Oh, that day! Not more than a week had gone by since then. Why did it seem to me to be so far away?Standing behind her, in that state of extreme tension, and, so to speak, on the watch, I imagined that perhaps she instinctively felt the danger hovering over her head: I believed I divined in her a sort of vague uneasiness. Once more I felt sick at heart.She finally said:"To-morrow, if I am better, you will take me out on the terrace, in the open air."I interrupted her."To-morrow, I shall not be here."She trembled at my strange voice. I added, without waiting:"I am going..."Then, making a violent effort to loosen my tongue, and terrified like a man who must strike a second blow to put his victim to death, I added hastily:"I am going to Florence.""Ah!"She had suddenly understood. She turned round with a rapid movement, she twisted herself on her cushions to look me in the face; and in that tragic pose, I saw again the whites of her eyes and her bloodless gum."Juliana!" I stammered, without finding anything else to say to her, bending toward her, fearing she would faint.But she lowered her eyelids, sank back, withdrew into herself, so to speak, as if chilled by severe cold. She remained thus for several minutes, her eyes closed, lips compressed, motionless. Only the pulsations of the carotid artery, visible at the neck, and a few convulsive contractions of her hands indicated that she was still alive.Was not this a crime? Yes, this was thefirstof my crimes, and not the least, without a doubt.I went away under terrible circumstances. My absence lasted more than a week. On my return and the days following, I was astonished myself at my almost cynical impudence. I was bewitched by a sort of malefice that suspended in me every moral sense and rendered me capable of the worst injustices, the worst cruelties. This time again Juliana exhibited prodigious force of character; this time again she was able to keep silent. She appeared to me wrapped up in her silence as if in an impenetrable adamantine wall.She went to the Badiola with her daughters and my mother. My brother accompanied them. I remained in Rome.It was then that began for me a frightful period of sombre misery, the recollection of which suffices to fill me with disgust and humiliation.Harassed by a feeling that, more than any other, stirs up in man the dregs of his being, I suffered every torture that a woman can make a feeble, passionate, and ever-wakeful soul suffer. The fire of a terrible sensual jealousy, kindled by suspicion, dried up in me every honest source, fed on the dregs deposited in the baser depths of my animal nature.Never had Teresa Raffo seemed to me to be so desirable as since the day when I indissolubly associated her with an ignoble image and a stain. And she made herself a weapon of my very contempt to excite my covetousness. Atrocious agonies, abject joys, dishonoring submission, cowardly complacencies proposed and unblushingly accepted, tears more acrid than all the poisons, sudden frenzies that drove me almost to the confines of dementia, such violent plunges into the abyss of indulgence that for many days after I lay in a stupefied state, every misery, every ignominy of the lower passions exasperated by jealousy—all, yes, I have known all. I became a stranger in my own house; the presence of Juliana became an encumbrance to me. Sometimes entire weeks passed without my addressing a single word to her; absorbed in my inner torture, I did not see her, I did not listen to her. At certain moments, when I raised my eyes towards her, I was surprised at her pallor, at the expression of her face, by such and such a detail of her features, as if these things were new, unexpected, strange; I did not succeed in entirely reconquering the notion of the reality. Every act of her life was unknown to me; I felt no desire to question her, to know anything; I felt neither preoccupation, interest, nor fear in regard to her. An inexplicable coldness acted as a cuirass against her. And still more: sometimes I felt a kind of vague and inexplicable rancor against her. One day I saw her laugh, and that laugh irritated me, almost put me in a passion.Another day I had a shock on hearing her singing in a distant room. She was singing an air from "Orphée.""Que ferai-je sans Eurydice?"That was the first time she had sung while going through the house for a long time; it was the first time I heard her for a long time."Why was she singing? Was she then happy? To what condition of her soul does that unusual effusion correspond?" An inexplicable agitation seized me. Without thinking, I went up to her, calling her by name.When she saw me enter her room she was surprised, and remained for a moment speechless; she was evidently startled."Are you singing?" I said, so as to say something, embarrassed and astonished myself at the eccentricity of what I was doing.She smiled a hesitating smile, not knowing what to answer, not knowing what attitude to assume toward me. And I thought I read in her eyes a grieved curiosity, the fugitive expression of which I had already noticed more than once—the compassionate curiosity with which one gazes at a person suspected of insanity, a maniac. As a matter of fact, I saw myself in a mirror opposite, and my face looked emaciated, my eyes sunken, my mouth puffed up—that feverish appearance that I had had for a month."Are you dressing to go out?" I asked, still disturbed, almost ashamed, not finding any other question to ask her, preoccupied only with avoiding silence."Yes."It was in the morning, in November. She was standing near a table trimmed with lace, and on which scintillated the scattered innumerable little articles that serve nowadays to beautify women. She wore a dress of vigonia, of a dark color, and held in her hand a light-colored shell comb mounted in silver. The dress, very simple in cut, set off her slim, graceful figure. A large bouquet of white chrysanthemums, placed on the table, reached up as far as her shoulder. The sun of the St. Martin's summer entered through the window, and in the air there was a perfume of chypre, or some other odor I could not recognize."What perfume do you use now?" I asked."Crab-apple," she replied."I like it," I said.She took a small bottle from the table, and handed it to me. I inhaled it deeply, so as to be doing something, and to gain time to prepare some other phrase. I did not succeed in dissipating my confusion, or in recovering my assurance. I felt that all intimacy between us was at an end. She seemed to me to beanother woman. And yet the air from "Orphée" still surged through my soul, still disturbed me:"Que ferai-je sans Eurydice?"In that warm and golden light, amidst that delightful perfume, among these objects impressed with feminine grace, the echo of the ancient melody seemed to put the palpitation of a secret life, to shed a shadow of some strange mystery."The air that you sang just now is very beautiful," I said, obeying an impulse that came from my uneasiness."Yes, very beautiful," she cried.A question rose to my lips: "Why are you singing?" but I repressed it and began to seek in myself the reasons of the curiosity which tormented me.There was an interval of silence. She ran her finger-nail across the teeth of the comb, producing a light, grating noise. This grating is a circumstance that I recall with perfect clearness."You were dressing to go out. Go on," I said."I have only to put on my jacket and hat. What time is it?""A quarter to eleven.""What! So late already?"She took her hat and veil, and sat down before the glass. I watched her. Another question rose to my lips: "Where are you going?" Yet, although it might appear quite natural, I restrained myself again, and continued to observe Juliana attentively.She reappeared to me once more what she was in reality—a young and stylish woman, a gentle and noble face full of a refined physical delicacy, radiant with an intense moral expression; in short, an adorable woman, and one who could be as delightful a mistress for the flesh as for the mind. "Suppose she were really someone's mistress?" I thought