which I never have an answer.
+I have not had the courage to look myself through and through--to form a
+really bold and honest resolution. I am pusillanimous, I am a coward. I
+shrink from pain, I want to suffer as little as possible, I prefer to
+temporise, to hang back, to resort to subterfuges, to wilfully blind
+myself instead of courageously facing the risks of a decisive battle.
+
+'The fact of the matter is this--that I am _afraid_ of being alone with
+him, of having a serious conversation with him, and so my life is
+reduced to a series of petty schemes and manoeuvrings and pretexts for
+avoiding his company. Such devices are unworthy of me. Either I must
+renounce this love altogether, and he shall hear my sad but firm
+resolve, or I shall accept it, in so far as it is pure, and he will
+receive my spiritual consent.
+
+'And now I ask myself--What do I really want? Which of the two paths am
+I to choose? Must I renounce--shall I accept?
+
+'My God! my God! answer Thou for me--light up the path before me!
+
+'To renounce is like tearing out a piece of my heart with my own hands.
+The agony would be supreme, the wrench would exceed the limits of the
+endurable. But, by God's grace, such heroism would be crowned by
+resignation, would be rewarded by that sweet and holy calm which follows
+upon every high moral impulse, every victory of the soul over the dread
+of suffering.
+
+'I shall renounce--my daughter shall keep possession of my whole life,
+of my whole soul. That is the path of duty, and I will walk in it.
+
+'Sow in tears, oh mourning souls, that ye may reap with songs of
+gladness!
+
+'_September 30th._--I feel somewhat calmer in writing these pages. I
+regain, at least for the moment, some slight balance of mind. I can look
+my misfortune more clearly in the face, and my heart seems relieved as
+if after confession.
+
+'Oh, if I could but go to confession!--could implore counsel and help of
+my old friend and comforter, Dom Luigi!
+
+'What sustains me most of all in my tribulation, is the thought that in
+a short time I shall see him again and be able to pour out all my griefs
+and fears to him, show him all my wounds, ask of him a balm for all my
+ills, as I used to in the days when his benign and solemn words would
+call up tears of tenderness to my eyes, that knew not then the
+bitterness of other tears or--more terrible by far--the burning pain of
+dry-eyed misery.
+
+'Will he understand me still? Can he fathom the deep anguish of the
+woman as he understood the vague and fitful melancholy of the girl?
+Shall I ever again see him lean towards me in pity and consolation, that
+gentle brow, crowned with silvery locks, illumined with purity and
+holiness, and sanctified by the hand of the Lord?
+
+'In the chapel, after mass, I played on the organ music of Bach and of
+Cherubini. I played the same prelude as the other evening.
+
+'A soul weeps and moans, weighed down with anguish, weeps and moans and
+cries to God, asking His pardon, imploring His aid, with a prayer that
+rises to heaven like a tongue of fire. It cries and it is heard--its
+prayer is answered; it receives light from above, utters songs of
+gladness reaches at length the haven of Peace and Truth and rests in the
+Lord----
+
+'The organ is not large nor is the chapel, but, nevertheless, my soul
+expanded as in a basilica, soared up as under some vast dome, and
+touched the pinnacle of high Heaven where blazes the Sign of Signs in
+the azure of Paradise, in the sublime ether.
+
+'Night. Alas: nothing is of any avail--nothing gives me one hour, one
+minute, one second's respite. Nothing can ever cure me, no dream of my
+mind can ever efface the dream of my heart.--All has been in vain; this
+anguish is killing me. I feel that my hurt is mortal, my heart pains me
+as if some one were actually crushing it, were tearing it to pieces. My
+agony of mind is so great that it has become a physical
+torment--atrocious, unbearable. I know perfectly well that I am
+overwrought, nervous--the victim of a sort of madness; but I cannot get
+the upper hand over myself, cannot pull myself together, cannot regain
+control of my reason. I cannot--I simply cannot!
+
+'So this, then, is love!
+
+'He went off somewhere this morning on horseback accompanied by a
+servant before I saw him, and I spent the whole morning in the chapel.
+When lunch time came he had not returned. His absence caused me such
+misery that I myself was astonished at the violence of my pain. I came
+up to my room afterwards, and to ease my heart I wrote a page of my
+journal, a devotional page, seeking to revive my fainting spirit at the
+glowing memory of my girlhood's faith. Then I read a few pieces, here
+and there, of Shelley's _Epipsychidion_, after which I went down into
+the park looking for Delfina. But no matter what I did, the thought of
+him was ever present with me, held me captive and tortured me
+relentlessly.
+
+'When, at last, I heard his voice again, I was on the first terrace. He
+was speaking to Francesca in the vestibule. She came out and called to
+me to come up.
+
+'I felt my knees giving way beneath me at each step. He held out his
+hand to me and he must have noticed the trembling of mine, for I saw a
+sudden gleam flash into his eyes. We all three sat down on low cane
+lounges in the vestibule, facing the sea. He complained of feeling very
+tired, and smoked while he told us of his ride. He had gone as far as
+Vicomile, where he had made a halt.
+
+'Vicomile, he said, possesses three wonderful treasures--a pine wood, a
+tower, and a fifteenth-century monstrance. Imagine a pine wood, between
+the sea and the hill, interspersed by a number of pools that multiply
+the trees indefinitely; a campanile in the old rugged Lombardy style
+that goes back to the eleventh century--a tree-trunk of stone, as it
+were, covered with sculptured sirens and peacocks, serpents and griffins
+and dragons--a thousand and one monsters and flowers; and a silver-gilt
+monstrance all enamelled, engraved and chased--Gothico-Byzantine in
+style and form with a foretaste of Renaissance, the work of Gallucci, an
+almost unknown artist, but who was the great forerunner of Benvenuto
+Cellini----
+
+'He addressed himself all the time to me. Strange how exactly I remember
+every word he says! I could set down any conversation of his, word for
+word, from beginning to end; if there were any means of doing so, I
+could reproduce every modulation of his voice.
+
+'He showed us two or three little sketches he had made, and then began
+again describing the wonders of Vicomile with that warmth with which he
+always speaks of beautiful things and that enthusiasm for art which is
+one of his most potent attractions.
+
+'"I promised the Canonico to come back to-morrow. We will all go, will
+we not, Francesca? Donna Maria ought to see Vicomile!"
+
+'Oh, my name on his lips! If it were possible, I could reproduce the
+very movements of his lips in uttering each syllable of those two
+words--Donna Maria----But what I never could express is my own emotion
+on hearing it; could never explain the unknown, undreamed-of sensation
+awakened in me by the presence of this man.
+
+'We sat there till dinner-time. Contrary to her usual habit, Francesca
+seemed a little pensive and out of spirits. There were moments when
+heavy silence fell upon us. But between him and me there then occurred
+one of those _silent colloquies_ in which the soul exhales the Ineffable
+and hears the murmur of its thoughts. He said things to me then that
+made me sink back against the cushions of my chair faint with
+rapture--things that his lips will never repeat to me, that my ears will
+never hear.
+
+'In front of us, the cypresses, tipped with fire by the setting sun,
+stood up tall and motionless like votive candles. The sea was the colour
+of aloe leaves, dashed here and there with liquid turquoise; there was
+an indescribable delicacy of varying pallor--a diffusion of angelic
+light, in which each sail looked like an angel's wing upon the waters.
+And the harmony of faint and mingled perfumes seemed like the soul of
+the declining day.
+
+'Oh sweet and tranquil death of September!
+
+'Another month ended, lost, dropped away into the abyss of
+Time--Farewell!
+
+'I have lived more in this last fortnight than in fourteen years; and
+not one of my long weeks of unhappiness has ever equalled in sharpness
+of torture this one short week of passion. My heart aches, my head
+swims; in the depths of my being, I feel a something obscure and
+burning--a something that has suddenly awakened in me like a latent
+disease, and now begins to creep through my blood and into my soul in
+spite of myself, baffling every remedy--desire.
+
+'It fills me with shame and horror as at some dishonour, some sacrilege
+or outrage; it fills me with wild and desperate terror as at some
+treacherous enemy who will make use of secret paths to enter the citadel
+which are unknown to myself.
+
+'And here I sit in the night watches, and while I write these pages,
+with all the feverish ardour that lovers put into their love-letters, I
+cease to listen to the gentle breathing of my child. She sleeps in
+peace; she little knows how far away from her her mother's spirit is!
+
+'_October 1st._--I see much in him that I did not observe before. When
+he speaks, I cannot take my eyes off his mouth--the play of his lips and
+their colouring occupies my attention more than the sound or the sense
+of his words.
+
+'_October 2nd._--To-day is Saturday--just a week since the
+never-to-be-forgotten day, the 25th of September.
+
+'By some strange chance, although I no longer avoid being alone with
+him--for I am anxious now for the dread and heroical moment--by some
+strange chance, that moment has not yet occurred.
+
+'Francesca has always been with me the whole day long. This morning we
+had a ride along the road to Rovigliano, and we spent the best part of
+the afternoon at the piano. She made me play some sixteenth-century
+dance music, and then Clementi's famous Toccata and two or three
+Caprices of Scarlatti's, and, after that, I had to sing certain songs
+from Schumann's _Frauenliebe_--what contrasts!
+
+'Francesca has lost much of her old gaiety, she is not as she used to be
+in the first days of my stay here. She is often silent and preoccupied,
+and when she does laugh or make fun, her gaiety seems to me very forced.
+I said to her once. "Is something worrying you?"
+
+'"Why?" she answered with assumed surprise.
+
+'"Because you seem to me a little out of spirits lately."
+
+'"Out of spirits? oh, no, you are quite mistaken," she answered, and she
+laughed, but with an involuntary note of bitterness. This troubles me
+and causes me a vague sense of uneasiness.
+
+'We are going to Vicomile to-morrow afternoon.
+
+'He asked me--"Would it tire you too much to come on horseback? In that
+way we could cut right through the pine wood!"
+
+'So we are going to ride and Francesca will join us. The others,
+including Delfina, will come in the mail-coach.
+
+'What a strange state of mind I am in this evening! I feel a kind of
+dull and angry bitterness at the bottom of my heart, without knowing
+why--am impatient with myself, my life, the whole world--my nervous
+irritation rises, at times, to such a pitch, that I am seized with an
+insane desire to scream aloud, to dig my nails into my flesh, to bruise
+my fingers against the wall--any physical suffering would be better than
+this intolerable mental discomfort, this unbearable wretchedness. I feel
+as if I had a burning knot in my bosom, that my throat were closed by a
+sob I dared not give vent to--I am icy cold and burning hot by turns
+and, from time to time, a sudden pang darts through me, an irrational
+terror that I can neither shake off nor control. Thoughts and images
+flash suddenly across my brain, coming from I know not what ignoble
+depths of my soul.
+
+'_October 3rd._--How weak and miserable is the human soul, how utterly
+defenceless against the attacks of all that is least noble and least
+pure in us, and that slumbers in the obscurity of our unconscious life,
+in those unexplored abysses where dark dreams are born of hidden
+sensations!
+
+'A dream can poison a whole soul, a single involuntary thought is
+sufficient to corrupt and break down the force of will.
+
+'We are just starting for Vicomile. Delfina is in raptures.
+
+'It is the festival of Our Lady of the Rosary. Courage, my heart!
+
+'_October 4th._--I found no courage.
+
+'Yesterday was so full of trifling incidents and great emotions, so
+joyful and so sad, so strangely agitating that I am almost at a loss
+when I try to remember it all. And yet all--all other recollections pale
+and vanish before the one.
+
+'After having visited the tower and admired the monstrance, we prepared
+to return home at about half-past five. Francesca was tired and
+preferred going back in the coach to getting on horseback again. We
+followed them for a while, riding behind or beside them, while Delfina
+and Muriella waved long flowering bulrushes at us, laughing and
+threatening us with their splendid spears.
+
+'The evening was calm, not a breath of wind stirred. The sun was sinking
+behind the hill at Rovigliano in a sky all rosy-red, like a sunset in
+the Far East.
+
+'When we came in sight of the pine-wood, he suddenly said to me: "Shall
+we ride through it?"
+
+'The high road skirted the wood, describing a wide curve, at one part of
+which it almost touched the sea-shore. The wood was already growing dark
+and was full of deep-green twilight, but under the trees the pools
+gleamed with a pure and intense light, like fragments of a sky far
+fairer than the one above our heads.
+
+'Without giving me time to answer, he said to Francesca, "We are going
+to ride through the wood and shall join you at the other side, on the
+high road, by the bridge"--and he reined in his horse.
+
+'Why did I consent--why did I follow him? There was a sort of dazzle
+before my eyes. I felt as if I were under the influence of some nameless
+fascination, as if the landscape, the light, this incident, the whole
+combination of circumstances were not new to me, but things that had all
+happened to me before, in another existence, and were now only being
+repeated. The impression is quite indescribable. My will seemed
+paralysed. It was as when some incident of one's life reappears in a
+dream, but with added details that differ from the real circumstances. I
+shall never be able to adequately describe even a part of this strange
+phenomenon.
+
+'We rode in silence at a foot's pace; the cawing of the rooks, the dull
+beat of the horses' hoofs and their noisy breathing in no way disturbed
+the all-pervading peace that seemed to grow every minute deeper and more
+magical.
+
+'Ah, why did he break the spell we ourselves had woven?
+
+'He began to speak; he poured out upon me a flood of burning
+words--words which, in the silence of the wood, frightened me because
+they carried with them an impression of something preternatural,
+something indefinably weird and compelling. He was no longer the humble
+suppliant of that morning in the park, spoke no more of his diffident
+hopes, his half-mystical aspirations, his incurable sense of sorrow.
+This time he did not beg and entreat. It was the voice of passion, full
+of audacity and virile power, a voice I did not know in him.
+
+'"You love me, you love me--you cannot help but love me--tell me that
+you love me!"
+
+'His horse was close beside mine. I felt him brush me; I almost felt the
+breath of his burning words upon my cheek, and I thought I must swoon
+with anguish and fall into his arms.
+
+'"Tell me that you love me," he repeated obstinately, relentlessly.
+"Tell me that you love me!"
+
+'Under the terrible strain of his insistent voice, I believe I answered
+wildly--whether with a cry or a sob, I do not know--
+
+'"I love you, I love you, I love you!" and I set my horse at a gallop
+down the narrow rugged path between the crowded tree-trunks, unconscious
+of what I was doing.
+
+'He followed me crying--"Maria, Maria, stop--you will hurt yourself."
+
+'But I fled blindly on. I do not know how my horse managed to keep clear
+of the trees, I do not know why I was not thrown; I am incapable of
+retracing my impressions in that mad flight through the dark wood, past
+the gleaming patches of water. When at last I came out upon the road,
+near the bridge, I seemed to have come out of some hallucination.
+
+'"Do you want to kill yourself?" he said almost fiercely. We heard the
+sound of the approaching carriage and turned to meet it. He was going to
+speak to me again.
+
+'"Hush, for pity's sake," I entreated, for I felt I was at the end of my
+forces.
+
+'He was silent. Then, with an assurance that stupefied me, he said to
+Francesca--"Such a pity you did not come! It was perfectly enchanting."
+
+'And he went on talking as quietly and unconcernedly as if nothing had
+happened, even with a certain amount of gaiety. I was only too thankful
+for his dissimulation which screened me, for if I had been obliged to
+speak, I should inevitably have betrayed myself, and for both of us to
+have been silent would doubtless have aroused Francesca's suspicions.
+
+'A little further on, the road wound up the hill towards Schifanoja. Oh,
+the boundless melancholy of the evening! A new moon shone in the
+faintly-tinted, pale-green sky, where my eyes, and perhaps mine alone,
+detected a lingering rosy tinge--that same rosy light that gleamed upon
+the pools down in the pine wood.
+
+'_October 5th._--He knows now that I love him, and knows it from my own
+lips. Nothing is left for me but flight--this is what I have come to!
+
+'When he looks at me now, there is a strange gleam in the depths of his
+eyes that was not there before. To-day, while Francesca was absent for a
+moment, he took my hand and made as if he would kiss it. I managed to
+draw it away, but I saw his lips tremble; I caught, as it were, the
+reflection of the kiss that never left his lips, and the image of that
+kiss haunts me now--it haunts me--haunts me----
+
+'_October 6th._--On the 25th of September, on the marble seat in the
+arbutus wood, he said to me--"I know you do not love me and that you
+never will love me!" And on the 3rd of October--"You love me--you love
+me--you cannot help but love me----"
+
+'In Francesca's presence, he asked if I would allow him to make a study
+of my hands, and I consented. He will begin to-day.
+
+'I am nervous and frightened, as if I were going to expose my hands to
+some nameless ordeal.
+
+'Night. It has begun, the slow, sweet, unspeakable torture.
+
+'He drew with red and black chalk. My right hand lay on a piece of
+velvet; near me on the table stood a Corean vase, yellow and spotted
+like the skin of a python, and in the vase was a group of orchids,
+those grotesque flowers for which Francesca has so curious a
+predilection.
+
+'When I felt that I could no longer bear the ordeal, I looked at the
+flowers to distract my thoughts, and their strange, distorted shapes
+carried me to the distant countries of their birth, giving me a moment's
+respite from my haunting grief. He went on drawing in silence; his eyes
+passing continually from the paper to my hand. Two or three times he
+looked at the vase; at last, rising from his chair, he said--"Excuse
+me"--and lifting the vase, he carried it away and placed it on another
+table. I do not know why.
+
+'After that, he resumed his drawing with much greater freedom, as if
+relieved of an annoyance.
+
+'I cannot describe the sensation produced in me by his eyes. I felt as
+if not my hand, but a part of my soul were laid bare to his scrutinising
+gaze, that his eyes pierced to its very depths, exploring its most
+secret recesses. Never had my hand felt so alive, so expressive, so
+responsive to my heart, revealing so much that I would fain have kept
+secret. Under his gaze I felt it quiver imperceptibly but continuously,
+and the tremor spread to my innermost veins. When his gaze grew too
+intense, I was seized with an instinctive desire to withdraw my hand
+altogether, arising from a sense of shame.
+
+'Now and then, he would stop drawing and sit for quite an appreciable
+time with his eyes fixed, and then I had the impression that he was
+absorbing something of me through his pupils, or that he was caressing
+me with a touch that was softer than the velvet beneath my hand. At
+other times, while he bent over the drawing, transferring maybe into the
+lines what he had taken from me, a faint smile played round his mouth,
+so faint that I only just caught it. I do not know why, but that smile
+sent a pang of delight thrilling through my heart. Once or twice, I saw
+the image of a kiss appear again upon his lips.
+
+'At last, curiosity got the better of me and I said--"Well--what is
+it?"
+
+'Francesca was at the piano with her back turned to us, her fingers
+wandering over the keys, trying to remember Rameau's Gavotte _of the
+Yellow Ladies_ that I have played so often, and which will always be
+connected in my mind with my stay at Schifanoja. She muffled the notes
+with the soft pedal and broke off frequently. These interruptions and
+gaps in the melody which was so familiar to me and which my ear filled
+up each time, in advance, added immeasurably to my distress. All at
+once, she struck one note hard several times in succession as if under
+the spur of some nervous irritation; then she started up and came and
+bent over the drawing.
+
+'I looked at her--I understood it all.
+
+'This last drop was wanting in my cup of bitterness. God had still this
+last and cruelest trial of all reserved for me.--His will be done!
+
+'_October 7th._--I have now but one thought, one desire--to fly from
+here--to escape.
+
+'I have come to the end of my strength. This love is crushing me, is
+killing me, and the unexpected discovery I have made increases my
+wretchedness a thousand-fold. What are her feelings towards me? What
+does she think? So she loves him too?--and since when? Does he know it?
+Or has he no suspicion of the fact?
+
+'_Mio Dio! Mio Dio!_ I believe I am going out of my mind--all my
+strength of will is forsaking me. At long intervals there comes a pause
+in my torment, as when the wild elements of the tempest hold their
+breath for a moment, only to break forth again with redoubled fury. I
+sit then in a kind of stupor, with heavy head and my limbs feeling as
+bruised and tired as if I had been beaten, and while my pain gathers
+itself up for a fresh onslaught, I do not succeed in collecting
+sufficient strength to resist it.
+
+'What does she think of me? What does she think? How much does she know?
+
+'Oh, to be misjudged by her--my best, my dearest friend--the one to
+whom I have always been able to open my heart! This is my crowning
+grief, my bitterest trial--
+
+'I must speak to her before I go. She must know all from me, I must know
+all from her--that is only right and just.
+
+'Night. About five o'clock she proposed a drive along the Rovigliano
+road. We two went alone in the open carriage. I was trembling with
+agitation as I said to myself--"Here is my opportunity for speaking to
+her." But my nervousness deprived me of every vestige of courage. Did
+she expect me to confide in her? I cannot tell.
+
+'We sat silent for a long while, listening to the steady trot of the
+horses, looking at the trees and the meadows by the side of the road.
+From time to time, by a brief remark or a sign, she drew my attention to
+some detail of the autumnal landscape.
+
+'All the witchery of the Autumn concentrated itself into this hour. The
+slanting rays of the evening sun lit up the rich and sombre harmonies of
+the dying foliage. Gold, amber, saffron, violet, purple,
+sea-green--tints the most faded and the most violent mingled in one deep
+strain, not to be surpassed by any melody of Spring, however sweet.
+
+'"Look," she said, pointing to the acacias, "would you not say they were
+in flower?"
+
+'At last, after an interval of silence, to make a beginning I said:
+"Manuel is sure to be here by Saturday. I expect a telegram from him
+to-morrow, and we shall leave by the early train on Sunday. You have
+been very good to me while I have been with you--I am deeply grateful to
+you."
+
+'My voice broke, a flood of tenderness swelled my heart. She took my
+hand and clasped it tight without speaking or looking at me. We remained
+silent for a long time, holding one another by the hand.
+
+'Presently she asked--"How long will you be with your mother?"
+
+'"Till the end of the year, I hope--perhaps longer."
+
+'"As long as that?"
+
+'We fell silent again. By this time, I felt I should never have the
+courage to face an explanation; besides which, I felt that it was less
+necessary now. Francesca seemed to have come back to me, to understand
+me, to be once more the sweet kind sister of old. My sorrow drew out her
+sadness as the moon attracts the waters of the ocean.
+
+'"Listen!" she said.
+
+'The sound of women's voices, singing, floated over to us from the
+fields, a slow song, full and solemn as a Gregorian chant. Further on,
+we came in sight of the singers. They were coming away from a field of
+dried sunflowers; walking in single file like a religious procession,
+and the sunflowers on their long leafless stalks, their great discs
+stripped of their halo of petals and their wealth of seed, were like
+liturgic emblems or monstrances of pale gold.
+
+'My emotion waxed greater. The song spread wide through the evening air.
+We passed through Rovigliano, where the lamps were beginning to twinkle,
+and came out again upon the high road. The church bells rang softly
+behind us. A moist breeze rustled in the trees that cast a faint blue
+shadow on the white road, and in the air a shadow as liquid as water.
+
+'"Are you not cold?" she asked me, and she ordered the footman to spread
+a rug over us, and told the coachman to turn homewards.
+
+'In the belfry at Rovigliano, a bell tolled with deep slow strokes as
+for some solemn rite, and the wave of sound seemed to send a wave of
+cold through the air. With a simultaneous movement, we drew closer to
+one another, settling the rug more warmly over our knees, and a shiver
+ran through us both. The carriage entered the town at a walk.
+
+'"What can that bell be ringing for?" she murmured in a voice that
+hardly seemed like her own.
+
+'I answered--"I fancy it must be for the Viaticum."
+
+'And in fact, a little further on we saw the priest just entering a door
+while a clerk held the canopy over him, and two others stood upon the
+threshold, straight as candelabra, holding up lighted lanterns. A
+single window of the house was lighted up, the one behind which the
+dying Christian was awaiting Extreme Unction. Faint shadows flitted
+across the brightness of that pale yellow square on which was outlined
+the whole mysterious drama of Death.
+
+'The footman bent down from the box and asked in a low voice--"Who is
+it?"
+
+'The person addressed answered in dialect and mentioned a woman's name.
+
+'I would have liked to muffle the sound of the carriage wheels upon the
+stones, to have made our passage a silent one past the spot where a soul
+was about to take flight. Francesca, I am sure, shared my feeling.
+
+'The carriage turned into the road to Schifanoja and the horses set off
+at a brisk trot. The moon, ringed by a halo, shone like an opal in the
+milk-white sky. A train of cloud rose out of the sea and stretched away
+by degrees in spiral form, like a trail of smoke. The somewhat stormy
+sea drowned all other sounds with its roar. Never, I think, did a
+heavier sadness weigh upon two spirits.
+
+'I felt something wet upon my cold cheek, and turning to Francesca to
+see if she noticed that I was crying, I met her eyes--they were full of
+tears. And so we sat, side by side, with mute, convulsively closed lips,
+clasping one another's hand, the tears rolling silently drop by drop
+over our cheeks, both knowing that they were for him.
+
+'As we neared Schifanoja I dried my eyes, and she did the same, each
+striving to hide her own weakness.
+
+'He was standing in the hall with Delfina and Muriella looking out for
+us. Why did I feel a sudden vague distrust of him, as if some instinct
+warned me of hidden danger? What troubles are in store for me in the
+future? Shall I be able to escape from the passion that attracts and
+blinds me?
+
+'And yet, those few tears have given me much relief! I feel less broken,
+less scorched, more self-confident; and it affords me an indescribable
+fond pleasure to retrace again, for myself alone, that last drive, while
+Delfina sleeps, made happy by the storm of kisses I rained upon her
+face, and while the moon that so lately saw me weep smiles sadly through
+the window panes.
+
+'_October 8th._--Did I sleep last night--did I wake? I could not say.
+Through my brain, like thick dark shadows, flitted terrifying thoughts,
+insupportable images of torment; and my heart gave sudden throbs and
+bounds, and I would find myself staring wide-eyed into the darkness, not
+knowing whether I had just awakened from a dream or whether I had never
+been asleep at all. And this state of semi-consciousness--infinitely
+more unbearable than real sleeplessness--continued throughout the night.
+
+'Nevertheless, when I heard my little girl's morning call, I did not
+answer, but pretended to be sound asleep, so that I need not rise, so
+that I might remain a few minutes longer in bed and thus retard for a
+while the inexorable certainty of the realities of life. The torments of
+thought and imagination seemed to me less cruel than those, so
+impossible to foresee, which awaited me in these last two days.
+
+'A little while later, Delfina came in on tip-toe, holding her breath.
+She looked at me and then whispered to Dorothy, with a little fond
+tremor in her voice--
+
+'"She is fast asleep! We will not wake her!"
+
+'Night. I do not believe I have a spark of life left in me. As I came
+upstairs I felt, at each step, as if every drop of blood had left my
+veins. I am as weak as one at the point of death.
+
+'Courage! courage!--only a few hours more. Manuel will be here to-morrow
+morning. We shall leave on Sunday, and on Monday I shall be with my
+mother.
+
+'Just now, I returned him two or three books he had lent me. In the
+volume of Shelley I underlined with my nail the last two lines of a
+certain verse and put a mark in the page--
+
+    "And forget me, for I _can never_--
+    Be thine!"
+
+'_October 9th._--Night. All day long he has sought an opportunity for
+speaking to me. His distress is evident. And all day long I have done my
+utmost to avoid him, so that he might not sow fresh seeds of pain, of
+desire, of regret and remorse in my heart. And I have triumphed--I was
+strong and brave--My God, I thank Thee!
+
+'This night is the last. To-morrow we leave--all will be over.
+
+'All will be over? A voice out of the depths cries unto me--I do not
+understand its words, but I know that it tells me of coming disaster,
+unknown but inevitable, mysterious and inexorable as death. The future
+is lugubrious as a cemetery full of open graves, ready to receive the
+dead, with here and there a flicker of pale torches which I can scarce
+distinguish, and I know not if they are there to lure me on to
+destruction or to show me to a path of safety.
+
+'I have re-read my Journal slowly, carefully, from the 15th of
+September, the day of my arrival. What a difference between the first
+entry and the last!
+
+'I wrote:--I shall wake up in the house of a friend, to the enjoyment of
+Francesca's cordial hospitality, in Schifanoja, where the roses are so
+fair and the cypresses so tall and grand. I shall wake with the prospect
+of some weeks of peace before me--twenty days or more of congenial
+intellectual companionship--Alas! where is that promised peace? But the
+roses, the beautiful roses, were they, too, faithless to their promise?
+Did I perhaps, on that first night in the loggia, open my heart too wide
+to their seductive fragrance while Delfina slept? And now the October
+moon floods the sky with its cold radiance, and through the closed
+windows I see the sharp points of the cypresses, all sombre and
+motionless, and on that night they seemed to touch the stars.
+
+'Of that prelude there is but one phrase which finds a place in this sad
+finale: So many hairs on my head, so many thorns in my woeful destiny!
+
+'I am going, and what will he do when I am far away? What will Francesca
+do?
+
+'The change in Francesca still remains incomprehensible,
+inexplicable--an enigma that torments and bewilders me. She loves
+him--but since when?--and does he know it? Confess, oh, my soul, to this
+fresh misery. A new poison is added to that already infecting me--I am
+jealous!
+
+'But I am prepared for any suffering, even the most horrible; I know
+well the martyrdom that awaits me; I know that the anguish of these days
+is as nought compared to that which I must face presently, the terrible
+cross on which my soul must hang. I am ready. All I ask, oh my God, is a
+respite, a short respite for the hours that remain to me here. To-morrow
+I shall have need of all my strength.
+
+'How strangely sometimes the incidents of one's life repeat themselves!
+This evening in the drawing-room, I seemed to have gone back to the 16th
+of September, when I first played and sang and my thoughts began to
+occupy themselves with him. This evening again I was seated at the
+piano, and the same subdued light illumined the room, and next door
+Manuel and the Marchese were at the card-table. I played the Gavotte _of
+the Yellow Ladies_, of which Francesca is so fond and which I heard some
+one trying to play on the 16th of September while I sat up in my room
+and began my nightly vigils of unrest.
+
+'He, I am sure, is not asleep. When I came upstairs, he went in and took
+the Marchese's place opposite to my husband. Are they playing still?
+Doubtless he is thinking and his heart aches while he plays. What are
+his thoughts?--what are his sufferings?
+
+'I cannot sleep. I shall go out into the loggia. I want to see if they
+are still playing, or if he has gone to his room. His windows are at the
+corner, in the second story.
+
+'It is a clear, mild night. There are lights still in the card-room. I
+stayed a long time in the loggia looking down at the light shining out
+against the cypresses and mingling with the silvery whiteness of the
+moon. I am trembling from head to foot. I cannot describe the almost
+tragic effect of those lighted windows behind which the two men are
+playing, opposite to one another, in the deep silence of the night,
+scarcely broken by the dull sob of the sea. And they will perhaps play
+on till morning, if he will pander so far to my husband's terrible
+failing. So we shall all three wake till the dawn and take no rest, each
+a prey to his own passion.
+
+'But what is he really thinking of? Of what nature is his pain? What
+would I not give, at this moment, to see him, to be able to gaze at him
+till the day breaks, even if it were only through the window, in the
+night dews, trembling, as I do now, from head to foot. The maddest,
+wildest thoughts rush through my brain like flashes of lightning,
+dazzling and confusing me. I feel the prompting of some evil spirit to
+do some rash and irreparable thing, I feel as if I were treading on the
+edge of perdition. It would, I feel, lift the great weight from my
+heart, would take this suffocating knot from my throat if, at this
+moment, I could cry aloud, into the silence of the night, with all the
+strength of my soul--"I love him! I love him! I love him!"'
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Two or three days after the departure of the Ferres, Sperelli and his
+cousins returned to Rome, Donna Francesca, contrary to her custom,
+wishing to shorten her stay at Schifanoja.
