AsEmilio Guasco helped his wife into her opera-cloak, she felt on her bare shoulders the sensation of something scorching. It was her husband’s hands that had touched her. She turned round quickly, never having seen him so pale. They were alone in the armoury of Casa Nerola, used as a cloak-room. No one is leaving, no one ought to be leaving at the moment when the festival is at its brightest, since the Emperor is dancing in the state quadrille. But Emilio had said to her, coming up unexpectedly, in a decided voice—
“Let us go.”
She obeyed at once. Two valets hastened to help her, but Emilio took the cloak and shawl. How hot the man’s hands felt on the woman’s cold white shoulders. Descending the staircase, with a silent bow he offered his arm to his wife, and, almost as if he feared to see her fall, he pressed hers against his as in a vice. They said not a word, nor did they look at each other. At the bottom of the stairs they waited while the porter called their carriage.
Slightly bending her beautiful head Maria entered the coupé drawn by a pair of grey horses, and the door closed behind Emilio with a dull sound. Emilio sat silently in his corner. Twice his wife looked at him in the half-light, and noticed that he was paler than she had ever seen him; his troubled eyes were brightly fixed on her.
She lowered her head. Suddenly he sought her gloved hand in the large velvet and lace sleeve of her mantle, and pressed it so hard that she gave a cry of pain.
“Emilio, you are hurting me!”
He threw the hand aside brutally and laughed loudly. They had reached Casa Guasco. She mounted the stairs rapidly, a prey to a singular trouble caused by an unknown fear, of an unknown shame and sorrow. She did not turn round, but she heard her husband following through the different rooms to the boudoir which preceded her own room, the room whose threshold Emilio had never crossed since she had returned home. In that little room they usually said good-night before separating. She stopped, turned round, and offered her hand to her husband.
“Good-night,” she said, in a feeble voice.
He did not reply, but looked at her strangely, and preceded her into the bedroom. At the threshold before entering she hesitated, and a feminine trembling caused her to vacillate. However, her pride and her courage came to her aid as sheentered the room. The man and the woman stood near to each other, looking into each other’s eyes.
“Good-night, Emilio,” she said firmly.
“I want to speak to you,” he managed to say with difficulty, in a hoarse voice.
“Very good,” she replied firmly.
She allowed the shawl, mantle, gloves, and purse to be taken away by Chiara’s deft fingers, who was in the room in attendance on her, almost feeling the gloomy hour which was waiting for them. All these operations are done calmly and dexterously. Quietly Maria removed from her head the grand diadem of diamonds, the pearl collar and necklace, the bracelets from her arms, and poured them into Chiara’s hands, saying quietly—
“You may go.”
“Am I to wait?” whispered the faithful creature, with a timid glance.
“No,” exclaimed Emilio suddenly.
“No,” replied Maria quietly.
With a light step Chiara disappeared. Maria sat down in an arm-chair in her white ball dress, and waited patiently. Her husband stood before her in evening dress, with a flower in his buttonhole, but like a corpse in the face, except that his eyes were shining with an evil flame.
“Maria,” he broke out, “have you decided to make me commit a crime?”
For half-an-hour she had understood that a breath of madness was crossing her husband’s senses, and she believed and hoped she could conquer this madness by calmness and coldness.
“I don’t understand you; will you explain?” she asked in a harmonious voice.
“Don’t lie!” he cried, “don’t lie, as you always do! You know quite well what I am saying. You pretend and dissimulate. You lie, that’s it; and I shall kill some one to make you content.”
“Emilio, Emilio,” she murmured sweetly, “you are wronging me; but I can stand the wrong since I see you are very excited. Calm yourself, I beg of you. Make an effort over your impetuousness; conquer yourself and be tranquil.”
He replied with a horrible laugh.
“Make an end of it, Maria, make an end of this nauseating cataplasm of your pity! Your compassion exasperates me. Go and use it in some hospital. I am sure you understand; and I am going to kill some one. I am going to killhim.”
She shook her head. Her sweetness disappeared with his laughter, and she became thoughtful and sad. He had risen, and was walking up and down the room like a madman talking to himself.
“It shall not be allowed for a miserable woman, yes, for a miserable woman, without honour and without heart, to make a poor gentleman unhappy and ridiculous. An honourable man should not allow her.”
“Are you speaking of me?” she asked, gettingup at once proud and erect before him, and forcing him to stop his mad perambulations.
“Exactly; I am speaking of you, dishonour of my life, misfortune of my life!” Emilio cried in her face.
She bent a little under the new injury, but still gathered all her strength not to retaliate or rebel, to dominate her pride, and to use only her goodness and her tenderness.
“Emilio, Emilio, you are raving!” she exclaimed, with immense sadness.
Again he burst into a harsh laugh, false and stridulous.
“So I am a madman, am I? And what are you, Maria? You who lost your head for three years for that waxen-faced doll, for that languishing idiot, for that perverse and mischievous-souled Marco Fiore? Oh yes, call me mad—you, you, who had neither shame nor honour for three years? You who are a spectacle for the laughter and contempt of the whole of Rome for your madness; and dare you tell me that I am raving?”
“Oh, Emilio, Emilio!” she exclaimed, trembling.
“Do you deny it? Do you deny it?” he yelled, almost stammering, so great was his fury.
She looked at her husband. The great danger she was in only made her a little paler and her lips a little drier. She kept silent.
“Haven’t you loved him?” he yelled, comingnearer to her, taking her two hands and squeezing them as in a vice.
She closed her eyes, as if face to face with death. Then she opened them wide, and replied simply—
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you run away from home for him, with him?”
She tried to free her hands, which were closed in his, but he did not let go. Again with simplicity, with loyalty, she had the courage to reply to the furious man—
“Yes.”
“There! there! Didn’t you adore him for three years?”
She tightened her lips, and bit them to conquer the pain of her tortured hands, and without a cry still replied—
“Yes.”
“And you still love him; you’ll always love him!” he cried, and in his anger this time there was mixed deep suffering.
He let go her hands. She fell back exhausted, but replied in a clear, precise voice—
“I do not love him.”
“It is false, it is false; you still love him.”
“If we had still loved each other we should not have left each other,” she declared without hesitation.
“When you returned to this house to laugh at me, to make a fool of your tortured husband, you were in love with Marco Fiore, and Marco Fiore was in love with you.”
“I should not have placed a foot in your house, understand, if I had still loved Marco,” she proclaimed, proudly and coldly.
“Cursed be that evening! Cursed be that hour!” the man exclaimed, mad with jealousy and suffering.
“You called me here,” she stated.
“If not, wouldn’t you have come? Wouldn’t you have come, eh, woman without soul or heart?”
“I should never have come,” she declared.