then. "Assuredly, it is impossible but that many men have hovered around her; everyone knows how I neglect her, everyone knows how I wrong her. Suppose she has yielded, or is about to yield? Suppose she has at last considered the sacrifice of her youth to be useless and unjust? Suppose she was at last grown tired of her abnegation? Suppose she has made the acquaintance of a man superior to me, some delicate and deep seducer, who has inspired her with renewed curiosity, who has taught her to forget her faithless husband? Suppose I have already lost her heart, which I have so often trampled upon without pity and without remorse?" A sudden fright seized me, and the anguish was so keen that I thought: "That is what I will do; I will confess my suspicion to Juliana. I will look into the depths of her eyes and say, 'Are you stillfaithful?' And I will know the truth. She is incapable of lying.""Incapable of lying? Ah! ah! ah! A woman! ... What do you know about it? A woman is capable of everything. Never forget that. Sometimes the large cloak of heroism serves but to hide half a dozen lovers. Sacrifice! Abnegation! Those are appearances, words. Who will ever know the truth? Swear, if you dare, that your wife is faithful to you; and I speak, not of the present faithfulness, but of that which preceded the episode of the illness. Swear in perfect assurance, if you dare." And the wicked voice (ah! Teresa Raffo, how your poison acts), the perfidious voice made me shudder."Do not be impatient, Tullio," said Juliana, almost timidly. "Will you stick this pin in my veil—here?"She raised her arms and held them over her head to fasten the veil, and her white fingers tried in vain to fasten it.Her pose was full of grace. The white fingers made me think: "How long it is since we clasped hands! Oh, the frank and warm clasps that her hand used to give me, as if to assure me that she bore me no ill-will for any offence! Now that hand is perhaps defiled." And while I fastened the veil, I felt a sudden revulsion in thinking of the possible pollution.She arose, and I helped her again to put on her cloak. Two or three times our eyes met by stealth, and again I observed in hers a sort of anxious curiosity. Perhaps she was asking herself: "Why did he come in here? Why is he staying here? What does that absent-minded air mean? What does he want with me? What has happened to him?""Excuse me a moment," she said.And she left the room.I heard her call Miss Edith, the governess.When I was alone my eyes turned involuntarily towards the small desk littered with letters, cards, and books. I approached, and my eyes ran for an instant over the papers, as if they sought to discover—what? Theproof, perhaps? I dismissed this base and stupid suspicion. I looked at a book covered with an antique cloth, with a small dagger stuck between the leaves. She had not yet finished reading it, and had cut only about half of it. It was the latest novel by Filippo Arborio,The Secret. I read on the frontispiece an autographic dedication by the author:TO YOU,JULIANA HERMIL, TURRIS EBURNEA,I offer this unworthy homage.F. ARBORIO.All Saints' Day, '85.So Juliana knew the novelist? And what did Juliana think of him? I conjured up the writer's fine and seductive face as I had seen it several times in public. There was certainly much in him that must please Juliana. According to current gossip, he pleased women. His romances, full of a complicated psychology, at times very subtle, often false, disturbed sentimental souls, fired restless imaginations, taught with supreme grace contempt of common life.An Agony, The True Catholic, Angelica Doni, Giorgio Aliora, The Secret, suggested an intense vision of life, as if life were a vast conflagration of innumerable ardent figures. Each of his characters fought for his chimera, in a hopeless duel against reality.Had not this extraordinary artist, who in his books appeared to be, so to speak, like a distilled quintessence of pure spirit, also exerted his fascination on me? Had I not said of hisGiorgio Aliorathat it was afraternalwork? Had I not found in certain of his literary creations strange resemblances with my inner being? And suppose the strange affinity that there is between us facilitated his work of seduction, perhaps already undertaken? Suppose Juliana was yielding to him, precisely because she had recognized in him some one of those attractions by which, previously, I had made myself adored by her? I thought with a new fright.She reëntered the room. On seeing me with the book in my hand, she said, with an embarrassed smile, and blushing slightly:"What are you looking at?""Do you know Filippo Arborio?" I asked her immediately, but without any change in my voice, in the most calm and natural voice that I could command."Yes," she answered frankly. "He was introduced to me at the Monterisi. He has even been here several times, but you have not had the opportunity of meeting him."A question rose to my lips: "Why have you never spoken of him to me?" But I restrained it. How could she have mentioned it, since, by my attitude, I had interrupted for a long time past all friendly exchange of news and confidences?"He is much more simple than his works would lead one to suppose," she continued carelessly, slowly drawing on her gloves. "Have you readThe Secret?""Yes, I have read it.""Did you like it?"Without thinking, and by an instinctive desire to affirm my superiority in Juliana's eyes, I answered:"No, it is commonplace."At last she said:"I am going."She made a motion to leave. I followed her as far as the antechamber, walking in the wake of the perfume she left behind her, so subtle as to be scarcely perceptible. In the presence of the servant she said only:"Au revoir."And, with a light step, she crossed the threshold.I went back to my room. I opened the window, and leaned out to watch her in the street.She hurried along, with her light step, on the sunny side of the street, straight on, without turning her head to the right or left. The St. Martin summer shed a delicate gilding over the crystal of the sky; a calm warmth softened the air and conjured up the perfume of the absent violets. An immense sadness weighed on me, crashed me down on the window-sill; gradually it became intolerable.Rarely in my life have I suffered so much as from that doubt which crumbled at one stroke my faith in Juliana, a faith that had lasted for so many years. Rarely had the flight of an illusion drawn from my soul such cries of anguish. But was it true that the illusion had fled and that the evil was irremediable? I could not, I would not, be persuaded of it.That great illusion had been the companion of my whole misguided life. It answered not only to the exigencies of my egotism, but also to my æsthetic dream of moral greatness."Since moral greatness results from the violence of pains which one triumphs over, it is necessary, so that she may have an opportunity to be heroic, that she should suffer all I have made her suffer." This axiom, which had often succeeded in calming my remorse, was deeply rooted in my mind, and had caused to surge there from the best part of myself an ideal phantom to which I had vowed a sort of platonic cult. Debauched, culpable, tired, I took pleasure in recognizing in the ray of my own existence a soul severe, upright, and strong, an incorruptible soul, and it pleased me to be the object of its love, of an eternal love. All my vice, all my misery, all my feebleness, found a support in this illusion. I believed that for me there was a possible realization of the dream of all intellectual men: to be constantly unfaithful to a constantly faithful woman."What are you seeking? All the intoxication of life? Very well! go, run on, intoxicate yourself. In your house a dumb creature remembers and waits, like a veiled image in a sanctuary. The lamp in which you do not put a single drop more of oil burns without ever becoming extinguished. Is not that the dream of all intellectual men?"And again: "No matter at what hour, no matter after what adventure, you will find her there on your return. She was awaiting your return