+
+After a brief stay at Naples, Andrea reached Rome on the 24th of
+October, a Sunday, in the first heavy morning rain of the Autumn season.
+He experienced an extraordinary pleasure in returning to his apartments
+in the Casa Zuccari, his tasteful and charming _buen retiro_. There he
+seemed to find again some portion of himself, something he had missed.
+Nothing was altered; everything about him retained, in his eyes, that
+indescribable look of life which material objects assume, amongst which
+one has lived and loved and suffered. His old servants, Jenny and
+Terenzio, had taken the utmost care of everything, and Stephen had
+attended to every detail likely to conduce to his master's comfort.
+
+It was raining. Andrea went to the window and stood for some time
+looking out upon his beloved Rome. The piazza of the Trinita de' Monti
+was solitary and deserted, left to the guardianship of its obelisk. The
+trees along the wall that joins the church to the Villa Medici, already
+half stripped of their leaves, rustled mournfully in the wind and the
+rain. The Pincio alone still shone green, like an island in a lake of
+mist.
+
+And as he gazed, one sentiment dominated all the others in his heart;
+the sudden and lively re-awakening of his old love for Rome--fairest
+Rome--that city of cities, immense, imperial, unique--like the sea, for
+ever young, for ever new, for ever mysterious.
+
+'What time is it?' Andrea asked of Stephen.
+
+It was about nine o'clock. Feeling somewhat tired, he determined to have
+a sleep: also, that he would see no one that day and spend the evening
+quietly at home. Seeing that he was about to re-enter the life of the
+great world of Rome, he wished, before taking up the old round of
+activity, to indulge in a little meditation, a slight preparation; to
+lay down certain rules, to discuss with himself his future line of
+conduct.
+
+'If any one calls,' he said to Stephen, 'say that I have not yet
+returned; and let the porter know it too. Tell James I shall not want
+him to-day, but he can come round for orders this evening. Bring me
+lunch at three--something very light--and dinner at nine. That is all.
+
+He fell asleep almost immediately. The servant woke him at two and
+informed him that, just before twelve o'clock, the Duke of Grimiti had
+called, having heard from the Marchesa d'Ateleta that he had returned to
+town.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Il Signor Duca left word that he would call again in the afternoon.'
+
+'Is it still raining? Open the shutters wide.'
+
+The rain had stopped, the sky was lighter. A band of pale sunshine
+streamed into the room and spread over the tapestry representing _The
+Virgin with the Holy Child and Stefano Sperelli_, a work of art brought
+by Giusto Sperelli from Flanders in 1508. Andrea's eyes wandered slowly
+over the walls, rejoicing in the beautiful hangings, the harmonious
+tints; and all these things so familiar and so dear to him seemed to
+offer him a welcome. The sight of them afforded him intense pleasure,
+and then the image of Maria Ferres rose up before him.
+
+He raised himself a little on the pillows, lit a cigarette and abandoned
+himself luxuriously to his meditations. An unwonted sense of comfort and
+well-being filled his body, while his mind was in its happiest vein. His
+thoughts mingled with the rings of smoke in the subdued light in which
+all forms and colours assume a pleasing vagueness.
+
+Instead of reverting to the days that were past, his thoughts carried
+him forward into the future.--He would see Donna Maria again in two or
+three months--perhaps much sooner; there was no saying. Then he would
+resume the broken thread of that love which held for him so many obscure
+promises, so many secret attractions. To a man of culture, Donna Maria
+Ferres was the Ideal Woman, Baudelaire's _Amie avec des hanches_, the
+perfect _Consolatrix_, the friend who can hold out both comfort and
+pardon. Though she had marked those sorrowful lines in the volume of
+Shelley, she had, most assuredly, said very different words in her
+heart. 'I can never be thine!' Why _never_? Ah, there had been too much
+passionate intensity for that in the voice in which she answered him
+that day in the wood at Vicomile--'I love you! I love you! I love you!'
+
+He could hear her voice now, that never-to-be-forgotten voice!
+
+Stephen knocked at the door. 'May I remind the Signor Conte that it is
+three o'clock?'
+
+Andrea rose and passed into the octagonal room to dress. The sun shone
+through the lace window screens and sparkled on the Hispano-Mauresque
+tiles, the innumerable toilet articles of crystal and silver, the
+bas-reliefs on the antique sarcophagus; its dancing reflections
+imparting a delightful sense of movement to the air. He felt in the best
+of spirits, completely cured, full of the joy and the vivacity of life.
+He was inexpressibly happy to be back in his home once more. All that
+was most frivolous, most capricious, most worldly in him awoke with a
+bound. It was as if the surrounding objects had the power to evoke in
+him the man of former days. His sensual curiosity, his elasticity, his
+ubiquity of mind reappeared. He already began to feel the necessity of
+expansion, of mixing in the world of pleasure and with his friends.
+
+He discovered that he was very hungry, and ordered the servant to bring
+the lunch at once. He rarely dined at home, but for special
+occasions--some _recherche_ lunch or private little supper--he had a
+dining-room decorated with eighteenth century Neapolitan tapestries
+which Carlo Sperelli had ordered of Pietro Dinanti in 1766 from designs
+by Storace. The seven wall panels represented episodes of Bacchic love,
+the portieres and the draperies above the doors and windows having
+groups of fruit and flowers. Shades of gold--pale or
+tawny--predominated, and mingling with the warm, pearly flesh-tints and
+sombre blues, formed a harmony of colour that was both delicate and
+sumptuous.
+
+'When the Duke of Grimiti comes back, show him up,' he said to the
+servant.
+
+Into this room too, the sun, sinking towards the Monte Mario, shot his
+dazzling rays. You could hear the rumble of the carriages in the piazza
+of the Trinita de' Monti. The rain over, it looked as if all the
+luminous gold of the Roman October were spread out over the city.
+
+'Open the window,' he said to the servant.
+
+The noise of the carriage wheels was louder now, a soft damp breeze
+stirred the curtains lightly.
+
+'Divine Rome!' he thought as he looked at the sky between the wide
+curtains.
+
+An irresistible curiosity drew him to the open window.
+
+Rome appeared, all pearly gray, spread out before him, its lines a
+little blurred like a faded picture, under a Claude Lorrain sky,
+sprinkled with ethereal clouds, their noble grouping lending to the
+clear spaces between an indescribable delicacy, as flowers lend a new
+grace to the verdure which surrounds them. On the distant heights the
+gray deepened gradually to amethyst. Long trailing vapours slid through
+the cypresses of the Monte Mario like waving locks through a comb of
+bronze. Close by, the pines of the Monte Pincio spread their sun-gilded
+canopies. Below, on the piazza, the obelisk of Pius VI. looked like a
+pillar of agate. Under this rich autumnal light everything took on a
+sumptuous air.
+
+Divine Rome!
+
+He feasted his eyes on the prospect before him. Looking down, he saw a
+group of red-robed clerics pass along by the church; then the black
+coach of a prelate with its two black, long-tailed horses; then other
+open carriages containing ladies and children. He recognised the
+Princess of Ferentino with Barbarella Viti, followed by the Countess of
+Lucoli driving a pair of ponies and accompanied by her great Danish
+hound. A perturbing breath of the old life passed over his spirit,
+awakening indeterminate desires in his heart.
+
+He left the window and returned to his lunch. The sun shone on the wall
+and lit up a dance of satyrs round a Silenus.
+
+'The Duke of Grimiti and two other gentlemen,' announced the servant.
+
+The Duke entered with Ludovico Barbarisi and Giulio Musellaro. Andrea
+hastened forward to meet them and they greeted him warmly.
+
+'You, Giulio!' exclaimed Sperelli, who had not seen his friend for more
+than two years. How long have you been in Rome?'
+
+'Only a week. I was going to write to you to Schifanoja, but thought I
+would rather wait till you came back. And how are you? You are looking a
+little thin, but very well. It was only when I got back to Rome that I
+heard of your affair; otherwise, I would certainly have come from India
+to offer you my services. At the beginning of May, I was at Padmavati in
+the Bahara. What a heap of things I have to tell you!'
+
+'And so have I!'
+
+They shook hands heartily a second time. Sperelli seemed overjoyed. None
+of his friends were so dear to him as Musellaro, for his noble
+character, his keen and penetrating mind and rare culture.
+
+'Ruggiero--Ludovico--sit down. Giulio, will you sit here?'
+
+He offered them tea, cigarettes, liqueurs. The conversation grew very
+lively. Grimiti and Barbarisi gave the news of Rome, especially the more
+spicy items of society gossip. The aroma of the tea mingled with that of
+the tobacco.
+
+'I have brought you a chest of tea,' said Musellaro to Sperelli, 'and
+much better tea too than your famous Kien Loung used to drink.'
+
+'Ah, do you remember, in London, how he used to make tea after the
+poetical method of the Great Emperor?'
+
+'I say,' said Grimiti, 'do you know that the fair Clara Green is in
+Rome? I saw her on Sunday at the Villa Borghese. She recognised me and
+stopped her carriage to speak to me. She is as lovely as ever. You
+remember her passion for you, and how she went on when she thought you
+were in love with Constance Landbrooke? She instantly asked for news of
+you.'
+
+'I should be very pleased to see her again. Does she still dress in
+green and wear sunflowers in her hat?
+
+'Oh no. She has apparently abandoned the aesthetic for good and all. She
+goes in for feathers now. On Sunday, she was wearing an enormous hat a
+la Montpensier with a perfectly fabulous feather in it.'
+
+'The season is in full swing, I suppose?'
+
+'Earlier than usual this year, both as to saints and sinners.'
+
+'Which of the saints are already in Rome?'
+
+'Almost all--Giulia Moceto, Barbarella Viti, the Princess of Micigliano,
+Laura Miano, the Marchesa Massa d'Alba, the Countess Lucoli----'
+
+'I saw her just now from the window, driving. And I saw your cousin too
+with Barbarella Viti.'
+
+'My cousin is only here till to-morrow, then she goes back to Frascati.
+On Wednesday, she gives a kind of garden party at the villa in the style
+of the Princess of Sagan. Costume is not absolutely _de rigueur_, but
+the ladies will all wear Louis XV. or Directoire hats. We are going.'
+
+'You are not leaving Rome again so soon, I hope?' Grimiti asked of
+Sperelli.
+
+'I shall stay till the beginning of November. Then I am going to France
+for a fortnight to see about some horses. I shall be back in Rome about
+the end of the month.'
+
+'Talking of horses,' said Ludovico, 'Leonetto Lanza wants to sell
+_Campomorto_. You know it--a magnificent animal, a first-rate jumper.
+That would be something for you.'
+
+'How much does he want for it?'
+
+'Fifteen thousand lire, I think.'
+
+'Well, we might see----'
+
+'Leonetto is going to be married directly. He got engaged this summer at
+Aix-les-Bains.'
+
+'I forgot to tell you,' said Musellaro, 'that Galeazzo Secinaro sends
+you his remembrances. We travelled back from India together. If you only
+knew of all Galeazzo's doughty deeds on the journey! He is at Palermo
+now, but he will be in Rome in January.'
+
+'And Gino Bomminaco begs to be remembered to you,' added Barbarisi.
+
+'Ah, ha!' exclaimed the duke with a burst of laughter, 'you should get
+Gino to tell you the story of his adventure with Donna Giulia Moceto.
+You are, I fancy, in a position to give us some details on the subject
+of Donna Giulia.'
+
+Ludovico, too, began to laugh.
+
+'Oh, I know,' broke in Musellaro, 'you have made the most tremendous
+conquests in Rome. _Gratulator tibi_!'
+
+'But tell me--do tell me about this adventure,' asked Andrea with
+impatient curiosity.
+
+These subjects excited him. Encouraged by his friends, he launched forth
+into a discourse on female beauty, displaying the profound knowledge and
+fervour of a connoisseur, taking a pleasure in using the most
+highly-coloured expressions, with the subtle distinctions of an artist
+and a libertine. Indeed, had any one taken the trouble to write down the
+conversation of the four young men within these walls, hung with the
+voluptuous scenes of the Bacchic tapestries, it might well have formed
+the _Breviarium arcanum_ of upper-class corruption at the end of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+The shades of evening were falling, but the air was still permeated with
+light as a sponge absorbs the water. Through the windows, one caught a
+glimpse of the horizon and a band of orange against which the cypresses
+of the Monte Mario stood out sharply like the teeth of a great ebony
+rake. Ever and anon, came the cawing of the rooks, assembling in groups
+on the roof of the Villa Medici before descending on the Villa Borghese
+and into the narrow Valley of Sleep.
+
+'What are you going to do this evening?' Barbarisi asked Andrea.
+
+'I really don't know.'
+
+'Well, then, come with us--dinner at eight, at Doney's, to inaugurate
+his new restaurant at the Teatro Nazionale.'
+
+'Yes, come with us, do come with us!' entreated Giulio Musellaro.
+
+'Besides the three of us,' continued the duke, 'there will be Giulia
+Arici, Bebe Silva and Maria Fortuna--That reminds me--capital idea!--you
+bring Clara Green.'
+
+'A capital idea!' echoed Ludovico Barbarisi.
+
+'And where shall I find Clara Green?'
+
+'At the Hotel de l'Europe, close by, in the Piazza di Spagna. A note
+from you would put her in the seventh heaven. She is certain to give up
+any other engagement she may have.'
+
+Andrea was quite agreeable to the plan.
+
+'But it would be better if I called on her,' he said. 'She is pretty
+sure to be in now. Don't you think so, Ruggiero?'
+
+'Well, dress quick and come out with us now.'
+
+Clara Green had just come in. She received Andrea with childish delight.
+No doubt she would have preferred to dine alone with him, but she
+accepted the invitation without hesitating, wrote a note to excuse
+herself from a previous engagement, and sent the key of her box at the
+theatre to a lady friend. She seemed overjoyed. She told him a string of
+sentimental stories and vowed that she had never been able to forget
+him; holding Andrea's hands in hers while she talked.
+
+I love you more than words can say, Andrew:
+
+She was still young. With her pure and regular profile, her pale gold
+hair parted and knotted very low on her neck, she looked like a beauty
+in a Keepsake. A certain affectation of aestheticism clung to her since
+her liaison with the poet-painter Adolphus Jeckyll, a disciple in poetry
+of Keats, in painting of Holman Hunt; a composer of obscure sonnets, a
+painter of subjects from the _Vita Nuova_. She had sat to him for a
+_Sibylla Palmifera_ and a _Madonna with the Lily_. She had also sat to
+Andrea for a study of the head of Isabella in Boccaccio's story. Art
+therefore had conferred upon her the stamp of nobility. But, at bottom,
+she possessed no spiritual qualities whatsoever; she even became
+tiresome in the long-run by reason of that sentimental romanticism so
+often affected by English _demi-mondaines_ which contrasts so strangely
+with the depravity of their licentiousness.
+
+'Who would have thought that we should ever be together again, Andrew?'
+
+An hour later, Andrea left her and returned to the Palazzo Zuccari by
+the little flight of steps leading from the Piazza Mignanelli to the
+Trinita. The murmur of the city floated up the solitary little stairway
+through the mild air of the October evening. The stars twinkled in a
+cool pure sky. Down below, at the Palazzo Casteldelfina, the shrubs
+inside the little gate cast vague uncertain shadows in the mysterious
+light, like marine plants waving at the bottom of an aquarium. From the
+palace, through a lighted window with red curtains, came the tinkle of a
+piano. The church bells were ringing. Andrea felt his heart suddenly
+grow heavy. The recollection of Donna Maria came back to him with a
+rush, filling him with a dim sense of regret, almost of remorse. What
+was she doing at this moment? Thinking? Suffering? Deep sadness fell
+upon him. He felt as if something in the depths of his heart had taken
+flight--he could not define what it was, but it affected him as some
+irreparable loss.
+
+He thought of his plan of the morning--an evening of solitude in the
+rooms to which some day perhaps she might come, an evening, sad yet
+sweet, in company with remembrances and dreams, in company with her
+spirit, an evening of meditation and self-communings. In truth, he had
+kept well to his promises! He was on his way to a dinner with friends
+and _demi-mondaines_ and, doubtless, would go home with Clara Green
+afterwards.
+
+His regret was so poignant, so intolerable, that he dressed with
+unwonted rapidity, jumped into his brougham and arrived at the hotel
+before the appointed time. He found Clara ready and waiting, and offered
+her a drive round the streets of Rome to pass the time till eight
+o'clock.
+
+They drove through the Via del Babuino, round the obelisk in the Piazza
+del Popolo, along the Corso and to the right down the Via della
+Fontanella di Borghese, returning by the Montecitorio to the Corso which
+they followed as far as the Piazza di Venezia and so to the Teatro
+Nazionale. Clara kept up an incessant chatter, bending, every other
+minute, towards her companion to press a kiss on the corner of his
+mouth, screening the furtive caress behind a fan of white feathers which
+gave out a delicate odour of 'white rose.' But Andrea appeared not to
+hear her, and even her caress only drew from him a slight smile.
+
+'_Che pensi?_' she asked, pronouncing the Italian words with a certain
+hesitation which was very taking.
+
+'Nothing,' returned Andrea, taking up one of her ungloved hands and
+examining the rings.
+
+_'Chi lo sa!_' she sighed, throwing a vast amount of expression into
+these three words, which foreign women pick up at once, because they
+imagine that they contain all the pensive melancholy of Italian love.
+'_Chi lo sa!_'
+
+With a sudden change of humour, Andrea kissed her on the ear, slipped an
+arm round her waist and proceeded to say a host of foolish things to
+her. The Corso was very lively, the shop windows resplendent,
+newspaper-vendors yelled, public and private vehicles crossed the path
+of their carriage; all the stir and animation of Roman evening life was
+in full swing from the Piazza Colonna to the Piazza di Venezia.
+
+It was ten minutes past eight by the time they reached Doney's. The
+other guests were already there. Andrea Sperelli greeted the assembled
+company, and taking Clara Green by the hand--
+
+'This,' he said, 'is Miss Clara Green, _ancilla Domini, Sibylla
+palmifera, candida puella_.'
+
+'_Ora pro nobis!_' replied Musellaro, Barbarisi, and Grimiti in chorus.
+
+The women laughed though they did not understand. Clara smiled, and
+slipping out of her cloak appeared in a white dress, quite simple and
+short, with a V-shaped opening back and front, a knot of sea-green
+ribbon on her left shoulder, and emeralds in her ears, perfectly
+unabashed by the triple scrutiny of Giulia Arici, Bebe Silva and Maria
+Fortuna.
+
+Musellaro and Grimiti were old acquaintances; Barbarisi was introduced.
+
+Andrea proceeded--'Mercedes Silva, surnamed Bebe--_chica pero qualsa_.
+
+'Maria Fortuna, a veritable _Fortuna publica_ for our Rome which has the
+good fortune to possess her.'
+
+Then, turning to Barbarisi--'Do us the honour to present us to this lady
+who is, if I am not mistaken, the divine Giulia Farnese.'
+
+'No--Arici,' Giulia broke in.
+
+'Oh, I beg your pardon, but really, to believe that, I should have to
+call upon all my powers of credulity and to consult Pinturicchio in the
+Fifth Room.'
+
+He uttered these absurdities with a grave smile, amusing himself by
+bewildering and teasing these pretty fools. In the _demi-monde_ he
+adopted a manner and style entirely his own, using grotesque phrases,
+launching the most ridiculous paradoxes or atrocious impertinences under
+cover of the ambiguity of his words; and all this in most original
+language, rich in a thousand different flavours, like a Rabelaisian
+_olla podrida_ full of strong spices and succulent morsels.
+
+'Pinturicchio,' asked Giulia turning to Barbarisi; 'who's that?'
+
+'Pinturicchio,' exclaimed Andrea, 'oh, a sort of feeble house-painter
+who once took it into his head to paint your picture on a door in the
+Pope's apartments. Never mind him--he is dead.'
+
+'Dead? How?'
+
+'In a most appalling manner! His wife's lover was a soldier from Perugia
+in garrison at Sienna--ask Ludovico--he knows all about it, but has
+never liked to tell you, for fear of hurting your feelings. Allow me to
+inform you, Bebe, that the Prince of Wales does not begin to smoke till
+between the second and third courses--never sooner. You are
+anticipating.'
+
+Bebe Silva had lighted a cigarette and was eating oysters, while she let
+the smoke curl through her nostrils. She was like a restless schoolboy,
+a little depraved hermaphrodite; pale and thin, the brightness of her
+eyes heightened by fever and kohl, with lips that were too red, and
+short and rather woolly hair that covered her head like an astrachan
+cap. Fixed tightly in her left eye was a single eye-glass; she wore a
+high stiff collar, a white necktie, an open waistcoat, a little black
+coat of masculine cut and a gardenia in her button-hole. She affected
+the manners of a dandy and spoke in a deep husky voice. And just therein
+lay the secret of her attraction--in this imprint of vice, of depravity,
+of abnormity in her appearance, her attitudes and her words. _Sal y
+pimienta_.
+
+Maria Fortuna, on the contrary, was of somewhat bovine type, a Madame de
+Parabere with a tendency to stoutness.
+
+Like the fair mistress of the Regent, she possessed a very white skin,
+one of those opaque white complexions which seem only to flourish and
+improve on sensual pleasure. Her liquid violet eyes swam in a faint blue
+shadow; and her lips, always a little parted, disclosed a vague gleam of
+pearl behind their soft rosy line, like a half-opened shell.
+
+Giulia Arici took Andrea's fancy very much on account of her
+golden-brown tints and her great velvety eyes of that soft deep
+chestnut that sometimes shows tawny gleams. The somewhat fleshy nose,
+and the full, dewy scarlet, very firm lips gave the lower part of her
+face a frankly animal look. Her eye-teeth, which were too prominent,
+raised her upper lip a little and she continually ran the point of her
+tongue along the edge to moisten it, like the thick petal of a rose
+running over a row of little white almonds.
+
+'Giulia,' said Andrea with his eyes on her mouth, 'Saint Bernard uses,
+in one of his sermons, an epithet which would suit you marvellously. And
+I'll be bound you don't know this either.'
+
+Giulia laughed her sonorous rather vacant laugh, exhaling, in the
+excitement of her hilarity, a more poignant perfume, like a scented
+shrub when it is shaken.
+
+'What will you give me,' continued Andrea, 'if I extract from the holy
+sermon a voluptuous motto to fit you?'
+
+'I don't know,' she replied laughing, holding a glass of Chablis in her
+long slender fingers. 'Anything you like.'
+
+'The substantive of the adjective.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'We will come back to that presently. The word is: _linguatica_--Messer
+Ludovico, you can add this clause to your litanies--'_Rosa linguatica,
+glube nos_.'
+
+'What a pity,' said Musellaro, 'that you are not at the table of a
+sixteenth-century prince, sitting between a Violante and an Imperia with
+Pietro Aretino, Giulio Romano, and Marc' Antonio!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The year was dying gracefully. A late wintry sun filled the sky over
+Rome with a soft, mild, golden light that made the air feel almost
+spring-like. The streets were full as on a Sunday in May. A stream of
+carriages passed and repassed rapidly through the Piazza Barberini and
+the Piazza di Spagna, and from thence a vague and continuous rumble
+mounted to the Trinita de' Monti and the Via Sistina and even faintly
+reached the apartments of the Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+The rooms began slowly to fill with the scent exhaled from numberless
+vases of flowers. Full-blown roses hung their heavy heads over crystal
+vases that opened like diamond lilies on a golden stem, similar to those
+standing behind the Virgin in the _tondo_ of Botticelli in the Borghese
+Gallery. No other shape of vase is to be compared with this for
+elegance; in that diaphanous prison, the flowers seemed to etherealise
+and had more the air of a religious than an amatory offering.
+
+For Andrea Sperelli was expecting Elena Muti.
+
+He had met her only yesterday morning in the Via Condotti, where she was
+looking at the shops. She had returned to Rome a day or two before,
+after her long and mysterious absence. They had both been considerably
+agitated by the unexpected encounter, but the publicity of the street
+compelled them to treat one another with ceremonious, almost cold
+politeness. However, he had said with a grave, half-mournful air,
+looking her full in the eyes--'I have much to say to you, Elena; will
+you come to my rooms to-morrow? Everything is just as it used to
+be--nothing is changed.' To which she replied quite simply--'Very well,
+I will come. You may expect me about four o'clock. I too have something
+to say to you--but leave me now.'
+
+That she should have accepted the invitation so promptly, without demur,
+without imposing any conditions or seemingly attaching the smallest
+importance to the matter, roused a certain vague suspicion in Andrea's
+mind. Was she coming as friend or lover?--to renew old ties or to
+destroy all hope of such a thing for ever? What vicissitudes had not
+occurred in this woman's soul during the last two years? Of that he was
+necessarily ignorant, but he had carried away with him the thrill of
+emotion called up in him by Elena's glance when they suddenly met in the
+street and he bent his head in greeting before her. It was the same look
+as of old--so tender, so deep, so infinitely seductive from under the
+long lashes.
+
+Everything in the arrangement of the rooms showed evidences of special
+loving care. Logs of juniper wood burned brightly on the hearth; the
+little tea-table stood ready with its cups and saucers of Castel-Durante
+majolica, of antique shape and inimitable grace, whereon were depicted
+mythological subjects by Luzio Dolci, with lines from Ovid underneath in
+black characters and a running hand. The light from the windows was
+tempered by heavy curtains of red brocade embroidered all over with
+silver pomegranates, trailing leaves and mottos. The declining sun, as
+it caught the window-panes, cast the shadow of the lace blinds on the
+carpet.
+
+The clock of the Trinita struck half-past three. He had half an hour
+still to wait. Andrea rose from the sofa where he had been lying and
+opened one of the windows; he wandered aimlessly about the room, took up
+a book, read a few lines and threw it down again; looked about him
+undecidedly as if searching for something. The suspense was so trying
+that he felt the necessity of rousing himself, of counteracting his
+mental disquietude by physical means. He went over to the fireplace,
+stirred up the logs and put on a fresh one. The glowing mass collapsed,
+sending up a shower of sparks, and part of it rolled out as far as the
+fender. The flames broke into a quantity of little tongues of blue fire,
+springing up and disappearing fitfully, while the broken ends of the log
+smoked.
+
+The sight brought back certain memories to him. In days gone by Elena
+had been fond of lingering over this fireside. She expended much art and
+ingenuity in piling the wood high on the fire-dogs, grasping the heavy
+tongs in both hands and leaning her head slightly back to avoid the
+sparks. Her hands were small and very supple, with that tendril-like
+flexibility, so to speak, of a Daphne at the very first onset of the
+fabled metamorphose.
+
+Scarcely were these matters arranged to her satisfaction than the logs
+would catch and send forth a sudden blaze, and the warm ruddy light
+would struggle for a moment with the icy gray shades of evening
+filtering through the windows. The sharp fumes of the burning wood
+seemed to rise to her head, and facing the glowing mass Elena would be
+seized with fits of childish glee. She had a rather cruel habit of
+pulling all the flowers to pieces and scattering them over the carpet at
+the end of each of her visits and then stand ready to go, fastening a
+glove or a bracelet, and smile in the midst of the devastation she had
+wrought.
+
+Nothing was changed since then. A host of memories were associated with
+these things which Elena had touched, on which her eyes had rested, and
+scenes of that time rose up vividly and tumultuously before him. After
+nearly two years' absence, Elena was going to cross his threshold once
+more. In half an hour, she would be seated in that chair--a little out
+of breath at first, as of yore--would have removed her veil--be
+speaking. All these familiar objects would hear the sound of her voice
+again--perhaps even her laugh--after two long years.
+
+'How shall I receive her--what shall I say?'
+
+He was quite sincere in his anxiety and nervousness, for he had really
+begun to love this woman once more, but the expression of his
+sentiments, whether verbal or otherwise, was ever with him such an
+artificial matter, so far removed from truth and simplicity, that he had
+recourse to these preparations from pure habit even when, as was the
+case now, he was sincerely and deeply moved.
+
+He tried to imagine the scene beforehand, to compose some phrases; he
+looked about him in the room, considering where would be the most
+appropriate spot for the interview. Then he went over to a looking-glass
+to see if his face were as pale as befitted the occasion, and his gaze
+rested complacently on his forehead, just where the hair began at the
+temples and where, in the old days, Elena was often wont to press a
+delicate kiss. In matters of love, his vitiated and effeminate vanity
+seized upon every advantage of personal grace or of dress to heighten
+the charm of his appearance, and he knew how to extract the greatest
+amount of pleasure therefrom. The chief reason of his unfailing success
+lay in the fact that, in the game of love, he shrank from no artifice,
+no duplicity, no falsehood that might further his cause. A great portion
+of his strength lay in his capacity for deception.
+
+'What shall I do--what shall I say when she comes?'
+
+His mind was all undecided and yet the minutes were flying. Besides, he
+had no idea in what frame of mind Elena might arrive.
+
+It wanted but two or three minutes now to the hour. His excitement was
+so great that he felt half suffocated. He returned to the window and
+looked out at the steps of the Trinita. She used always to come up those
+steps, and when she reached the top, would halt for a moment before
+rapidly crossing the square in front of the Casa Casteldelfina. Through
+the silence, he often heard the tapping of her light footsteps on the
+pavement below.
+
+The clock struck four. The rumble of carriage wheels came up from the
+Piazza di Spagna and the Pincio. A great many people were strolling
+under the trees in front of the Villa Medici. Two women seated on a
+stone bench beside the church were keeping watch over some children
+playing round the obelisk, which shone rosy red under the sunset, and
+cast a long, slanting, blue-gray shadow.
+
+The air freshened as the sun sank lower. Farther off, the city stood out
+golden against the colourless clear sky, which made the cypresses on the
+Monte Mario look jet black.
+
+Andrea started. A shadow stole up the little flight of steps beside the
+Casa Casteldelfina leading up from the Piazzetta Mignanelli. It was not
+Elena; it was some other lady, who slowly turned the corner into the Via
+Gregoriana.
+
+'What if she did not come at all?' he said to himself as he left the
+window. Coming away from the colder outside air he felt the warmth of
+the room all the more cosy, the scent of the burning wood and the roses
+more piercing sweet, the shadow of the curtains and portieres more
+delightfully mysterious. At that moment the whole room seemed on the
+alert for the arrival of the woman he loved. He imagined Elena's
+sensations on entering. It was hardly possible that she should be able
+to resist the influence of these surroundings, so full of tender
+memories for her; she would suddenly lose all sense of time and reality,
+would fancy herself back at one of the old rendezvous, the Elena of
+those happy days. Since nothing was altered in the _mise-en-scene_ of
+their love, why should their love itself be changed? She must of
+necessity feel the profound charm of all these things which once upon a
+time had been so dear to her.
+
+And now the anguish of hope deferred created a fresh torture for him.
+Minds that have the habit of imaginative contemplation and poetic
+dreaming attribute to inanimate objects a soul, sensitive and variable
+as their own, and recognise in all things--be it form or colour, sound
+or perfume--a transparent symbol, an emblem of some emotion or thought;
+in every phenomenon and every group of phenomena they claim to discover
+a psychical condition, a moral significance. At times the vision is so
+lucid as to produce actual pain in such minds, they feel themselves
+overwhelmed by the plenitude of life revealed to them and are terrified
+by the phantom of their own creation.
+
+Thus Andrea saw his own dire distress reflected in the aspect of the
+objects surrounding him, and as his own fond desires seemed wasting
+fruitlessly in this protracted expectation, so the erotic essence, so to
+speak, of the room appeared to be evaporating and exhaling uselessly. In
+his eyes these apartments in which he had loved and also suffered so
+much had acquired something of his own sensibility--had not only been
+witness of his loves, his pleasures, his sorrows, but had taken part in
+it all. In his memories, every outline, every tint harmonised with some
+feminine image, was a note in a chord of beauty, an element in an
+ecstasy of passion. The very nature of his tastes led him to seek for a
+diversity of enjoyment in his love, and seeing that he set out upon that
+quest as an accomplished artist and aesthetic it was only natural that he
+should derive a great part of his delight from the world of external
+objects. To this fastidious actor the comedy of love was nothing without
+the scenery.