“You are a monster of pride and aridness!” he cried; but in his voice sorrow conquered anger.
“I have tamed my pride before you, Emilio, don’t forget it,” she replied.
“When? How? You humiliate yourself? You?”
“When I accepted the pardon you offered me. I could have refused it, but I conquered my pride. I bowed and almost prostrated myself before you, and you pardoned me. Remember that; remember that.”
“Cursed be those words; cursed the lips that pronounced them.”
Maria stretched out her hand involuntarily, as if to stop her husband from a mortal fall.
“Weren’t you sincere at that moment?” she asked in a dull voice.
“I was sincere,” he replied, with a gulp.
“Did that pardon come from the bottom of your heart?”
“From the bottom, from the very depths of my heart.”
“Why do you then curse that moment, those words and that sentiment?”
“Because you still love Marco Fiore.”
“No,” she replied.
“You keep his letters.”
“That is true; but I don’t love him. His letters are sacred, like those of one dead, like those of one dear to me.”
“You love him; you love him!” exclaimed Emilio, in a monotony of desperation; “you keep every gift of his.”
“I don’t love him; but what I have is dear to me as a funereal memory.”
“You love him, and he loves you. The house at Santa Maria Maggiore has remained as it was. It belongs to him and you.”
“But I have never been there again,” she replied disdainfully.
“I know, I know. I know where you go. But you will go there to-morrow perhaps, and he will come to-morrow. Oh, this evening, if I had never seen this evening!”
He turned, wringing his hands under a pain he could no longer resist.
“I saw your eyes, Maria; I saw his when you met at Casa Nerola. I saw all. And Vittoria Fiore, the poor unfortunate, saw you. She was as pale as death. This time, understand, I can’t endure the insult; I shall kill you and him. But endure this shame again—never, never!”
She made a supreme effort of courage, subduing her indignation, repressing it at the back of her atrociously offended mind. She remembered that she had returned home to be good, to be sweet, to restore peace and serenity there, to give back happiness to her husband, who had a right to it, to perform works of tenderness, even to the silence and death of her own heart.
“Emilio, Emilio,” she said softly, “tell me what I am to do to soften your mind and pacify your heart. You don’t believe me to-day, you must to-morrow. Tell me all. Shall we leave Rome together for ever?”
“No,” he replied gloomily; “I should think that you wanted to fly from Marco Fiore.”
“Shall we go for a long voyage together?”
“No; you have been everywhere together, that I know.”
“Do you want me to shut myself up at home, to see no one, as if I were dead?”
“No; I should think you were absorbed in memories of him.”
“Well, would you like us to lead a society life together, wild and full of pleasure?”
“No, no. We should meet him every day, every evening, and I should commit a crime, Maria,” and the fixed idea returned to him.
She felt lost for a moment.
“Then what am I to do?”
“There is one only means,” he replied, drawing much nearer to her, speaking with his hot breath in her face.
“What is it?”
“To love me as you loved him.”
The woman frowned two or three times without replying.
“I want to be loved passionately by you, do you understand? You must love me with passion as you loved Marco, as I love you. Have you understood? No more of this pale and flaccid affection, this loving friendship, which I despise and which exasperates me to frenzy. It must be passion. Have you perfectly understood me?”
She stood cold and rigid with staring eyes; but made no reply.
“You want to love me, don’t you? I am your husband, who spoke the first words of love to you, who gave you the first kiss. Remember, remember, you who want to love me. You must love me as I have loved you. Speak; reply.”
She closed her eyes, and replied in a choking and desperate voice—
“I will try; I will try.”
“When?” and the question is like a dull roar.
“Later on, later on,” she said, feeling herself lost, but unable to lie.
“No, no,” he roared. “No, this evening, this very evening, in which you have seen him again, in which you have looked at and understood each other.”
* * * * * * * *
It is late in the night, Maria is alone, stretched in her easy-chair, with dishevelled hair, which covers her face. Her hands hang limply with fingers apart, and her eyes are wide open, almost deprived of their glance. With a supreme effort of will she raised her hand and touched the bell. Her head fell back exhausted. The silence around was intense. No one came, and she had no strength left. But a little step draws near, a familiar face bends over her.
“I am dying,” she cries to the faithful girl.
Chiara suddenly becomes strong, lifts her in her arms, holds her up, and begins to take off her ball dress, while Maria every moment seems to be fainting.
“I am dying,” she repeats.
At last she is free of her gay garments, and the faithful girl tries to make her rise, with infinitepatience and tact. At last she stands up, tall, rigid and pale as a ghost.
“I am dying!” she cries.
She grips Chiara with her hands for aid, totters, sways, and falls exhausted in the gloom and silence, as if dead.
Donna Arduinastopped in the centre of the large hall of Palazzo Fiore, with its dark carved wood, and red tapestry bearing the Fiore arms. In spite of her years and life’s troubles she still preserved her noble appearance. Marco bent and kissed her hand tenderly, while she kissed him on the forehead affectionately.
“Good-night, Marco.”
“Good-night, mamma.”
Vittoria had stopped two or three paces behind, wrapped in a white mantle, trimmed with gold, the large chinchilla collar of which suited the delicacy of her face and slender figure. She had placed no shawl on her hair, whose wavy gold was almost oppressed by the weight of the diadem, which shone brightly in the gloom of the hall. Her white and tranquil face is without expression, and her eyes have a distant and dull glance. In her hands she held her shawl, and waited patiently.
“Good-night, Vittoria,” said Donna Arduina, approaching her daughter-in-law.
“Good-night, mother,” she replied, stooping to kiss her hand. Then she drew herself up naturallyand avoided the kiss on her forehead which Donna Arduina intended to give her.
Donna Arduina hesitated a moment as if she wished to say something, then, turning her back, she walked slowly and imposingly towards her own apartments. Marco had already started towards his, and his wife followed him without saying a word. As they crossed the various rooms, Marco looked two or three times at Vittoria as if he wished to question her silent, reserved face. She appeared, however, not to notice his questioning glance. Thus they reached their immense bedroom, the room occupied by the eldest sons of Casa Fiore and their wives for more than three hundred years, which modern taste and modern furniture had changed very little, leaving the solemnity and austerity of the old Roman patrician houses. In the majesty of her surroundings, the fragile woman seemed but a fantastic shadow. She sat down, but did not take off her cloak, opening it a little as if she felt warm.
“Aren’t you going to call your maid?” Marco asked, taking the gardenia out of his buttonhole, as if about to undress.
“No,” she replied, “a little later. I must say something to you, Marco.”
He raised his eyebrows slightly, and jokingly sought to change the tone of the conversation.
“We will talk in bed if you like, dear. It is an excellent place for conversation, and I will listento you with deep attention without going to sleep.”