with confidence, but she will not tell you of her waiting. You will rest your head on her knees and she will caress your temples with her finger-tips, to take away your pain."I had a presentiment that one day I would return thus; I would end by coming back, after one of those intimate catastrophes that metamorphose a man. All my hopelessnesses were softened by the secret conviction that this refuge could not fail me, and in the depth of my abjectness a little light came to me from that woman who, for love of me andby my work, had raised herself to the summit of greatness and had perfectly realized the form of my ideal.Would one doubt suffice to destroy all that in a moment?I repassed from one end to the other the scene that had taken place between Juliana and myself from the moment I had entered the room to the instant she had left it. And it was in vain I attributed a great part of my inner agitation to a special and transient nervous condition; I could not succeed in dissipating the strange impression exactly translated by these words:"She seemed to me to beanother woman."There was certainly something new about her. But what? Was not Filippo Arborio's dedication in a sense reassuring? Did it not precisely affirm that theTurris Eburneawas impregnable? This glorious qualification had been suggested to the author either simply by the reputation for purity that Juliana Hermil's name bore, or by the non-success of an attempted assault, or, possibly, by the abandonment of a siege undertaken. In consequence, the Ivory Tower still remained unsullied.While reasoning thus to allay the gnawings of suspicion, I could not remove the confused anxiety that lay at the bottom of my being, as if I feared a sudden apparition of some ironical objection. "You know, Juliana has extraordinarily white skin. She is literallyas white as her night-dress. The pious qualification might well hide some profane meaning." But the wordunworthy? "Oh! Oh! What subtleties!"An attack of impatience and anger cut short this humiliating and vain debate. I withdrew from the window, shrugged my shoulders, made two or three turns in the room, mechanically opened a book, then threw it down again. But my anguish did not decrease. "In short," I thought, stopping short, as if to confront some invisible adversary, "to what does all this lead me? Either she has already fallen, and the loss is irreparable; or she is in danger, and in my present situation I cannot interfere to save her; or else she is pure, and then there is no change. In any case, it is not for me toact. What exists, exists of necessity; what is to happen, will of necessity happen. This crisis of suffering will pass. One must wait. How beautiful those white chrysanthemums were that were on Juliana's table just now! I will go and buy a heap more just like them. My rendezvous with Teresa is for two o'clock to-day. I have still almost three hours before me. Did she not tell me, the last time, that she wished to find the fire burning? This will be the first fire of the winter on such a warm day. It seems to me she is in a week of kindness. I only hope it will last! But, at the first opportunity, I shall challenge Eugenio Egano."My thoughts followed a new course, with sudden checks, with unforeseen divergences. In the midst even of the pictures of the approaching voluptuousness, another contaminating imagination passed like a lightning flash, one that I feared, one from which I should like to flee. Certain audacious and ardent pages ofThe True Catholicrecurred to me. One of these passions aroused the other, and, while suffering from the distinct pains, I confounded the two women in the same pollution, Filippo Arborio and Eugenio Egano in the same hate.The crisis passed, leaving in my soul a species of vague contempt mixed with rancor against thesister. I drifted away still further from her; I became more and more hardened, more and more careless, more and more reserved. My sad passion for Teresa Raffo became more exclusive, occupied all my faculties, left me no respite. I was really a maniac, a man possessed by a diabolical insanity, devoured by an unknown and frightful malady. My mind has retained of that winter only confused, incoherent souvenirs, interspersed with strange, rare obscurities.That winter I never encountered Filippo Arborio at my house; but I saw him sometimes in public. One evening, however, I met him in a salle d'armes; and there we became acquainted. We were introduced by the fencing-master, and we exchanged a few words. The gaslight, the creaking of the flooring, the flash and clatter of the foils, the clumsy or graceful attitudes of the swordsmen, the rapid extension of all those bent limbs, the warm and acrid exhalations of all those bodies, the guttural cries, rude interjections, the bursts of laughter—such are the details that my memory furnishes to reconstruct with singular clearness the scene that unrolled itself before us, while we were standing face to face and the master pronounced our names. I again see the gesture with which Filippo Arborio, raising his mask, displayed a heated face all bathed in perspiration. He was panting with fatigue, and somewhat convulsed, like a man unaccustomed to muscular exercise. Instinctively I thought that he would not be a formidable opponent in a duel. I affected also a certain haughtiness; I especially avoided saying anything that bore any reference to his celebrity or to my admiration; I assumed the attitude I would have taken towards a perfect stranger."So it is for to-morrow?" said the fencing-master to me, smiling."Yes, at ten o'clock.""Are you going to fight?" asked Arborio, with evident curiosity."Yes."He hesitated a little, and then added:"May I ask with whom, if it is not an indiscretion?""With Eugenio Egano."I noticed that he would have liked to learn more, but that he was restrained by the coldness of my attitude and my apparent inattention."Maestro," I said, "I'll give you five minutes."I turned my back to go to the dressing-room. At the door I stopped, and glancing back, saw that Arborio had recommenced to fence. One glance sufficed to show me that he was a very poor swordsman.When, watched by all the persons present, I engaged with the fencing-master, a singular nervous excitement seized upon me and redoubled my energy. I felt Arborio's eyes were fastened on me.Later on, I saw him again in the dressing-room. The room had a very low ceiling, and was already full of smoke and an acrid, sickening smell of men. All those in it, naked save for their large white dressing-gowns, were smoking and slowly rubbing their chests, arms, shoulders, and chaffing one another loudly. The splashing of the shower-bath alternated with the loud laughter. Two or three times, with an indefinable motion of repulsion, with a start similar to that which a violent physical shock would produce, I saw the frail form of Arborio, whom my eyes sought involuntarily. And, once again, the odious image was formed.Since then I had no other opportunity to approach or meet him. I ceased to busy myself with him, and, as a consequence, I remarked nothing suspicious in Juliana's behavior. Outside the constantly narrowing circle in which I moved, there no longer existed for me anything lucid, or sensible, or intelligent. Every external impression passed over me like drops of water over red-hot iron, rebounding or evaporating.Events came one after the other. Toward the end of February, after a last proof of infamy, a definite rupture occurred between Teresa Raffo and myself. I left for Venice, alone.I remained there about one month in a state of incomprehensible uneasiness, in a sort of stupor that made the fogs seem thicker and the lagoons more silent. There remained to me only the innate sensation of my own isolation amidst the inert phantoms of all things. For long hours, I felt no other sensation than that of the persistent and crushing weight of life, and that of the slight pulsation of an artery in my head. For long hours, I endured that strange fascination exerted by the uninterrupted and monotonous murmur of some indistinct thing on