+
+From that point of view his stage was certainly quite perfect, and he
+himself a most adroit actor-manager; for he almost always entered heart
+and soul into his own artifice, he forgot himself so completely that he
+was deceived by his own deception, fell into the trap of his own laying,
+and wounded himself with his own weapons--a magician enclosed in the
+spells of his own weaving.
+
+The roses in the tall Florentine vases, they too were waiting and
+breathing out their sweetness. On the divan cover and on the walls
+inscriptions on silver scrolls singing the praises of woman and of wine
+gleamed in the rays of the setting sun, and harmonised admirably with
+the faded colours of the sixteenth century Persian carpet. Elsewhere the
+shadow was deeply transparent and as if animated by that indefinable
+luminous tremor felt in hidden sanctuaries where some mystic treasure
+lies enshrined. The fire crackled on the hearth, each flame, as Shelley
+puts it, like a separate jewel dissolved in ever moving light. To Andrea
+it seemed that at that moment every shape, every colour, every perfume
+gave forth the essential and delicate spirit of its being. And yet _she_
+came not, _she_ came not!
+
+For the first time, the thought of her husband presented itself to him.
+
+Elena was no longer free. Some months after her abrupt departure from
+Rome, she had renounced the agreeable liberty of widowhood to marry an
+English nobleman, Lord Humphrey Heathfield. Andrea had seen the
+announcement of the marriage in a society paper in the October following
+and had heard a world of comment on the new Lady Humphrey in every
+country house he stayed in during the autumn. He remembered also having
+met Lord Humphrey some half a score of times during the preceding winter
+at the Saturdays of the Princess Giustiniani-Bandini, or in the public
+sale-rooms. He was a man of about forty, with colourless fair hair, bald
+at the temples, an excessively pale face, a pair of piercing light eyes
+and a prominent forehead, on which a network of veins stood out. He had
+his name of Heathfield from that lieutenant-general who was the hero of
+the defence of Gibraltar and afterwards immortalised by the brush of Sir
+Joshua Reynolds.
+
+What part had this man in Elena's life? What ties, beyond the convention
+of marriage, bound her to him? What transformations had the physical and
+moral contact of this husband brought to pass in her?
+
+These enigmas rose tumultuously before him, making his pain so
+intolerable, that he started up with the instinctive bound of a man who
+has been stabbed unawares. He crossed the room to the ante-chamber and
+listened at the door which he had left ajar. It was on the stroke of a
+quarter to five.
+
+The next moment he heard footsteps on the stair, the rustle of skirts
+and a quick panting breath. A woman was coming up hurriedly. His heart
+beat with such vehemence that--his nerves all unstrung by his long
+suspense--he felt hardly able to stand on his feet. The steps drew
+nearer, there was a long-drawn sigh--a step upon the landing--at the
+door--Elena entered.
+
+'O Elena--at last!'
+
+There was in that cry such a profound accent of agony endured, that it
+brought to Elena's lips an indescribable smile, mingled of pleasure and
+pity. He took her by her ungloved right hand and drew her into the room.
+She was still a little out of breath, and under her black veil a faint
+flush diffused itself over her whole face.
+
+'Forgive me, Andrea! I could not get away any sooner--there is so much
+to do--so many calls to return--such tiring days! I hardly know where to
+turn. How warm it is in here! What a delicious smell!'
+
+She was standing in the middle of the room--a little undecided and ill
+at ease in spite of her rapid and lightly spoken words. A velvet coat
+with Empire sleeves, very full at the shoulders and buttoned closely at
+the wrists and with an immense collar of blue fox for sole trimming,
+covered her from head to foot, but without disguising the grace of her
+figure. She looked at Andrea with eyes in which a curious tremulous
+smile softened the flash and sparkle.
+
+'You have changed somehow,' she said; 'I don't quite know what it
+is--but round your mouth, for instance, there are bitter lines that used
+not to be there.'
+
+She spoke in a tone of affectionate familiarity. The sound of her voice
+once more in this room caused him such exquisite delight that he
+exclaimed--'Speak again, Elena--go on speaking!'
+
+She laughed. 'Why?' she asked.
+
+'You know why,' he answered, taking her hand again.
+
+She drew her hand away and looked the young man deep in the eyes. 'I
+know nothing any more.'
+
+'Then you have changed very much.'
+
+'Yes--very much indeed.'
+
+They had both dropped their bantering tone. Elena's answer threw a
+sudden search-light upon much that was problematical before. Andrea
+understood, and with that rapid and precise intuition so often found in
+minds practised in psychological analysis, he instantly divined the
+moral attitude of his visitor, and foresaw the further development of
+the coming scene. Moreover, he was already under the spell of this
+woman's fascination as in the former days, besides being greatly piqued
+by curiosity.
+
+'Will you not sit down?' he asked.
+
+'Yes--for a moment.'
+
+'Here--in this arm-chair.'
+
+'Ah--_my_ arm-chair!' she was on the point of exclaiming, for she
+recognised an old friend, but she stopped herself in time.
+
+The chair was deep and roomy, and covered with antique leather on which
+pale dragons ramped in relief, after the style of the wall decorations
+of one of the rooms in the Chigi palace. The leather had taken on that
+warm and sumptuous tone which recalls the background of certain Venetian
+portraits, or a fine bronze still retaining traces of former gilding, or
+a piece of tortoise-shell with gleams of gold here and there. A great
+cushion covered with a piece of a dalmatic of faded colouring--of that
+peculiar shade which the Florentine silk merchants used to call 'rosa di
+gruogo,' saffron red, contributed to its inviting easiness.
+
+Elena seated herself in it, placing on the tea-table beside her her
+right hand glove and her card-case, a fragile toy in polished silver
+with a device and motto engraven on it. She then proceeded to remove her
+veil, raising her arms high to unfasten the knot, her graceful attitude
+throwing gleams of changeful light on the velvet of her coat, along the
+sleeves and over the contour of her bust. The heat of the fire was very
+strong, and with her bare hand, which shone transparent like rosy
+alabaster, she screened her face from it. The rings on her fingers
+glittered in the firelight.
+
+'Please screen the fire,' she said, 'it is really too fierce.'
+
+'What--have you lost your fondness for the flames?--and you used to be a
+perfect salamander. This hearth is full of memories----'
+
+'Let memory sleep,--do not stir the embers,' she interrupted him.
+'Screen the fire and let us have some light. I will make the tea.'
+
+'Won't you take off your coat?'
+
+'No, I must go directly--it is late.'
+
+'But you will be melted.'
+
+She rose with a little gesture of impatience. 'Very well then--help me,
+please.'
+
+As he helped her off with the mantle, Andrea noticed that the scent was
+not the same as the familiar one of old. However, it was so delicious
+that it thrilled his every sense.
+
+'You have a new scent,' he said with peculiar emphasis.
+
+'Yes,' she answered simply, 'do you like it?'
+
+Andrea still held the mantle in his hands. He buried his face in the fur
+collar which had been next her throat and her hair--'What is it called?'
+he inquired.
+
+'It has no name.'
+
+She re-seated herself in the arm-chair within the circle of the
+firelight. Her dress was of black lace, on which sparkled a mass of tiny
+jet and steel beads.
+
+The day was fading from the windows. Andrea lit candles of twisted
+orange-coloured wax in wrought-iron candlesticks, after which he drew a
+screen before the fire.
+
+During this pause, both felt a certain perplexing uneasiness; Elena was
+no longer exactly conscious of the moment, nor was she quite mistress of
+herself. In spite of all her efforts she was unable to recall with
+precision her motives for coming here, to follow out her
+intentions--even to regain her force of will. In the presence of this
+man to whom, once upon a time, she had been bound by such passionate
+ties, and in this spot where she lived the most ardent moments of her
+life, she felt her reserve melting, her mind wavering and growing
+feeble. She was at that dangerously delicious point of sentiment at
+which the soul receives its every impulse, its attitudes, its form from
+its external surroundings as an aerial vapour from the mutations of the
+atmosphere. But she checked herself before wholly giving way to it.
+
+'Is that right now?' asked Andrea in a low, almost humble voice.
+
+She smiled without replying. His words had given her inexpressibly keen
+delight.
+
+She began her delicate manipulations--lit the spirit-lamp under the
+kettle, opened the lacquer tea-caddy and put the necessary quantity of
+aromatic leaves into the tea-pot, and finally prepared two cups. Her
+movements were slow and a little hesitating, as happens when the mind is
+busied with other things than the occupation of the moment; her
+exquisite white hands hovered over the cups with the airiness of
+butterflies, and from her whole lithe form there emanated an indefinable
+charm which enveloped her lover like a caress.
+
+Seated quite close to her, gazing at her from under his half-closed
+lids, Andrea drank in the subtle fascination of her presence. Neither of
+them spoke. Elena, leaning back in the cushions, waited for the water to
+boil, with her eyes fixed on the blue flame while she absently slipped
+her rings up and down her fingers, lost in a dream apparently. But it
+was no dream; it was rather a vague reminiscence, faint, confused and
+evanescent. All the recollections of the love that was past rose up in
+her mind, but dimly and uncertain, leaving an indistinct impression, she
+hardly knew whether of pleasure or of pain. It was like the indefinable
+perfume of a faded bouquet, in which each separate flower has lost the
+vivacity proper to its colour and its fragrance, but from which emanates
+a common perfume wherein all the diverse component elements are
+indistinguishably blended. She seemed to carry in her heart the last
+breath of memories already faded, the last trace of joys departed for
+ever, the last tremor of a happiness that was dead--something akin to a
+mist from out of which images emerge fitfully without shape or name. She
+knew not, was it pleasure or pain, but by degrees this mysterious
+agitation, this nameless disquiet waxed greater and filled her soul with
+joy and bitterness.
+
+She was silent--withdrawn within herself--for though her heart was full
+to overflowing, her emotion was pleasurably increased by that silence.
+Speech would have broken the charm.
+
+The kettle began its low song.
+
+Andrea on a low seat, with his elbow on his knee and his chin in his
+hand, sat watching the fair woman so intently that Elena, without
+turning, felt that persistent gaze upon her with a sense of physical
+discomfort. And while he gazed upon her he thought to himself that she
+seemed altogether a new woman to him--one who had never been his, whom
+he had never clasped to his heart.
+
+And in truth, she was even more desirable than in the former days, the
+plastic enigma of her beauty more obscure and more enthralling. Her head
+with the low broad forehead straight nose and arched eyebrows--so pure
+and firm in outline, so classically antique in the modelling--might have
+come from some Syracusan coin. The expression of the eyes and that of
+the mouth were in singular contrast, giving her that passionate,
+ambiguous, almost preternatural look that only one or two master-hands,
+deeply imbued in all the profoundest corruption of art, have been able
+to infuse into such immortal types of woman as the Mona Lisa and Nelly
+O'Brien.
+
+The steam began to escape through the hole in the lid of the kettle, and
+Elena turned her attention once more to the tea-table. She poured a
+little water on the leaves; put two lumps of sugar in one of the cups,
+then poured some more water into the tea-pot and extinguished the lamp;
+doing it all with a certain fond care, but never once looking in
+Andrea's direction. By this time her inward agitation had resolved
+itself into such melting tenderness, that there was a lump in her throat
+and her eyes filled involuntarily; all her contradictory thoughts, all
+her trouble and agitation of heart, concentrated themselves in those
+tears.
+
+A movement of her arm knocked the little silver card-case off the table.
+Andrea picked it up and examined the device: two true lovers' knots each
+bearing an inscription in English--_From Dreamland_, and _A Stranger
+here_.
+
+When he raised his head, Elena offered him the fragrant beverage with a
+mist of tears before her eyes.
+
+He saw that mist, and, filled with love and gratitude at such an
+unlooked-for sign of melting, he put down the cup, sank on his knees
+before her, and seizing her hand pressed his lips passionately to it.
+
+'Elena! Elena!' he murmured, his face close to hers as if he would drink
+the breath from her lips. His emotion was quite sincere, though some of
+the things he said were not. He loved her--had always loved her--had
+never, never, never been able to forget her. On meeting her again, he
+had felt his passion rekindle with such vehemence that it had given him
+a kind of shock of terror--as if in one lightning flash he had witnessed
+the upheaval, the convulsion of his whole life.
+
+'Hush--hush----' said Elena with a look of pain, and turning very pale.
+
+But Andrea went on, still on his knees, fanning the flames of his
+passion by the images he himself evoked. When she had left him so
+abruptly, he had felt that the greater and better part of him went with
+her. Afterwards----never, never could he tell her all the misery of
+those days, the agony of regret, the ceaseless, implacable, devouring
+torture of mind and body. His wretchedness grew and increased daily till
+it burst all bounds and overwhelmed him utterly. Despair lay in wait for
+him at every turn. The mere flight of time became an intolerable burden.
+His regrets were less for the happy days gone by than for those that
+were passing all profitless for love. Those, at least, had left him a
+memory, these nothing but profoundest regret--nay, almost remorse. His
+life was preying upon itself, consumed in secret by the inextinguishable
+flame of one desire, by the unconquerable distaste to any other form of
+pleasure. Of all the fiery ardour of his youth nothing now remained to
+him but a handful of ashes. Sometimes, like a dream that vanishes at
+dawn, all the past, all the present would fade and fall away from his
+inner consciousness--like a tale that is told, a useless garment. Then
+he would remember the past no more, as a man newly risen from a long
+illness, a convalescent still overcome with stupor. At last he could
+forget--his tortured soul was sinking gently down to death.----But
+suddenly, out of the depths of this lethal tranquillity his pain had
+sprung up afresh, and the fallen idol was re-established higher than
+ever. She and she alone held every fibre of his heart captive beneath
+her spells, crushing out his intelligence, keeping the doors of his soul
+against any other passion, any sorrow, any dream to the end of all
+time----
+
+He was lying of course, but his words were so fervid, his voice so
+thrilling, the clasp of his hands so fondly caressing that Elena was
+profoundly touched.
+
+'Hush,' she said, 'I must not, dare not listen to you--I am yours no
+longer, I never can be yours again--never. Do not say these things----'
+
+'No--listen----'
+
+'I will not--good-bye--I must go now. Good-bye, Andrea,--it is late--let
+me go.'
+
+She drew her hands out of the young man's clasp, and, successfully
+throwing off the dangerous languor that was creeping over her, she
+prepared to rise.
+
+'Then why did you come?' he asked almost roughly, and preventing her
+from doing so.
+
+Slight as was the force he used, she frowned. She paused before
+answering.
+
+'I came,' she said in measured accents and looking her lover full in the
+eyes--'I came because you asked me. For the sake of the love that was
+once between us, for the manner in which that love was broken and for
+the long and unexplained silence of my absence I had not the heart to
+refuse your invitation. Besides, I wanted to say what I have said: that
+I am no longer yours--that I never can be again--never. That is what I
+wanted to tell you, honestly and frankly, to save you and myself all
+painful disillusionment, all danger or bitterness in the future.--Do you
+understand?'
+
+Andrea bowed his head almost to her knee in silence. She stroked his
+hair with a familiar gesture of old.
+
+'And then,' she went on in a voice that thrilled him to the heart's
+core--'and then--I wanted to tell you--that I love you--love you as much
+as ever: that you are still the heart of my heart and that I will be the
+fondest of sisters to you, the best of friends--do you understand?'
+
+Andrea made no reply. She took his head between her hands and raised it,
+forcing him to look her in the face.
+
+'Do you understand?' she repeated in a still lower, sweeter tone. Her
+eyes under the shadow of the long lashes were suffused with a pure and
+tender light, her lips were slightly open and trembling.
+
+'No; you never loved me, and you do not love me now!' Andrea burst out
+at last, pulling Elena's hands from his temples and drawing away from
+her, for he was sensible of the fire that was kindling in his veins
+under the mere gaze of those eyes, and his regret at having lost
+possession of this fairest of women grew more bitter and poignant than
+before. 'No, you never loved me. You had the heart to strike your love
+dead at a blow--treacherously almost--just when it had reached its
+supremest height. You ran away, you deserted me, left me alone in my
+bewilderment, my misery, while I was still blinded by your promises. You
+never loved me--neither then nor now. And now, after such a long
+absence, so full of mystery, so silent and inexorable, after I have
+wasted the bloom of my life in cherishing a wound that was dear to me
+because your hand had dealt it--after so much joy and so much pain, you
+return to this room, in which every object is replete for us with living
+memories, and you say to me calmly--"I am yours no
+longer--good-bye."--Oh no--you do not love me.'
+
+'Oh, you are ungrateful!' she cried, deeply wounded by the young man's
+incensed tone. 'What do you know of all that has occurred, or of what I
+have had to go through?--What do you know?'
+
+'I know nothing, and what is more, I do not want to,' Andrea retorted
+stubbornly, enveloping her in a darkling look in which burned the fever
+of his desire. 'All I know is that you were mine once--wholly and
+without reserve, and I know that body and soul I shall never forget
+it----'
+
+'Be silent!'
+
+'What do I care for your sisterly affection? In spite of yourself you
+offer it with your eyes full of quite another kind of love, and you
+cannot touch me without your hands trembling. I have seen that look in
+your eyes too often, you have too often felt me tremble with passion
+beneath your hands--I love you!'
+
+Carried away by his own words he grasped her wrists tightly and drew so
+close to her that she felt his hot breath on her cheek. 'I love you, I
+tell you--more than ever before,' he went on, slipping an arm about her
+waist to draw her to his kiss--'Have you forgotten--have you forgotten?'
+
+She pushed him forcibly from her and rose to her feet, trembling in
+every limb.
+
+'I will not--do you hear?'
+
+But he would not hear. He came towards her with arms outstretched, very
+pale and determined.
+
+'Could you bear,' she cried turning at bay at last, indignant at his
+violence, 'could you bear to share me with another?'
+
+She flung the cruel question at him point-blank, without reflection, and
+now stood looking at her lover with wide open frightened eyes, like one
+who in self-defence has dealt a blow without measuring his strength, and
+fears to have struck too deep.
+
+Andrea's frenzy dropped on the instant, and his face expressed such
+overwhelming pain that Elena was stricken to the heart.
+
+After a moment's silence--'Good-bye!' he said, but that one word
+contained all the bitterness of the words he refrained from saying.
+
+'Good-bye,' she answered gently, 'forgive me.'
+
+They both felt the necessity of putting an end, at least for that
+evening, to this perilous conversation. Andrea affected an almost
+over-strained courtesy. Elena became even gentler, almost humble. A
+nervous tremor shook her continually.
+
+She took her cloak from the chair and Andrea hastened to assist her. As
+she did not succeed in finding the armholes, Andrea guided her hand to
+it but scarcely touched her. He then offered her her hat and veil.
+'There is a looking-glass in the next room if you would like----'
+
+'No, thank you.' She went over beside the fireplace, where on the wall
+hung a quaint little old mirror in a frame surrounded by little figures,
+carved in so airy and vivacious a style that they seemed rather to be of
+malleable gold than of wood. It was a charming thing, the work doubtless
+of some delicate artist of the fifteenth century and designed to reflect
+the charms of some Mona Amorrosisca or some Laldomine. Many a time in
+the old happy days Elena had put on her veil in front of this dim, lack
+lustre mirror. She remembered it again now.
+
+On seeing her reflection rise out of its misty depths she was stirred by
+a singular emotion. A rush of profound sadness came over her. She did
+not speak.
+
+All this time Andrea was watching her intently.
+
+Her preparations concluded, she said, 'It must be very late.'
+
+'Not very--about six o'clock, I think.'
+
+'I sent away my carriage. I would be very grateful if you could send for
+a closed cab for me.'
+
+'Will you excuse me then if I leave you alone for a moment? My servant
+is out.'
+
+She assented. 'And please tell the man yourself where to go to--the
+Hotel Quirinal.'
+
+He went out and shut the door behind him. She was alone.
+
+She cast a rapid glance around her, embracing the whole room with an
+indefinable look that lingered on the vases of flowers. The room seemed
+to her larger, the ceiling higher than she remembered. She began to feel
+a little giddy. She did not notice the scent of the flowers any longer,
+but the atmosphere of the room was close and heavy as in a hot-house.
+Andrea's image appeared to her in a sort of intermittent flashes--a
+vague echo of his voice rang in her ears. Was she going to faint?--Oh,
+the delight of it if she might close her eyes and abandon herself to
+this languor!
+
+She gave herself a little shake and went over to one of the windows,
+which she opened, and let the breeze blow in her face. Somewhat revived
+by this she turned back into the room. The pale flame of the candles
+sent flickering shadows over the walls. The fire burned low but sufficed
+to light up in part the pious figures on the screen made of stained
+glass from a church window. The cup of tea stood where Andrea had laid
+it down on the table, cold and untouched. The chair cushion retained the
+impress of the form that had leaned against it. All the objects
+surrounding her breathed an ineffable melancholy, which condensed itself
+in a heavy weight upon Elena's heart, till it sank beneath the well nigh
+insupportable burden.
+
+_'Mio Dio! mio Dio!'_
+
+She wished she could make her escape unseen. A puff of wind inflated the
+curtains, made the candles flicker, raised a general rustle through the
+room. She shivered, and almost without knowing what she did, she
+called--
+
+'Andrea!'
+
+Her own voice--that name in the silence startled her strangely, as if
+neither voice nor name had come from her lips. Why was Andrea so long in
+returning? She listened.----There was no sound but the dull deep
+inarticulate murmur of the city. Not a carriage passed across the piazza
+of the Trinita de' Monti. As the wind came in strong gusts from time to
+time, she closed the window, catching a glimpse as she did so of the
+point of the obelisk, black against the starry sky.
+
+Possibly Andrea had not found a conveyance at once on the Piazza
+Barberini. She sat herself down to wait on the sofa and tried to calm
+her foolish agitation, avoiding all heartsearchings and endeavouring to
+fix her attention on external objects. Her eyes wandered to the figures
+on the fire-screen, faintly visible by the light of the dying logs. On
+the mantelpiece a great white rose in one of the vases was dropping its
+petals softly, languidly, one by one, giving an impression of something
+subtly feminine and sensuous. The cup-like petals rested delicately on
+the marble, like flakes of snow.
+
+Ah, how sweet that fragrant snow had been _then_! she thought.
+Rose-leaves strewed the carpets, the divan, the chairs, and she was
+laughing, happy in the midst of the devastation, and her happy lover was
+at her feet----
+
+A carriage stopped down in the street. She rose and shook her aching
+head to banish the dull weight that seemed to paralyse her. The next
+moment, Andrea entered out of breath.
+
+'Forgive me,' he said, 'for keeping you so long, but I could not find
+the porter, so I went down to the Piazza di Spagna. The carriage is
+waiting for you.'
+
+'Thanks,' answered Elena with a timid glance at him through her black
+veil.
+
+He was grave and pale but quite calm.
+
+'I expect my husband to-morrow,' she went on in a low faint voice. 'I
+will send you a line to let you know when I can see you again.'
+
+'Thank you,' answered Andrea.
+
+'Good-bye then,' she said, holding out her hand.
+
+'Shall I see you down to the street? There is no one there.'
+
+'Yes--come down with me.'
+
+She looked about her a little hesitatingly.
+
+'Have you forgotten anything?' asked Andrea.
+
+She was looking at the flowers, but she answered, 'Ah--yes--my
+card-case.'
+
+Andrea sprang to fetch it from the table. '_A stranger here_?' he read
+as he handed it to her.
+
+'_No, my dear, a friend_----'
+
+Her answer was quick, her voice eager. Then suddenly with a smile
+peculiarly her own, half imploring, half seductive, a mixture of
+timidity and tenderness, she said: '_Give me a rose._'
+
+Andrea went from vase to vase gathering all the roses into one great
+bunch which he could scarcely hold in his hands--some of them shed their
+petals.
+
+'They were for you--all of them,' he said without looking at her.
+
+Elena hung her head and turned to go in silence followed by Andrea. They
+descended the stairs still in silence. He could see the nape of her neck
+so fair and delicate where the little dark curls mingled with the
+gray-blue fur.
+
+'Elena!' he cried her name in a low voice, incapable any longer of
+fighting against the passion that filled his heart to bursting.
+
+She turned round to him with a finger on her lips--a gesture of agonised
+entreaty--but her eyes burned through the shadow. She hastened her
+steps, flung herself into the carriage and felt rather than saw him lay
+the roses in her lap.
+
+'Good-bye! Good-bye!'
+
+And when the carriage turned away she threw herself back exhausted and
+burst into a passion of sobs, tearing the roses to pieces with her poor
+frenzied hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+So she had come, she had come! She had re-entered the rooms in which
+every piece of furniture, every object must retain some memory for her,
+and she had said--'I am yours no more, can never be yours again, never!'
+and--'Could you suffer to share me with another?'--Yes, she had dared to
+fling those words in his face, in that room, in sight of all these
+things!
+
+A rush of pain--atrocious, immeasurable, made up of a thousand wounds,
+each distinct from the other and one more piercing than the other, came
+over him and goaded him to desperation. Passion enveloped him once more
+in a thousand tongues of fire, re-kindling in him an inextinguishable
+desire for this woman who belonged to him no more, re-awakening in his
+memory every smallest detail of past caresses and all the sweet mad
+doings of those days. And yet through it all, there persisted the
+strange difficulty in identifying that Elena with the Elena of to-day,
+who seemed to him altogether another woman, one whom he had never known,
+never held in his arms. The torture of his senses was such that he
+thought he must die of it. Impurity crept through his blood like a
+corroding poison.
+
+The impurity which _then_ the winged flame of the soul had covered with
+a sacred veil, had surrounded with a mystery that was half divine,
+appeared _now_ without the veil and without the mystery as a mere carnal
+lust, a piece of gross sensuality. He knew that the ardour he had felt
+to-day in her presence was not Love--had nothing in common with
+Love--for when she had cried--'Could you suffer to share me with
+another?'--Why, yes, he could suffer it perfectly.
+
+Nothing therefore--nothing in him had remained intact. Even the memory
+of his grand passion was now corrupted, sullied, debased. The last spark
+of hope was extinct. He had reached his lowest level, never to rise
+again.
+
+He was seized by a terrible and frenzied desire to overthrow the idol
+that still persistently rose up lofty and enigmatic before his
+imagination, do what he would to abase it. With cynical cruelty, he set
+himself to insult, to undermine, to mutilate it. The destructive
+analysis he had already employed upon himself, he now turned upon Elena.
+To those dubious problems which, at one time, he had resolutely put away
+from him, he now sought the answer; of all the suspicions which had
+formerly presented themselves to him only to disappear without leaving a
+trace, he now studied the origin, found them justified and obtained
+their confirmation. But whereas he thought to find relief in this
+furious work of demolition, he only increased his sufferings, aggravated
+his malady and deepened his wounds.
+
+What had been the true cause of Elena's departure two years before?
+There were many conflicting rumours at the time, and again when she
+married Humphrey Heathfield; but the actual truth of the matter was what
+he heard, quite by chance, among other scraps of society gossip, from
+Giulio Musellaro one evening as they left the theatre together, nor did
+Andrea doubt it for a moment. Donna Elena had been obliged to leave Rome
+for pecuniary reasons, to work some 'operation' which should extricate
+her from the serious embarrassments into which her outrageous
+extravagance had plunged her. The marriage with Humphrey Heathfield, who
+was Marquis of Mount Saint Michael and Earl of Broadford, and besides
+possessing a considerable fortune was related to the highest nobility of
+Great Britain, had saved her from ruin. Donna Elena had managed matters
+with the utmost adroitness and succeeded marvellously in steering clear
+of the threatening peril. It was not to be denied that the interval of
+her three years of widowhood had been none too chaste a prelude to a
+second marriage--neither chaste nor prudent--nevertheless, there was
+also no denying that Elena Muti was a great lady----
+
+'Ah, my boy, a grand creature!' said Musellaro, 'as you very well know.'
+
+Andrea said nothing.
+
+'But take my advice,' his friend went on, throwing away the cigarette
+which had gone out while he talked, 'do not resume your relations with
+her. It is the same with love as with tobacco--once out, it will not
+bear relighting. Let us go and get a cup of tea from Donna Giulia
+Moceto. They tell me one may go to her house after the theatre--it is
+never too late.'
+
+They were close by the Palazzo Borghese.
+
+'You can,' answered Andrea, 'I am going home to bed. I am rather tired
+after to-day's run with the hounds. My regards to Donna Giulia--my
+blessing go with you!'
+
+Musellaro went up the steps of the palace and Andrea continued on his
+way past the Borghese fountain towards the Trinita.
+
+It was one of those wonderful January nights, cold and serene, which
+turn Rome into a city of silver set in a ring of diamonds. The full
+moon, hanging in mid-sky, shed a triple purity of light, of frost, and
+of silence.
+
+He walked along in the moonlight like a somnambulist, conscious of
+nothing but his pain. The last blow had been struck, the idol was
+shattered, nothing remained standing above the ruins--this was the end!
+
+So it was true--she had never really loved him. She had not scrupled to
+break with him in order to contract a marriage of convenience. And now
+she put on the airs of a martyr before him, wrapped herself round with a
+mantle of conjugal inviolability! A bitter laugh rose to his lips, and
+then a rush of sullen blind rage against the woman came over him. The
+memory of his passion went for nothing--all the past was one long fraud,
+one stupendous, hideous lie; and this man, who throughout his whole life
+had made a practice of dissimulation and duplicity, was now incensed at
+the deception of another, was as indignant at it as at some unpardonable
+backsliding, some inexcusable and inexplicable perfidy. He was quite
+unable to understand how Elena could have committed such a crime; he
+denied her all possibility of justification, and rejected the hypothesis
+of some secret and dire necessity having driven her to sudden flight. He
+could see nothing but the bare brutal fact, its baseness, its
+vulgarity--above all its vulgarity, gross, manifest, odious, without one
+extenuating circumstance. In short, the whole matter reduced itself to
+this: a passion which was apparently sincere, which they had vowed was
+profound and inextinguishable, had been broken off for a question of
+money, for material interests, for a commercial transaction.
+
+'Oh, you are ungrateful! What do you know of all that has happened, of
+all I have suffered!'
+
+Elena's words recurred to him with everything else she had said, from
+beginning to end of their interview--her words of fondness, her offer of
+sisterly affection, all her sentimental phrases. And he remembered, too,
+the tears that had dimmed her eyes, her changes of countenance, her
+tremors, her choking voice when she said good-bye, and he laid the roses
+in her lap. 'But why had she ever consented to come? Why play this part,
+call up all these emotions, arrange this comedy? Why?
+
+By this time he had reached the top of the steps, and found himself in
+the deserted piazza. Suddenly the beauty of the night filled him with a
+vague but desperate yearning towards some unknown good. The image of
+Maria Ferres flashed across his mind; his heart beat fast, he thought of
+what it would be to hold her hands in his, to lean his head upon her
+breast, to feel that she was consoling him without words, by her pity
+alone. This longing for pity, for a refuge, was like the last struggle
+of a soul that will not be content to perish. He bent his head and
+entered the house without turning again to look at the night.
+
+Terenzio was waiting up for him and followed him to the bedroom, where
+there was a fire.
+
+'Will the Signor Conte go to bed at once?' he asked.
+
+'No, Terenzio, bring me some tea,' replied his master, sitting down
+before the fire and stretching out his hands to the blaze.
+
+He was shivering all over with a little nervous tremor.
+
+'The Signor Conte is cold?' asked Terenzio, hastening with affectionate
+interest to stir up the fire and put on fresh logs.
+
+He was an old servant of the house of Sperelli, having served Andrea's
+father for many years, and his devotion for the son reached the pitch of
+idolatry. No human being seemed to him so handsome, so noble, so worthy
+of devotion. He belonged to that ideal race which furnished faithful
+retainers to the romance writers of old, but differed from the servants
+of romance in that he spoke little, never offered advice, and concerned
+himself with no other business than that of carrying out his master's
+orders.