“No,” she replied dryly, “we must talk as we are.”
“As we are, dressed for society! As we were in Casa Nerola? Very well, dear, but I find the Emperor is missing. We can telephone to him, if you like, to assist at this colloquy?”
And he laughed mischievously. However, Vittoria paid no attention.
“I want to make a request of you, Marco.”
“What is it?”
“I want ten days’ freedom.”
“You, Vittoria?”
“I, yes.”
“To do what?”
“I want to make a retreat at Bambino Gesù now that Christmas is drawing near,” she concluded, in a low voice.
“A novena!” he exclaimed, internally relieved, but not showing it; “and what prevents you from doing it here?”
“It is impossible, Marco. It isn’t a question of prayer only. One must retire for nine whole days to a convent.”
“To a convent? Are you going to become a nun like Ophelia?”
“Why Ophelia? What do you mean?”
“Nothing, nothing. Go then to your convent; which one?”
“That of the white nuns of Gesù Bambino in via Merulana.”
“Who put such a strange idea into your head, Vittoria? Doesn’t it seem a little ridiculous to you?”
“It is neither ridiculous nor strange,” she added, shaking her head; “other ladies go there to retire and pray.”
“Old ladies, I suppose?”
“No,” she insisted coldly; “young ladies, and beautiful too; young married women especially.”
“Who are perhaps in mortal sin. Are you in mortal sin, though I didn’t know it, Vittoria?” he laughed loudly, looking at her.
“I hope not,” she replied, lowering her eyes to hide a sudden flash; “but so many people can be in mortal sin, prayers are necessary for us and them.”
“Even for me, dear nun!” he exclaimed mischievously.
“For you also,” she replied expressionlessly.
“When must you enter?”
“To-morrow evening at eight. To-morrow is the fifteenth of December.”
“When do you come out?”
“On the evening of the twenty-fourth.”
“Have you told mamma this?”
“No; please tell her yourself to-morrow.”
“Perhaps mamma will not approve.”
“She knows what it is a question of,” murmuredVittoria; “all Roman ladies know of this retreat in the monastery of Gesù Bambino. Get her to tell you.”
She blushed slightly. He looked at her, and proceeded more gently with the conversation.
“Are there special prayers in this convent, Vittoria? Are special graces asked for?”
“One grace only,” she replied, with downcast eyes; “one grace only of the Divine Son, Marco.”
“Ah!” he replied without further remark, understanding.
“Do you so very much want to have a son, Vittoria?” he asked in a peculiar tone.
There was a deep silence between them.
“I desire it ardently,” she broke out suddenly, with an impetuous accent, immediately recovering herself, “I desire nothing else now.”
“Also I want one for you,” he said, vaguely and absently.
“Not for yourself?” was the sharp question. But he did not heed the intense expression.
“As for myself, you understand, my brother Giulio has three sons. The house of Fiore has descendants.”
“Beatrice has been fortunate,” she murmured, with a sigh.
“There, there; you, too, will be fortunate,” he resumed jokingly and laughingly; “you will have a quiverful of sons, too many, I tell you, dearVittoria, for many sons will give you much worry. Don’t doubt; you are not sterile.”
“Who knows,” she said, with a sorrowful shudder.
“Go to your convent, dear, since you are set on it,” he said, laughing; “the Bambino Gesù will content you, and when you return home He will send you the little one.”
He drew near her to kiss and embrace her. With a cold gesture she repulsed him.
“Hoighty, toighty! Hoighty toighty!” he exclaimed; “why all this rudeness to your lawful husband, Don Marco Fiore?” He tried again to draw her to himself and kiss her. Again still more coldly and hostilely she kept him at a distance.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“We must live from to-day in prayer and mortification,” she replied in glacial tones.
“Therefore?” he asked.
“You resume from to-night your bachelor bedroom.”
“Ah; and am I to keep it for ten days?” he said drily.
“Yes, for ten days, till my return.”
“Brava! Brava! And if I am bored in there all alone?” he continued, with signs of annoyance.
“Oh, you won’t bore yourself there!” she replied, with a slightly bitter smile.
He remembered that in that room everythinghad remained untouched since he had married, that it was full of portraits, big and small, of Maria Guasco, with recollections of their dead dream, their dead love. He understood more than ever the depth of his wife’s thoughts and feelings; he realised her intense pain. So he tried again in pity and tenderness to make her speak, to make her weep.
“Vittoria, Vittoria!” he exclaimed in sad reproach, “you as usual are dissimulating and lying, and that makes you suffer and becomes unfair to me. I don’t want to be angry, and you should not suffer.”
“You are mistaken,” she replied coldly, “neither do I suffer nor need you be angry. My confessor has told me that the scope of matrimony is not love but children, that one must ask Heaven for children, and pray very much. I am going to pray.”
“Ah!” he said, suddenly becoming cold, “you are convinced that the scope of matrimony is not love?”
“Quite convinced,” she answered harshly.
“All the worse,” he exclaimed in a bad temper; “all the worse; and when did you decide to enter the convent for the novena?”
The question was direct and sharp. She hesitated to reply.
“When, Vittoria? Think and tell the truth.”
“This evening,” she replied, with an effort.
“This evening? At the ball?” he insisted, still more sharply.
“This evening at the ball,” she assented, growing very pale.
But pity, sentiment without strength, was already extinguished in Marco’s heart, and there was substituted, as in every heart unjustly suspected, a dull and cruel indignation. He shrugged his shoulders, took his fur coat and hat, and left with a dry, “Good-night, Vittoria.”
She had no strength to reply. With difficulty she closed the door of her big room where she was alone, desperately alone. She dared not weep, for fear that he might return and find her weeping, for fear that, not being very far away, he might hear her weeping.