the soul. It drizzled; on the water, the fog at times took on lugubrious forms, advancing like spectres, with slow and solemn step. Often I found a sort of imaginary death in a gondola, as in a coffin. When the rower asked where I desired to be taken, I almost always answered by a vague gesture, and I comprehended internally the hopeless sincerity of the answer: "No matter where ... beyond the world."I came back to Rome during the last days of March. I felt a new sensation of the reality, as if after a long eclipse of conscience. Sometimes, unexpectedly, a timidity, an uneasiness, an unreasoning fear seized me, and I felt as powerless as an infant. I looked about me ceaselessly with unusual attention, to grasp once more the true sense of things, to find again the proper connections, to take note of what was changed and what had disappeared. And, in proportion as I slowly reëntered into the ordinary existence, the equilibrium reëstablished itself in my being, hope revived, and I began to become preoccupied with the future.I found Juliana's strength much reduced and her health very much changed. She was sadder than ever. We spoke but little and without looking at one another, without opening our hearts. We both sought the society of our two little daughters; and, with their happy innocence, Maria and Natalia filled our long silences with their fresh chatter. One day Maria asked:"Mamma, shall we go this Easter to the Badiola?"I answered, without hesitation, instead of her mother:"Yes, we shall."Then Maria began to dance around the room in token of her joy, dragging her sister with her. I looked at Juliana."Does it suit you that we should go there?" I asked, fearfully, almost humbly.She consented by a nod."I see you are not well," I added, "nor am I well. Perhaps the country ... the spring..."She was stretched out in an arm-chair, the arms of which supported her white hands, and that attitude recalled another attitude—that of the convalescent on the morning when she first rose, after I had told her.The departure was decided upon. We made our preparations. A hope shone in the depth of my soul, but I dared not look straight at it.I.My first recollection is as follows:By this, when I began this narrative, I meant: "Among my recollections this is the first in any way connected with the frightful thing."It was, therefore, in April. We had been at the Badiola for several days."Ah! my children," my mother had said, with her unceremonious candor, "how pale you both look! Oh! that Rome, that Rome. To put some color in your cheeks you must stay in the country with me for a long, long time.""Yes," Juliana had answered, with a smile; "yes, mother, we will stay as long as you wish."That smile often appeared on Juliana's lips when my mother was by. And, although her eyes invariably retained their melancholy, that smile was so sweet, so profoundly kind, that I permitted even myself to be deceived by it. I dared now to entertain some hope.During the first few days my mother could not tear herself away from her dear visitors; one might have thought she wished to surfeit them with tenderness. I saw her two or three times under the influence of some indefinable emotion, I saw her caress Juliana's hair with her blessed hand, I heard her ask her:"Is he as kind to you as ever?""Yes, poor Tullio!" replied the other voice."So it is not true...""What?""I was told that...""What were you told?""Nothing, nothing ... I thought that Tullio had caused you some unhappiness."They spoke in the embrasure of a window, behind waving curtains, while outside the wind sighed through the elm-trees. I came up to them before they were aware of my presence, and raising a portière, showed myself."Ah! Tullio!" cried my mother.They exchanged a look, a little embarrassed."We were speaking of you," said my mother."Of me? Bad or good?" I asked lightly."Good," replied Juliana, quickly.I detected in her voice the evident intention to reassure me.The April sun shone on the window-sill, lit up my mother's gray hair, lightly touched Juliana's temples. The very white curtains were waving to and fro, reflected in the luminous window-panes. The lofty elms on the lawn, covered with young leaves, produced a murmur, at times loud, at times soft, on which the shadows, more or less stationary, regulated their swing. From the wall of the house, covered with thousands of bunches of violets, arose a paschal odor, like an invisible vapor of incense."How penetrating that odor is!" murmured Juliana, passing her hand over her brow and half-closing her eyes. "It makes one dizzy!"I was between her and my mother, a little in the rear. A desire seized me to put my arms around both and lean out of the window. In that familiar and simple act I wished to put all the tenderness that swelled my heart, and make Juliana understand a multitude of inexpressible things and, by that one gesture, reconquer her entirely. But I was restrained by an almost infantile feeling of timidity."Look, Juliana," said my mother, pointing to the top of the hill, "look at your dear Lilacs. Can you see them?""Yes, yes."And, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand, she made an effort to see better. I, who was watching her, remarked a slight trembling of her lower lip."Can you see the cypress?" I asked her, with the intention of increasing her agitation by this suggestive question.And I saw once more, in imagination, the venerable old cypress, whose trunk rose amid a rose-bush, and whose top sheltered a nest of nightingales."Yes, yes; I see it, but with difficulty."The Lilacs stood out white against its background of foliage half-way up the slope. The chain of hills rolled away in the distance in a noble, peaceful, undulating line, and the olive-tree plantations on their sides appeared of extraordinary lightness, like a kind of greenish fog piled up in motionless shapes. The trees in blossom, dotted here and there with bouquets of red and white, broke the uniformity. The sky seemed to pale from minute to minute as if a stream of milk were being continually spread in and mixed with its fluid atmosphere."We will go to the Lilacs after Easter; everything there will be in flower," I said, trying to revive in that soul the dream which I had so brutally shattered.I dared to draw closer to her, and put my arms around Juliana and my mother, and lean out of the window, advancing my head between theirs in such a manner that the hair of each brushed me. The spring, the purity of the air, the nobleness of the country, the peaceful transfiguration of every creature by the season's maternal influence, and that sky, that sky of divine paleness, more divine in measure as it became paler—all awoke in me such a new sentiment of life that I thought, with an internal tremor: "Can it be possible? Can it be possible? After all that has happened, after all that I have suffered, after so many transgressions, can I still find enjoyment in life? Can I, then, stillhope? Can I still have a presentiment of happiness? From whence does this blessing come to me?" It seemed to me that all my being was relieved, became expanded, became dilated beyond its limits, with a subtle, rapid, and continuous vibration. Nothing can convey an idea of the feeling developed in me by the imperceptible sensation of a hair grazing my cheek.We remained several minutes in this attitude, without speaking. The elms moaned. The constant thrill of the thousands of yellow and violet flowers that carpeted the wall beneath our window enchanted my eyes. A heavy and warm perfume arose in the sunshine with the rhythm of a breath.All at once Juliana drew back, and grew pale. Her eyes looked troubled, her mouth was contracted as if with nausea. She said:"That odor is terrible. It makes one giddy. Are you not affected by it too, mother?"She turned round, tottered a few steps, and left the room hastily. My mother followed her.I watched them as they passed through the corridors, still dominated by what rested of my former sensations, lost in the dream.II.My confidence in the future increased from day to day. It was as if I had forgotten