+
+'That will do very nicely,' said Andrea, trying to repress the
+convulsive trembling of his limbs and crouching closer over the fire.
+
+The presence of the old man in this hour of misery and distress moved
+him singularly. It was an emotion somewhat similar to that which, in the
+presence of some very kind and sympathetic person, affects a man
+determined upon suicide. Never before had the old man brought back to
+him so strongly the recollection of his father, the memory of the
+beloved dead, his grief for the loss of a great and good friend. Never
+so much as now had he felt the want of that comforting voice, that
+paternal hand. What would his father say could he see his son thus
+crushed under the weight of a nameless distress? How would he have
+sought to relieve him--what would he have done?
+
+His thoughts turned to the dead father with boundless yearning and
+regret. And he had not the shadow of a suspicion that in the very
+teachings of that father lay the primary cause of his wretchedness.
+
+Terenzio brought the tea. He then proceeded slowly to arrange the bed
+with a care and solicitude that were almost womanly, forgetting nothing,
+as if he wished to ensure to his master refreshing and unbroken slumbers
+till the morrow.
+
+Andrea watched him with growing emotion. 'Go to bed now, Terenzio,' he
+said. 'I shall not want anything more.'
+
+The old man retired and left him alone before the fire--alone with his
+heart, alone with his misery. Tortured by his inward agitation, he rose
+and began to pace the room. He was haunted by a vision of Elena, and
+each time he came as far as the window and turned, he fancied he saw her
+and started violently. His nerves were in such an overstrung condition
+that they only increased the disorder of his imagination. The
+hallucination grew more distinct. He stood still and covered his face
+with his hands for a moment to control his excitement, and then returned
+to his seat by the fire.
+
+This time another image rose before him--that of Elena's husband.
+
+He knew him better now. That very evening in a box at the theatre, Elena
+had introduced them to one another, and he had seized that opportunity
+to examine him attentively in detail with the keenest curiosity, as
+though he hoped to obtain some revelation, to draw some secret from him.
+He could still hear the man's voice--a voice of very peculiar tone,
+somewhat harsh and strident, with an interrogative inflection at the end
+of each sentence. Again he saw those pale, pale eyes under the great
+prominent forehead, eyes that at times assumed a hideous, glassy, dead
+look, and at others lit up with an indefinable gleam that savoured of
+madness. Those hands too, he saw--white and smooth and thickly covered
+with sandy yellow down, and with something obscene in their every
+movement; their way of raising the opera-glass, of unfolding a
+handkerchief, of reclining on the cushion in front of the box or turning
+over the pages of the libretto--hands instinct with vice.
+
+Oh, horror! he saw those hands touching Elena, profaning her with their
+odious caresses.
+
+The torture became insupportable. He rose once more, went to the
+window, opened it, shivered under the biting breeze and shook himself.
+The Trinita de' Monti glittered in the deep blue sky, sharply outlined
+as if sculptured in faintly tinted marble. Rome, spread out beneath him,
+had a sheen as of crystal, like a city cut in a glacier.
+
+The calm and sparkling cold brought his mind back to the realities of
+life and enabled him to recognise the true condition of his mind. He
+closed the window and sat down again. Once more the enigmatical aspect
+of Elena's character occupied him, questions crowded in upon him
+tumultuously, persistently. But he had the strength of mind to
+co-ordinate them, to attack them one by one, with singular lucidity. The
+deeper he went in his analysis the more lucid became his mental vision,
+and he worked out his psychological revenge with cruel relish. At last
+he felt that he had laid bare a soul, penetrated a mystery. It seemed to
+him, that thus he made Elena infinitely more his own than in the days of
+their passion.
+
+What, after all, was this woman?--An unbalanced mind in a sensually
+inclined body. As with all who are greedy of pleasure, the foundation of
+her moral being was overweening egotism. Her dominant faculty, her
+intellectual axis, so to speak, was imagination--an imagination
+nourished upon a wide range of literature, connected with her sex and
+perpetually stimulated by neurotic excitement. Possessed of a certain
+degree of intellectual capacity, brought up in all the luxury of a
+princely Roman house--that papal luxury which is made up of art and
+history--she had received a thin coating of aesthetic varnish, had
+acquired a graceful taste, and, having thoroughly grasped the character
+of her beauty, sought by skilful simulation and a sapient use of her
+marked histrionic talents to enhance its spirituality by surrounding it
+with a delusive halo of ideality.
+
+Into the comedy of human life she thus brought some highly perilous
+elements, and was thereby the occasion of more ruin and disaster than if
+she had been a _demi-mondaine_ by profession.
+
+Under the glamour of her imagination, every caprice assumed an
+appearance of pathos. She was the woman of fulminating passions, of
+suddenly blazing desire. She covered the lusts of the flesh with a
+mantle of ethereal flame, and could transform into a noble sentiment
+what was merely a base appetite.
+
+Such was the scathing judgment brought by Andrea against the woman he
+had once adored. At the root of every action, every expression of
+Elena's love he now discovered studied artifice, an admirable natural
+gift for carrying out a pre-arranged scheme, for playing a dramatic part
+or organising a striking scene. He did not spare their most memorable
+episodes--neither the first meeting at the Ateletas' dinner, nor the
+Cardinal Immenraet's sale, nor the ball at the French Embassy, nor the
+sudden offer of her love in the red room at the Barberini palace, nor
+their farewells out in the country in the biting March blast. The magic
+draught which had intoxicated him then now seemed but an insidious
+poison.
+
+Yet, in spite of it all, certain points perplexed him, as if in
+penetrating Elena's soul he had penetrated his own, and in the woman's
+perfidy had seen a reflection of his own. There was much affinity
+between their two natures. Therefore he _understood_, and little by
+little, his contempt changed to ironical indulgence. He was so
+thoroughly conversant with his own mode of procedure.
+
+Then with cold lucidity, he mapped out his plan of campaign. He reviewed
+every detail of the interview that had taken place on New Year's
+Eve--more than a week ago--and it pleased him to re-construct the scene,
+but without the slightest indignation or excitement, only smiling
+cynically both at Elena and himself. Why had she come?--Simply because
+this impromptu _tete-a-tete_ with a former lover, in the well-known
+place, after a lapse of two years, had tempted a spirit always on the
+look-out for fresh emotions, had inflamed her imagination and her
+curiosity. She thirsted to see into what new situations, new intrigues
+the dangerous game would lead her. She was perhaps attracted by the
+novelty of a platonic affection with a person who had already been the
+object of her sensual passion. As ever, she had thrown herself into the
+new part with a certain imaginative fervour. Also it was quite possible
+that, for the moment, she believed what she said, and that this illusory
+sincerity had furnished her with that deep tenderness of accent, those
+despairing attitudes, those tears. How well he knew it all! She had a
+sentimental hallucination as other people have a physical one. She
+forgot that she was acting a lie, was no longer conscious whether she
+were living in a world of truth or falsehood, of fiction or reality.
+
+Now this was precisely the moral phenomenon which so constantly took
+place in himself. Therefore he could not reproach her without injustice.
+But the discovery very naturally deprived him of the hope of deriving
+any pleasure from her other than sensual ones. In any case, mistrust
+would poison all the sweetness of abandon, all soulful rapture. To
+deceive a confiding and faithful heart, dominate a soul by artifice,
+possess it wholly and make it vibrate like an instrument--_habere non
+haberi_--all this, doubtless, gives intense pleasure; but to deceive,
+and know that one is being deceived in return, is a stupid and fruitless
+labour, a tiresome and aimless pursuit.
+
+He must therefore work upon Elena to renounce the sisterly scheme and to
+return to his arms once more. He must regain possession of this
+beautiful woman, extract the utmost possible pleasure from her beauty
+and free himself for ever of this passion by reaching the point of
+satiety. But it was a task demanding prudence and patience. In that
+first interview, his ardour had availed him nothing. Obviously, she had
+founded her plan of impeccability on the grand phrase--'Could you endure
+to share me with another?' The mainspring of the great platonic business
+was a virtuous horror of divided possession. For the rest, it was just
+within the bounds of possibility that this horror was not feigned. Most
+women addicted to the practice of free love, if they do eventually
+marry, affect, during the early days of their marriage, a savage
+virtue, and make professions of conjugal fidelity with the most honest
+determination. Perhaps, therefore, Elena had been affected by this
+common scruple, in which case, nothing would be more ill-advised than to
+show his hand too boldly and offend against her new-found virtue. The
+better plan would be to second her spiritual aspirations, accept her as
+'the fondest of sisters, the truest of friends,' intoxicate her with the
+ideal, be skilfully platonic and then make her glide imperceptibly from
+frank sisterly relations to a more passionate friendship, and from
+thence to the complete surrender of her person. In all probability these
+transitions would occur very rapidly. It all depended upon a wise
+adjustment of circumstances----
+
+Thus Andrea Sperelli reasoned, sitting in front of the fire which had
+glowed upon Elena, laughing among the scattered rose leaves. A boundless
+lassitude weighed upon him, a lassitude which did not invite sleep, a
+sense of weariness, so empty, so disconsolate as to be almost a longing
+for death; while the fire died out on the hearth and the tea grew cold
+in the cup.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+He waited in vain during the days that followed for the promised note to
+tell him when he might see Elena again----So she did intend to make
+another appointment with him; the question was--where? At the Casa
+Zuccari again? Would she risk such an imprudence a second time? This
+uncertainty kept him on the rack. He passed whole hours in searching for
+some way of meeting her, of seeing her again. He went several times to
+the Hotel Quirinal in the hope of being received, but never once did he
+find her at home. One evening, he saw her again in the theatre with
+'Mumps,' as she called her husband. Though only saying the usual things
+about the music, the singers, the ladies, he infused a supplicating
+melancholy into his gaze. She seemed greatly taken up by the arrangement
+of their house. They were going back to the Palazzo Barberini, her old
+quarters, but were having them much enlarged, and she was for ever
+occupied with upholsterers and decorators, giving orders and
+superintending the placing of the furniture.
+
+'Are you going to stay long in Rome?' asked Andrea.
+
+'Yes,' she answered--'Rome will be our winter residence.' Then, after a
+moment's pause--'You could give us some very good advice about the
+furniture. Come to the palace one of these days. I am always there from
+ten to twelve.'
+
+He took advantage of a moment when Lord Heathfield was talking to Giulio
+Musellaro, who had just entered the box, to say to her, looking her full
+in the eyes.
+
+'To-morrow?'
+
+'By all means,' she replied with perfect simplicity, as if she had not
+noticed the tone of his question.
+
+The next morning, about eleven, he set off on foot to the Palazzo
+Barberini through the Via Sistina. It was a road he had often traversed
+before--and, for a moment, the impressions of those days seemed to come
+back to him, and his heart swelled. The fountain of Bernini shone
+curiously luminous in the sunshine, as if the dolphins and the Triton
+with his conch-shell had, by some interrupted metamorphose transformed
+themselves into a more diaphanous material--not stone, nor yet quite
+crystal. The noise of the building of new Rome filled all the piazza and
+the adjoining streets; country children ran in and out between the carts
+and horses offering violets for sale.
+
+As he passed through the gate and entered the garden, he felt that he
+was beginning to tremble. 'Then I _do_ love her still?' he thought to
+himself--'Is she still the woman of _my dreams_?'
+
+He looked at the great palace, radiant under the morning sun, and his
+spirit flew back to the days when, in certain chill and misty dawns,
+this same palace had assumed for him a look of enchantment. That was in
+the early times of his happiness, when he came away warm from her kisses
+and full of his new-found bliss; the bells of Trinita de' Monti, of San
+Isidoro and the Cappuccini rang out the Angelus into the dawning day,
+with a muffled peal as if out of the far distance--at the corner of the
+street, fires glowed red round cauldrons of boiling asphalt--a little
+herd of goats stood against the white wall of the slumbering house----
+
+These forgotten sensations rose up once more out of the depths of his
+consciousness, and, for an instant, a wave of the old love swept over
+his soul, for one moment he tried to imagine that Elena was still the
+Elena of those days, that his happiness had endured till now, that none
+of these miserable things were true. As he crossed the threshold of the
+palace, all this illusory ferment died away on the instant, for Lord
+Heathfield came forward to greet him with his habitual and somewhat
+ambiguous smile.
+
+With that his torture began.
+
+Elena appeared, and shaking hands cordially with him in her husband's
+presence, she said--'Bravo, Andrea! Come and help us, come and help us!'
+
+She talked and gesticulated with much vivacity and looked very girlish
+in a close-fitting jacket of dark-blue cloth, trimmed round the high
+collar and the cuffs with black astrachan and fine black braiding. She
+kept one hand in her pocket in a graceful attitude, and with the other
+pointed out the various wall-hangings, the pictures, the furniture,
+asking his advice as to their most advantageous disposal.
+
+'Where would you put these two chests? Look--Mumps picked them up at
+Lucca. These pictures are your beloved Botticelli's.--Where would you
+hang these tapestries?'
+
+Andrea recognised the four pieces of tapestry from the Immenraet sale
+representing the Story of Narcissus. He looked at Elena, but could not
+catch her eye. A profound sense of irritation against her, against her
+husband, against all these things took possession of him. He would have
+liked to go away, but politeness demanded that he should place his good
+taste at the service of the Heathfields; it also obliged him to submit
+to the archaeological erudition of 'Mumps,' who was an ardent collector
+and was anxious to show him some of his finds. In one cabinet Andrea
+caught sight of the Pollajuolo helmet, and in another of the
+rock-crystal goblet which had belonged to Niccolo Niccoli. The presence
+of that particular goblet in this particular place moved him strangely
+and sent a flash of mad suspicion through his mind.
+
+So it had fallen into the hands of Lord Heathfield! The famous
+competition between the Countesses having come to nothing, nobody
+troubled themselves further about the fate of the goblet, and none of
+the party had returned to the sale after that day. Their ephemeral zeal
+had languished and finally died out and passed away, like everything
+else in the world of fashion, and the goblet had been abandoned to the
+competition of other collectors. The thing was perfectly natural, but
+at that moment it appeared to Andrea most extraordinary.
+
+He purposely stopped before the cabinet and gazed long at the precious
+goblet on which the story of Venus and Anchises glittered as if cut in a
+pure diamond.
+
+'Niccolo Niccoli!' said Elena, pronouncing the name with an indefinable
+accent in which the young man seemed to catch a note of sadness.
+
+The husband had just gone into another room to open a cabinet.
+
+'Remember--remember!' murmured Andrea, turning towards her.
+
+'I do remember.'
+
+'Then when may I see you?'
+
+'Ah, when?'
+
+'But you promised me----'
+
+Lord Heathfield returned. They passed on into an adjoining room, making
+the tour of the apartments. Everywhere they met workmen hanging papers,
+draping curtains, carrying furniture. Each time Elena asked his opinion,
+Andrea had to make an effort before answering her, in order to disguise
+his ill-humour and his impatience. At last, he managed to seize a moment
+when her husband was occupied with one of the men to say to her in a low
+voice, unable any longer to conceal his chagrin--
+
+'Why inflict this torture upon me? I expected to find you alone.'
+
+Passing through one of the doors, Elena's hat caught in the portiere and
+was dragged out of place. She laughed and called to Mumps to come and
+unfasten her veil. And Andrea was forced to look on while those odious
+hands touched the hair of the woman he desired, ruffling the little
+curls at the back of her neck, those curls which under his caresses had
+seemed to breathe out a mysterious perfume, unlike any other, and
+sweeter and more intoxicating than all the rest.
+
+He hurriedly took his leave under pretext of being due at lunch with
+some one else.
+
+'We shall move in here on the 1st of February,' Elena said to him, 'and
+then I hope you will be one of our _habitues_.'
+
+Andrea bowed.
+
+He would have given worlds not to be obliged to touch Lord Heathfield's
+hand. He went away filled with rancour, jealousy and disgust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+At a late hour that same evening, happening to look in at the Club,
+where he had not been for a long time, whom should he see at one of the
+card-tables but Don Manuel Ferres y Capdevila. Andrea greeted him with
+effusion and inquired after Donna Maria and Delfina--whether they were
+still at Sienna--when they were coming to Rome.
+
+Don Manuel, who remembered to have won several thousand lire from the
+young Count during the last evening at Schifanoja, and had recognised in
+Andrea Sperelli a player of the best form and perfect style, responded
+with the utmost courtesy and cordiality.
+
+'They have been here some days already; they arrived on Monday,' he
+answered. 'Maria was much disappointed not to find the Marchesa
+d'Ateleta in town. I am sure it would give her the greatest pleasure if
+you would call on her. We are in the Via Nazionale. Here is the exact
+address.'
+
+He handed one of his cards to Andrea and then returned to the game.
+
+The Duke di Beffi, who was standing with a knot of gentlemen, called
+Andrea over to them.
+
+'Why did you not come to Cento Celli this morning?' asked the duke.
+
+'I had another appointment,' Andrea replied without reflecting.
+
+'At the Palazzo Barberini perhaps?' said the duke with a shy laugh, in
+which he was joined by the others.
+
+'Perhaps.'
+
+'Perhaps, indeed?--why, Ludovico saw you go in.'
+
+'And where were you, may I ask?' said Andrea turning to Barbarisi.
+
+'Over the way, at my Aunt Saviano's.'
+
+'Ah!'
+
+'I don't know if you had better luck than we had,' Beffi went on, 'but
+we had a run of forty-two minutes and got two foxes. The next meet is on
+Thursday at the Three Fountains.'
+
+'You understand--at the _Three_ Fountains, not at the _Four_,' Gino
+Bomminaco admonished him with comic gravity.
+
+The others burst into a roar of laughter which Andrea could not help
+joining. He was by no means displeased at their gibes; on the contrary,
+now that there was no truth in their suspicions, it flattered him for
+his friends to think he had renewed his relations with Elena. He turned
+away to speak to Giulio Musellaro, who had just come in. From a few
+strays words that reached his ear, he found that the group behind him
+were discussing Lord Heathfield.
+
+'I knew him in London six or seven years ago,' Beffi was saying. 'He was
+Gentleman of the Bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales as far as I
+remember----'
+
+The duke lowered his voice, he was evidently retailing the most
+appalling things. Andrea caught scraps here and there of a highly-spiced
+nature and, once or twice, the name of a newspaper famous in the annals
+of London scandal. He longed to hear more; a terrible curiosity took
+possession of him. His imagination conjured up Lord Heathfield's hands
+before him--so white, so significant, so expressive, so impossible to
+forget. Musellaro was still talking, and now said--
+
+'Let us go--I want to tell you----'
+
+On the stairs they encountered Albonico, who was coming up. He was in
+deep mourning for Donna Ippolita, and Andrea stopped to ask for details
+of the sad event. He had heard of her death when he was in Paris in
+November from Guido Montelatici, a cousin of Donna Ippolita.
+
+'Was it really typhus?'
+
+The wan and pale-eyed widower grasped at an occasion for pouring out his
+griefs, for he made a display of his bereavement as, at one time, he had
+made a display of his wife's beauty. He stammered and grew lachrymose
+and his colourless eyes seemed bulging from his head.
+
+Seeing that the widower's elegy threatened to be somewhat long drawn
+out, Musellaro said to Andrea--
+
+'If we don't take care, we shall be late.'
+
+Andrea accordingly took leave of Albonico, promising to hear the rest of
+the funeral oration very shortly, and went away with Musellaro.
+
+The meeting with Albonico had re-awakened the singular emotion--partly
+regret, partly a certain peculiar satisfaction--which he had experienced
+for several days after hearing the news of this death. The image of
+Donna Ippolita, half obliterated by his illness and convalescence, by
+his love for Maria Ferres, by a variety of incidents, had reappeared to
+him then as in the dim distance, but invested with a nameless ideality.
+He had received a promise from her which, though it was never fulfilled,
+had procured to him the greatest happiness that can befall a man: the
+victory over a rival, a brilliant victory in the presence of the woman
+he desired. Later on, between desire and regret another sentiment grew
+up--the poetic sentiment for beauty idealised by death. It pleased him
+that the adventure should end thus for ever. This woman who had never
+been his, but to gain whom he had nearly lost his life, now rose up
+noble and unsullied before his imagination in all the sublime ideality
+of death. _Tibi, Hippolyta, semper!_
+
+'But where are we going to?' asked Musellaro, stopping short in the
+middle of the Piazza de Venezia.
+
+At the bottom of all Andrea's perturbation and all his varying thoughts,
+was the excitement called up in him by his meeting with Don Manuel
+Ferres and the consequent thought of Donna Maria; and now, in the midst
+of these conflicting emotions, a sort of nervous longing drew him to her
+house.
+
+'I am going home,' he answered; 'we can go through the Via Nazionale.
+Come along with me.'
+
+He paid no heed to what his friend was saying. The thought of Maria
+Ferres occupied him exclusively. Arrived in front of the theatre, he
+hesitated a moment, undecided which side of the street he had better
+take. He would find out the direction of the house by seeing which way
+the numbers ran.
+
+'What is the matter?' asked Musellaro.
+
+'Nothing--go on,--I am listening.'
+
+He looked at one number and calculated that the house must be on the
+left hand side, somewhere about the Villa Aldobrandini. The tall pines
+round the villa looked feathery light against the starry sky. The night
+was icy but serene; the Torre delle Milizie lifted up its massive bulk,
+square and sombre among the twinkling stars; the laurels on the wall of
+Servius slumbered motionless in the gleam of the street lamps.
+
+A few numbers more and they would reach the one mentioned on Don
+Manuel's card. Andrea trembled as if he expected Donna Maria to appear
+upon the threshold. He passed so close to the great door that he brushed
+against it; he could not refrain from looking up at the windows.
+
+'What are you looking at?' asked Musellaro.
+
+'Nothing--give me a cigarette and let us walk a little faster; it is
+awfully cold.'
+
+They followed the Via Nazionale as far as the Four Fountains in silence.
+Andrea's preoccupation was patent.
+
+'You must decidedly have something serious on your mind,' said his
+friend.
+
+Andrea's heart beat so fast that he was on the point of pouring his
+confidences into his friend's ear, but he restrained himself. Memories
+of Schifanoja passed across his spirit like an exhilarating perfume, and
+in the midst of them beamed the figure of Maria Ferres with a radiance
+that almost dazzled him. But most distinctly and more luminously than
+all the rest, he saw that moment in the wood at Vicomile, when she had
+flung those burning words at him. Would he ever hear such words from her
+lips again? What had she been doing--what had been her thoughts--how had
+she spent the days since they parted? His agitation increased with every
+step. Fragments of scenes passed rapidly before him like the
+phantasmagoria of a dream--a bit of country, a glimpse of the sea, a
+flight of steps among the roses, the interior of a room, all the places
+in which some sentiment had had its birth, round which she had diffused
+some sweetness, where she had breathed the charm of her person. And he
+thrilled with profound emotion at the idea that perchance she still
+carried in her heart that living passion, had perhaps suffered and wept,
+had dreamed and hoped.
+
+'Well?' said Musellaro, 'and how is your affair with Donna Elena
+progressing?'
+
+They happened to be just in front of the Palazzo Barberini. Behind the
+railings and the great stone pillars of the gates stretched the garden,
+dimly visible through the gloom, animated by the low murmur of the
+fountains and dominated by the massive white palace where in the portico
+alone was light.
+
+'What did you say?' asked Andrea.
+
+'I asked how you were getting on with Donna Elena.'
+
+Andrea glanced up at the palace. At that moment he seemed to feel a
+blank indifference in his heart, the absolute death of desire--the final
+renunciation.
+
+'I am following your advice. I have not tried to relight the cigarette.'
+
+'And yet, do you know, in this one instance, I believe it would be worth
+while. Have you noticed her particularly? It seems to me that she has
+become more beautiful. I cannot help thinking there is something--how
+shall I express it?--something new, something indescribable about her.
+No, _new_ is not the word. She has gained intensity without losing
+anything of the peculiar character of her beauty; in short, she is _more
+Elena_ than the Elena of two years ago--the quintessence of herself. It
+is, most likely, the effect of her second spring, for I should fancy
+she must be hard on thirty. Don't you think so?'
+
+As he listened, Andrea felt the dull ashes of his love stir and kindle.
+Nothing revives and excites a man's desire so much as hearing from
+another the praises of a woman he has loved too long or wooed in vain. A
+love in its death-throes may thus be prolonged as the result of the envy
+or the admiration of another; for the disgusted or wearied lover
+hesitates to abandon what he possesses or is struggling to possess in
+favour of a possible successor.
+
+'Don't you think so?' Musellaro repeated. 'And, besides, to make a
+Menelaus of that Heathfield would in itself be an unspeakable
+satisfaction.'
+
+'So I think,' answered Andrea, forcing himself to adopt his friend's
+light tone. 'Well, we shall see.'
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+'Maria, grant me this one moment of unalloyed sweetness! Let me tell you
+all that is in my heart.'
+
+She rose. 'Forgive, me,' she said gently, without anger or bitterness
+and with an audible quiver of emotion in her voice. 'Forgive me but I
+cannot listen to you. You pain me very much.'
+
+'Well, I will not say anything--only stay--I implore you.'
+
+She seated herself once more. It was like the days of Schifanoja come
+back again. The same matchless grace of the delicate head drooping under
+the masses of hair as under some divine chastisement, the same deep and
+tender shadow, a fusion of diaphanous violet and soft blue, surrounding
+the tawny brown eyes.
+
+'I only wanted,' Andrea went on humbly, 'I only wanted to remind you of
+the words I spoke, the words you listened to that morning in the park
+under the shadow of the trees, in an hour that will always remain sacred
+in my memory.'
+
+'I have not forgotten them.'
+
+'Since that day my unhappiness has become ever deeper, darker, more
+poignant. I can never tell you all I have suffered, all the abject
+misery of that time: can never tell you how often in spirit I have
+called upon you as if my last hour had come, nor describe to you the
+thrill of joy, the upward bound of my whole soul towards the light of
+hope, if, for one moment, I dared to think that the remembrance of me
+still lived in your heart.'
+
+He spoke in the accents of that morning long ago; he seemed to have
+regained the same passionate rapture: all his vaguely felt happiness
+rose to his lips. And she sat motionless, listening with drooping head,
+almost in the same attitude as on that day; and round her lips, those
+lips which she vainly sought to keep firm, there played the same
+expression of dolorous rapture.
+
+'Do you remember Vicomile? Do you remember our ride through the wood on
+that evening in October?'
+
+Donna Maria bent her head slightly in sign of assent.
+
+'And the words you said to me?' the young man went on in a lower voice,
+but in a tone of suppressed passion and bending down to look into the
+eyes she kept steadfastly fixed upon the ground.
+
+She raised them now to his--those sweet, patient, pathetic eyes.
+
+'I have forgotten nothing,' she replied, 'nothing, nothing! Why should I
+hide my heart from you? You are good and noble-minded, and I have
+absolute trust in your generosity. Why should I act towards you like an
+ordinary foolish woman? I told you that evening that I loved you. Your
+question implies another one, I see that very well--you want to ask me
+if I love you still.'
+
+She faltered for a moment and her lips quivered. 'I love you.'
+
+'Maria!'
+
+'But you must give up all claim upon my love, you must keep away from
+me. Be noble, be generous, and spare me the struggle which frightens me.
+I have suffered much, Andrea, I have borne much; but the thought of
+having to struggle with you, to defend myself against you, fills me with
+a nameless terror. You do not know at the cost of what sacrifices I have
+at last gained peace of heart; you do not know what lofty and cherished
+ideals I have been obliged to bid farewell to--poor ideals! I am a
+changed woman because I could not help it; I have had to place myself on
+a lower level.'
+
+There was a note of grave, sweet sadness in her voice.
+
+'In those first days after I met you, I abandoned myself to the alluring
+sweetness, let myself drift with eyes closed to the distant peril. I
+thought--he shall never know anything from me, I shall never know
+anything from him. I had nothing to regret and therefore I felt no fear.
+But you spoke--you said things to me that no one had ever said before,
+and then you forced my avowal from me. The danger suddenly appeared
+before me, unmistakable, imminent. And then I abandoned myself to a
+fresh dream. Your mental distress touched me to the heart, caused me
+profound pain. "Impurity has sullied his soul," I thought to myself.
+"Oh, that I had the power to purify it again! What happiness to offer
+myself up as a sacrifice for his regeneration!" Your unhappiness
+attracted mine. I thought I might scarcely be able to console you, but I
+hoped at least you might find relief in having another soul to answer
+eternally _Amen_ to all your plaints.'
+
+She uttered the last words with a face so suffused with spiritual
+exaltation that Andrea felt a wave of half-religious joy sweep over him,
+and his one desire, at that moment, was to take those dear and spotless
+hands in his and breathe upon them the ineffable rapture of his soul.
+
+'But it cannot--it may not be.' she went on, shaking her head in sad
+regret. 'We must renounce that hope for ever. Life is inexorable.
+Without intending it, you would destroy a whole existence--and more than
+one perhaps----'
+
+'Maria, Maria! do not say such things!' the young man broke in, leaning
+over her once more and taking one of her hands with a sort of timid
+entreaty, as if looking for some sign of permission before venturing on
+the liberty. 'I will do anything you tell me; I will be humble and
+obedient, my one thought shall be to carry out your wishes, my one
+desire, to die with your name upon my lips. In renouncing you, I
+renounce my salvation, I fall back into irremediable ruin and disaster.
+I have no words to express my love for you. I have need of you. You
+alone are _true_--you are Truth itself, for which my soul is ever
+seeking. All else is vanity--all else is nought. To give you up is like
+signing my death-warrant. But if this immolation is necessary to your
+peace of mind, it shall be done--I owe it to you. Do not fear, Maria, I
+will never do anything to hurt you.'
+
+He held her hand, but he did not press it. His voice had none of the old
+passionate ardour, it was submissive, disconsolate, heart-broken, full
+of infinite weariness. And Maria was so blinded by her compassion that
+she did not draw away her hand, but let it lie in his, abandoning
+herself for a moment to the unutterable rapture of that light contact--a
+rapture so subtle as hardly to have any physical origin--as if some
+magnetic fluid, issuing from her heart, diffused itself through her arm
+to her fingers and there flowed forth in a wave of ineffable sweetness.
+When Andrea ceased speaking, certain words of his, uttered on that
+memorable morning in the park and revived by the recent sound of his
+voice, returned to her memory--'Your mere presence suffices to
+intoxicate me--I feel it flowing through my veins like blood, flooding
+my soul with nameless emotion----'
+
+There was an interval of silence. From time to time, a gust of wind
+shook the window-panes and bore fitfully with it the distant roar of the
+city and the rumbling of carriage wheels. The light was cold and limpid
+as spring water; shadows were gathering thickly in the corners of the
+room and in the folds of the Oriental curtains; from pieces of
+furniture, here and there, came gleams of ivory and mother-of-pearl; a
+great gilded Buddha shone out of the background under a tall palm.
+Something of the exotic mystery of these things was diffused over the
+drawing-room.
+
+'And what do you suppose is going to become of me now?' asked Andrea.
+
+She seemed lost in perplexing thought. There was a look of irresolution
+on her face as if she were listening to two contending voices.
+
+'I cannot describe to you,' she answered, passing her hand over her eyes
+with a rapid gesture, 'I cannot describe to you the strange foreboding
+that has weighed upon me for a long time past. I do not know what it is,
+but I am _afraid_.'
+
+Then, after a pause--'Oh, to think that you may be suffering, sick at
+heart,--my poor darling--and that I can do nothing to ease your pain,
+may not be with you in your hour of anguish--may not even know that you
+have called me--_Mio Dio!_'
+
+There was a quiver of tears in her breaking voice. Andrea hung his head
+but did not speak.