Maria Guascowrote thus to Marco Fiore—
“Marco, this sudden and unexpected letter will not surprise you. You know already that it is not a love letter, because our souls united and understood themselves too intimately in that past which can never return, and they were too much agreed in feeling the irremediable end of their love for a sentimental misunderstanding ever again to happen between us. If anybody else, a stranger, were to lean over my shoulder, and read the first word written, he would at once have no other thought but this: ‘See, it was natural, she is writing to her lover, she has never ceased to love him.’ Let it be so. Not a short time has passed since we separated freely and voluntarily, overcome by anguish, but stronger than anguish itself, since the reason for our ardent and free union was at an end. Since it is now May it is nearly two years ago. It is a year since you married Vittoria, when, placing her little hand in yours, she will certainly have pardoned your long infidelity and desertion. Well, my friend, no one about me believes that I have ceased loving you with passion, not eventhose who know me well, such, for instance, as a faithful friend like Flaminia Colonna, not even a would-be lover like Gianni Provana, to give another instance. No one, and especially my husband, Emilio Guasco; he does not believe, can’t believe, never will believe that I have ceased to love you passionately.“This is the cross that I have been carrying for a year, at first with energy and Christian courage, sustained by a burning desire for expiation, by a burning desire to repair the horrible suffering inflicted on others, to heal all the deep evil inflicted on others, and in fact with the great and lofty hope of giving all the happiness possible to the man who deserved it. Marco, how happily I embraced my cross at first, and how I suffered with humility and simplicity, like a child that feels it deserves all its punishment, or some self-effacing creature who performs every deep act of contrition! You know my pride, Marco; you know that it has always been my weapon of defence and attack in this war of life; you know that my pride has taken the place of many virtues and that, as it was perhaps too great and imperious, it formed also the source of all my sorrows. Well, Marco, I swear it, and I know you believe me, that I have every day thrown this pride at my husband’s feet, and my heart has been prostrated in an almost continual prayer for pardon. To accomplish what I had set myself for you, to accomplish all my vow of reparationI suffered so joyfully, but so bravely. At every fresh sting I did not bind the bleeding point, and from every new wound I let my blood gush forth, glad to suffer, glad to expiate, glad to be able by my secret and open sufferings to unfold and complete all my expiation, rejoicing to reach the goal of being a consolation to Emilio, of being, as of yore, the giver of his happiness. I have been intoxicated with the sacrifice, Marco, but now my intoxication has vanished. Alas, my friend, I see and know that it has been useless! My repentance has been in vain, and so have been all my acts of contrition, and the lowering of my pride. In vain, too, has been my desire to do good. Emilio is unhappier than ever, and I alone am the cause of his unhappiness. It is impossible for me, I swear, to make him happy even if I lived a hundred years, even if I died to-morrow. In life or death I can do nothing more for him—nothing, nothing.“Listen, Marco, and see if it be not all irreparable. I didn’t understand at once, because I was infatuated with my fine hopes and desires of doing good; but now I know that all is irreparable. Do you know how long my husband’s pardon lasted? The fraction of an April evening in which he pronounced the sacred words which should absolve, cancel, and redeem. Immediately afterwards he despised himself and me, and the act of pardon seemed to him one of hypocrisy and lying humiliation. Later, when in one of our more furiouscrises, on reminding him that a Christian pardon is an act of renewed esteem, that Christian pardon should destroy the sin and purify the sinner, and that such an one should be loved as a new soul, he replied brutally: ‘Exactly; but Jesus who founded pardon was not married to an adulteress.’ What am I to say to him, Marco? The man loves me, longs for me, but at the same time he hates me. Never for an instant, understand, can he forget that I betrayed and abandoned him, and that for three years I wasyours. He spies on me and makes me spy. He scrutinises every glance, he watches every action of mine. If I speak to him he doesn’t believe me; if I am kind he refuses my kindness. If my pity breaks out he understands at once, like all morbid hearts, that it is a question of pity and not of love, and he rejects my pity. He wrongs me and you with vituperation, and asks me to love him with passion as I loved you. But I can’t lie; I can’t, I can’t. I have never lied, and if I were to do so for a minute to save him and myself he wouldn’t believe me. What am I to say; what am I to do, Marco? I have said all; I have endured everything, and I don’t want to—I can’t—add anything else, my friend. I can’t write everything; my mind refuses to raise certain veils of shame. Let us leave it, let us leave it. My cross is so heavy on my shoulders that I am on the ground and breathless. What shall I say? What shall I do? Hasn’t all my repentance beenuseless? Hasn’t all my dedication been useless? And useless every abnegation? Whatever shall I do to-night? Whatever to-morrow? The man whom I have returned to comfort is, as far as I am concerned, in a state of sorrow and implacable agitation; this man whom I imagined so ingenuously and sweetly to make happy again, in spite of my sufferings, is still, and always will be, unhappy. After a terrible year, Marco, after a year of every experiment and attempt, in which I have consumed my will and weakened my energy, after a year in which I have seen all the good which was accumulated in my generous mind miserably dispersed, and day by day the sacred trust of doing good dissipated, I cry to you in my sadness and impotence, in my weariness and discouragement. I ask you whatever I shall do, Marco, with myself and my life, since it is of no further use but for evil? What shall I do with myself, inept for good, inept to give joy, and so involuntarily and fatally capable of evil?“I am so lonely, Marco. When he is here he regards me with desire and anger. Both sentiments crucify and torture me, but I daren’t repress or combat either sentiment. I have become what I never was, a creature without will or object, a passive and resigned creature—I! I! think, Maria Guasco, a creature of resignation! Often he avoids me for days together, and I don’t know what to do with my dried-up and deserted existence.I do nothing, never, because I fear that all may be for the worse, even when he ignores me—ignores me!Sometimes he leaves Rome and goes away for two or three days, for a week. I don’t know where—in his distrust he won’t say. I don’t know when he returns, as he doesn’t wish it to be known. He enters suddenly and looks for me, as if he must always find me in sin, and I am always paralysed just as if my nerves had been cut, just as if a single gesture of mine may be an offence, or the pretext of an offence to him.“I am so lonely, so lonely.“In this Casa Guasco, in this Rome, in this world, Marco, I am more lonely than ever woman was, and I cry to you, not as a lover, not even as a friend, but as a soul which was once mine while mine was yours, I cry out my impotence, anguish, and mortal solitude.“Marco, I am afraid of myself: I know myself. If the hand even of an enemy is stretched towards me with the impetus of unexpected sympathy, my soul at once trembles with emotion and opens its inviolate doors, and abandons itself with tenderness and enthusiasm. If a person who loves me ill-treats me or offends me it is impossible for me not to rebel; all my pride invests me wonderfully and magically with a steel cuirass, and I feel I love no longer, and I disdain the love of the other one who knows not how to love. I am capable of breaking a heart, two hearts, my own and the other’s, witha violence which nothing can stop. You know me. You conquered me with your youthful grace, with your sincere passion mixed with gentle languor, which conquers the proudest and most reserved souls. Never once did you offend me, never once, perfect friend and perfect lover, pleasant and sweet to dream of and remember. In those three years, passed together, my simple and impetuous character, so sincere and yet inflammable, found every sentimental delight. Our short life was beautiful, beautiful with unspeakable harmony, and we could separate full of sorrow, but still without anger or a single bitter thought of each other.“Marco, this unfortunate man for whom I returned a year ago, to heal of all the poison he had absorbed on my account, not only is he more poisoned than at first, but he vents all his revenge on me by a love composed of suspicion, contempt, sensuality, and jealousy. This man who seemed to me a hero, and was one for a single moment when he pronounced the words of pardon, this hero whom I had poetised proudly in my mind, and who deserved the lofty place of poesy for a brief moment, when he pronounced the words of pardon, is no longer a betrayed lover who must be made to forget the betrayal by lavished caresses, is no longer an offended husband whose pardon is asked and given, with whom a new, loyal, and lasting peace is re-established. No, he is now an enemy,who now loves and now hates, who now wants you and now spurns you, who adores you by day and execrates you by night, who would keep you eternally pressed to himself and who flies from you, who thinks you capable of every black action, and makes you understand his suspicions, and declares them. Emilio Guasco is an enemy to me, Maria, an enemy whose name I bear, whose fortune I share; an enemy in whose love I live, an enemy who now keeps mebecause I have returned, an enemy who doesn’t wish to see me dead because he would kill himself on my tomb, who wants me to be alive with him and for him, to torture me and himself.“O Marco, Marco, how terrified I have been lest all the good with which my heart is filled be at an end! how deeply I feel that my kindness which is not superhuman, since I am a woman and not an angel, will dissolve like a cloud, and I may become a naked rock, sharp and fierce of aspect—a rock!“Marco, if he doesn’t calm himself and stop, if he doesn’t become more humane, kinder, more generous; if he doesn’t become the man of pardon and not him ofafter the pardon, that is sad and contemptuous for having pardoned, how shall I pour the balsam over him which ought to restore him to health, the jar of which is perhaps already empty and wobbling in my hand? Marco, if he doesn’t restore to me his esteem, his trust and hisfriendship, unless he is affectionate and magnanimous with me, how shall I be able to improve and exalt his life? What shall I do here if he continues to be an enemy who loves me? O Marco, I tremble to the very roots of my soul, even to the most mysterious essence of my spirit, lest all my mission of peace, beauty, and affection, can never be accomplished, and lest all my rebellious heart may revolt against the enemy who loves me. Marco, what will become of me to-morrow, a week hence, a year hence?“Maria.”