everything. My soul, too fatigued, no longer remembered its sufferings. At certain periods of complete abandon, all became disintegrated, diluted, dissolved, lost in the original fluidity, became unrecognizable. Then, after these strange internal decompositions, it seemed to me that a new principle of life had entered into me, that a new power had penetrated me.A multitude of sensations, involuntary, spontaneous, unconscious, and instinctive, made up my real existence. Between the exterior and the interior there was established a play of minute actions and instantaneous minute reactions, that vibrated in endless repercussions, and each one of these incalculable repercussions became converted into an astonishing psychic phenomenon. My entire being was modified by the slightest odor of the circumambient atmosphere, by a breath, by a shadow, by a flash of light.The great maladies of the soul, like those of the body, renew a man, and the convalescences of the mind are not less charming nor less miraculous than the physical convalescences. Before a small, flowering shrub, before a branch covered with small buds, before a vigorous shoot growing out of an old and almost dead trunk, before the most modest metamorphoses accomplished by spring, I stopped, artless, ingenuous, stupefied.Often, in the morning, I went out with my brother. At that hour, everything was cool, graceful, unconstrained.Federico's company purified me and strengthened me not less than the good country air. Federico was then twenty-seven years old; he had almost always lived in the country, where he led a sober and laborious existence, and the earth seemed to have communicated to him its mild sincerity. He was in possession of the rule of life. Leon Tolstoï, as he kissed his fine, serene brow, would have called him, "My son."We walked across the fields, without an object, exchanging but few words. He praised the fertility of our domains, explained to me the innovations introduced in their cultivation, pointing out the progress made. The cottages of our peasants were large and airy and coquettishly kept. Our stables were full of healthy and well-nourished cattle. Our dairies were admirably equipped. Often, on the way, he stopped to examine a plant, and his virile hands could touch with the greatest delicacy the little green leaves at the tip of a new shoot. At times we passed through an orchard. The peach-trees, apple-trees, pear-trees, cherry-trees, plum-trees, and apricot-trees bore on their branches thousands of flowers, and, below, the transparency of the rosy and silvery petals metamorphosed the light into a sort of humid atmosphere, into an indescribable thing, divinely graceful and hospitable. Through the small interstices of these light garlands smiled the blue sky.While I was admiring the flowers, he was already anticipating the future treasure suspended from the branches, and said:"You will see—you will see the fruit.""Yes, I shall see it," I repeated to myself, inwardly. "I shall see the flowers fall, the leaves born, the fruit grow, color, ripen, and fall."It was from my brother's mouth that this affirmation first issued, and it assumed for me a grave importance, as if it presaged I know not what promised and expected happiness, that was certain to arrive during the period of the vegetal labor, at the period separating the flower from the fruit. "Even before I manifested my intention to do so, it already seems natural to my brother that, henceforth, I should live here, in the country, with him and our mother; for he said I shall see the fruit of his trees. He issureI shall see them. So it is quite true that a new life has begun again for me, and that my innate sensation does not deceive me. In fact, everything, now, is being accomplished with a strange, unusual facility, with an abundance of love. How I love Federico! Never have I loved him so much before." Such were the soliloquies that I indulged in, soliloquies somewhat disconnected, incoherent, at times puerile, because of the singular disposition of soul that made me recognize in no matter what insignificant fact a favorable sign, a happy prognostication.My keenest joy was in knowing myself to be far removed from the past, far from certain places and certain persons, freed forever. Sometimes, in order to better enjoy the peace of this vernal country, I imagined to myself the space that separated me now from the shadowy world in which I had suffered so many and such culpable sufferings. Sometimes, too, a confused fear seized me again, compelled me to restlessly seek about me the motives of my present security, forced me to place my arm on my brother's arm, and read in his eyes the indubitable and protecting affection.I had a blind confidence in Federico. I should have liked not only that he should love me, but that he should dominate me. I should have liked to cede to him my right as the elder, because he was more worthy, to submit to his advice, to have him for a guide, to obey him. At his side, I should not have run the peril of being lost, since he knew the right way and trod it with an infallible step. And, more than that, he was strong of arm, he would have defended me. He was the exemplary man—good, energetic, sagacious. To me, nothing equalled in nobleness the sight of his youth devoted to the religion of "to act conscientiously," consecrated to the love of the Earth. One would say that his eyes, in the continual contemplation of verdant nature, had borrowed something of its limpid vegetal color."Jesus of the soil," I called him one day, smiling. That was on a morning pregnant with innocence, one of those mornings that evoked the images of primordial daybreaks at the infancy of the world. My brother was speaking to a group of laborers at the edge of a field. He spoke standing, taller by a head than those around him, and his calm gesture indicated the simplicity of his words. Old men grown white in wisdom, mature men already on the confines of old age, were listening to the young man. All bore on their knotty bodies the mark of the great common toil. As there were no trees in the vicinity, and as the wheat was low in the furrows, their attitudes were fully outlined in the sanctity of the light. When he saw that I was coming towards him, he dismissed his men in order to come forward to meet me. And then fell spontaneously from my lips this salutation:"Jesus of the soil, hosanna!"To every vegetable growth he paid infinite attentions. Nothing escaped his penetrating and, so to speak, omnispective regard. During our matinal walks, he stopped at every step to remove from some leaf a snail, a caterpillar, or an ant. One day, while carelessly walking along, I struck the plants with the end of my stick, and at every blow the ends of the verdant stems flew in all directions. That gave him pain, since he took the stick from my hands, but with a gentle movement, and he blushed, thinking perhaps that his pity might seem to me an exaggeration of sickly sentimentality. Oh! that blush on that manly face.Another day, as I was breaking off a flowering branch from an apple-tree, I surprised in Federico's eyes a shadow of sorrow. I stopped immediately, and withdrew my hands, saying:"Does it displease you..."He burst into a laugh."Not at all, not at all. You may despoil the entire tree."Yet the broken branch, held by several live fibres, hung down the trunk, and, truly, that wound, moist with sap, had an appearance of a thing in pain; those fragile flowers, flesh-colored with pale spots, like bunches of simple roses, grown from a germ henceforth condemned, continued to thrill in the breeze.Then, so as to excuse the cruelty of my aggression, I said:"It is for Juliana."And, breaking the last live fibres, I detached the broken branch.
Oh, that day! Not more than a week had gone by since then. Why did it seem to me to be so far away?
Standing behind her, in that state of extreme tension, and, so to speak, on the watch, I imagined that perhaps she instinctively felt the danger hovering over her head: I believed I divined in her a sort of vague uneasiness. Once more I felt sick at heart.