+
+'To think that my spirit will follow you always, always, and yet that it
+may never, never mingle with yours, will never, never be understood by
+you!--Alas, poor love!'
+
+Her voice was full of tears and her mouth was drawn with pain.
+
+Ah, do not desert me--do not desert me!' cried the young man, seizing
+her two hands and half-kneeling at her feet, a prey to overwhelming
+excitement--'I will never ask anything of you--I want nothing but your
+pity. A little pity from you is more--far more--to me than passionate
+love from any other woman--you know it. Your hand alone can heal me, can
+bring me back to life, can raise me out of the slough into which I have
+sunk, give me back my faith and free me from the bondage of those
+shameful things that corrupt me and fill me with horror.
+Dear--dear--hands!'
+
+He bent over them and pressed his lips to them in a long kiss,
+abandoning himself with half-closed eyes to the utter sweetness of it.
+
+'I can feel you tremble,' he murmured in an indefinable tone.
+
+She rose abruptly, trembling from head to foot, giddy, paler still than
+on the morning when they walked together beneath the flower-laden trees.
+The wind still shook the panes; there was a dull clamour in the distance
+as of a riotous crowd. The shrill cries borne on the wind from the
+Quirinal increased her agitation.
+
+'Go, Andrea--please go--you must not stay here any longer. You shall see
+me some other time--whenever you like, but go now, I entreat you----'
+
+'Where shall I see you again?'
+
+'At the concert to-morrow--good-bye.'
+
+She was as perturbed and agitated as if she had been guilty of some
+grave fault. She accompanied him to the door of the room. When she found
+herself alone, she hesitated, not knowing what to do next, still under
+the sway of her terror. Her temples throbbed, her cheeks and her eyes
+burned with fierce intensity, while cold shivers ran through her limbs.
+But on her hands she still felt the pressure of that beloved mouth, a
+sensation so surpassingly sweet that she wished it might remain there
+for ever indelible like some divine impress.
+
+She looked about her. The light was fading, things looked shapeless in
+the shadows, the great Buddha gleamed with a weird pale light. The cries
+came up from the street fitfully. She went over to a window, opened it
+and leaned out. An icy wind blew through the street; in the direction of
+the Piazza dei Termini, they were already lighting the lamps. Across the
+way, at the Villa Aldobrandini, the trees swayed to and fro, their tops
+touched with a faint red glow. A huge crimson cloud hung solitary in the
+sky over the Torre delle Milizie.
+
+The evening struck her as strangely lugubrious. She withdrew from the
+window and seated herself again where she had just had her conversation
+with Andrea. Why had Delfina not returned yet? She earnestly desired to
+escape from her thoughts, and yet she weakly allowed herself to linger
+in the place where, only a few minutes ago, Andrea had breathed and
+spoken, had sighed out his love and his unhappiness. The struggles, the
+resolutions, the contrition, the prayers, the penances of four months
+had been wiped out, made utterly unavailing in one second of time, and
+she sank down more weary and vanquished than ever, without the will or
+the power to fight against the foes that beset her in her own heart,
+against the feelings that were upheaving her whole moral foundations.
+And while she gave way to the anguish and despair of a conscience which
+feels all its courage oozing from it, she still had the feeling that
+something of _him_ lingered in the shadows of the room and enveloped her
+with all the sweetness of a passionate caress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The next day, she arrived at the Palazzo dei Sabini, her heart beating
+fast under a bunch of violets.
+
+Andrea was looking out for her at the door of the concert-hall.
+
+'Thanks,' he said, and pressed her hand.
+
+He conducted her to a seat and sat down beside her.
+
+'I thought the anxiety of waiting for you would have killed me,' he
+murmured. 'I was so afraid you would not come. How grateful I am to you!
+Late last night,' he went on, 'I passed your house. There was a light in
+one window--the third looking towards the Quirinal--I would have given
+much to know if you were up there. Who gave you those violets?' he asked
+abruptly.
+
+'Delfina,' she answered.
+
+'Did Delfina tell you of our meeting this morning in the Piazza di
+Spagna?'
+
+'Yes--all.'
+
+The concert began with a Quartett by Mendelssohn. The hall was already
+nearly full, the audience consisting, for the most part, of foreign
+ladies--fair-haired women very quietly and simply dressed, grave of
+attitude, religiously silent, as in some sacred spot. The wave of music
+passing over these motionless heads spread out into the golden light, a
+light that filtered from above through faded yellow curtains and was
+reflected from the bare white walls. It was the old hall of the
+Philharmonic concerts. The whiteness of the walls was unbroken by any
+ornament, with only here and there a trace of former frescoes and its
+meagre blue portieres threatening to come down at any moment. It had
+all the air of a place that had been closed for a century and opened
+again that day for the first time. But just this faded look of age, the
+air of poverty, the nakedness of the walls lent a curious additional
+flavour to the exquisite enjoyment of the audience, making their delight
+seem more absorbing, loftier, purer by contrast. It was the 2nd of
+February; at Montecitorio the Parliament was disputing over the massacre
+of Dogali; the neighbouring streets and squares swarmed with the
+populace and with soldiers.
+
+Musical memories of Schifanoja came back to the lovers, a reflected
+gleam from those fair autumn days illumined their thoughts.
+Mendelssohn's Minuet called up before them a vision of the villa by the
+sea, of rooms filled with the perfume of the terraced garden, of
+cypresses lifting their dark heads into the soft sky, of flaming sails
+upon a glassy sea.
+
+Bending towards his companion, Andrea whispered softly: 'What are you
+thinking about?'
+
+With a smile so faint that he hardly caught it, she answered:
+
+'Do you remember the 22nd of September?'
+
+Andrea had no very clear recollection of this date, but he nodded his
+head.
+
+The Andante, calm, broad and solemn, dominated by a wonderful and
+pathetic melody, had ended in a sudden outburst of grief. The Finale
+lingered in a certain rhythmic monotony full of plaintive weariness.
+
+'Now comes your favourite Bach,' said Donna Maria.
+
+And when the music commenced they both felt an instinctive desire to
+draw closer to each other. Their shoulders touched; at the end of each
+part Andrea leant over her to read the programme which she held open in
+her hands, and in so doing pressed against her arm, inhaling the perfume
+of her violets, and sending a wild thrill of ecstasy through her. The
+Adagio rose with so exultant a song, soared with so jubilant a strain to
+the topmost summits of rapture, and flowed wide into the Infinite, that
+it seemed like the voice of some celestial being pouring out the joy of
+a deathless victory. The spirits of the audience were borne along on
+that irresistible torrent of sound. When the music ceased, the tremor of
+the instruments continued for a moment in the hearers. A murmur ran from
+one end of the hall to the other. A moment later and the applause broke
+forth vehemently.
+
+The lovers turned simultaneously and looked at one another with swimming
+eyes.
+
+The music continued; the light began to fade; a gentle warmth pervaded
+the air, and Donna Maria's violets breathed a fuller fragrance. Seeing
+nobody near him whom he knew, Andrea almost felt as if he were alone
+with her.
+
+But he was mistaken. Turning round in one of the pauses, he caught sight
+of Elena standing at the back of the hall with the Princess of
+Ferentino. Instantly their eyes met. As he bowed to her, he seemed to
+catch a singular smile on Elena's lips.
+
+'To whom are you bowing?' asked Donna Maria, turning round too, 'who are
+those ladies?'
+
+'Lady Heathfield and the Princess of Ferentino.'
+
+She noticed a tremor of annoyance in his voice.
+
+'Which of them is the Princess of Ferentino?'
+
+'The fair one.'
+
+'The other is very beautiful.'
+
+Andrea said nothing.
+
+'But is she English?' she asked again.
+
+'No, she is a Roman. She was the widow of the Duke of Scerni, and now
+married again to Lord Heathfield.'
+
+'She is very lovely.'
+
+'What is coming next?' Andrea asked hurriedly.
+
+'The Brahms Quartett in C minor.'
+
+'Do you know it?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'The second movement is marvellous.'
+
+He went on speaking to hide his embarrassment.
+
+'When shall I see you again?' he asked.
+
+'I do not know.'
+
+'To-morrow?'
+
+She hesitated. A cloud seemed to have come over her face.
+
+'To-morrow,' she answered, 'if it is fine I shall take Delfina to the
+Piazza di Spagna about twelve o'clock.'
+
+'And if it is not fine?'
+
+'On Saturday evening I shall be at the Countess Starnina's----'
+
+The music began once more. The first movement expressed a sombre and
+virile struggle, the Romance a memory full of passionate but sad desire,
+followed by a slow uplifting, faltering and tentative, towards the
+distant dawn. Out of this a clear and melodious phrase developed itself
+with splendid modulations. The sentiment was very different from that
+which animated Bach's Adagio; it was more human, more earthly, more
+elegiacal. A breath of Beethoven ran through this music.
+
+Andrea's nervous perturbation was so great that he feared every moment
+to betray himself. All his pleasure was embittered. He could not exactly
+analyse his discomfort; he could neither gather himself together and
+overcome it, nor put it away from him; he was swayed in turn by the
+charm of the music and the fascination exercised over him by each of
+these women without being really dominated by any of the three. He had a
+vague sensation as of some empty space, in which heavy blows perpetually
+resounded followed by dolorous echoes. His thoughts seemed to break up
+and crumble away into a thousand fragments, and the images of the two
+women to melt into and destroy one another without his being able to
+disconnect them or to separate his feeling for the one from his feeling
+for the other. And above all this mental disturbance was the anxiety
+occasioned by the immediate circumstances, by the necessity for adopting
+some practical line of action. Donna Maria's slight change of attitude
+had not escaped him, and he seemed to feel Elena's gaze riveted upon
+him. What course should he pursue? He could not make up his mind whether
+to accompany Donna Maria when she left the concert, or to approach
+Elena, nor could he determine where this incident would be favourable to
+him or otherwise with either of the ladies.
+
+'I am going,' said Donna Maria, rising at the end of the movement.
+
+'You will not wait till the end?'
+
+'No, I must be home by five o'clock.'
+
+'Do not forget--to-morrow morning----'
+
+She held out her hand. It was perhaps the air of the close room that
+sent a flush to her pale cheek. A velvet mantle of a dull leaden shade,
+with a deep border of chinchilla, covered her to her feet, and amid the
+soft gray fur the violets were dying exquisitely. As she passed out, she
+moved with such a queenly grace that many of the ladies turned to follow
+her with their eyes. It was the first time that in this spiritual
+creature, the pure Siennese Madonna, Andrea also beheld the elegant
+woman of the world.
+
+The third movement of the Quartett began. The daylight had diminished so
+much that the yellow curtains had to be drawn back. Several other ladies
+left. A low hum of conversation was audible here and there. The fatigue
+and inattention which invariably marks the end of a concert began to
+make itself apparent in the audience. By one of those strange and abrupt
+manifestations of moral elasticity, Andrea experienced a sudden sense of
+relief, not to say gaiety. In a moment, he had forgotten his sentimental
+and passionate pre-occupations, and all that now appealed to him--to his
+vanity, to his corrupt senses--was the licentious aspect of the affair.
+He thought to himself that in granting him these little innocent
+rendezvous, Donna Maria had already set her foot on the gentle downward
+slope of the path at the bottom of which lies sin, inevitable even to
+the most vigilant soul; he also argued that doubtless a little touch of
+jealousy would do much towards bringing Elena back to his arms and that
+thus the one intrigue would help on the other--was it not a vague fear,
+a jealous foreboding that had made Donna Maria consent so quickly to
+their next meeting? He saw himself, therefore, well on the way to a
+two-fold conquest, and he could not repress a smile as he reflected that
+in both adventures the chief difficulty presented itself under the same
+guise: both women professed a wish to play the part of sister to him; it
+was for him to transform these sisters in something closer. He remarked
+upon other resemblances between the two--That voice! How curiously like
+Elena's were some tones in Donna Maria's voice! A mad thought flashed
+through his brain. That voice might furnish him with the elements of a
+study of imagination--by virtue of that affinity, he might resolve the
+two fair women into one, and thus possess a third, imaginary, mistress,
+more complex, more perfect, more _true_ because she would be ideal----
+
+The third movement, executed in faultless style, finished in a burst of
+applause. Andrea rose and approached Elena--
+
+'Oh, there you are, Ugenta! Where have you been all this time?'
+exclaimed the Princess--'In the "pays du Tendre?"'
+
+'And your incognita?' asked Elena lightly as she pulled a bunch of
+violets out of her muff and sniffed them.
+
+'She is a great friend of my cousin Francesca's, Donna Maria Ferres y
+Capdevila, the wife of the new minister for Guatemala,' Andrea replied
+without turning a hair--'a beautiful creature and very cultivated--she
+was at Schifanoja with Francesca last September.'
+
+'And what of Francesca?' Elena broke in--'do you know when she is coming
+back?'
+
+'I had the latest news from her a day or two ago--from San Remo.
+Fernandino is better, but I am afraid she will have to stay on there
+another month at least, perhaps longer.'
+
+'What a pity!'
+
+The last movement, a very short one, began. Elena and the Princess
+occupied two chairs at the end of the room, against the wall under a dim
+mirror in which the melancholy hall was reflected. Elena listened with
+bent head, slowly drawing through her fingers the long ends of her boa.
+
+The concert over, she said to Sperelli: 'Will you see us to the
+carriage?'
+
+As she entered her carriage after the Princess, she turned to him
+again--'Won't you come too? We will drop Eva at the Palazzo Fiano, and I
+can put you down wherever you like.'
+
+'Thanks,' answered Andrea, nothing loath. On the Corso they were obliged
+to proceed very slowly, the whole roadway being taken up by a seething,
+tumultuous crowd. From the Piazza di Montecitorio and the Piazza Colonna
+came a perfect uproar that swelled and rose and fell and rose again,
+mingled with shrill trumpet-blasts. The tumult increased as the gray
+cold twilight deepened. Horror at the tragedy enacted in a far-off land
+made the populace howl with rage; men broke through the dense crowd
+running and waving great bundles of newspapers. Through all the clamour,
+the one word Africa rang distinctly.
+
+'And all this for four hundred brutes who had died the death of brutes!'
+murmured Andrea, withdrawing his head from the carriage window.
+
+'What are you saying!' cried the Princess.
+
+At the corner of the Chigi palace the commotion assumed the aspect of a
+riot. The carriage had to stop. Elena leaned forward to look out, and
+her face emerging from the shadows and lighted up by the glare of the
+gas and the reflection of the sunset seemed of a ghastly whiteness, an
+almost icy pallor, reminding Andrea of some head he had seen before, he
+could not say where or when--in some gallery or chapel.
+
+'Here we are,' said the Princess, as the carriage drew up at last at the
+Palazzo Fiano. 'Good-bye--we shall meet again at the Angelieris' this
+evening. Ugenta will come and lunch with us to-morrow? You will find
+Elena and Barbarella Viti and my cousin there----'
+
+'At what time?'
+
+'Half-past twelve.'
+
+'Thanks, I will.'
+
+The Princess got out. The footman stood at the carriage door awaiting
+further orders.
+
+'Where shall I take you?' Elena asked Sperelli, who had promptly taken
+the place of the Princess beside her.
+
+'Far, far away----'
+
+'Nonsense--tell me now,--home?' And without waiting for his answer she
+said--'To the Palazzo Zuccari, Trinita de' Monti.'
+
+The footman closed the carriage door and they drove off down the Via
+Frattina leaving all the turmoil of the crowd behind them.
+
+'Oh, Elena--after so long----' Andrea burst out, leaning down to gaze
+at the woman he so passionately desired and who had shrunk away from him
+into the shadow as if to avoid his contact.
+
+The brilliant lights of the shop windows pierced the gloom in the
+carriage as they passed, and he saw on Elena's white face a slow
+alluring smile.
+
+Still smiling thus, with a rapid movement she unwound the boa from her
+neck and cast it over Andrea's head like a lasso, and with that soft
+loop, all fragrant with the same perfume he had noticed in the blue fox
+of her coat, she drew the young man towards her and silently held up her
+lips to his.
+
+Well did those two pairs of lips remember the rapture of by-gone days,
+those terrible and yet deliriously sweet meetings prolonged to anguish.
+They held their breath to taste the sweetness of that kiss to the full.
+
+Passing through the Via due Macelli the carriage drove up the Via dei
+Tritone, turned into the Via Sistina and stopped at the door of the
+Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+Elena instantly released her captive, saying rather huskily--
+
+'Go now, good-bye.'
+
+'When will you come?'
+
+'_Chi sa!_'
+
+The footman opened the door and Andrea got out. The carriage turned back
+to the Via Sistina and Andrea, still vibrating with passion, a veil of
+mist before his eyes, stood watching to see if Elena's face would not
+appear at the window; but he saw nothing. The carriage drove rapidly
+away.
+
+As he ascended the stairs to his apartment, he said to himself--'So she
+has come round at last!' The intoxication of her presence was still upon
+him, on his lips he still felt the pressure of her kiss, and in his eyes
+was the flash of the smile with which she had thrown that sort of smooth
+and perfumed snake about his neck. And Donna Maria?--Most assuredly it
+was to her he owed these unexpected favours. There was no doubt that at
+the bottom of Elena's strange and fantastic behaviour lay a decided
+touch of jealousy. Fearing perhaps that he was escaping her she sought
+thus to lure him back and rekindle his passion. 'Does she love me, or
+does she not?' But what did it matter to him one way or another? What
+good would it do him to know? The spell was broken irremediably. No
+miracle that ever was wrought could revive the least little atom of the
+love that was dead. The only thing that need occupy him now was the
+carnal body, and that was divine as ever.
+
+He indulged long in pleasurable meditation on this episode. What
+particularly took his fancy was the arch and graceful touch Elena had
+given to her caprice. The thought of the boa evoked the image of Donna
+Maria's coils, and so, confusedly, all the amorous fancies he had woven
+round that virginal mass of hair by which, once on a time, the very
+school-girls of the Florentine convent had been enthralled. And again he
+let his two loves melt into one and form the third--the Ideal.
+
+The musing mood still upon him while he dressed for dinner, he thought
+to himself--'Yesterday, a grand scene of passion almost ending in tears;
+to-day, a little episode of mute sensuality--and I seemed to myself as
+sincere in my sentiment yesterday as I was in my sensations to-day.
+Added to which, scarcely an hour before Elena's kiss, I had a moment of
+lofty lyrical emotion at Donna Maria's side. Of all this not one vestige
+remains. To-morrow, most assuredly I shall begin the same game over
+again. I am unstable as water; incoherent, inconsistent, a very
+chameleon! All my efforts towards unity of purpose are for ever vain. I
+must resign myself to my fate. The law of my being is comprised in the
+one word--_Nunc_--the will of the Law be done!'
+
+He laughed at himself, and from that moment began a new phase of his
+moral degradation.
+
+Without mercy, without remorse, without restraint, he set all his
+faculties to work to compass the realisation of his impure imaginings.
+To vanquish Maria Ferres he had recourse to the most subtle artifices,
+the most delicate machinations; taking care to deceive her in matters of
+the soul, of the spiritual, the ideal, the inmost life of the heart. In
+carrying on the two campaigns--the conquest of the new and the
+re-conquest of the old love--with equal adroitness, and in turning to
+the best advantage the chance circumstances of each enterprise, he was
+led into an infinity of annoying, embarrassing, and ridiculous
+situations, to extricate himself from which he was obliged to descend to
+a series of lies and deceptions, of paltry evasions, ignoble subterfuges
+and equivocal expedients. All Donna Maria's goodness and faith and
+single mindedness were powerless to disarm him. As the foundation of his
+work of seduction with her he had taken a verse from one of the
+Psalms:--_Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor--lavabis me et super nirem
+dealbabor_. And she, poor, hapless, devoted creature, imagined that she
+was saving a soul alive, redeeming an intellect, washing away by her own
+purity the stains that sin had left on him. She still believed
+implicitly in the ever-remembered words he had spoken to her in the
+park, on that Epiphany of Love, within sight of the sea; and it was just
+in this belief that she found comfort and support in the midst of the
+religious conflict that rent her conscience; this belief that blinded
+her to all suspicion and filled her with a soil of mystic intoxication
+wherein she opened the secret floodgates of her heart and let loose all
+her pent-up tenderness, and let the sweetest flowers of her womanhood
+blossom out resplendently.
+
+For the first time in his life, Andrea Sperelli found himself face to
+face with a _real_ passion--one of those rare and supreme manifestations
+of woman's capacity for love which occasionally flash their superb and
+terrible lightnings across the shifting gray sky of earthly loves. But
+he did not care a jot, and went on with the pitiless work which was to
+destroy both himself and his victim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The next day, according to their agreement at the concert, Andrea found
+Donna Maria in the Piazza di Spagna with Delfina, looking at the antique
+jewellery in a shop window. At the first sound of his voice she turned,
+and a bright flush stained the pallor of her cheek. Together they then
+examined the eighteenth-century jewels, the paste buckles and hair
+ornaments, the enamelled watches, the gold and ivory tortoise-shell
+snuff-boxes, all these pretty trifles of a by-gone day which afforded an
+impression of harmonious richness under the clear morning sun.
+Everywhere about them, the flower-sellers were offering yellow and white
+jonquils, double violets, and long branches of flowering almond. There
+was a breath of Spring in the air. The column of the Immaculate
+Conception rose lightly into the sunshine, like a flower stem with the
+_Rosa mystica_ on its summit; the Barcaccia glistened in a shower of
+diamonds, the stairway of the Trinita opened its arms gaily towards the
+church of Charles VIII., the two towers of which stood out boldly
+against the blue cloud-flecked sky.
+
+'How exquisite!' exclaimed Donna Maria. 'No wonder you are so deeply
+enamoured of Rome!'
+
+'Oh, you don't know it yet,' Andrea replied, 'I wish I might be your
+guide'--she smiled--'and undertake a pilgrimage of sentiment with you
+this spring.'
+
+She smiled again, and her whole person assumed a less grave and
+chastened air. Her dress, this morning, had a quiet elegance about it,
+but revealed the refined taste of an expert in style and in the delicate
+combinations of colour. Her jacket, of a shade of gray inclining to
+green, was of cloth trimmed round the edge with beaver and opening over
+a vest of the same fur, the blending of the two tones--indefinable gray
+and tawny gold--forming a harmony that was a delight to the eye.
+
+'What did you do yesterday evening?' she asked.
+
+'I left the concert-hall a few minutes after you and went home; and I
+stayed there because I seemed to feel your spirit near me. I thought
+much. Did you not _feel_ my thought?'
+
+'No, I cannot say I did. I passed a very cheerless evening. I do not
+know why. I felt so dreadfully alone!'
+
+The Contessa di Lucoli passed in her dog-cart, driving a big roan.
+Giulia Moceto, accompanied by Musellaro, passed on foot, and then Donna
+Isotta Cellesi.
+
+Andrea bowed to each. Donna Maria asked him the names of the ladies.
+That of Giulia Moceto was not new to her. She recalled the day on which
+she heard Francesca mention it while looking at Perugino's Archangel
+Michael, when they were turning over Andrea's drawings at Schifanoja.
+She followed her curiously with her eyes, seized with a sudden vague
+fear. Everything connecting Andrea with his former life was distasteful
+to her. She wished that that life, of which she knew next to nothing,
+could be entirely wiped out of the memory of this man who had flung
+himself into it with such avidity and dragged himself out with so much
+weariness, so many losses, so many wounds--'To live solely in you and
+for you, with no to-morrow and no yesterday--without other bond or
+preference--far from the world----' Were not those his words to her?
+What a dream!
+
+Matters of very different import were troubling Andrea. It was fast
+approaching the Princess of Ferentino's lunch hour.
+
+'Where are you bound for?' he asked of his companion.
+
+'Wishing to make the most of the sunshine, Delfina and I had tea and
+sandwiches at Nazzari's and thought of going up to the Pincio and
+visiting the Villa Medici. If you would care to come with us----'
+
+He had a moment of painful hesitation. The Pincio, the Villa Medici, on
+a February afternoon--with her! But he could not well get out of the
+lunch; besides, he was desperately anxious to meet Elena again after
+yesterday's episode, for though he had gone to the Angelieris', she did
+not put in an appearance.
+
+He therefore answered with an inconsolable air--'How wretchedly
+unfortunate! I am obliged to be at a lunch in a quarter of an hour. I
+accepted the invitation a week ago, but if I had known, I would have
+found some way of getting out of it--What a nuisance!'
+
+'Oh, then you must go without losing a moment--you will be late.'
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+'I can walk a little further with you.'
+
+'Mamma, do let us go up the steps,' begged Delfina. 'I went up yesterday
+with Miss Dorothy. You should see it!'
+
+They turned back and crossed the square. A child followed them
+persistently, offering a great branch of flowering almond, which Andrea
+bought and presented to Delfina. Blonde ladies issued from the hotels
+armed with red Baedekers; clumsy hackney coaches with two horses jogged
+past with a glint of brass on their oldfashioned harness; the
+flower-sellers thrust their overflowing baskets in front of the
+strangers, vociferating at the pitch of their voices.
+
+'Will you promise me,' Andrea said to Donna Maria, as they began to
+ascend the steps--'will you promise me not to go to the Villa Medici
+without me? Give it up for to-day--please do.'
+
+For a moment she seemed preoccupied by sad thoughts, then she answered:
+'Very well, I will give it up.'
+
+'Thanks!'
+
+Before them the great stairway rose triumphantly, its sun-warmed steps
+giving out a gentle heat, the stone itself having the polished gleam of
+old silver like that of the fountains at Schifanoja. Delfina ran on in
+front with her almond-branch and, caught by the breeze of her movement,
+some of its faint pink petals fluttered away like butterflies.
+
+A poignant regret pierced the young man's heart. He pictured to himself
+the delights of a sentimental walk through the quiet glades of the Villa
+Medici in the early hours of the sunny afternoon.
+
+'With whom do you lunch?' asked Donna Maria, after an interval of
+silence.
+
+'With the old Princess Alberoni,' he replied.
+
+He lied to her once more, for some instinct warned him that the name
+Ferentino might arouse some suspicion in Donna Maria's mind.
+
+'Good-bye, then,' she said, and held out her hand.
+
+'No--I will come up to the Piazza. My carriage is waiting for me there.
+Look--that is where I live,' and he pointed to the Palazzo Zuccari, all
+flooded with sunshine.
+
+Donna Maria's eyes lingered upon it.
+
+'Now there you have seen it, will you come there sometimes--in spirit?'
+
+'In spirit always.'
+
+'And shall I not see you before Saturday evening?'
+
+'I hardly think so.'
+
+They parted--she turning with Delfina into the avenue, Andrea jumping
+into his brougham and driving off down the Via Gregoriana.
+
+He arrived at the Ferentinos' a few minutes late. He made his apologies.
+Elena was already there with her husband.
+
+Lunch was served in a dining room gay with tapestries representing
+scenes after the manner of Peter Loar. In the midst of these beautiful
+seventeenth-century grotesques, a brisk fire of wit and sarcasm soon
+began to flash and scintillate. The three ladies were in high spirits
+and prompt at repartee. Barbare la Viti laughed her sonorous masculine
+laugh, throwing back her handsome boyish head and making free play with
+her sparkling black eyes. Elena was in a more than usually brilliant
+vein, and impressed Andrea as being so far removed from him, so
+unfamiliar, so unconcerned, that he almost doubted whether yesterday's
+scene had not been all a dream. Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of
+Ferentino aided and abetted the ladies; Lord Heathfield entertained his
+'young friend' by boring him to extinction with questions as to the
+coming sales and giving him minute details of a very rare edition of the
+_Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius--Roma, 1469--in folio, which he had acquired
+a day or two ago for fifteen hundred and twenty lire. He broke off every
+now and then to watch Barbarella, and then that gleam of dementia would
+flash into his eyes, and his repulsive hands trembled strangely.
+
+Andrea's irritation, disgust, and boredom at last reached such a pitch
+that he was unable to conceal his feelings.
+
+'You seem out of spirits, Ugenta,' said the princess.
+
+'Well, a little, perhaps--Miching Mallecho is ill.'
+
+Barbarisi at once overwhelmed him with importunate questions about the
+horse's ailments; and then Lord Heathfield recommenced the story of the
+_Metamorphoses_ from the beginning.
+
+The Princess turned to her cousin. 'What do you think, Ludovico,' she
+said with a laugh, 'yesterday, at the concert, we surprised him in a
+flirtation with an Incognita!'
+
+'So we did,' added Elena.
+
+'An Incognita?' exclaimed Ludovico.
+
+'Yes, but perhaps you can give us further information. She is the wife
+of the new Minister for Guatemala.'
+
+'Aha--I know.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'For the moment, I only know the Minister. I see him playing at the Club
+every night.'
+
+'Tell me, Ugenta, has she been received at court yet?'
+
+'I really do not know, Princess,' Andrea returned with some impatience.
+
+The whole business had become simply intolerable to him. Elena's gaiety
+jarred horribly on him, and her husband's presence was more odious than
+ever. But if he was out of temper, it was more with himself than with
+the rest of the company. At the root of his irritation lay a dim longing
+after the pleasure he had so lately rejected. Hurt and offended by
+Elena's indifference, his heart turned with poignant regret to the other
+woman, and he pictured her wandering pensive and alone through the
+silent avenues, more beautiful, more noble than ever before.
+
+The Princess rose and led the way into an adjoining room. Barbarella ran
+to the piano, which was entirely enveloped in an immense antique
+caparison of red velvet embroidered with dull gold, and began to sing
+Bizet's Tarantelle dedicated to Christine Nilsson. Elena and Eva leaned
+over her to read the music, while Ludovico stood behind them smoking a
+cigarette. The Prince had disappeared.
+
+But Lord Heathfield kept firm hold of Andrea. He had drawn him into a
+window and was discoursing to him on certain little Urbanese '_coppette
+amatorie_' which he had picked up at the Cavaliere Davila's sale, and
+the rasping voice with its aggravating interrogative inflections, the
+gestures with which he indicated the dimensions of the cups, and his
+glance--now dull and fishy, now keen as steel under the great prominent
+brow--in short, the whole man was so unendurably obnoxious to Andrea
+that he clenched his teeth convulsively like a patient under the
+surgeon's knife.
+
+His one absorbing thought was how to get away. His plan was to rush to
+the Pincio in the hope of finding Donna Maria and taking her, after all,
+to the Villa Medici. It was about two o'clock. He looked out of the
+window at the glorious sunshine; he turned back into the room, and saw
+the group of pretty women at the piano, bathed in the red glow struck
+out of the velvet cover by a strong golden ray. With this red glow the
+smoke of the cigarette mingled lightly as the talking and laughter
+mingled with the chords Barbarella Viti struck haphazard on the keys.
+Ludovico whispered a word or two in his cousin's ear, which the Princess
+forthwith communicated to her friends, for there was a renewed burst of
+laughter, ringing and deep, like a string of pearls dropping into a
+silver bowl. Then Barbarella took up Bizet's air again in a low voice--
+
+'Tra, la la--Le papillon s'est envole--Tra, la la----'
+
+Andrea was anxiously on the watch for a favourable moment at which to
+interrupt Lord Heathfield's harangue and make his escape. But the
+collector had entered upon a series of rounded periods, each intimately
+connected with the other, without one break, without one pause for
+breath. A single stop would have saved the persecuted listener, but it
+never came, and the victim's torments grew more unbearable every minute.
+
+'Oui! Le papillon s'est envole--Oui! Ah! ah! ah! ah!'
+
+Andrea looked at his watch.
+
+'Two o'clock already! Excuse me, Marquis, but I must go.'
+
+He left the window and went over to the ladies.
+
+'Will you excuse me, Princess, I have a consultation at two with the
+veterinary surgeons at my stables?'
+
+He took leave in a great hurry. Elena gave him the tips of her fingers,
+Barbarella presented him with _fondant_, saying--'Give it to poor
+Mallecho with my love.'
+
+Ludovico offered to accompany him.