“Marco, this sudden and unexpected letter will not surprise you. You know already that it is not a love letter, because our souls united and understood themselves too intimately in that past which can never return, and they were too much agreed in feeling the irremediable end of their love for a sentimental misunderstanding ever again to happen between us. If anybody else, a stranger, were to lean over my shoulder, and read the first word written, he would at once have no other thought but this: ‘See, it was natural, she is writing to her lover, she has never ceased to love him.’ Let it be so. Not a short time has passed since we separated freely and voluntarily, overcome by anguish, but stronger than anguish itself, since the reason for our ardent and free union was at an end. Since it is now May it is nearly two years ago. It is a year since you married Vittoria, when, placing her little hand in yours, she will certainly have pardoned your long infidelity and desertion. Well, my friend, no one about me believes that I have ceased loving you with passion, not eventhose who know me well, such, for instance, as a faithful friend like Flaminia Colonna, not even a would-be lover like Gianni Provana, to give another instance. No one, and especially my husband, Emilio Guasco; he does not believe, can’t believe, never will believe that I have ceased to love you passionately.
“This is the cross that I have been carrying for a year, at first with energy and Christian courage, sustained by a burning desire for expiation, by a burning desire to repair the horrible suffering inflicted on others, to heal all the deep evil inflicted on others, and in fact with the great and lofty hope of giving all the happiness possible to the man who deserved it. Marco, how happily I embraced my cross at first, and how I suffered with humility and simplicity, like a child that feels it deserves all its punishment, or some self-effacing creature who performs every deep act of contrition! You know my pride, Marco; you know that it has always been my weapon of defence and attack in this war of life; you know that my pride has taken the place of many virtues and that, as it was perhaps too great and imperious, it formed also the source of all my sorrows. Well, Marco, I swear it, and I know you believe me, that I have every day thrown this pride at my husband’s feet, and my heart has been prostrated in an almost continual prayer for pardon. To accomplish what I had set myself for you, to accomplish all my vow of reparationI suffered so joyfully, but so bravely. At every fresh sting I did not bind the bleeding point, and from every new wound I let my blood gush forth, glad to suffer, glad to expiate, glad to be able by my secret and open sufferings to unfold and complete all my expiation, rejoicing to reach the goal of being a consolation to Emilio, of being, as of yore, the giver of his happiness. I have been intoxicated with the sacrifice, Marco, but now my intoxication has vanished. Alas, my friend, I see and know that it has been useless! My repentance has been in vain, and so have been all my acts of contrition, and the lowering of my pride. In vain, too, has been my desire to do good. Emilio is unhappier than ever, and I alone am the cause of his unhappiness. It is impossible for me, I swear, to make him happy even if I lived a hundred years, even if I died to-morrow. In life or death I can do nothing more for him—nothing, nothing.
“Listen, Marco, and see if it be not all irreparable. I didn’t understand at once, because I was infatuated with my fine hopes and desires of doing good; but now I know that all is irreparable. Do you know how long my husband’s pardon lasted? The fraction of an April evening in which he pronounced the sacred words which should absolve, cancel, and redeem. Immediately afterwards he despised himself and me, and the act of pardon seemed to him one of hypocrisy and lying humiliation. Later, when in one of our more furiouscrises, on reminding him that a Christian pardon is an act of renewed esteem, that Christian pardon should destroy the sin and purify the sinner, and that such an one should be loved as a new soul, he replied brutally: ‘Exactly; but Jesus who founded pardon was not married to an adulteress.’ What am I to say to him, Marco? The man loves me, longs for me, but at the same time he hates me. Never for an instant, understand, can he forget that I betrayed and abandoned him, and that for three years I wasyours. He spies on me and makes me spy. He scrutinises every glance, he watches every action of mine. If I speak to him he doesn’t believe me; if I am kind he refuses my kindness. If my pity breaks out he understands at once, like all morbid hearts, that it is a question of pity and not of love, and he rejects my pity. He wrongs me and you with vituperation, and asks me to love him with passion as I loved you. But I can’t lie; I can’t, I can’t. I have never lied, and if I were to do so for a minute to save him and myself he wouldn’t believe me. What am I to say; what am I to do, Marco? I have said all; I have endured everything, and I don’t want to—I can’t—add anything else, my friend. I can’t write everything; my mind refuses to raise certain veils of shame. Let us leave it, let us leave it. My cross is so heavy on my shoulders that I am on the ground and breathless. What shall I say? What shall I do? Hasn’t all my repentance beenuseless? Hasn’t all my dedication been useless? And useless every abnegation? Whatever shall I do to-night? Whatever to-morrow? The man whom I have returned to comfort is, as far as I am concerned, in a state of sorrow and implacable agitation; this man whom I imagined so ingenuously and sweetly to make happy again, in spite of my sufferings, is still, and always will be, unhappy. After a terrible year, Marco, after a year of every experiment and attempt, in which I have consumed my will and weakened my energy, after a year in which I have seen all the good which was accumulated in my generous mind miserably dispersed, and day by day the sacred trust of doing good dissipated, I cry to you in my sadness and impotence, in my weariness and discouragement. I ask you whatever I shall do, Marco, with myself and my life, since it is of no further use but for evil? What shall I do with myself, inept for good, inept to give joy, and so involuntarily and fatally capable of evil?