She finally said:
"To-morrow, if I am better, you will take me out on the terrace, in the open air."
I interrupted her.
"To-morrow, I shall not be here."
She trembled at my strange voice. I added, without waiting:
"I am going..."
Then, making a violent effort to loosen my tongue, and terrified like a man who must strike a second blow to put his victim to death, I added hastily:
"I am going to Florence."
"Ah!"
She had suddenly understood. She turned round with a rapid movement, she twisted herself on her cushions to look me in the face; and in that tragic pose, I saw again the whites of her eyes and her bloodless gum.
"Juliana!" I stammered, without finding anything else to say to her, bending toward her, fearing she would faint.
But she lowered her eyelids, sank back, withdrew into herself, so to speak, as if chilled by severe cold. She remained thus for several minutes, her eyes closed, lips compressed, motionless. Only the pulsations of the carotid artery, visible at the neck, and a few convulsive contractions of her hands indicated that she was still alive.
Was not this a crime? Yes, this was thefirstof my crimes, and not the least, without a doubt.
I went away under terrible circumstances. My absence lasted more than a week. On my return and the days following, I was astonished myself at my almost cynical impudence. I was bewitched by a sort of malefice that suspended in me every moral sense and rendered me capable of the worst injustices, the worst cruelties. This time again Juliana exhibited prodigious force of character; this time again she was able to keep silent. She appeared to me wrapped up in her silence as if in an impenetrable adamantine wall.
She went to the Badiola with her daughters and my mother. My brother accompanied them. I remained in Rome.
It was then that began for me a frightful period of sombre misery, the recollection of which suffices to fill me with disgust and humiliation.
Harassed by a feeling that, more than any other, stirs up in man the dregs of his being, I suffered every torture that a woman can make a feeble, passionate, and ever-wakeful soul suffer. The fire of a terrible sensual jealousy, kindled by suspicion, dried up in me every honest source, fed on the dregs deposited in the baser depths of my animal nature.
Never had Teresa Raffo seemed to me to be so desirable as since the day when I indissolubly associated her with an ignoble image and a stain. And she made herself a weapon of my very contempt to excite my covetousness. Atrocious agonies, abject joys, dishonoring submission, cowardly complacencies proposed and unblushingly accepted, tears more acrid than all the poisons, sudden frenzies that drove me almost to the confines of dementia, such violent plunges into the abyss of indulgence that for many days after I lay in a stupefied state, every misery, every ignominy of the lower passions exasperated by jealousy—all, yes, I have known all. I became a stranger in my own house; the presence of Juliana became an encumbrance to me. Sometimes entire weeks passed without my addressing a single word to her; absorbed in my inner torture, I did not see her, I did not listen to her. At certain moments, when I raised my eyes towards her, I was surprised at her pallor, at the expression of her face, by such and such a detail of her features, as if these things were new, unexpected, strange; I did not succeed in entirely reconquering the notion of the reality. Every act of her life was unknown to me; I felt no desire to question her, to know anything; I felt neither preoccupation, interest, nor fear in regard to her. An inexplicable coldness acted as a cuirass against her. And still more: sometimes I felt a kind of vague and inexplicable rancor against her. One day I saw her laugh, and that laugh irritated me, almost put me in a passion.
Another day I had a shock on hearing her singing in a distant room. She was singing an air from "Orphée."
"Que ferai-je sans Eurydice?"
That was the first time she had sung while going through the house for a long time; it was the first time I heard her for a long time.
"Why was she singing? Was she then happy? To what condition of her soul does that unusual effusion correspond?" An inexplicable agitation seized me. Without thinking, I went up to her, calling her by name.
When she saw me enter her room she was surprised, and remained for a moment speechless; she was evidently startled.
"Are you singing?" I said, so as to say something, embarrassed and astonished myself at the eccentricity of what I was doing.
She smiled a hesitating smile, not knowing what to answer, not knowing what attitude to assume toward me. And I thought I read in her eyes a grieved curiosity, the fugitive expression of which I had already noticed more than once—the compassionate curiosity with which one gazes at a person suspected of insanity, a maniac. As a matter of fact, I saw myself in a mirror opposite, and my face looked emaciated, my eyes sunken, my mouth puffed up—that feverish appearance that I had had for a month.
"Are you dressing to go out?" I asked, still disturbed, almost ashamed, not finding any other question to ask her, preoccupied only with avoiding silence.
"Yes."
It was in the morning, in November. She was standing near a table trimmed with lace, and on which scintillated the scattered innumerable little articles that serve nowadays to beautify women. She wore a dress of vigonia, of a dark color, and held in her hand a light-colored shell comb mounted in silver. The dress, very simple in cut, set off her slim, graceful figure. A large bouquet of white chrysanthemums, placed on the table, reached up as far as her shoulder. The sun of the St. Martin's summer entered through the window, and in the air there was a perfume of chypre, or some other odor I could not recognize.
"What perfume do you use now?" I asked.
"Crab-apple," she replied.
"I like it," I said.
She took a small bottle from the table, and handed it to me. I inhaled it deeply, so as to be doing something, and to gain time to prepare some other phrase. I did not succeed in dissipating my confusion, or in recovering my assurance. I felt that all intimacy between us was at an end. She seemed to me to beanother woman. And yet the air from "Orphée" still surged through my soul, still disturbed me:
"Que ferai-je sans Eurydice?"
In that warm and golden light, amidst that delightful perfume, among these objects impressed with feminine grace, the echo of the ancient melody seemed to put the palpitation of a secret life, to shed a shadow of some strange mystery.
"The air that you sang just now is very beautiful," I said, obeying an impulse that came from my uneasiness.
"Yes, very beautiful," she cried.
A question rose to my lips: "Why are you singing?" but I repressed it and began to seek in myself the reasons of the curiosity which tormented me.
There was an interval of silence. She ran her finger-nail across the teeth of the comb, producing a light, grating noise. This grating is a circumstance that I recall with perfect clearness.
"You were dressing to go out. Go on," I said.
"I have only to put on my jacket and hat. What time is it?"
"A quarter to eleven."
"What! So late already?"
She took her hat and veil, and sat down before the glass. I watched her. Another question rose to my lips: "Where are you going?" Yet, although it might appear quite natural, I restrained myself again, and continued to observe Juliana attentively.