+
+'No, no--stay where you are.'
+
+He bowed and left--flew down the stairs like lightning and jumped into
+his carriage, shouting to the coachman--
+
+'To the Pincio--quick!'
+
+He was filled with a frenzied longing to reach Maria Ferres' side, to
+enjoy the delights which he had refused before. The rapid pace of his
+horses was not quick enough for him. He looked out anxiously for the
+Trinita de' Monti, the avenue--the gates.
+
+The carriage flashed through the gates. He ordered the coachman to
+moderate his pace and to drive through each of the avenues. His heart
+gave a bound every time the figure of a woman appeared in the distance
+through the trees. He got out and, on foot, explored the paths forbidden
+to vehicles. He searched every nook and corner--in vain.
+
+The Villa Borghese being open to the public, the Pincio lay deserted and
+silent under the languid smile of the February sun. Few carriages or
+foot-passengers disturbed the peaceful solitude of the place. The
+grayish-white trees, tinged here and there with violet, spread their
+leafless branches against a diaphanous sky, and the air was full of
+delicate spider-webs which the breeze shook and tore asunder. The pines
+and cypresses--all the evergreen trees--took on something of this
+colourless pallor, seemed to fade and melt into the all-prevailing
+monotone.
+
+Surely something of Donna Maria's sadness still lingered in the
+atmosphere. Andrea stood for several minutes leaning against the
+railings of the Villa Medici, crushed beneath a load of melancholy too
+heavy to be borne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In the days that followed, the double pursuit continued with the same
+tortures, or worse, and with the same odious mendacity. By a phenomenon
+which is of frequent occurrence in the moral degradation of men of keen
+intellect, he now had a terrible lucidity of conscience, a lucidity
+without interruptions, without a moment of dimness or eclipse. He knew
+what he was doing and criticised what he had done. With him self-scorn
+went hand in hand with feebleness of will.
+
+But his variable humour, his incertitude, his unaccountable silences and
+equally unaccountable effusions, in short, all the peculiarities of
+manner which such a condition of mind inevitably brings along with it,
+only increased and excited the passionate commiseration of Donna Maria.
+She saw him suffer, and it filled her with grief and tenderness. 'By
+slow degrees I shall cure him,' she thought. But slowly and surely,
+without being aware of it, she was losing her strength of purpose and
+was bending to the sick man's will.
+
+The downward slope was gentle.
+
+In the drawing-room of the Countess Starnina, an indefinable thrill ran
+through her when she felt Andrea's gaze upon her bare shoulders and
+arms. It was the first time he had seen her in evening dress. Her face
+and her hands were all he knew. This evening he saw how exquisite was
+the shape of her neck and shoulders and of her arms too, although they
+were a little thin.
+
+She was dressed in ivory-white brocade trimmed with sable. A narrow band
+of fur edged the low bodice and imparted an indescribable delicacy to
+the tints of the skin. The line of the shoulders, from the neck to the
+top of the arms, had that gracious slope which is such a sure mark of
+physical aristocracy and so rare nowadays. In her magnificent hair,
+arranged in the manner affected by Verocchio for his busts, there was
+not one jewel, not one flower.
+
+At two or three propitious moments, Andrea murmured words of passionate
+admiration in her ear.
+
+'This is the first time we have met in society,' he said to her. 'Give
+me a glove as a souvenir.'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Why not, Maria?'
+
+'No, no. Be quiet.'
+
+'Oh, those hands of yours! Do you remember when I copied them at
+Schifanoja? I feel as if I had a right to them; as if you ought to grant
+them to me; of your whole person they are the part that is most
+intimately connected with your soul, the most spiritualised, almost, one
+might say, the purest--Oh, hands of kindness--hands of pardon. How
+dearly I should love to possess at least a semblance of their form, some
+token to which their delicate perfume still clings. You will give me a
+glove before you leave?'
+
+She did not answer. The conversation dropped. A short time afterwards,
+on being asked to play, she consented, and drawing off her gloves laid
+them on the music-stand in front of her. Her fingers, tapering and
+glittering with rings, looked very white as she drew off their delicate
+covering. On the ring finger of her left hand blazed a great opal.
+
+She played the two Sonata-Fantasias of Beethoven (Op. 27). The one,
+dedicated to Giulietta Guicciardi, expressed a hopeless renunciation,
+told of an awakening after a dream that had lasted too long. The other,
+from the first bars of the _Andante_, described by its full smooth
+rhythm the calm that comes after the storm; then, passing through the
+disquietude of the second movement, opened out into an _Adagio_ of
+luminous serenity, and ended in an _Allegro Vivace_ in which there was a
+rising note of courage, almost of fervour.
+
+Though surrounded by an attentive audience, Andrea felt that she was
+playing for him alone. From time to time, his eyes wandering from the
+fingers of the pianist to the long gloves hanging from the music stand,
+which still retained the form of those hands, still preserved an
+inexpressible charm in the small opening at the wrist where, but a short
+time ago, a tiny morsel of her soft flesh had been visible.
+
+Maria rose amidst a round of applause. She left the piano, but she did
+not take away her gloves. Andrea was tempted to steal them.--Had she not
+perhaps left them for him?--But he only wanted one. As a connoisseur in
+amatory matters has said, a pair of gloves is a totally different thing
+from a single one.
+
+Led back to the piano by the insistence of the Countess Starnina, Maria
+removed her gloves from the desk and placed them in a corner of the
+keyboard, in the shadow. She then played Rameau's Gavotte--_the Gavotte
+of the Yellow Ladies_--the never-to-be-forgotten dance of Indifference
+and Love.
+
+Andrea regarded her fixedly with a little trepidation. When she rose,
+she took up one of her gloves. The other she left in the shadowy corner
+of the piano--for him.
+
+Three days afterwards, when astonished Rome had awakened to find itself
+under a covering of snow, Andrea received a note to the following
+effect--
+
+'_Tuesday, 2 p. m._--To-night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, you
+will wait for me in a carriage in front of the Palazzo Barberini,
+outside the gates. If by midnight I am not there, you can go away
+again.--_A stranger_.'
+
+The tone of the note was mysterious and romantic. Was it in remembrance
+of the 25th of March two years ago? Lady Heathfield seemed particularly
+fond of the use of carriages in her love affairs. Had she the intention
+of taking up the adventure at the point where it broke off? And why--_A
+stranger_? Andrea could not repress a smile. He had just come back from
+a visit to Maria--a very pleasing visit--and his heart inclined, for the
+moment, more to the Siennese than to the other. His ear still retained
+the sound of her sweet and gentle words as they stood together at the
+window and watched the snow falling soft as peach or apple blossom on
+the trees of the Villa Aldobrandini, already touched with the
+presentiment of the coming Spring. However, before going out to dinner,
+he gave very particular orders to Stephen.
+
+Eleven o'clock found him in front of the palace, devoured by impatience
+and curiosity. The novelty of the situation, the spectacle of the snowy
+night, the mystery and uncertainty of it all, inflamed his imagination
+and transported him beyond the realities of life.
+
+Over Rome, on that memorable February night, there shone a full moon of
+fabulous size and unheard of splendour. In that immense radiance, the
+surrounding objects seemed to exist only as in a dream, impalpable,
+meteoric, and visible at a great distance by virtue of some fantastic
+irradiation of their own. The snow covered the railings of the gateway,
+concealing the iron and transforming it into a piece of open-work, more
+frail and airy than filigree; while the white-robed Colossi supported it
+as oaks support a spider's web. The garden looked like a motionless
+forest of enormous and mis-shapen lilies all of ice; a garden under some
+lunar enchantment, a lifeless paradise of Selene. Mute, solemn and
+massive the Palazzo Barberini reared its great bulk into the sky, its
+most salient points standing out dazzlingly white and casting a pale
+blue shadow as transparent as light.
+
+He waited, leaning forward on the watch; and under the fascination of
+that marvellous spectacle, he felt the spirits that wait on love awake
+in him, that the lyric summits of his sentiment began to gleam and
+glitter like the frozen shafts of the gateway under the moon. But he
+could not make up his mind which of the two women he would prefer as the
+centre of this fantastic scenery: Elena Heathfield robed in imperial
+purple, or Maria Ferres robed in ermine. And as he lingered pleasurably
+over this uncertainty of choice, he ended by mingling and confounding
+his two anxieties--the real one for Elena and the imaginary one for
+Maria.
+
+A clock near by struck in the silence with a clear vibrating sound, and
+each stroke seemed to break something crystalline in the air. The clock
+of the Trinita de' Monti responded to the call, and after that the clock
+of the Quirinal--then others faintly out of the distance. It was a
+quarter past eleven.
+
+Andrea strained his eyes towards the portico. Would she dare to traverse
+the garden on foot? He pictured the figure of Elena in the midst of all
+this dazzling whiteness, then, in an instant, that of Donna Maria
+appeared to him, obliterating the other, triumphant over the whiteness,
+_Candida super nivem_. This night of moonlight and snow then was under
+the dominance of Maria Ferres as under some invincible actual influence.
+The image of the pure creature grew symbolically out of the sovereign
+purity of the surrounding aspect of things. The symbol re-acted forcibly
+on the spirit of the poet.
+
+While still watching to see if the other one would come, he gave himself
+up to a vision suggested by the scene before him.
+
+It was a poetic, almost a mystic dream. He was waiting for Donna
+Maria--she had chosen this night of supernatural purity on which to
+sacrifice her own purity to her lover's desire. All the white things
+about her, cognisant of the great sacrifice about to be accomplished,
+were waiting to cry _Ave_ and _Amen_ at the passage of their sister. The
+silence was alive.
+
+And behold, she comes! _Incedit per lilia et super nivem._ She comes,
+robed in ermine; her tresses bound about with a fillet; her steps
+lighter than a shadow; the moon and the snow are less pale than
+she--_Ave_!
+
+A shadow, azure as the light that tints the sapphire, accompanies her.
+The great mis-shapen lilies bend not as she passes; the frost has
+congealed them, has made them like the asphodels that illumine the paths
+of Hades. And yet, like those of the Christian paradise, they have a
+voice and say with one accord--_Amen_.
+
+So be it--the Beloved glides on to the sacrifice. Already she nears the
+watcher sitting mute and icy, but whose eyes are burning and eloquent.
+And on her hands, the dear hands that close his wounds and open the
+doors of dreams, he presses his kiss.--So be it.
+
+Then on her lips, the dear lips that know no word of falseness, he lays
+his kiss. Released from the fillet, her hair spreads like a glorious
+flood in which all the shadows of the night put to flight by the moon
+and the snow seem to have taken refuge. _Comis suis obumbrabit tibi, et
+sub comis peccavit. Amen._
+
+And still the other did not come! Through the silence, through the
+poetry, the hours of men sounded again from the towers and belfries of
+Rome. A carriage or two rolled noiselessly past the Four Fountains
+towards the Piazza or crawled slowly up towards Santa Maria Maggiore;
+and each street-lamp shone yellow as a topaz in the light. It seemed as
+if the night, reaching its highest point, had grown more luminously
+radiant. The filigree of the gateway twinkled and flashed as if its
+silver embroideries were studded with jewels. In the palace, great
+circles of dazzling light shone on the windows like diamond florins.
+
+'What if she does not come?' thought Andrea to himself.
+
+The flood of lyric fervour that had passed over his soul at Maria's name
+had submerged the anxiety of his vigil, had appeased his desire and
+calmed his impatience. For a moment, the thought that she would not come
+only made him smile. But the next, the anguish of uncertainty began
+again worse than ever, and he was tortured by the vision of the joys
+that might have been his, here in the warm carriage where the roses
+breathed so sweet an atmosphere. Besides which, his sufferings were
+further increased, as on New Year's Eve, by a sharp touch of wounded
+vanity; it annoyed him particularly that his delicate preparations for a
+love scene should thus be wasted and useless.
+
+In the carriage, the cold was tempered by the pleasant warmth diffused
+by a metal foot-warmer, full of hot water. A bunch of white roses,
+snowy, moonlike, lay on the bracket in front of the seat. A white
+bear-skin covered his knees. Everything pointed to an intentional
+arrangement of a sort of _Symphonie en blanc-majeur_.
+
+The clocks struck for the third time. It was a quarter to twelve. The
+vigil had lasted too long--Andrea was growing tired and cross. In
+Elena's apartments, in the left wing of the palace, there was no light
+but that which came from outside. Was she coming? And if so, in what
+manner? Secretly? Under what pretext? Lord Heathfield was certainly in
+Rome--how would she explain her nocturnal absence? Once more the soul of
+the former lover was torn with curiosity; once more jealousy gnawed at
+his heart and carnal passion inflamed him. He thought of Musellaro's
+derisive suggestion about the husband, and he determined to have Elena
+again at all costs, both for pleasure and for revenge. Oh, if only she
+would come!
+
+A carriage drove through the gates and into the garden. He leaned
+forward to look at it. He recognised Elena's horses and caught a glimpse
+inside of the figure of a woman. The carriage disappeared into the
+portico. He remained perplexed. She had been out then? She had returned
+alone? He fixed a scrutinising gaze upon the portico. The carriage came
+out, passed through the garden and drove away towards the Via Rasella;
+it was empty.
+
+It wanted but two or three minutes to midnight and she had not come!
+
+It struck the hour. A bitter pang smote the heart of the deluded
+watcher. She was not coming.
+
+Unable to see any cause for her having missed the appointment he turned
+upon her in sudden anger; he even had a suspicion that she might have
+wished to inflict a humiliation, a punishment upon him, or else that she
+had merely indulged in a whim in order to inflame his desire afresh. The
+next moment he called to the coachman--
+
+'Piazza del Quirinale.'
+
+He yielded to the attraction of Maria Ferres; he abandoned himself once
+more to the vaguely tender sentiment which, ever since his visit in the
+afternoon, had left, as it were, a perfume in his soul and suggested to
+him thoughts and images of poetic beauty. The recent disappointment,
+proving, as he considered, Elena's malice and indifference, urged him
+more strongly than ever towards the love and goodness of the other. His
+regret for the loss of so beautiful a night increased, under the
+influence of the vision he had dreamed just now. And, truth to tell, it
+was one of the most enchanting nights Rome had ever known; one of those
+spectacles that oppress the human soul with deep sadness, because they
+transcend all power of admiration, all possibility of human expression.
+
+The Piazza del Quirinale, magnified by the all-pervading whiteness, lay
+spread out solitary and dazzling, like an Olympian acropolis above the
+silent city. The edifices surrounding it reared their stately
+proportions into the deep sky; Bernini's great portal to the royal
+palace surmounted by the loggia offered an optical delusion by seeming
+to detach itself from the building and stand out all alone in all its
+unwieldy magnificence, like some mausoleum sculptured out of a meteoric
+block of stone. The rich architraves to the Palazzo della Consulta were
+curiously transformed by the accumulated masses of snow. Sublime amidst
+the uniform whiteness, the colossal statues seemed to dominate all
+things. The grouping of the Dioscuri and the horses looked bolder and
+larger in that light; the broad backs of the steeds glittered under
+jewelled trappings, there was a sparkle as of diamonds on the shoulders
+and the uplifted arm of each demi-god.
+
+An august solemnity flowed from the monument. Rome lay plunged in a
+death-like silence, motionless, empty--a city under a spell. The houses,
+the churches, the spires and turrets, all the confusion and
+intermingling of Christian and Pagan architecture, resolved itself into
+one unbroken forest between the heights of the Janiculum and the Monte
+Mario, drowned in a silvery vapour, far off, infinitely immaterial,
+reminding one a little of a lunar landscape, calling up visions of some
+half extinct planet peopled by shades. The dome of St. Peter's, shining
+with a peculiar metallic lustre in the blue atmosphere looked gigantic
+and so close that one might have thought to touch it. And the two
+youthful Heroes, sons of the Swan, radiant with beauty in the vast
+expanse of whiteness as in the apotheosis of their origin, seemed to be
+the immortal Genii of Rome guarding the slumbers of the sacred city.
+
+The carriage stopped in front of the palace and remained there for a
+long time. The poet was once more absorbed in his impossible dream. And
+Maria Ferres was quite near, was perhaps watching and dreaming also,
+perhaps she too felt the grandeur of the night weighing upon her heart
+and crushing it in vain.
+
+Slowly the carriage passed her closed door, while the windows reflected
+the full moon gazing at the hanging gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini
+where the trees looked like aerial miracles. And as he passed, the poet
+threw the bunch of roses on to the snow before Donna Maria's door in
+token of homage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+'I saw--I guessed--I had been at the window for a long time, unable to
+tear myself away from the fascination of all that whiteness. I saw the
+carriage pass slowly in the snow. I felt that it was you, before I saw
+you throw the roses. No words can describe to you the tenderness of my
+tears. I wept for you from love and for the roses out of pity. Poor
+roses! It seemed to me that they were alive and must suffer and die in
+the snow. I seemed to hear them call to me and lament like human
+creatures that have been deserted. As soon as your carriage had
+disappeared, I leaned out of the window to look at them. I was on the
+point of going down into the street to pick them up. But a servant was
+still in the hall waiting up for some one. I thought of a thousand plans
+but could find none that was practicable. I was in despair--You smile?
+Truly, I hardly know what madness had come over me. I watched the
+passers-by anxiously, my eyes full of tears. If any one of them had
+trodden on the roses, he would have trampled upon my heart. And yet in
+all this torment I was happy, happy in your love, in the delicacy of
+your passionate homage, in your gentleness, your kindness.--When, at
+last I fell asleep, I was sad and happy together; the roses must have
+been nearly dead by that time. After an hour or two of sleep, the sound
+of spades upon the pavement woke me up. They were shovelling away the
+snow just in front of my door. I listened; the noise and the voices
+continued till after daylight and filled me with unutterable
+sadness!--Poor roses! But they will always live and bloom in my heart.
+There are certain memories that can perfume a soul for ever--Do you
+love me very much, Andrea?'
+
+She hesitated for a moment, and then--'Do you love only me? Have you
+forgotten all the rest? Do all your thoughts belong to me?'
+
+Her breath came fast and she was trembling.
+
+'I suffer--at the thought of your former life,--the past of which I know
+nothing--of your memories, of all the marks left upon your soul, of that
+in you which I shall never understand never possess. Oh, if I could but
+wipe it all out for you! Incessantly, Andrea, I hear your first, your
+very first words. I believe I shall hear them at the moment of my
+death----'
+
+She panted and trembled, shaken by the force of all-conquering passion.
+
+'Every day I love you more, every day more!'
+
+He intoxicated her with words of honied sweetness; he was more fervent
+than herself; he told her of his visions in the night of snow and of his
+despairing desire and some plausible story of the roses and a thousand
+other lyric fancies. He judged her to be on the point of yielding--he
+saw her eyes swim in melting languor, and on her plaintive mouth that
+nameless contraction which seems like an instinctive dissimulation of
+the physical desire to kiss; he looked at her hands, so delicate and yet
+so strong, the hands of an archangel, and saw them trembling like the
+strings of an instrument expressing all the anguish of her soul. 'If,
+to-day, I could succeed in stealing even the most fleeting kiss from
+her,' he thought, 'I should find myself considerably nearer the goal of
+my desires.'
+
+But, conscious of her peril, she rose hastily with an apology and,
+ringing the bell, ordered tea and sent to ask Miss Dorothy to bring
+Delfina to the drawing-room.
+
+'It is better so,' she said, turning to Andrea with the traces of her
+agitation still visible in her face; 'forgive me!'
+
+And from that day she avoided receiving him except on Tuesday and
+Saturday when she was at home to every one.
+
+Nevertheless, she allowed Andrea to conduct her on long peregrinations
+through the Rome of the Emperors and the Rome of the Popes, through the
+villas, the museums, the churches, the ruins. Where Elena Muti had
+passed, there Maria Ferres passed also. Often enough, the sights they
+visited suggested to the poet the same eloquent effusions which Elena
+had once heard. Often enough, some recollection carried him away
+suddenly from the present and disturbed him strangely.
+
+'What are you thinking of at this moment?' Donna Maria would ask him,
+looking him deep in the eyes with a shade of suspicion.
+
+'Of you--always of you!' he answered. 'I am sometimes seized with
+curiosity to look into my own soul to see if there remains one tiny
+particle that does not belong to you, one smallest corner still closed
+to your light It is an exploration made for you, as you cannot make it
+for yourself. I may say with truth, Maria, that I have nothing more to
+give you. You have absolute dominion over me. Never, I think, in spirit
+has one human being possessed another so entirely. If my lips were to
+meet yours my whole life would be absorbed in yours--I believe I should
+die of it.'
+
+She had full faith in his words, for his voice lent them the fire of
+truth.
+
+One day, they were in the Belvedere of the Villa Medici and were
+watching the gold of the sun fade slowly from the sky while the Villa
+Borghese, still bare and leafless, sank gently into a violet mist.
+Touched with sudden melancholy she said:
+
+'Who knows how many times you have come here to feel yourself beloved?'
+
+'I do not know,' he answered, like a man lost in a dream, 'I do not
+remember. What are you saying?'
+
+She was silent. Then she rose to read the inscriptions written on the
+pillars of the little temple. They were, for the most part, written by
+lovers, by newly-married couples, by solitary dreamers. All expressed
+some sentiment of love, grave or gay; they sang the praises of a beauty
+or mourned a lost delight; they told of some burning kiss or ecstasy of
+languor; they thanked the ancient wooded glades that had sheltered their
+love, pointed out some secret nook to the happy visitor of the morrow,
+described the lingering charms of a sunset they had watched. All of
+them, whether lovers or married, under the fascination of the eternal
+feminine had been seized with lyric fervour in this little lonely
+Belvedere to which they ascended by a flight of steps carpeted with moss
+as thick as velvet. The very walls spoke. An indefinable melancholy
+emanated from these unknown voices of vanished lovers, a sadness that
+seemed almost sepulchral, as if they had been epitaphs in a chapel.
+
+Suddenly Maria turned to Andrea. 'You have been here too,' she said.
+
+'I do not know,' he answered again, looking at her in the same dreamy
+way as before, 'I do not remember. I remember nothing. I love you.'
+
+She read, written in Andrea's hand, an epigram of Goethe's, a distich,
+the one beginning--_Sage, wie lebst du?_ Say, how livest thou? _Ich
+lebe!_ I live! 'And were it mine to live a hundred, hundred years, my
+only wish would be that to-morrow should be as to-day.' Underneath this
+there was a date: _Die ultima februarii_ 1885, and a name: _Helena
+Amyclae_.
+
+'Let us go,' she said.
+
+The canopy of branches cast deep shadows over the little moss-carpeted
+stairway.
+
+'Will you take my arm?' he asked.
+
+'No, thank you,' she replied.
+
+They went on in silence. The heart of each was heavy.
+
+Presently she said--'You were very happy two years ago.'
+
+And he, persisting in his tone of reverie--'I do not know--I do not
+remember.'
+
+In the green twilight, the path was mysterious. The trunks and branches
+of the trees were coiled and interlaced like serpents; here and there a
+leaf gleamed through the shade like an emerald green eye.
+
+After an interval of silence, she began again--'Who was that Elena?'
+
+'I do not know, I have forgotten. I remember nothing but that I love
+you. I love none but you. I think only of you. I live for you alone. I
+know nothing, I wish for nothing but your love. Every fetter that binds
+me to my former life is broken. Now I am far from the world, utterly
+lost in you. I live in your heart and in your soul; I _feel myself_ in
+every throb of your pulse; I do not touch you, and yet I am as close to
+you as if I held you in my arms, pressed to my lips, to my heart. I love
+you and you love me; and that has been for ages and will last for ages,
+to all eternity. At your side, thinking of you, living in you, I am
+conscious of the infinite--the eternal--I love you and you love me. I
+know nothing else--I remember nothing else.'
+
+On all her sadness, all her suspicions, he poured out a flood of warm
+fond eloquence. And she listened, standing straight and slender in front
+of the balustrade that runs round the wide terrace.
+
+'Is it true? is it true?' she repeated, in a faint voice like the echo
+of a moan out of the depth of her soul--'is that true?'
+
+'Yes, it is true--and that alone is true. All the rest is a dream. I
+love you and you love me. I am yours as you are mine. I know you to be
+so absolutely mine that I ask for no caress; I ask for no proof of your
+love. I can wait. My dearest delight is to obey you. I ask for no
+caresses, but I can feel them in your voice, in your eyes, your
+attitudes, your slightest movement. All that comes to me from you
+intoxicates me like a kiss, and when I touch your hand I know not which
+is greater, the rapture of my senses or the exaltation of my soul.'
+
+He lightly laid his hand on hers. She trembled, drawn by a wild desire
+to throw herself upon his breast to offer him, at last, her lips, her
+kiss, herself. It seemed to her--for she believed blindly in Andrea's
+words--that by so doing, she would bind him to her finally with an
+indissoluble bond. She felt that she was going to swoon, to die. It was
+as if the tumults of passion from which she had already suffered swelled
+her heart and increased the present storm; as if, into this one moment
+of time were gathered all the varying emotions she had experienced since
+she first knew this man. The roses of Schifanoja bloomed again among the
+shrubs and laurels of the Villa Medici.
+
+'I shall wait, Maria. I shall be true to my promises. I ask nothing of
+you. I wait and look forward to the supreme moment. That moment will
+come, I know it, for the power of love is invincible. And all your
+fears, all your terrors will vanish; and the communion of the body will
+seem to you as pure as the communion of the soul; for all flames are
+alike in purity.'
+
+He clasped Maria's ungloved hand in his. The gardens seemed deserted.
+From the palace of the Accademia came not a sound, not a voice. Clear
+through the silence, they heard the lisp of the fountain in the middle
+of the esplanade; the avenues stretched away towards the Pincio,
+straight and rigid as if enclosed between two walls of bronze, upon
+which the gilding of the sunset still lingered; the absolute immobility
+of all things suggested the idea of a petrified labyrinth; the reeds
+round the basin of the fountain were not less motionless than the
+statues.
+
+'I feel,' said Donna Maria, half-closing her eyes, 'as if I were on one
+of the terraces at Schifanoja--far, far away from Rome--alone--with you.
+When I shut my eyes, I see the sea.'
+
+Born of her love and of the silence, she saw a vision rise up before her
+and spread wide under the setting sun. Andrea's gaze was upon her; she
+said no more, but she smiled faintly. As she uttered the two
+words--'with you'--she closed her eyes, but her mouth seemed suddenly to
+grow luminous as if on it were concentrated all the splendour veiled by
+her quivering lids and her eyelashes.
+
+'I feel as if none of these things existed outside of my consciousness,
+but that you had created them in my soul, for my delight. I am
+profoundly affected with this illusion each time I stand before some
+spectacle of beauty and you are at my side.'
+
+The words came slowly, with pauses in between, as if her voice were the
+halting echo of some other voice imperceptible to the senses, imparting
+to her words a singular accent, a tone of mystery, revealing that they
+proceeded from the innermost depths of her heart; they were no longer
+the ordinary imperfect symbols of thoughts, they were transformed into a
+more intense means of expression, transcendant, quivering with life, of
+infinitely ampler signification.
+
+    'And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
+      Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
+    Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops
+      Of planetary music heard in trance.'
+
+Andrea thought of Shelley's lines. He repeated them to Maria, feeling
+the contagion of her emotion, penetrated by the charm of the hour and
+the scene.
+
+'Never, in my hours of loftiest spiritual flights, have I attained to
+such heights. You lift yourself above my sublimest dream, shine
+resplendent above my most radiant thoughts; you illumine me with a ray
+that is almost brighter than I can bear.'
+
+She stood up straight and slender against the balustrade, her hands
+clasping the stone, her head high, her face more pallid than on the
+memorable morning when they walked beneath the flowering trees. Tears
+filled her half-closed eyes and glittered upon her lashes, and as she
+gazed before her, she saw the sky all rosy-red through the mist of her
+tears.
+
+The sky seemed to rain roses as on that evening in October when the sun,
+sinking behind the hill at Rovigliano, lit up the deep pools in the
+pine-wood. The Villa Medici, eternally green and flowerless, received
+upon the tops of its rigid arboreal walls this gentle rain of
+innumerable petals showered down from the celestial gardens.
+
+She turned to go down. Andrea followed her. They walked in silence
+towards the stairway; they looked at the wood that stretched between the
+terrace and the Belvedere. The light seemed to stop short at the
+entrance to it, where stood the two guardian statues, unable to pierce
+the further gloom; and the trees looked as if they spread their branches
+in a different atmosphere, or rather in some dark waters at the bottom
+of the sea, like giant marine plants.
+
+She was seized with sudden terror. Hastening towards the steps, she ran
+down five or six and then stopped, dazed and panting. Through the
+silence, she heard the beating of her heart like the roll of distant
+thunder. The Villa Medici was no longer in sight; the stairway was
+enclosed between two walls, damp and gray and with grass growing in the
+cracks, gloomy as a subterranean dungeon. She saw Andrea lean down
+swiftly to kiss her on the lips.
+
+'No, no, Andrea--no!'
+
+He stretched out his hands to draw her to him, to hold her fast.
+
+'No!'
+
+Wildly she seized one of his hands and carried it to her lips; she
+kissed it twice--thrice, with frenzied passion. Then she fled down the
+steps to the gate like a mad creature.
+
+'Maria! Maria! Stop!'
+
+They stood together before the closed gate, pale, panting, shaken,
+trembling from head to foot, gazing at one another with wide distraught
+eyes, their ears filled with the throb of their mad pulses, a sense of
+choking in their throats. Then suddenly, with one impulse, they were in
+each other's arms, heart to heart, lips to lips.
+
+'Enough--you are killing me,' she murmured, leaning, half fainting,
+against the gateway, with a gesture of supreme entreaty.
+
+For a moment, they stood facing one another without touching. All the
+silence of the Villa seemed to weigh upon them in this narrow spot
+enclosed in its high walls like an open tomb. High above them sounded
+the hoarse cawing of the rooks gathering on the roofs of the palaces or
+crossing the sky. Once more, a strange fear possessed Maria's heart. She
+cast a terror-stricken glance up at the top of the walls. Then, with a
+visible effort she said quickly:
+
+'We can go now; will you open the gate!'
+
+And, in her uncontrollable haste to get away, her hand met Andrea's on
+the latch of the gate.
+
+As she passed between the two granite columns and under the jasmin,
+Andrea said--'Look, the jasmin is just going to blossom!'
+
+She did not turn but she smiled--a smile that was infinitely sad because
+of the shadow cast upon her heart by the sudden recollection of the name
+she had read in the Belvedere. And while she walked through the
+mysterious gloom of the avenue, and she felt his kiss flame in her
+blood, a ruthless torture graved deep into her heart, that name--oh,
+that name!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Lord Heathfield opened the great book-case containing his private
+collection, and turning to Sperelli--
+
+'You should design the clasps for this volume,' he said; 'it is in
+quarto and dated from Lampsacus, 1734. The engravings seem to me
+extremely fine. What do you think?'
+
+He handed Andrea the rare volume, which was illustrated with erotic
+vignettes.
+
+'Here is a very notable figure,' he continued, pointing to one of the
+vignettes--'something that was quite new to me. None of my erotic
+authors mention it.'
+
+He talked incessantly, discussing each detail and following the lines of
+the drawing with a flabby white finger, covered with hairs on the first
+joint and ending in a polished, pointed nail, a little livid like the
+nail of an ape. His voice grated hideously on Sperelli's ear.
+
+'This Dutch edition of Petronius is magnificent. And here is the
+_Erotopoegnion_ printed in Paris, 1798. Do you know the poem
+attributed to John Wilkes, _An Essay on Women_? This is an edition of
+1763.'
+
+The collection was very complete. It comprised all the most infamous,
+the most refinedly sensual works that the human mind has produced in the
+course of centuries to serve as a commentary to the ancient hymn in
+honour of the god of Lampsacus, _Salve! Sancte pater._
+
+The collector took the books down from their shelves and showed them in
+turn to his 'young friend,' never pausing in his discourse. His hands
+grew caressing as he touched each volume bound in priceless leather or
+material. A subtle smile played continually round his lips, and a gleam
+as of madness flashed from time to time into his eyes.