“I am so lonely, Marco. When he is here he regards me with desire and anger. Both sentiments crucify and torture me, but I daren’t repress or combat either sentiment. I have become what I never was, a creature without will or object, a passive and resigned creature—I! I! think, Maria Guasco, a creature of resignation! Often he avoids me for days together, and I don’t know what to do with my dried-up and deserted existence.I do nothing, never, because I fear that all may be for the worse, even when he ignores me—ignores me!Sometimes he leaves Rome and goes away for two or three days, for a week. I don’t know where—in his distrust he won’t say. I don’t know when he returns, as he doesn’t wish it to be known. He enters suddenly and looks for me, as if he must always find me in sin, and I am always paralysed just as if my nerves had been cut, just as if a single gesture of mine may be an offence, or the pretext of an offence to him.
“I am so lonely, so lonely.
“In this Casa Guasco, in this Rome, in this world, Marco, I am more lonely than ever woman was, and I cry to you, not as a lover, not even as a friend, but as a soul which was once mine while mine was yours, I cry out my impotence, anguish, and mortal solitude.
“Marco, I am afraid of myself: I know myself. If the hand even of an enemy is stretched towards me with the impetus of unexpected sympathy, my soul at once trembles with emotion and opens its inviolate doors, and abandons itself with tenderness and enthusiasm. If a person who loves me ill-treats me or offends me it is impossible for me not to rebel; all my pride invests me wonderfully and magically with a steel cuirass, and I feel I love no longer, and I disdain the love of the other one who knows not how to love. I am capable of breaking a heart, two hearts, my own and the other’s, witha violence which nothing can stop. You know me. You conquered me with your youthful grace, with your sincere passion mixed with gentle languor, which conquers the proudest and most reserved souls. Never once did you offend me, never once, perfect friend and perfect lover, pleasant and sweet to dream of and remember. In those three years, passed together, my simple and impetuous character, so sincere and yet inflammable, found every sentimental delight. Our short life was beautiful, beautiful with unspeakable harmony, and we could separate full of sorrow, but still without anger or a single bitter thought of each other.
“Marco, this unfortunate man for whom I returned a year ago, to heal of all the poison he had absorbed on my account, not only is he more poisoned than at first, but he vents all his revenge on me by a love composed of suspicion, contempt, sensuality, and jealousy. This man who seemed to me a hero, and was one for a single moment when he pronounced the words of pardon, this hero whom I had poetised proudly in my mind, and who deserved the lofty place of poesy for a brief moment, when he pronounced the words of pardon, is no longer a betrayed lover who must be made to forget the betrayal by lavished caresses, is no longer an offended husband whose pardon is asked and given, with whom a new, loyal, and lasting peace is re-established. No, he is now an enemy,who now loves and now hates, who now wants you and now spurns you, who adores you by day and execrates you by night, who would keep you eternally pressed to himself and who flies from you, who thinks you capable of every black action, and makes you understand his suspicions, and declares them. Emilio Guasco is an enemy to me, Maria, an enemy whose name I bear, whose fortune I share; an enemy in whose love I live, an enemy who now keeps mebecause I have returned, an enemy who doesn’t wish to see me dead because he would kill himself on my tomb, who wants me to be alive with him and for him, to torture me and himself.
“O Marco, Marco, how terrified I have been lest all the good with which my heart is filled be at an end! how deeply I feel that my kindness which is not superhuman, since I am a woman and not an angel, will dissolve like a cloud, and I may become a naked rock, sharp and fierce of aspect—a rock!
“Marco, if he doesn’t calm himself and stop, if he doesn’t become more humane, kinder, more generous; if he doesn’t become the man of pardon and not him ofafter the pardon, that is sad and contemptuous for having pardoned, how shall I pour the balsam over him which ought to restore him to health, the jar of which is perhaps already empty and wobbling in my hand? Marco, if he doesn’t restore to me his esteem, his trust and hisfriendship, unless he is affectionate and magnanimous with me, how shall I be able to improve and exalt his life? What shall I do here if he continues to be an enemy who loves me? O Marco, I tremble to the very roots of my soul, even to the most mysterious essence of my spirit, lest all my mission of peace, beauty, and affection, can never be accomplished, and lest all my rebellious heart may revolt against the enemy who loves me. Marco, what will become of me to-morrow, a week hence, a year hence?
“Maria.”
At the same time Marco wrote to Maria—
“Maria, my delight, do you know that there has not been a single day since that fatal and tragic one on which we left each other, that I have ceased to think of you, far away or near, deeply separated from me by the depth of our divine dream of love, separated for ever since we wished it to be so, but always present to my spirit, which reflects itself in you as in the coolest and most crystal mountain stream? I have thought of you, Maria, as a dear mother, as a sister, as a friend, as a womanly creature who has been and is most dear to me, wherever I have found myself, whatever the idle words which left my mouth, whatever my careless deeds, however intense my silence and immobility. I thought of you then, soul of beauty, withoutardour or desire, because that flame which was so devouring is extinguished in me as in you, but I have thought of you with sweet and melancholy moral sympathy, without jealousy, without bitterness, without gall, without any of the dregs which passion leaves in the heart, but with a measured and calm recollection, as for a memory which will be ever dear. I have never sought you; I have never thought of seeking you: I have never avoided you or wished to avoid you, nor have I written to you. Only your place has been, and is within me, high, unshakable, strong, and you are like a mother, a sister, a friend, the inspirer of my thoughts and sentiments. From the high extinguished pyre a slender warmth of life prevents my heart from getting cold; a thin light, that which they say remains after a star is dead in the firmament, seems to guide me in my unstable and uncertain way.“But at last, after such a long silence, Maria, on the anniversary of my marriage, since you are always a source of warmth and light to me, and since you can still give me light and tell mewhat is necessary, I am writing to you and am breaking this division of time, of place, of persons which seemed inseparable between us, and I have come to implore help as formerly, as yesterday, as to-morrow, as always. I come to ask moral help of you, because you were always my conscience, even when we broke together the ties of society andlaws, since you taught me nobly the way of liberty and truth, even in that which the world calls a mistake and the Faith a mortal sin, but which we called, and shall call, by a single word—Love—whatever it may be, from wherever it may come to us, wherever it may drag us. Maria, you who in the supreme hour of farewell, when I wept upon your hand the most burning tears of my life, you who showed me what to do with my existence; you who reminded me of a great duty to be accomplished; you who spoke no more to me of happiness, no longer possible for me from the moment that our love was ended, but of that which I could still give to a human creature; you who exalted for me this duty even to making it appear adorned with every attraction: Maria, to-day you must tell me, if you know, if you will,what is necessary, since I no longer know.