She reappeared to me once more what she was in reality—a young and stylish woman, a gentle and noble face full of a refined physical delicacy, radiant with an intense moral expression; in short, an adorable woman, and one who could be as delightful a mistress for the flesh as for the mind. "Suppose she were really someone's mistress?" I thought then. "Assuredly, it is impossible but that many men have hovered around her; everyone knows how I neglect her, everyone knows how I wrong her. Suppose she has yielded, or is about to yield? Suppose she has at last considered the sacrifice of her youth to be useless and unjust? Suppose she was at last grown tired of her abnegation? Suppose she has made the acquaintance of a man superior to me, some delicate and deep seducer, who has inspired her with renewed curiosity, who has taught her to forget her faithless husband? Suppose I have already lost her heart, which I have so often trampled upon without pity and without remorse?" A sudden fright seized me, and the anguish was so keen that I thought: "That is what I will do; I will confess my suspicion to Juliana. I will look into the depths of her eyes and say, 'Are you stillfaithful?' And I will know the truth. She is incapable of lying."
"Incapable of lying? Ah! ah! ah! A woman! ... What do you know about it? A woman is capable of everything. Never forget that. Sometimes the large cloak of heroism serves but to hide half a dozen lovers. Sacrifice! Abnegation! Those are appearances, words. Who will ever know the truth? Swear, if you dare, that your wife is faithful to you; and I speak, not of the present faithfulness, but of that which preceded the episode of the illness. Swear in perfect assurance, if you dare." And the wicked voice (ah! Teresa Raffo, how your poison acts), the perfidious voice made me shudder.
"Do not be impatient, Tullio," said Juliana, almost timidly. "Will you stick this pin in my veil—here?"
She raised her arms and held them over her head to fasten the veil, and her white fingers tried in vain to fasten it.
Her pose was full of grace. The white fingers made me think: "How long it is since we clasped hands! Oh, the frank and warm clasps that her hand used to give me, as if to assure me that she bore me no ill-will for any offence! Now that hand is perhaps defiled." And while I fastened the veil, I felt a sudden revulsion in thinking of the possible pollution.
She arose, and I helped her again to put on her cloak. Two or three times our eyes met by stealth, and again I observed in hers a sort of anxious curiosity. Perhaps she was asking herself: "Why did he come in here? Why is he staying here? What does that absent-minded air mean? What does he want with me? What has happened to him?"
"Excuse me a moment," she said.
And she left the room.
I heard her call Miss Edith, the governess.
When I was alone my eyes turned involuntarily towards the small desk littered with letters, cards, and books. I approached, and my eyes ran for an instant over the papers, as if they sought to discover—what? Theproof, perhaps? I dismissed this base and stupid suspicion. I looked at a book covered with an antique cloth, with a small dagger stuck between the leaves. She had not yet finished reading it, and had cut only about half of it. It was the latest novel by Filippo Arborio,The Secret. I read on the frontispiece an autographic dedication by the author:
TO YOU,JULIANA HERMIL, TURRIS EBURNEA,
I offer this unworthy homage.
F. ARBORIO.All Saints' Day, '85.
So Juliana knew the novelist? And what did Juliana think of him? I conjured up the writer's fine and seductive face as I had seen it several times in public. There was certainly much in him that must please Juliana. According to current gossip, he pleased women. His romances, full of a complicated psychology, at times very subtle, often false, disturbed sentimental souls, fired restless imaginations, taught with supreme grace contempt of common life.An Agony, The True Catholic, Angelica Doni, Giorgio Aliora, The Secret, suggested an intense vision of life, as if life were a vast conflagration of innumerable ardent figures. Each of his characters fought for his chimera, in a hopeless duel against reality.
Had not this extraordinary artist, who in his books appeared to be, so to speak, like a distilled quintessence of pure spirit, also exerted his fascination on me? Had I not said of hisGiorgio Aliorathat it was afraternalwork? Had I not found in certain of his literary creations strange resemblances with my inner being? And suppose the strange affinity that there is between us facilitated his work of seduction, perhaps already undertaken? Suppose Juliana was yielding to him, precisely because she had recognized in him some one of those attractions by which, previously, I had made myself adored by her? I thought with a new fright.
She reëntered the room. On seeing me with the book in my hand, she said, with an embarrassed smile, and blushing slightly:
"What are you looking at?"
"Do you know Filippo Arborio?" I asked her immediately, but without any change in my voice, in the most calm and natural voice that I could command.
"Yes," she answered frankly. "He was introduced to me at the Monterisi. He has even been here several times, but you have not had the opportunity of meeting him."
A question rose to my lips: "Why have you never spoken of him to me?" But I restrained it. How could she have mentioned it, since, by my attitude, I had interrupted for a long time past all friendly exchange of news and confidences?
"He is much more simple than his works would lead one to suppose," she continued carelessly, slowly drawing on her gloves. "Have you readThe Secret?"
"Yes, I have read it."
"Did you like it?"
Without thinking, and by an instinctive desire to affirm my superiority in Juliana's eyes, I answered:
"No, it is commonplace."
At last she said:
"I am going."
She made a motion to leave. I followed her as far as the antechamber, walking in the wake of the perfume she left behind her, so subtle as to be scarcely perceptible. In the presence of the servant she said only:
"Au revoir."
And, with a light step, she crossed the threshold.
I went back to my room. I opened the window, and leaned out to watch her in the street.
She hurried along, with her light step, on the sunny side of the street, straight on, without turning her head to the right or left. The St. Martin summer shed a delicate gilding over the crystal of the sky; a calm warmth softened the air and conjured up the perfume of the absent violets. An immense sadness weighed on me, crashed me down on the window-sill; gradually it became intolerable.
Rarely in my life have I suffered so much as from that doubt which crumbled at one stroke my faith in Juliana, a faith that had lasted for so many years. Rarely had the flight of an illusion drawn from my soul such cries of anguish. But was it true that the illusion had fled and that the evil was irremediable? I could not, I would not, be persuaded of it.
That great illusion had been the companion of my whole misguided life. It answered not only to the exigencies of my egotism, but also to my æsthetic dream of moral greatness.
"Since moral greatness results from the violence of pains which one triumphs over, it is necessary, so that she may have an opportunity to be heroic, that she should suffer all I have made her suffer." This axiom, which had often succeeded in calming my remorse, was deeply rooted in my mind, and had caused to surge there from the best part of myself an ideal phantom to which I had vowed a sort of platonic cult. Debauched, culpable, tired, I took pleasure in recognizing in the ray of my own existence a soul severe, upright, and strong, an incorruptible soul, and it pleased me to be the object of its love, of an eternal love. All my vice, all my misery, all my feebleness, found a support in this illusion. I believed that for me there was a possible realization of the dream of all intellectual men: to be constantly unfaithful to a constantly faithful woman.
"What are you seeking? All the intoxication of life? Very well! go, run on, intoxicate yourself. In your house a dumb creature remembers and waits, like a veiled image in a sanctuary. The lamp in which you do not put a single drop more of oil burns without ever becoming extinguished. Is not that the dream of all intellectual men?"