+
+'I also possess a first edition of the Epigrams of Martial--the Venice
+one, printed by Windelin of Speyer, in folio. This is it. The clasps are
+by a master hand.'
+
+Sperelli listened and looked in a sort of stupor that changed by degrees
+into horror and distress. His eyes were continually drawn to a portrait
+of Elena hanging on the wall against the red damask background.
+
+'That is Elena's portrait by Frederick Leighton. But now, look at this!
+The frontispiece, the headings, the initial letters, the marginal
+ornaments combine all that is most perfect in the matter of erotic
+iconography. Look at the clasps!'
+
+The binding was exquisite. Shark-skin, wrinkled and rough as that which
+surrounds the hilts of Japanese sabres covered the sides and back; the
+clasps and bosses, of richly silvered bronze, were chased with
+consummate elegance, and were worthy to rank with the best work of the
+sixteenth century.
+
+'The artist, Francis Redgrave, died in a lunatic asylum. He was a young
+genius of great promise. I have all his studies. I will show them to
+you.'
+
+The collector warmed to his subject. He went away to fetch the portfolio
+from the next room. His gait was somewhat jerky and uncertain, like that
+of a man who already carries in his system the germ of paralysis, the
+first touch of spinal disease; his body remained rigid without following
+the movement of his limbs, like the body of an automaton.
+
+Andrea Sperelli followed him with his eyes till he crossed the threshold
+of the room. The moment he was alone, unspeakable anguish rent his soul.
+This room, hung with dark-red damask, exactly like the one in which
+Elena had received him two years ago, seemed to him tragic and sinister.
+These were, perhaps, the very same hangings that had heard Elena say to
+him that day, 'I love you.' The book-case was open, and he could see the
+rows of obscene books, the bizarre bindings stamped with symbolic
+decorations. On the wall hung the portrait of Lady Heathfield side by
+side with a copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Nelly O'Brien. And the two
+women looked out of the canvas with the same, self-same piercing
+intensity, the same glow of passion, the same flame of sensual desire,
+the same marvellous eloquence; each had a mouth that was ambiguous,
+enigmatical, sibylline, the mouth of the insatiable absorber of souls;
+and each had a brow of marble whiteness, immaculately, radiantly pure.
+
+'Poor Redgrave!' said Lord Heathfield, returning with the portfolio of
+drawings. 'There was a genius for you. There never was an erotic
+imagination to equal his. Look! look! What style! What profound
+knowledge of the potentialities of the human figure for expression.'
+
+He left Andrea's side for a moment in order to close the door. Then he
+returned to the table in the window and began turning over the
+collection under Sperelli's eyes, talking without a pause, pointing out
+with that ape-like finger the peculiar characteristics of each figure.
+
+He spoke in his own language, beginning each sentence with an
+interrogative intonation and ending with a monotonous irritating drop of
+the voice. Certain words lacerated Andrea's ear like the sound of filing
+iron or the shriek of a steel knife over a pane of glass.
+
+And the drawings passed in review before him, appalling pictures which
+revealed the terrible fever that had taken hold upon the artist's hand,
+and the terrible madness that possessed his brain.
+
+'Now here,' said Lord Heathfield, 'is the work which inspired these
+masterpieces. A priceless book--rarest of the rare! You are not
+acquainted with Daniel Maclisius?'
+
+He handed Andrea the treatise: _De verberatione amatoria_. He had warmed
+more and more to his subject. His bald temples were flushed, and the
+veins stood out on his great forehead; every minute his mouth twitched a
+little convulsively and his hands, those detestable hands, were
+perpetually on the move, while his arms retailed their paralytic
+immobility. The unclean beast in him appeared in all its brazen
+ugliness and ferocity.
+
+'Mumps! Mumps! are you alone?'
+
+It was Elena's voice. She knocked softly at one of the doors.
+
+'Mumps!'
+
+Andrea started violently; the blood rushed to his head and drew a veil
+of mist before his eyes, and there was a roar in his ears as if he were
+going to be seized with vertigo. In the midst of the fever of excitement
+into which he had been thrown by these books, these pictures, the
+maddening discourses of his host, a furious instinct rose out of the
+blind depths of his being, the same brutal impetus which he had already
+experienced on the race-course after his victory over Rutolo amid the
+acrid exhalations of his steaming horse. The phantasm of a crime of love
+tempted and beckoned to him: to kill this man, take the woman by force,
+wreak his brutal will upon her, and then kill himself. But it passed
+rapidly as it had come.
+
+'No, I am not alone,' answered the husband, without opening the door.
+'In a few minutes I shall have the pleasure of bringing Count Sperelli
+to you--he is here with me.'
+
+He replaced the book in the book-case, closed the portfolio and carried
+it back into the next room.
+
+Andrea would have given all he possessed not to have to undergo the
+ordeal that awaited him, and yet it attracted him strangely. Once more,
+he raised his eyes to the crimson wall and the dark frame out of which
+Elena's pallid face looked forth, that face with the haunting eyes and
+the sibylline mouth. A penetrating and continuous fascination emanated
+from that imperious image. That strange pallor dominated tragically the
+whole crimson gloom of the apartment. And once again he felt that his
+miserable passion was incurable.
+
+'Will you come into the drawing-room?' asked the husband, reappearing in
+the doorway perfectly calm and composed. 'Then, you will design those
+clasps for me?'
+
+'I will try,' answered Andrea.
+
+He was quite unable to control his inward agitation. Elena looked at him
+with a provocative smile.
+
+'What were you doing in there?' she asked him, still smiling in the same
+manner.
+
+'Your husband was showing me some unique curiosities.'
+
+'Ah!'
+
+There was a sardonic sneer upon her lips, a manifest mocking scorn in
+her voice. She settled herself on a wide divan covered with a Bokhara
+carpet of faded amaranthine hues on which languished great cushions
+embroidered with spreading palms of dull gold. Here she leaned back in
+an easy, graceful attitude, and gazed at Andrea from under her drooping
+eyelids, while she spoke of trivial society matters in a voice that
+insinuated its tones into the young man's heart, and crept through his
+blood like an invisible fire.
+
+Two or three times, he surprised a look which Lord Heathfield fixed upon
+his wife--a look that seemed surcharged with all the infamies he had
+stirred up just now. Again that criminal thought sped through his mind.
+He trembled in every fibre of his being. He started to his feet, livid
+and convulsed.
+
+'Going already?' exclaimed Lord Heathfield. 'Why, what is the matter?'
+and he smiled a singular smile at his 'young friend.' He knew well the
+effect of his books.
+
+Sperelli bowed. Elena gave him her hand without rising. Her husband
+accompanied him to the door, where he repeated in a low voice--'You
+won't forget those clasps?'
+
+As Andrea stood in the portico, he saw a carriage coming up the drive. A
+man with a great golden beard nodded to him from the window. It was
+Galeazzo Secinaro.
+
+In a flash, the recollection of the May Bazaar came back to him, and the
+episode of Galeazzo offering Elena a sum of money if she would dry her
+beautiful hands, all wet with champagne, on his beard. He hurried
+through the garden and out into the street. He had a dull confused sense
+as of some deafening noise going on inside his head.
+
+It was an afternoon at the end of April, warm and moist.
+
+The sun appeared and disappeared again among the fleecy slow-sailing
+clouds. The languor of the sirocco lay over Rome.
+
+On the pavement in front of him in the Via Sistina, he perceived a lady
+walking slowly in the direction of the Trinita. He recognised her as
+Donna Maria Ferres. He looked at his watch; it was on the stroke of
+five; only a minute or two before the accustomed hour of meeting. Maria
+was assuredly on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.
+
+He hastened forward to join her. When he reached her side, he called her
+by name.
+
+She started violently. 'What? You here? I was just going up to you. It
+is five o'clock.'
+
+'It wants a minute or two yet to the hour. I was hurrying on to receive
+you. Forgive me.'
+
+'But you seem quite upset and very pale. Where were you coming from?'
+
+She frowned slightly, regarding him fixedly through her veil.
+
+'From my stables,' Andrea replied, meeting her look unblushingly as
+though he had not a drop of blood left to send to his face. 'A horse
+that I thought a great deal of has been hurt in the knee--the fault of
+the jockey--and now it will not be able to run in the Derby on Sunday.
+It has annoyed and upset me very much. Please forgive me, I over-stayed
+the time without noticing it. But it is still a few minutes to five.'
+
+'It does not matter. Good-bye. I am going back.'
+
+They had reached the Piazza del Trinita. She stopped and held out her
+hand. A furrow still lingered between her brows. With all her great
+sweetness of temper, she occasionally had moments of angry impatience
+and petulancy that seemed to transform her into another creature.
+
+'No, Maria--come, be kind! I am going up now to wait for you. Go on as
+far as the gates of the Pincio and then come back. Will you?'
+
+The clock of the Trinita de' Monti begun to strike.
+
+'You hear that?' he added.
+
+She hesitated for a moment.
+
+'Very well, I will come.'
+
+'Thank you so much! I love you.'
+
+'And I love you.'
+
+They parted.
+
+Donna Maria went on across the piazza and into the avenue. Over her
+head, the languid breath of the sirocco sent a broken murmur through the
+green trees. Subtle waves of perfume rose and fell upon the warm, damp
+breeze. The clouds seemed lower; the swallows skimmed close to the
+ground; and in the languorous heaviness of the air there was something
+that melted the passionate heart of the Siennese.
+
+Ever since she had yielded to Andrea's persuasions, her heart had been
+filled with a happiness that was deeply fraught with fear. All her
+Christian blood was on fire with the hitherto undreamed-of raptures of
+her passion, and froze with terror at her sin. Her passion was
+all-conquering, supreme, immense, so despotic that for hours sometimes
+it obliterated all thought of her child. She went so far as to forget,
+to neglect Delfina! And afterwards, she would have a sudden access of
+remorse, of repentance, of tenderness, in which she covered the
+astonished little girl's face with tears and kisses, sobbing in horrible
+despair as over a corpse.
+
+Her whole being quickened at this flame, grew keener, more acute,
+acquired a marvellous sensibility, a sort of clairvoyance, a faculty of
+divination which caused her endless torture. Hardly a deception of
+Andrea's but seemed to send a shadow across her spirit; she felt an
+indefinite sense of disquietude which sometimes condensed itself into a
+suspicion. And this suspicion would gnaw at her heart, embittering
+kisses and caresses, till it was dissipated by the transports and ardent
+passion of her incomprehensible lover.
+
+She was jealous. Jealousy was her implacable tormentor; not jealousy of
+the present but of the past. With the cruelty that jealous people
+exercise against themselves, she would have wished to read the secrets
+of Andrea's memory, to find the traces left there by former mistresses,
+to know--to know--. The question that most often rose to her lips if
+Andrea seemed moody and silent was, 'What are you thinking about?' And
+yet, at the very moment of asking the question, a shadow would cross her
+eyes and her spirit, an inevitable rush of sadness would rise out of her
+heart.
+
+To-day again, when he turned up so unexpectedly in the street, had she
+not had an instinctive movement of suspicion? With a flash of lucidity,
+the idea had leapt into her mind that Andrea was coming from the Palazzo
+Barberini, from Lady Heathfield.
+
+She knew that Andrea had been this woman's lover; she knew that her name
+was Elena; she knew also that she was the Elena of the inscription--'Ich
+lebe!' Goethe's distich rang painfully in her heart. That lyric cry gave
+her the measure of Andrea's love for this most beautiful woman. He must
+have loved her boundlessly!
+
+Walking slowly under the trees, she recalled Elena's appearance in the
+concert-hall and the ill-disguised uneasiness of the old lover. She
+remembered her own terrible agitation one evening at the Austrian
+Embassy when the Countess Starnina said to her, seeing Elena pass
+by--'What do you think of Lady Heathfield? She was, and is still, I
+fancy, a great flame of our friend Sperelli's.'
+
+'Is still, I fancy.' What tortures in a single sentence! She followed
+her rival persistently with her eyes through the throng, and more than
+once her gaze met that of the other, sending a nameless shiver through
+her. Later on in the evening, when they were introduced to one another
+by the Baroness Bockhorst, in the middle of the crowd, they merely
+exchanged an inclination of the head. And that perfunctory salutation
+had been repeated on the rare occasions on which Maria Ferres had joined
+in any social function.
+
+Why should these doubts and suspicions, beaten down and stifled under
+the flood of her passion, rise up again now with so much vehemence? Why
+had she not the strength to repress them or put them away from her
+altogether? The least touch brought them up to the surface as lively as
+ever.
+
+Her distress and unhappiness increased with every moment. Her heart was
+not satisfied; the dream that had risen up within her on that mystical
+morning under the flowering trees in sight of the sea, had not come
+true. All that was purest and fairest in that love had remained down
+there in the sequestered glades in the symbolical forest that bloomed
+and bore fruit perpetually in contemplation of the Infinite.
+
+She stood and leaned against the parapet that looks towards San
+Sebastianello. The ancient oaks, their foliage so dark as almost to seem
+black, spread a sombre artificial roof over the fountain. There were
+great rents in their trunks filled up with bricks and mortar like the
+breaches in a wall. Oh, the young arbutus-trees all radiant and
+breathing in the light! The fountain, dripping from the higher into the
+lower basin, moaned at intervals, like a heart that fills with anguish
+and then overflows in a torrent of tears; oh, the melody of the Hundred
+Fountains in the laurel avenue! The city lay as dead, as if buried under
+the ashes of an invisible volcano, silent and funereal as a city ravaged
+by the plague, enormous, shapeless, dominated by the cupola that rose
+out of its bosom like a cloud. Oh, the sea, the tranquil sea!
+
+Her uneasiness increased. An obscure menace emanated from these things.
+She was seized with the feeling of terror she had already experienced on
+so many occasions. Across her pious spirit there flashed once more the
+thought of punishment.
+
+Nevertheless, the recollection that her lover awaited her, thrilled her
+to the heart's core; at the thought of his kisses, his caresses, his mad
+endearments, her blood was on fire and her soul grew faint. The thrill
+of passion triumphed over the fear of God. She turned her steps towards
+her lover's house with all the palpitating emotion of her first
+rendezvous.
+
+'At last!' cried Andrea, gathering her into his arms, and drinking the
+breath from her panting lips.
+
+He took one of her hands and held it against his breast.
+
+'Feel my heart. If you had stayed away a minute longer, it would have
+broken.'
+
+But instead of her hand, she laid her cheek upon it. He kissed the white
+nape of her neck.
+
+'Do you hear it beat?'
+
+'Yes, and it speaks to me.'
+
+'What does it tell you?'
+
+'That you do not love me.'
+
+'What does it tell you?' repeated the young man, biting her neck softly
+and preventing her from raising her head.
+
+She laughed.
+
+'That you love me.'
+
+She removed her cloak, her hat and her gloves, and then went to smell
+the bouquets of white lilac that filled the high Florentine vases like
+those of the _tondo_ in the Borghese Gallery. Her step on the carpet was
+extraordinarily light, and nothing could exceed her grace of attitude as
+she buried her face in the delicate tassels of bloom.
+
+She bit off the end of a spray, and holding it between her lips--
+
+'Take it,' she said.
+
+They exchanged a long, long kiss in among the perfume.
+
+He drew her closer and said with a tremor in his voice, 'Come.'
+
+'No, Andrea--no; let us stay here. I will make the tea for you.'
+
+She took her lover's hand and twined her fingers into his. 'I don't know
+what is the matter with me. My heart is so full of love that I could
+almost cry.'
+
+The words trembled on her lips; her eyes were full of tears.
+
+'Oh, if only I need not leave you, if I could stay here always!'
+
+Her heart was so full that it lent an indefinable sadness to her words.
+
+'When I think that you can never know the whole extent of my love! That
+I can never know yours! Do you love me? Tell me, say it a hundred, a
+thousand times--always--you love me?'
+
+'As if you did not know!'
+
+'No, I do not know.'
+
+She uttered the words in so low a tone that Andrea hardly caught them.
+
+'Maria!'
+
+She silently laid her head on Andrea's breast, waiting for him to speak,
+as if listening to his heart.
+
+He regarded that hapless head, weighed down by the burden of a sad
+foreboding; he felt the light pressure of that noble, mournful brow upon
+his breast, which was hardened by falsehood, encased in duplicity as in
+a cuirass of steel. He was stirred by genuine emotion; a sense of human
+pity for this most human suffering gripped him by the throat. And yet
+this agitation of soul resolved itself into lying words and lent a
+quiver of seeming sincerity to his voice.
+
+'You do not know!--Your voice was so low that it died away upon your
+lips; at the bottom of your heart something protested against your
+words; all, all the memories of our love rose up and protested against
+them. Oh! _you do not know_ that I love you!--'
+
+She remained leaning against him, listening, trembling, recognising or
+fancying that she recognised in his moving voice the accents of true
+passion, the accents that intoxicated her and that she supposed were
+inimitable. And he went on speaking, almost in her ear, in the silence
+of the room, with his hot breath on her cheek and with pauses that were
+almost sweeter than words. '--To have one sole thought, continually,
+every hour, every moment--not to be able to conceive of any happiness
+but the transcendent one that beams upon me from your mere presence--to
+live throughout the day in the anticipation--impatient, restless,
+fierce--of the moment when I shall see you again, and, after you have
+gone to caress and cherish your image in my heart,----to believe in you
+alone, to swear by you alone, in you alone to put my faith, my strength,
+my pride, my whole world, all that I dream and all that I hope----'
+
+She lifted her face all bathed in tears. He ceased to speak, and with
+his lips arrested the course of the warm drops that flowed over her
+cheeks. She wept and smiled, caressing his hair with trembling hands,
+shaken with irrepressible sobs.
+
+'My heart, my dearest heart!'
+
+He made her sit down and knelt before her without ceasing to kiss her
+lids. Suddenly he started. He had felt her long lashes tremble on his
+lips like the flutter of an airy wing. Time was, when Elena had
+laughingly given him that caress twenty times in succession. Maria had
+learned it from him, and at that caress he had often managed to conjure
+up the image of _the other_.
+
+His start made Maria smile; and as a tear still lingered on her
+lashes--'This one too,' she said.
+
+He kissed it away, and she laughed softly without a thought of
+suspicion.
+
+Her tears had ceased, and, reassured, she turned almost gay and full of
+charming graces.
+
+'I am going to make the tea now,' she said.
+
+'No, stay where you are.' The image of Elena had suddenly interposed
+between them.
+
+'No, let me get up,' begged Maria, disengaging herself from his
+constraining arms. 'I want you to taste my tea. The aroma will penetrate
+to your very soul.'
+
+She was alluding to some costly tea she had received from Calcutta which
+she had given to Andrea the day before.
+
+She rose and went over to the arm-chair with the dragons in which the
+melting shades of the _rosa di gruogo_ of the ancient dalmatic continued
+to languish exquisitely. The little cups of fine Castel-Durante Majolica
+still glittered on the tea-table.
+
+While preparing the tea, she said a thousand charming things, she let
+all the goodness and tenderness of her fond heart bloom out with entire
+freedom; she took an ingenuous delight in this dear and secret intimacy,
+the hushed calm of the room with all its accessories of refined luxury.
+Behind her, as behind the Virgin in Botticelli's _tondo_, rose the tall
+vases crowned with sprays of white lilac, and her archangelic hands
+moved about among the little mythological pictures of Luzio Dolci and
+the hexameters of Ovid beneath them.
+
+'What are you thinking about?' she asked Andrea, who was sitting on the
+floor beside her, leaning his head against the arm of her chair.
+
+'I am listening to you. Go on!'
+
+'I have nothing more to say.'
+
+'Yes, you have. Tell me a thousand, thousand things----'
+
+'What sort of things?'
+
+'The things that you alone know how to say.'
+
+He wanted Maria's voice to lull the anguish caused him by _the other_;
+to animate for him the image of _the other_.
+
+'Do you smell that?' she exclaimed, as she poured the boiling water on
+to the aromatic leaves.
+
+A delicious fragrance diffused itself through the air with the steam.
+
+'How I love that!' she cried.
+
+Andrea shivered. Were not those the very words--and spoken in her very
+tone--that Elena had used on the evening she offered him her love? He
+fixed his eyes on Maria's mouth.
+
+'Say that again.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'What you just said.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'The words sound so sweet when you pronounce them--you cannot understand
+it, of course. Say them again.'
+
+She smiled, divining nothing, and a little troubled, even a little shy,
+under her lover's strange gaze.
+
+'Well then--I love that!'
+
+'And me?'
+
+'What?'
+
+'And me?----you----'
+
+She looked down puzzled at her lover writhing at her feet, his face
+haggard and drawn, waiting for the words he was trying to draw out of
+her.
+
+'And me?----'
+
+'Ah! you----I love you----'
+
+'That is it! That is it!--Say it again--again----'
+
+She did so, quite unsuspecting. He felt a spasm of inexpressible
+pleasure.
+
+'Why do you shut your eyes?' she asked, not because of any suspicion in
+her mind, but to lead him on to explain his emotion.
+
+'So that I may die.'
+
+He laid his head on her knee and remained for some minutes in that
+attitude, silent and abstracted. She gently stroked his hair, his
+brow--that brow behind which his infamous imagination was working.
+Shadows began to fill the room, and the fragrance of the flowers and the
+aromatic beverage mingled in the air; the outlines of the surrounding
+objects melted into one vague form, harmonious, dim, unsubstantial.
+
+Presently she said: 'Get up, dearest, I must go. It is getting late.'
+
+'Stay a little longer with me,' he entreated.
+
+He drew her over to the divan where the gold on the cushions still
+gleamed through the shadows. There he suddenly clasped her head between
+his hands and covered her face with fierce hot kisses. He let himself
+imagine it was the other face he held, and he thought of it as sullied
+by the lips of her husband; and instead of disgust, was filled with
+still more savage desire of it. All the turbid sensations he had
+experienced in the presence of this man now rose to the surface of his
+consciousness, and with his kisses these vile things swept over the
+cheeks, the brow, the hair, the throat, the lips of Maria.
+
+'Let me go--let me go,' she cried, struggling out of his arms.
+
+She ran across to the tea-table to light the candles.
+
+'You must be good,' she said, panting a little still, and with an air of
+fond reproof.
+
+He did not move from the divan, but looked at her in silence.
+
+She went over to the side of the mantelpiece, where, on the wall, hung
+the little old mirror. She put on her hat and veil before its dim
+surface, that looked so like a pool of dull and stagnant water.
+
+'I am so loath to leave you this evening!' she murmured, oppressed by
+the melancholy of the twilight hour. 'This evening more than ever
+before.'
+
+The violet gleam of the sunset struggled with the light of the candles.
+The lilac in the crystal vases looked waxen white. The cushion in the
+arm-chair retained the impress of the form that had leaned against it.
+
+The clock of the Trinita began to strike.
+
+'Heavens! how late! Help me to put on my cloak,' exclaimed the poor
+creature, turning to Andrea.
+
+He only clasped her once more in his arms, kissing her furiously,
+blindly, madly, with a devouring passion, stifling on her lips his own
+insane desire to cry aloud the name of Elena.
+
+At last she managed to gasp in an expiring voice--
+
+'You are drawing my life out of me.' But his passionate vehemence seemed
+to make her happy.
+
+'My love, my soul, all, all mine!' she said.
+
+And again, blissfully--'I can feel your heart beating--so fast, so
+fast.'
+
+At last, with a sigh, 'I must go now.'
+
+Andrea was as lividly pale and convulsed as if he had just committed a
+murder.
+
+'What ails you?' she asked with tender solicitude.
+
+He tried to smile. 'I never felt so profound an emotion,' he answered.
+
+'I thought I should have died.'
+
+He took the bouquet of flowers from one of the vases and handed it to
+her and went with her towards the door, almost hurrying her departure,
+for this woman's every look and gesture and word was a fresh
+sword-thrust in his heart.
+
+'Good-bye, dear heart!' said the hapless creature to him with
+unspeakable tenderness. 'Think of me.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+On the morning of the 20th of May, as Andrea Sperelli was walking along
+the Corso in the radiant sunshine, he heard his name called from the
+doorway of the Club.
+
+On the pavement in front of it was a group of gentlemen amusing
+themselves by watching the ladies pass and talking scandal. They were
+Giulio Musellaro, Ludovico Barbarisi, the Duke of Grimiti, Galeazzo
+Secinaro, Gino Bomminaco, and two or three others.
+
+'Have you heard what happened last night?' Barbarisi asked him.
+
+'No, what?'
+
+'Don Manuel Ferres, the Minister for Guatemala----'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Was caught red-handed cheating at cards.'
+
+Sperelli retained his self-command, although some of the men were
+looking at him with a certain malicious curiosity.
+
+'How was that?'
+
+'Galeazzo was there and was playing at the same table.'
+
+Secinaro proceeded to give him the details.
+
+Andrea did not affect indifference, he listened with a grave and
+attentive air. At the end of the story, he said, 'I am extremely sorry
+to hear it.'
+
+After remaining a minute or two longer with the group, he bowed and
+passed on.
+
+'Which way are you going?' asked Secinaro.
+
+'I am going home.'
+
+'I will go with you part of the way.'
+
+They went off together in the direction of the Via de' Condotti. The
+Corso was one glittering stream of sunshine from the Piazzo di Venezia
+to the Piazzo del Popolo. Ladies in light spring dress passed along by
+the brilliant shop-windows--the Princess of Ferentino with Barbarella
+Viti under one big lace parasol; Bianca Dolcebuono; Leonetto Lanza's
+young wife.
+
+'Do you know this man--this Ferres?' asked Galeazzo of Andrea, who had
+not spoken as yet.
+
+'Yes, I met him last year at Schifanoja, at my cousin Ateleta's. The
+wife is a great friend of Francesca's. That is why the affair annoys me
+so much. We must see that it is hushed up as much as possible. You will
+be doing me the greatest favour if you will help me about it.'
+
+Galeazzo promised his assistance with the most cordial alacrity.
+
+'I think,' said he, 'that the worst of the scandal might be avoided if
+the Minister sends in his resignation to his Government without a
+moment's delay. That is what the President of the Club advised, but
+Ferres refused last night. He blustered and did the insulted. And yet
+the proofs were there, as clear as daylight. He will have to be
+persuaded.'
+
+They continued on the subject as they walked along. Sperelli was
+grateful to Secinaro for his assistance, and the intimate tone of the
+conversation predisposed Secinaro to friendly confidences.
+
+At the corner of the Via de' Condotti, they caught sight of Lady
+Heathfield strolling along the left side of the street past the Japanese
+shop-windows, with her undulating, rhythmic, captivating walk.
+
+'Ah--Donna Elena,' said Galeazzo.
+
+Both the men watched her, and both felt the glamour of that rhythmic
+gait.
+
+When they came up to her, they both bowed but passed on. They no longer
+saw her, but she saw them; and for Andrea it was a form of torture to
+have to walk beside a rival under the gaze of the woman he desired, and
+feel that those piercing eyes were perhaps taking a delight in weighing
+the merits of both men. He compared himself with Secinaro.
+
+Galeazzo was of the bovine type, a Lucius Verus with golden hair and
+blue eyes; while amid the magnificent abundance of his golden beard
+shone a full red mouth, handsome, but without the slightest expression.
+He was tall, square-shouldered and strong, with an air of elegance that
+was not exactly refined, but easy and unaffected.
+
+'Well?' Sperelli asked, goaded on by a sort of madness. 'Are matters
+going on favourably?'
+
+He knew he might adopt this tone with a man of this sort.
+
+Galeazzo turned and looked at him half surprised, half suspicious. He
+certainly did not expect such a question from him, and still less the
+airy and perfectly calm tone in which the question was uttered.
+
+'Ah, the time that siege of mine has lasted!' groaned the bearded
+prince. 'Ages simply--I have tried every kind of manoeuvre but always
+without success. I always came too late, some other fellow had always
+been before me in storming the citadel. But I never lost heart. I was
+convinced that sooner or later my turn would come. _Attendre pour
+atteindre._ And sure enough----'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Lady Heathfield is kinder to me than the Duchess of Scerni. I shall
+have, I hope, the very enviable honour of being set down after you on
+the list.'
+
+He burst into a rather coarse laugh, showing his splendid teeth.
+
+'I fancy that my doughty deeds in India, which Giulio Musellaro spread
+abroad, have added to my beard several heroic strands of irresistible
+virtue.'
+
+'Ah, just in these days that beard of yours should fairly quiver with
+memories.'
+
+'What memories?'
+
+'Memories of a Bacchic nature.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+'What, have you forgotten the famous May Bazaar of 1884?'
+
+'Well, upon my word, now that you remind me of it, the third anniversary
+does fall on one of these next days. But you were not there--who told
+you?
+
+'You want to know more than is good for you, my dear boy.'
+
+'Do tell me!'
+
+'Bend your mind rather to making the most skilful use of this
+anniversary and give me news as soon as you have any.'
+
+'When shall I see you again?'
+
+'Whenever you like.'
+
+'Then dine with me to-night at the Club--about eight o'clock. That will
+give us an opportunity of seeing after the other affair too.'
+
+'All right. Good-bye, Goldbeard. Run!'
+
+They parted in the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the steps, and as
+Elena came across the square in the direction of the Via due Macelli to
+go up to the Quattro Fontane, Secinaro joined her and walked on with
+her.
+
+The strain of dissimulation once over, Andrea's heart sank within him
+like a leaden weight. He did not know how he was to drag himself up the
+steps. He was quite assured that, after this, Secinaro would tell him
+everything, and somehow this seemed to him a point to his advantage. By
+a sort of intoxication, a species of madness, resulting from the
+severity of his sufferings, he rushed blindly into new and ever more
+cruel and senseless torments; aggravating and complicating his miserable
+state in a thousand ways; passing from perversion to perversion, from
+aberration to aberration, without being able to hold back or to stop for
+one moment in his giddy descent. He seemed to be devoured by an
+inextinguishable fever, the heat of which made all the germs of human
+lust lying dormant in the hidden depths of his being flourish and grow
+big. His every thought, his every emotion showed the same stain.
+
+And yet, it was the very deception itself that bound him so strongly to
+the woman he deceived. His mind had adapted itself so thoroughly to the
+monstrous comedy that he was no longer capable of conceiving any other
+way of satisfying his passion. This incarnation of one woman in another
+was no longer a result of exasperated desire, but a deliberate habit of
+vice, and now finally an imperious necessity. From thenceforth, the
+unconscious instrument of his vicious imagination had become as
+necessary to him as the vice itself. By a process of sensual depravity,
+he had almost come to think that the real possession of Elena would not
+afford him such exquisite and violent delight as the imaginary. He was
+hardly able to separate the two women in his thoughts. And just as he
+felt that his pleasure would be diminished by the actual possession of
+the one, so his nerves received a shock if by some lassitude of the
+imagination he found himself in the presence of the other without the
+interposing image of her rival.
+
+Thus he felt crushed to the earth at the thought that Don Manuel's ruin
+meant for him the loss of Maria.
+
+When she came to him that evening, he saw at once that the poor thing
+was ignorant as yet of her misfortune. But the next day, she arrived,
+panting, convulsed, pale as death. She threw herself into his arms, and
+hid her face on his breast.
+
+'You know?' she gasped between her sobs.
+
+The news had spread. Disgrace and ruin were inevitable, irremediable.
+There followed days of hideous torture, during which Maria, left alone
+after the precipitate flight of the gamester, abandoned by the few
+friends she possessed, persecuted by the innumerable creditors of her
+husband, bewildered by the legal formalities of the seizure of their
+effects, by bailiffs, money-lenders and rogues of all sorts, gave
+evidences of a courage that was nothing less than heroic, but failed to
+avert the utter ruin that overwhelmed the family.