“Maria, the bridal veil which the young woman wore a year ago in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, when she knelt near me and the priest pronounced over our heads and joined hands the words which bind us till death, that soft veil which should be raised after the wedding to show me openly and loyally the face of my lady, where may be mirrored all her soul, which perhaps possesses concealed the most precious spiritual and sentimental treasures—but however light it was, neither my hands nor my kisses succeeded in rarefying its aërial woof—Vittoria has never once desired toliberate her face from it. I have always felt this veil, between me and her, no longer a bridal veil but a veil of life, in which she enveloped herself in the first vivid days of our marriage; and as time passed—and sometimes its course seemed very slow to me—it became closer and denser even to hiding my lady completely, and as time still went on its course more slowly than ever, I felt that this veil had become a seamless, opaque texture, in which she is enclosed for ever. Maria, Maria, all the solemn words of that last hour in which you enjoined me to assign this deep and great object to my life, this of offering happiness without equal to a woman who had suffered for me, I never forget, when I am with Vittoria, for an instant; and in spite of the unspeakable weariness of my soul, in spite of that mortal aridness which succeeds to great passion, in spite of my hidden distrust of myself, in spite of the fact that I doubted deeply of my success, I have always endeavoured that Vittoria, my wife, should be happy. Dear, dear Maria, if only you knew how often I have invoked you as light, and heat, and guide, so as not to lose myself or falter on the way! How often I have called on you, my conscience, to continue my duty! Well, Maria, you and I have been deceived. Or perhaps you were deceived, beautiful and magnificent soul, in thinking thatthatwas the necessary thing, or very likely it is Vittoria who has deceived you, me, and all of us.“This creature is unable to be happy on my account, perhaps she is unable to be happy on any account. She is a soul incapable of happiness. Such souls, Maria, are to be met with. Heaven has sent them thus on the earth to live a peculiar, cold, sad existence, without joy, without hope and without desires; they are souls incapable of reaching that extreme joy, even for a second, which is called happiness; and probably the others only have it for a single minute, but they do reach it and possess it, and through it feel themselves children of God, near to Him, near to His throne of splendour and glory. This moment you and I have possessed, Maria; but we were born to possess it. Vittoria, my wife, is unable to touch this height. Her hands are as white as her face and garments, they are as cold as her forehead and her heart. Her life, too, is white, cold, and immobile.“O my conscience, secure and firm, do you know I have managed to extract from Vittoria her secret. Do you know that her secret is terror of you, terror of what you have been in my life, which has been painted fantastically for her—simple, innocent girl—as something horrible and tremendous. Her childish secret as betrothed, bride, and wife, was this ferocious terror that I might belong to you as a lover for ever, that through the mysterious reasons of passion you would always keep me, and that from one day to another I could again belong to you through the impetuous and imperiousreasons of desire. By pressing her cold white hands I communicated a flame of life to her, by fixing my eyes on hers I placed a gleam in those two bright eyes, and then I learnt her secret. Hers is a soul sick with this terror. On your account, my lofty pure conscience, on my own, since I am pledged to follow every wish of yours, I have word for word, act for act, tried to destroy in her this morbid terror of you; and believe me, believe me in everything, any other woman would be convinced that her terror was in vain, would have given me all her heart and soul for recognition, affection, love. But the more I demonstrated to her that the bonds of passion were undone through your will and mine, the denser became the veil which surrounded her. Whatever was she wanting, whatever was she asking, for her existence as a woman and a wife; whatever was existence able to give her; more than the affectionate and tender companionship of a man like me, dedicated entirely to her, who desired nothing more than to see her smile in her juvenile happiness, and himself to be the only origin of that smile and that joy? Maria, my wife has smiled five or six times in one year of matrimony, and hasn’t laughed once. Ah, I have tried to tear the closely knit and invisible texture in which she is clothed even because of this, and I have asked her whatever she could wish from me beyond this certainty that I am no longer yours, whatever else she could expect from a man,a companion and a husband beyond this great and absolute dedication to her happiness which should be sufficient for any woman. She lowered her eyelids, closed her little mouth as usual, all her face became as marble. Oh, if only once to see that white marble face flesh!—and she replied—“I expect nothing and I wish nothing.”“Maria, the limpid truth is that Vittoria can’t, won’t, and doesn’t know how to become happy with me, because of her sentimental ineptitude, and it has all been a generous mistake of ours. With her I am sad, tired, and bored. Oh, how I bore myself, I can’t tell you, Maria! On some days a mad rage comes over me against this immense boredom. Why did I marry the girl? Why did I give myself this duty of a husband and companion, which I have tried and am trying to accomplish—so badly it seems, both for her and me? Why did I swear to Heaven to make this woman happy, when I am not able to keep the oath, though I want to? Perhaps she would have been happy with another. Why did I bring her my wasted heart? Why have I offered her a life where love’s harvest is gathered, and the earth which had produced too violently has been left fruitless? Why have I given her a soul which has done with love? Maria, Maria, we made a mistake on that last day; our souls did not understand the truth which is within us and not without. We have seen and understood nothing beyond ourselves. Vittoriadid not ask for a husband but a lover, a lover like Maria Guasco had; she did not ask for happiness but passion. You knew, Maria, that that was impossible, and I knew it. Now I really begin to fear that I have torn the veil for ever which encloses Vittoria’s soul and person, and that I know all about her, and that I can do nothing now—never, never.“Marco.”
“Maria, my delight, do you know that there has not been a single day since that fatal and tragic one on which we left each other, that I have ceased to think of you, far away or near, deeply separated from me by the depth of our divine dream of love, separated for ever since we wished it to be so, but always present to my spirit, which reflects itself in you as in the coolest and most crystal mountain stream? I have thought of you, Maria, as a dear mother, as a sister, as a friend, as a womanly creature who has been and is most dear to me, wherever I have found myself, whatever the idle words which left my mouth, whatever my careless deeds, however intense my silence and immobility. I thought of you then, soul of beauty, withoutardour or desire, because that flame which was so devouring is extinguished in me as in you, but I have thought of you with sweet and melancholy moral sympathy, without jealousy, without bitterness, without gall, without any of the dregs which passion leaves in the heart, but with a measured and calm recollection, as for a memory which will be ever dear. I have never sought you; I have never thought of seeking you: I have never avoided you or wished to avoid you, nor have I written to you. Only your place has been, and is within me, high, unshakable, strong, and you are like a mother, a sister, a friend, the inspirer of my thoughts and sentiments. From the high extinguished pyre a slender warmth of life prevents my heart from getting cold; a thin light, that which they say remains after a star is dead in the firmament, seems to guide me in my unstable and uncertain way.
“But at last, after such a long silence, Maria, on the anniversary of my marriage, since you are always a source of warmth and light to me, and since you can still give me light and tell mewhat is necessary, I am writing to you and am breaking this division of time, of place, of persons which seemed inseparable between us, and I have come to implore help as formerly, as yesterday, as to-morrow, as always. I come to ask moral help of you, because you were always my conscience, even when we broke together the ties of society andlaws, since you taught me nobly the way of liberty and truth, even in that which the world calls a mistake and the Faith a mortal sin, but which we called, and shall call, by a single word—Love—whatever it may be, from wherever it may come to us, wherever it may drag us. Maria, you who in the supreme hour of farewell, when I wept upon your hand the most burning tears of my life, you who showed me what to do with my existence; you who reminded me of a great duty to be accomplished; you who spoke no more to me of happiness, no longer possible for me from the moment that our love was ended, but of that which I could still give to a human creature; you who exalted for me this duty even to making it appear adorned with every attraction: Maria, to-day you must tell me, if you know, if you will,what is necessary, since I no longer know.
“Maria, the bridal veil which the young woman wore a year ago in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, when she knelt near me and the priest pronounced over our heads and joined hands the words which bind us till death, that soft veil which should be raised after the wedding to show me openly and loyally the face of my lady, where may be mirrored all her soul, which perhaps possesses concealed the most precious spiritual and sentimental treasures—but however light it was, neither my hands nor my kisses succeeded in rarefying its aërial woof—Vittoria has never once desired toliberate her face from it. I have always felt this veil, between me and her, no longer a bridal veil but a veil of life, in which she enveloped herself in the first vivid days of our marriage; and as time passed—and sometimes its course seemed very slow to me—it became closer and denser even to hiding my lady completely, and as time still went on its course more slowly than ever, I felt that this veil had become a seamless, opaque texture, in which she is enclosed for ever. Maria, Maria, all the solemn words of that last hour in which you enjoined me to assign this deep and great object to my life, this of offering happiness without equal to a woman who had suffered for me, I never forget, when I am with Vittoria, for an instant; and in spite of the unspeakable weariness of my soul, in spite of that mortal aridness which succeeds to great passion, in spite of my hidden distrust of myself, in spite of the fact that I doubted deeply of my success, I have always endeavoured that Vittoria, my wife, should be happy. Dear, dear Maria, if only you knew how often I have invoked you as light, and heat, and guide, so as not to lose myself or falter on the way! How often I have called on you, my conscience, to continue my duty! Well, Maria, you and I have been deceived. Or perhaps you were deceived, beautiful and magnificent soul, in thinking thatthatwas the necessary thing, or very likely it is Vittoria who has deceived you, me, and all of us.
“This creature is unable to be happy on my account, perhaps she is unable to be happy on any account. She is a soul incapable of happiness. Such souls, Maria, are to be met with. Heaven has sent them thus on the earth to live a peculiar, cold, sad existence, without joy, without hope and without desires; they are souls incapable of reaching that extreme joy, even for a second, which is called happiness; and probably the others only have it for a single minute, but they do reach it and possess it, and through it feel themselves children of God, near to Him, near to His throne of splendour and glory. This moment you and I have possessed, Maria; but we were born to possess it. Vittoria, my wife, is unable to touch this height. Her hands are as white as her face and garments, they are as cold as her forehead and her heart. Her life, too, is white, cold, and immobile.
“O my conscience, secure and firm, do you know I have managed to extract from Vittoria her secret. Do you know that her secret is terror of you, terror of what you have been in my life, which has been painted fantastically for her—simple, innocent girl—as something horrible and tremendous. Her childish secret as betrothed, bride, and wife, was this ferocious terror that I might belong to you as a lover for ever, that through the mysterious reasons of passion you would always keep me, and that from one day to another I could again belong to you through the impetuous and imperiousreasons of desire. By pressing her cold white hands I communicated a flame of life to her, by fixing my eyes on hers I placed a gleam in those two bright eyes, and then I learnt her secret. Hers is a soul sick with this terror. On your account, my lofty pure conscience, on my own, since I am pledged to follow every wish of yours, I have word for word, act for act, tried to destroy in her this morbid terror of you; and believe me, believe me in everything, any other woman would be convinced that her terror was in vain, would have given me all her heart and soul for recognition, affection, love. But the more I demonstrated to her that the bonds of passion were undone through your will and mine, the denser became the veil which surrounded her. Whatever was she wanting, whatever was she asking, for her existence as a woman and a wife; whatever was existence able to give her; more than the affectionate and tender companionship of a man like me, dedicated entirely to her, who desired nothing more than to see her smile in her juvenile happiness, and himself to be the only origin of that smile and that joy? Maria, my wife has smiled five or six times in one year of matrimony, and hasn’t laughed once. Ah, I have tried to tear the closely knit and invisible texture in which she is clothed even because of this, and I have asked her whatever she could wish from me beyond this certainty that I am no longer yours, whatever else she could expect from a man,a companion and a husband beyond this great and absolute dedication to her happiness which should be sufficient for any woman. She lowered her eyelids, closed her little mouth as usual, all her face became as marble. Oh, if only once to see that white marble face flesh!—and she replied—
“I expect nothing and I wish nothing.”
“Maria, the limpid truth is that Vittoria can’t, won’t, and doesn’t know how to become happy with me, because of her sentimental ineptitude, and it has all been a generous mistake of ours. With her I am sad, tired, and bored. Oh, how I bore myself, I can’t tell you, Maria! On some days a mad rage comes over me against this immense boredom. Why did I marry the girl? Why did I give myself this duty of a husband and companion, which I have tried and am trying to accomplish—so badly it seems, both for her and me? Why did I swear to Heaven to make this woman happy, when I am not able to keep the oath, though I want to? Perhaps she would have been happy with another. Why did I bring her my wasted heart? Why have I offered her a life where love’s harvest is gathered, and the earth which had produced too violently has been left fruitless? Why have I given her a soul which has done with love? Maria, Maria, we made a mistake on that last day; our souls did not understand the truth which is within us and not without. We have seen and understood nothing beyond ourselves. Vittoriadid not ask for a husband but a lover, a lover like Maria Guasco had; she did not ask for happiness but passion. You knew, Maria, that that was impossible, and I knew it. Now I really begin to fear that I have torn the veil for ever which encloses Vittoria’s soul and person, and that I know all about her, and that I can do nothing now—never, never.
“Marco.”
In reply to her letter Maria received this from Marco—