+
+From her lover she would receive no assistance of any kind; she told him
+nothing of the martyrdom she was enduring even when he reproached her
+for the brevity of her visits. She never complained; for him she always
+managed to call up a less mournful smile; still obeyed the dictates of
+her lover's capricious passion, and lavished upon her ruthless destroyer
+all the treasures of her fond heart.
+
+Her presentiments had not deceived her. Everything was falling in ruins
+around her. Punishment had overtaken her without a moment's warning.
+
+But she never regretted having yielded to her lover; never repented
+having given herself so utterly to him, never bewailed her lost purity.
+Her one sorrow--stronger than remorse, or fear, or any other trouble of
+mind--was the thought that she must go away, must be separated from this
+man who was the life of her life.
+
+'My darling, I shall die. I am going away to die far from
+you--alone--all alone--and you will not be there to close my eyes----'
+
+She smiled as she spoke with certainty and resignation. But Andrea
+endeavoured to kindle an illusive hope in her breast, to sow in her
+heart the seeds of a dream that could only lead to future suffering.
+
+'I will not let you die! You will be mine again and for a long time to
+come. We have many happy days of love before us yet!'
+
+He spoke of the immediate future.--He would go and establish himself in
+Florence; from there he could go over as often as he liked to Sienna
+under the pretext of study--could pass whole months there copying some
+Old Master or making researches in ancient chronicles. Their love should
+have its hidden nest in some deserted street, or beyond the city, in the
+country, in some villa decorated with rural ornaments and surrounded by
+a meadow. She would be able to spare an hour now and then for their
+love. Sometimes she would come and spend a whole week in Florence, a
+week of unbroken happiness. They would air their idyll on the hillside
+of Fiesole in a September as mild as April, and the cypresses of
+Montughi would not be less kind to them than the cypresses of
+Schifanoja.
+
+'Would it were true! Would it were true!' sighed Maria.
+
+'You don't believe me?'
+
+'Oh yes, I believe you; but my heart tells me that all these sweet
+things will remain a dream.'
+
+She made Andrea take her in his arms and hold her there for a long time;
+and she leaned upon his breast, silently crouching into his embrace as
+if to hide herself, with the shiver of a sick person or of one who seeks
+protection from some threatening danger. She asked of Andrea only the
+delicate caresses that in the language of affection she called 'kisses
+of the soul' and that melted her to tears sweeter than any more carnal
+delights. She could not understand how in these moments of supreme
+spirituality, in these last sad hours of passion and farewell her lover
+was not content to kiss her hands.
+
+'No--no, dear love,' she besought him, half repelled by Andrea's crude
+display of passion, 'I feel that you are nearer to me, closer to my
+heart, more entirely one with me, when you are sitting at my side, and
+take my hand in yours and look into my eyes and say the things to me
+that you alone know how to say. Those other caresses seem to put us far
+away from each other, to set some shadow between you and me----I don't
+know how to express my thought properly----And afterwards it leaves me
+so sad, so sad--I don't know what it is----I feel then so tired--but a
+tiredness that has something evil about it----!'
+
+She entreated him, humbly, submissively, fearing to make him angry. Then
+she fell to recalling memories of things recent and passed, down to the
+smallest details, the most trivial words, the most insignificant facts,
+which all had a vast amount of significance for her. But it was towards
+the first days of her stay at Schifanoja that her heart returned most
+fondly.
+
+'You remember? You remember?'
+
+And suddenly the tears filled her downcast eyes.
+
+One evening Andrea, thinking of her husband, asked her--'Since I knew
+you, have you always been _wholly_ mine?'
+
+'Always.'
+
+'I am not speaking of the soul----'
+
+'Hush!----yes, always wholly yours.'
+
+And he, who had never before believed one of his mistresses on this
+point, believed Maria without a shadow of doubt as to the truth of her
+assertion.
+
+He believed her even while he deceived and profaned her without remorse;
+he knew himself to be boundlessly loved by a lofty and noble spirit,
+that he was face to face with a grand and all-absorbing passion, and
+recognised fully both the grandeur of that passion and his own vileness.
+And yet under the lash of his base imaginings he would go so far as to
+hurt the mouth of the fond and patient creature, to prevent himself from
+crying aloud upon her lips the name that rose invincibly to his; and
+that loving and pathetic mouth would murmur, all unconscious, smiling
+though it bled--
+
+'Even thus you do not hurt me.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+It wanted but a few days now to their parting. Miss Dorothy had taken
+Delfina to Sienna, and then returned to help her mistress in the last
+and most trying arrangements and to accompany her on the journey. In the
+mother's house in Sienna the truth of the story was not known, and
+Delfina of course knew nothing. Maria had merely written that Don Manuel
+had been suddenly recalled by his government. And she made ready to
+go--to leave these rooms, so full of cherished things, to the hands of
+the public auctioneers who had already drawn up the inventory and fixed
+the date of the sale for the 20th of June, at ten in the morning.
+
+On the evening of the 9th, as she was leaving Andrea, she missed a
+glove. While looking for it she came upon a volume of Shelley, the one
+which Andrea had lent her in Schifanoja, the dear and affecting book in
+which, before the excursion to Vicomile, she had underlined the words
+
+    'And forget me, for I can _never_
+    Be thine.'
+
+She took up the book with visible emotion and turned over the pages till
+she came to the one which bore the mark of her underlining.
+
+'_Never!_' she murmured with a shake of the head. 'You remember? And
+hardly eight months have passed since.'
+
+She pensively turned over a few more leaves and read other verses.
+
+'He is our poet,' she went on. 'How often you promised to take me to the
+English Cemetery! You remember, we were to take flowers for his grave.
+Shall we go? You might take me before I leave. It will be our last walk
+together.'
+
+'Let us go to-morrow,' he answered.
+
+The next evening, when the sun was already declining, they went in a
+closed carriage; on her knees lay a bunch of roses. They drove along the
+foot of the leafy Aventino and caught a glimpse of the boats laden with
+Sicilian wine anchored in the port of Ripa Grande.
+
+In the neighbourhood of the cemetery they left the carriage and went the
+rest of the way to the gates on foot and in silence. At the bottom of
+her heart, Maria felt that not only was she here to lay flowers on the
+tomb of a poet, but that in this place of death she would weep for
+something of herself irreparably lost. A _Fragment_ of Shelley, read in
+the sleepless watches of the night echoed through her spirit as she
+gazed at the cypresses pointing to the sky on the other side of the
+white wall.
+
+    'Death is here, and Death is there,
+    Death is busy everywhere;
+    All around, within, beneath,
+    Above, is death--and we are death.
+
+    Death has set his mark and seal
+    On all we are and all we feel,
+    On all we know and all we fear--
+
+    First our pleasures die, and then
+    Our hopes, and then our fears: and when
+    These are dead, the debt is due,
+    Dust claims dust--and we die too.
+
+    All things that we love and cherish,
+    Like ourselves must fade and perish.
+    Such is our rude mortal lot:
+    Love itself would, did they not----'
+
+As she passed through the gateway she put her arm through Andrea's and
+shivered.
+
+The cemetery was solitary and deserted. A few gardeners were engaged in
+watering the plants along by the wall, swinging their watering-cans
+from side to side with an even and continuous motion and in silence.
+
+The funeral cypresses stood up straight and motionless in the air; only
+their tops, gilded by the sun, trembled lightly. Between the rigid,
+greenish-black trunks rose the white tombs--square slabs of stone,
+broken pillars, urns, sarcophagi. From the sombre mass of the cypresses
+fell a mysterious shadow, a religious peace, a sort of human kindness,
+as limpid and beneficent waters gush from the hard rock. The unchanging
+regularity of the trees and the chastened whiteness of the sepulchral
+monuments affected the spirit with a sense of solemn and sweet repose.
+But between the stiff ranks of the trees, standing in line like the deep
+pipes of an organ, and interspersed among the tombs, graceful oleanders
+swayed their tufts of pink blossom; roses dropped their petals at every
+light touch of the breeze, strewing the ground with their fragrant snow;
+the eucalyptus shook its pale tresses--now dark, now silvery white;
+willows wept over the crosses and crowns; and, here and there, the
+cactus displayed the glory of its white blooms like a swarm of sleeping
+butterflies or an aigrette of wonderful feathers. The silence was
+unbroken save by the cry, now and then, of some solitary bird.
+
+Andrea pointed to the top of the hill.
+
+'The poet's tomb is up there,' he said, 'near that ruin to the left,
+just below the last tower.'
+
+She dropped his arm and went on in front of him through the narrow paths
+bordered with low myrtle hedges. She walked as if fatigued, turning
+round every few minutes to smile back at her lover. She was dressed in
+black and wore a black veil that cast over her faint and trembling smile
+a shadow of mourning. Her oval chin was paler and purer than the roses
+she carried in her hand.
+
+Once, as she turned, one of the roses shed its petals on the path.
+Andrea stooped to pick them up. She looked at him and he fell on his
+knees before her.
+
+'_Adorata!_' he exclaimed.
+
+A scene rose up before her, vividly as a picture.
+
+'You remember,' she said, 'that morning at Schifanoja when I threw a
+handful of leaves down to you from the higher terrace? You bent your
+knee to me while I descended the steps. I do not know how it is, but
+that time seems to me so near and yet so far away! I feel as if it had
+happened yesterday, and then again, a century ago. But perhaps, after
+all it only happened in a dream.'
+
+Passing along between the low myrtle hedges, they at last reached the
+tower near which lies the tomb of the poet and of Trelawny. The jasmin
+climbing over the old ruin was in flower, but of the violets nothing was
+left but their thick carpet of leaves. The tops of the cypresses, which
+here just reached the line of vision, were vividly illumined by the last
+red gleams of the sun as it sank behind the black cross of the Monte
+Testaccio. A great purple cloud edged with burning gold sailed across
+the sky in the direction of the Aventino--
+
+    'These are two friends whose lives were undivided.
+    So let their memory be, now they have glided
+    Under their grave; let not their bones be parted
+    For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.'
+
+Maria repeated the last line. Then, moved by a delicate
+inspiration--'Please unfasten my veil,' she said to Andrea.
+
+She leaned her head back slightly so that he might untie the knot, and
+Andrea's fingers touched her hair--that magnificent hair, in the dense
+shadow of which he had so often tasted all the delights of his
+perfidious imagination, evoked the image of her rival.
+
+'Thank you,' she said.
+
+She then drew the veil from before her face and looked at Andrea with
+eyes that were a little dazed. She looked very beautiful. The shadows
+round her eyes were darker and deeper, but the eyes themselves burned
+with a more intense light. Her hair clung to her temples in heavy
+hyacinthine curls tinged with violet. The middle of her forehead, which
+was left free, gleamed, by contrast, in moonlike purity. Her features
+had fined down and lost something of their materiality through stress of
+love and sorrow.
+
+She wound the veil about the stems of the roses, tied the two ends
+together with much care, and then buried her face in the flowers,
+inhaling their perfume. Then she laid them on the simple stone that
+bears the poet's name engraved upon it. There was an indefinable
+expression in the gesture, which Andrea could not understand.
+
+As they moved away, he suddenly stopped short, and looking back towards
+the tower, 'How did you manage to get those roses?' he asked.
+
+She smiled, but her eyes were wet.
+
+'They are yours--those of that snowy night--they have bloomed again this
+evening. Do you not believe it?'
+
+The evening breeze was rising, and behind the hill the sky was
+overspread with gold, in the midst of which the purple cloud dissolved,
+as if consumed by fire. Against this field of light, the serried ranks
+of the cypresses looked more imposing and mysterious than before. The
+Psyche at the end of the middle avenue seemed to flush with pale tints
+as of flesh. A crescent moon rose over the pyramid of Cestius, in a deep
+and glassy sky, like the waters of a calm and sheltered bay.
+
+They went through the centre avenue to the gates. The gardeners were
+still watering the plants, and two other men held a velvet and silver
+pall by the two ends, and were beating it vigorously, while the dust
+rose high and glittered in the air.
+
+From the Aventine came the sound of bells.
+
+Maria clung to her lover's arm, unable to control her anguish, feeling
+the ground give way beneath her feet, her life ebb from her at every
+step. Once inside the carriage, she burst into a passion of tears,
+sobbing despairingly on her lover's shoulder.
+
+'I shall die!'
+
+But she did not die. Better a thousand times for her that she had!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Two days after this, Andrea was lunching with Galeazzo Secinaro at a
+table in the Caffe di Roma. It was a hot morning. The place was almost
+empty; the waiters nodded drowsily among the buzzing flies.
+
+'And so,' the bearded prince went on, 'knowing that she had a fancy for
+strange and out-of-the-way situations, I had the courage to----'
+
+He was relating in the crudest terms the extremely audacious means by
+which he had at last succeeded in overcoming Lady Heathfield's
+resistance. He exhibited neither reserve nor scruples, omitting no
+single detail, and praising the acquisition to the connoisseur. He only
+broke off, from time to time, to put his fork into a piece of juicy red
+meat, or to empty a glass of red wine. His whole bearing was expressive
+of robust health and strength.
+
+Andrea Sperelli lit a cigarette. In spite of all his efforts, he could
+not bring himself to swallow a mouthful of food, and with the wine
+Secinaro poured out for him, he seemed to be drinking poison.
+
+There came a moment at last, when the prince, in spite of his
+obtuseness, had a qualm of doubt, and he looked sharply at Elena's
+former lover. Except his want of appetite, Andrea gave no outward sign
+of inward agitation; with the utmost calm he puffed clouds of smoke into
+the air, and smiled his habitual, half-ironical smile, at his jocund
+companion.
+
+The prince continued: 'She is coming to see me to-day for the first
+time.'
+
+'To you--to-day?'
+
+'Yes, at three o'clock.'
+
+The two men looked at their watches.
+
+'Shall we go?' asked Andrea.
+
+'Let us,' assented Galeazzo rising. 'We can go up the Via de' Condotti
+together. I want to get some flowers. As you know all about it, tell
+me--what flowers does she like best?'
+
+Andrea laughed. An abominable answer was on the tip of his tongue, but
+he restrained himself and replied unmoved--
+
+'Roses, at one time.'
+
+In front of the Barcaccia they parted.
+
+At that hour the Piazza di Spagna had the deserted look of high summer.
+Some workmen were repairing a main water-pipe, and a heap of earth dried
+by the sun threw up clouds of dust in the hot breath of the wind. The
+stairway of the Trinita gleamed white and deserted.
+
+Slowly, slowly, Andrea went up, standing still every two or three steps,
+as if he were dragging a terrible weight after him. He went into his
+rooms and threw himself on his bed, where he remained till a quarter to
+three. At a quarter to three he got up and went out. He turned into the
+Via Sistina, on through the Via Quattro Fontane, passed the Palazzo
+Barberini and stopped before a book-stall to wait for three o'clock. The
+bookseller, a little wrinkled, dried-up old man, like a decrepit
+tortoise, offered him books, taking down his choicest volumes one by
+one, and spreading them out under his eyes, speaking all the time in an
+insufferable nasal monotone. Three o'clock would strike directly; Andrea
+looked at the titles of the books, keeping an eye on the gates of the
+palace, while the voice of the bookseller mingled confusedly with the
+loud thumping of his heart.
+
+A lady passed through the gates, went down the street towards the
+piazza, got into a cab, and drove away through the Via del Tritone.
+
+Andrea went home. There he threw himself once more on his bed, and
+waited till Maria should come, keeping himself in a state of such
+complete immobility, that he seemed not to be suffering any more.
+
+At five Maria came.
+
+'Do you know,' she said, panting, 'I can stay with you the whole
+evening--till to-morrow. It will be our first and last night of love. I
+am going on Tuesday.'
+
+She sobbed despairingly, and clung to him, her lips pressed convulsively
+to his.
+
+'Don't let me see the light of another day--kill me!' she moaned.
+
+Then, catching sight of his discomposed face, 'You are suffering?' she
+exclaimed. 'You too--you think we shall never meet again?'
+
+He had almost insuperable difficulty in speaking, in answering her. His
+tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, the words failed him. He had an
+instinctive desire to hide his face from those observant eyes, to avoid
+her questions at all cost. He was neither capable of consoling her nor
+of practising fresh deceptions.
+
+'Hush!' he whispered in a choking, almost irrecognisable voice.
+
+Crouching at her feet, he laid his head in her lap and remained like
+that for a long time without speaking, while she laid her tender hands
+upon his temples and felt the wild, irregular beating of his arteries.
+She realised that he was suffering fiercely, and in his pain forgot all
+thought of her own, grieving now only for his grief--only for him.
+
+Presently he rose, and clasped her with such mad vehemence to him that
+she was frightened.
+
+'What has come to you! What is it?' she cried, trying to look in his
+eyes, to discover the reason of his sudden frenzy. But he only buried
+his face deeper in her bosom, her neck, her hair--anywhere out of sight.
+
+All at once, she struggled free of his embrace, her whole form convulsed
+with horror, her face ghastly and distraught as if she had at that
+moment torn herself from the arms of Death.
+
+That name! That name!--She had heard that name!
+
+A deep and awful silence fell upon her soul, and in it there suddenly
+opened one of those great gulfs into which the whole universe seems to
+be hurled at the touch of one thought. She heard nothing more. Andrea
+might writhe and supplicate and despair as he would--in vain.
+
+She heard nothing. Some instinct directed her actions. She found her
+things and put them on.
+
+Andrea lay upon the floor, sobbing, frenzied, mad.
+
+He was conscious that she was preparing to leave the room.
+
+'Maria! Maria!
+
+He listened.
+
+'Maria!'
+
+He only heard the sound of the door closing behind her--she was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+At ten o'clock in the morning of June 20th the sale began of the
+furniture and hangings belonging to His Excellency the Minister
+Plenipotentiary for Guatemala.
+
+It was a burning hot morning. Summer blazed already over Rome. Up and
+down the Via Nationale ran the tram-cars, drawn by horses with funny
+white caps over their heads to protect them against the sun. Long lines
+of heavily-laden carts encumbered the road, while the blare of trumpets
+mingled with the cracking of whips and the hoarse cries of the carters.
+
+Andrea could not make up his mind to cross the threshold of that house,
+but wandered about the street a long time, weighed down by a horrible
+sense of lassitude, a lassitude so overwhelming and desperate as to be
+almost a physical longing for death.
+
+At last, seeing a porter come out of the house with a piece of furniture
+on his shoulder, he decided to go in. He ran rapidly up the stairs. From
+the landing already he could hear the voice of the auctioneer.
+
+The sale was going on in the largest room of the suite--the one in which
+the Buddha had stood. The buyers were gathered round the auctioneer's
+table. They were, for the most part, shopkeepers, second-hand furniture
+dealers and the lower classes generally. There being little competition
+in summer when town was empty, the dealers rushed in, sure of obtaining
+costly articles for next to nothing. A vile odour permeated the hot air
+exhaled by the crowd of dirty and perspiring people.
+
+Andrea felt stifled. He wandered into the other rooms, where nothing had
+been left but the wall hangings, the curtains, and the portieres, the
+other things having been collected in the sale room. Although he was
+walking on a thick carpet, he heard his footsteps as distinctly as if
+the boards had been bare.
+
+He found himself presently in a semicircular room. The walls were deep
+red, with here and there a sparkle of gold, giving the impression of a
+temple or a tomb, a sad and mysterious sanctuary fit for praying in, or
+for dying. The crude, hard light blazing in through the open windows
+seemed like a violation.
+
+He returned to the auction room. Again he breathed the nauseating
+atmosphere. He turned round, and in a corner of the room perceived the
+Princess of Ferentino and Barbarella Viti. He bowed and went over to
+them.
+
+'Well, Ugenta, what have you bought?'
+
+'Nothing.'
+
+'Nothing? Why, I should have thought you would buy everything.'
+
+'Indeed, why?'
+
+'Oh, it was just an idea of mine--a romantic idea.'
+
+The princess laughed and Barbarella joined in.
+
+'We are going. It is impossible to stay any longer in this perfume.
+Good-bye, Ugenta--console yourself!'
+
+Andrea went to the auctioneer's table. The man recognised him.
+
+'Does the Signor Conte wish for anything in particular?'
+
+'I will see,' Andrea answered.
+
+The sale proceeded rapidly. He looked about him at the low faces of the
+dealers, felt their elbows pushing him, their feet touching his, their
+horrid breath upon him. Nausea gripped his throat.
+
+'Going--going--gone!'
+
+The stroke of the hammer rang like a knell through his heart and set his
+temples throbbing painfully.
+
+He bought the Buddha, a great carved cabinet, some china, some pieces
+of drapery. Presently he heard the sound of voices, and laughter, and
+the rustle of feminine skirts. He turned round to see Galeazzo Secinaro
+entering, accompanied by Lady Heathfield and followed by the Countess
+Lucoli, Gino Bomminaco and Giovanella Daddi. They were all laughing and
+talking noisily.
+
+He did his best to conceal himself from them in the crowd that besieged
+the auctioneer's table. He shuddered at the thought of being discovered.
+Their voices and laughter reached him over the heads of the perspiring
+people through the suffocating heat. Fortunately the gay party very soon
+afterwards took themselves off.
+
+He forced himself a passage through the closely packed bodies,
+repressing his disgust as well as he could, and making the most
+tremendous efforts to ward off the faintness that threatened to overcome
+him. There was a bitter and sickening taste in his mouth. He felt that
+from the contact of all these unclean people he was carrying away with
+him the germs of obscure and irremediable diseases. Physical torture
+mingled with his moral anguish.
+
+When he got down into the street in the full blaze of noon-day, he had a
+touch of giddiness. With an unsteady step, he set off in search of a
+cab. He found one in the Piazza del Quirinale and drove straight home.
+
+Towards evening, however, a wild desire came over him to revisit those
+dismantled rooms. He went upstairs and entered, on the pretext of asking
+if the furniture he had bought had been sent away yet.
+
+A man answered him: the things had just gone, the Signor Conte must have
+passed them on his way here.
+
+Hardly anything remained in the rooms. The crimson splendour of the
+setting sun gleamed through the curtainless windows and mingled with the
+noises of the street. Some men were taking down the hangings from the
+walls, disclosing a paper with great vulgar flowers, torn here and there
+and hanging in strips. Others were engaged in taking up and rolling the
+carpets, raising a cloud of dust that glittered in the sunlight. One of
+them sang scraps of a lewd song. Dust and tobacco-smoke mingled and rose
+to the ceiling.
+
+Andrea fled.
+
+In the Piazza del Quirinale a brass band was playing in front of the
+royal palace. Great waves of metallic music spread through the glowing
+air. The obelisk, the fountain, the statues looked enormous and seemed
+to glow as if impregnated with flame. Rome, immense and dominated by a
+battle of clouds, seemed to illumine the sky.
+
+Half-demented, Andrea fled; through the Via del Quirinale, past the
+Quattro Fontane and the gates of the Palazzo Barberini with its many
+flashing windows and, at last, reached the Cassa Zuccari.
+
+There the porters were just taking his purchases off a cart,
+vociferating loudly. Several of them were carrying the cabinet up the
+stairs with a good deal of difficulty.
+
+He went in. As the cabinet occupied the whole width of the staircase, he
+could not pass. So he had to follow it, slowly, slowly, step by step, up
+to his door.
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MODERN LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS
+
+COMPLETE LIST OF TITLES IN
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+THE MODERN LIBRARY
+
+_For convenience in ordering please use number at right of title_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUTHOR                   TITLE AND NUMBER
+AIKEN, CONRAD          Modern American Poetry 127
+ANDERSON, SHERWOOD     Poor White 115
+ANDERSON, SHERWOOD     Winesburg, Ohio 104
+ANDREYEV, LEONID       The Seven That Were Hanged; and the Red Laugh 45
+
+BALZAC                 Short Stories 40
+BAUDELAIRE             Prose and Poetry 70
+BEARDSLEY, AUBREY      64 Reproductions 42
+BEEBE, WILLIAM         Jungle Peace 30
+BEERBOHM, MAX          Zuleika Dobson 116
+BIERCE, AMBROSE        In the Midst of Life 133
+BLAKE, WILLIAM         Poems 91
+BRONTE, EMILY          Wuthering Heights 106
+BROWN, GEORGE DOUGLAS  The House with the Green Shutters 129
+BUTLER, SAMUEL         Erewhon 136
+BUTLER, SAMUEL         The Way of All Flesh 13
+
+CABELL, JAMES BRANCH   Beyond Life 25
+CABELL, JAMES BRANCH   The Cream of the Jest 126
+CARPENTER, EDWARD      Love's Coming of Age 51
+CARROLL, LEWIS         Alice in Wonderland, etc. 79
+CELLINI, BENVENUTO     Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini 3
+CHEKHOV, ANTON         Rothschild's Fiddle, etc. 31
+CHESTERTON, G. K.      Man Who Was Thursday 35
+CRANE, STEPHEN         Men, Women and Boats 102
+
+D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE   Flame of Life 65
+D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE   The Child of Pleasure 98
+D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE   The Maidens of the Rocks 118
+D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE   The Triumph of Death 112
+DAUDET, ALPHONSE       Sapho 85
+DEFOE, DANIEL          Moll Flanders 122
+DOSTOYEVSKY            Poor People 10
+DOUGLAS, NORMAN        Old Calabria 141
+DOUGLAS, NORMAN        South Wind 5
+DOWSON, ERNEST         Poems and Prose 74
+DREISER, THEODORE      Free, and Other Stories 50
+DUMAS, ALEXANDRE       Camille 69
+DUNSANY, LORD          A Dreamer's Tales 34
+DUNSANY, LORD          Book of Wonder 43
+
+ELLIS, HAVELOCK        The New Spirit 95
+
+FABRE, JEAN HENRI      The Life of the Caterpillar 107
+FLAUBERT               Madame Bovary 28
+FLAUBERT               Temptation of St. Anthony 92
+FRANCE, ANATOLE        Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard 22
+FRANCE, ANATOLE        The Queen Pedauque 110
+FRANCE, ANATOLE        The Red Lily 7
+FRANCE, ANATOLE        Thais 67
+FRENSSEN, GUSTAV       Jorn Uhl 101
+
+GAUTIER, THEOPHILE     Mlle. De Maupin 53
+GEORGE, W. L.          A Bed of Roses 75
+GILBERT, W. S.         The Mikado, Iolanthe, etc, 26
+GILBERT, W. S.         Pinafore and Other Plays 113
+GISSING, GEORGE        New Grub Street 125
+GISSING, GEORGE        Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft 46
+GONCOURT, E. AND J. DE Renee Mauperin 76
+GORKY, MAXIM           Creatures That Once Were Men and Other Stories 48
+DE GOURMONT, REMY      A Night in the Luxembourg 120
+DE GOURMONT, REMY      A Virgin Heart 131
+
+HARDY, THOMAS          Jude the Obscure 135
+HARDY, THOMAS          The Mayor of Casterbridge 17
+HARDY, THOMAS          The Return of the Native 121
+HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL   The Scarlet Letter 93
+HEARN, LAFCADIO        Some Chinese Ghosts 130
+HECHT, BEN             Erik Dorn 29
+HUDSON, W. H.          Green Mansions 89
+HUDSON, W. H.          The Purple Land 24
+HUXLEY, ALDOUS         A Virgin Heart 131
+
+IBSEN, HENRIK          A Doll's House, Ghosts, etc. 6
+IBSEN, HENRIK          Hedda Gabler, Pillars of Society,
+                       The Master Builder 36
+IBSEN, HENRIK          The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm,
+                       The League of Youth 54
+
+JAMES, HENRY           Daisy Miller, etc. 63
+JAMES, WILLIAM         The Philosophy of William James 114
+JOYCE JAMES            Dubliners 124
+
+KIPLING, RUDYARD       Soldiers Three 71
+
+LATZKO, ANDREAS        Men in War 88
+LAWRENCE, D. H.        The Rainbow 128
+LAWRENCE, D. H.        Sons and Lovers 109
+LEWISOHN, LUDWIG       Upstream 123
+LOTI, PIERRE           Mme. Chrysantheme 94
+
+MACY, JOHN             The Spirit of American Literature 56
+MAETERLINCK, MAURICE   Pelleas and Melisande, etc. 11
+DE MAUPASSANT, GUY     Love and Other Stories 72
+DE MAUPASSANT, GUY     Mademoiselle Fifi, and Twelve Other Stories 8
+DE MAUPASSANT, GUY     Une Vie 57
+MELVILLE, HERMAN       Moby Dick 119
+MEREDITH, GEORGE       Diana of the Crossways 14
+MEREDITH, GEORGE       The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 134
+MEREJKOWSKI, DMITRI    The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci 132
+MISCELLANEOUS          A Modern Book of Criticism 81
+                       Best Ghost Stories 73
+                       Best American Humorous Short
+                       Stories 87
+                       Best Russian Short Stories 18
+                       Contemporary Science 99
+                       Evolution in Modern Thought 37
+                       Outline of Psychoanalysis 66
+                       The Woman Question 59
+MOLIERE                Plays 78
+MOORE, GEORGE          Confessions of a Young Man 16
+MORRISON, ARTHUR       Tales of Mean Streets 100
+
+NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH   Ecce Homo and the Birth of Tragedy 68
+NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH   Thus Spake Zarathustra 9
+NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH   Beyond Good and Evil 20
+NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH   Genealogy of Morals 62
+
+O'NEILL, EUGENE        Seven Plays of the Sea 111
+
+PATER, WALTER          The Renaissance 86
+PATER, WALTER          Marius the Epicurean 90
+PAINE, THOMAS          Writings 108
+PEPYS, SAMUEL          Samuel Pepys' Diary 103
+POE, EDGAR ALLEN       Best Tales 82
+PREVOST, ANTOINE       Manon Lescaut 85
+RENAN, ERNEST          The Life of Jesus 140
+RODIN                  64 Reproductions 41
+RUSSELL, BERTRAND      Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell 137
+
+SALTUS, EDGAR          The Imperial Orgy 139
+SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR     Anatol, Green Cockatoo, etc. 32
+SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR     Bertha Garlan 39
+SCHOPENHAUER           Studies in Pessimism 12
+SCHREINER, OLIVE       The Story of an African Farm 132
+SHAW, G. B.            An Unsocial Socialist 15
+SPINOZA                The Philosophy of Spinoza 60
+STEVENSON, ROBERT L.   Treasure Island 4
+STIRNER, MAX           The Ego and His Own 49
+STRINDBERG, AUGUST     Married 2
+STRINDBERG, AUGUST     Miss Julie, The Creditor, etc. 52
+SUDERMANN, HERMANN     Dame Care 33
+SWINBURNE, CHARLES     Poems 23
+
+THOMPSON, FRANCIS      Complete Poems 38
+TOLSTOY, LEO           Redemption and Other Plays 77
+TOLSTOY, LEO           The Death of Ivan Ilyitch and Four Other Stories 64
+TURGENEV, IVAN         Fathers and Sons 21
+TURGENEV, IVAN         Smoke 80
+
+VAN LOON, HENDRIK W.   Ancient Man 105
+VILLON FRANCOIS        Poems 58
+VOLTAIRE               Candide 47
+
+WELLS, H. G.           Ann Veronica 27
+WHITMAN, WALT          Poems 97
+WILDE, OSCAR           An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance 84
+WILDE, OSCAR           De Profundis 117
+WILDE, OSCAR           Dorian Gray 1
+WILDE, OSCAR           Poems 19
+WILDE, OSCAR           Fairy Tales, Poems in Prose 61
+WILDE, OSCAR           Pen, Pencil and Poison 96
+WILDE, OSCAR           Salome, The Importance of Being Ernest, etc 83
+WILSON, WOODROW        Selected Addresses and Papers 55
+
+YEATS, W. B.           Irish Fairy and Folk Tales 44
+
+ZOLA, EMILE            Nana 142
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Child of Pleasure, by Gabriele D'Annunzio
+
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