And again: "No matter at what hour, no matter after what adventure, you will find her there on your return. She was awaiting your return with confidence, but she will not tell you of her waiting. You will rest your head on her knees and she will caress your temples with her finger-tips, to take away your pain."
I had a presentiment that one day I would return thus; I would end by coming back, after one of those intimate catastrophes that metamorphose a man. All my hopelessnesses were softened by the secret conviction that this refuge could not fail me, and in the depth of my abjectness a little light came to me from that woman who, for love of me andby my work, had raised herself to the summit of greatness and had perfectly realized the form of my ideal.
Would one doubt suffice to destroy all that in a moment?
I repassed from one end to the other the scene that had taken place between Juliana and myself from the moment I had entered the room to the instant she had left it. And it was in vain I attributed a great part of my inner agitation to a special and transient nervous condition; I could not succeed in dissipating the strange impression exactly translated by these words:
"She seemed to me to beanother woman."
There was certainly something new about her. But what? Was not Filippo Arborio's dedication in a sense reassuring? Did it not precisely affirm that theTurris Eburneawas impregnable? This glorious qualification had been suggested to the author either simply by the reputation for purity that Juliana Hermil's name bore, or by the non-success of an attempted assault, or, possibly, by the abandonment of a siege undertaken. In consequence, the Ivory Tower still remained unsullied.
While reasoning thus to allay the gnawings of suspicion, I could not remove the confused anxiety that lay at the bottom of my being, as if I feared a sudden apparition of some ironical objection. "You know, Juliana has extraordinarily white skin. She is literallyas white as her night-dress. The pious qualification might well hide some profane meaning." But the wordunworthy? "Oh! Oh! What subtleties!"
An attack of impatience and anger cut short this humiliating and vain debate. I withdrew from the window, shrugged my shoulders, made two or three turns in the room, mechanically opened a book, then threw it down again. But my anguish did not decrease. "In short," I thought, stopping short, as if to confront some invisible adversary, "to what does all this lead me? Either she has already fallen, and the loss is irreparable; or she is in danger, and in my present situation I cannot interfere to save her; or else she is pure, and then there is no change. In any case, it is not for me toact. What exists, exists of necessity; what is to happen, will of necessity happen. This crisis of suffering will pass. One must wait. How beautiful those white chrysanthemums were that were on Juliana's table just now! I will go and buy a heap more just like them. My rendezvous with Teresa is for two o'clock to-day. I have still almost three hours before me. Did she not tell me, the last time, that she wished to find the fire burning? This will be the first fire of the winter on such a warm day. It seems to me she is in a week of kindness. I only hope it will last! But, at the first opportunity, I shall challenge Eugenio Egano."
My thoughts followed a new course, with sudden checks, with unforeseen divergences. In the midst even of the pictures of the approaching voluptuousness, another contaminating imagination passed like a lightning flash, one that I feared, one from which I should like to flee. Certain audacious and ardent pages ofThe True Catholicrecurred to me. One of these passions aroused the other, and, while suffering from the distinct pains, I confounded the two women in the same pollution, Filippo Arborio and Eugenio Egano in the same hate.
The crisis passed, leaving in my soul a species of vague contempt mixed with rancor against thesister. I drifted away still further from her; I became more and more hardened, more and more careless, more and more reserved. My sad passion for Teresa Raffo became more exclusive, occupied all my faculties, left me no respite. I was really a maniac, a man possessed by a diabolical insanity, devoured by an unknown and frightful malady. My mind has retained of that winter only confused, incoherent souvenirs, interspersed with strange, rare obscurities.
That winter I never encountered Filippo Arborio at my house; but I saw him sometimes in public. One evening, however, I met him in a salle d'armes; and there we became acquainted. We were introduced by the fencing-master, and we exchanged a few words. The gaslight, the creaking of the flooring, the flash and clatter of the foils, the clumsy or graceful attitudes of the swordsmen, the rapid extension of all those bent limbs, the warm and acrid exhalations of all those bodies, the guttural cries, rude interjections, the bursts of laughter—such are the details that my memory furnishes to reconstruct with singular clearness the scene that unrolled itself before us, while we were standing face to face and the master pronounced our names. I again see the gesture with which Filippo Arborio, raising his mask, displayed a heated face all bathed in perspiration. He was panting with fatigue, and somewhat convulsed, like a man unaccustomed to muscular exercise. Instinctively I thought that he would not be a formidable opponent in a duel. I affected also a certain haughtiness; I especially avoided saying anything that bore any reference to his celebrity or to my admiration; I assumed the attitude I would have taken towards a perfect stranger.
"So it is for to-morrow?" said the fencing-master to me, smiling.
"Yes, at ten o'clock."
"Are you going to fight?" asked Arborio, with evident curiosity.
"Yes."
He hesitated a little, and then added:
"May I ask with whom, if it is not an indiscretion?"
"With Eugenio Egano."
I noticed that he would have liked to learn more, but that he was restrained by the coldness of my attitude and my apparent inattention.
"Maestro," I said, "I'll give you five minutes."
I turned my back to go to the dressing-room. At the door I stopped, and glancing back, saw that Arborio had recommenced to fence. One glance sufficed to show me that he was a very poor swordsman.
When, watched by all the persons present, I engaged with the fencing-master, a singular nervous excitement seized upon me and redoubled my energy. I felt Arborio's eyes were fastened on me.
Later on, I saw him again in the dressing-room. The room had a very low ceiling, and was already full of smoke and an acrid, sickening smell of men. All those in it, naked save for their large white dressing-gowns, were smoking and slowly rubbing their chests, arms, shoulders, and chaffing one another loudly. The splashing of the shower-bath alternated with the loud laughter. Two or three times, with an indefinable motion of repulsion, with a start similar to that which a violent physical shock would produce, I saw the frail form of Arborio, whom my eyes sought involuntarily. And, once again, the odious image was formed.
Since then I had no other opportunity to approach or meet him. I ceased to busy myself with him, and, as a consequence, I remarked nothing suspicious in Juliana's behavior. Outside the constantly narrowing circle in which I moved, there no longer existed for me anything lucid, or sensible, or intelligent. Every external impression passed over me like drops of water over red-hot iron, rebounding or evaporating.
Events came one after the other. Toward the end of February, after a last proof of infamy, a definite rupture occurred between Teresa Raffo and myself. I left for Venice, alone.
I remained there about one month in a state of incomprehensible uneasiness, in a sort of stupor that made the fogs seem thicker and the lagoons more silent. There remained to me only the innate sensation of my own isolation amidst the inert phantoms of all things. For long hours, I felt no other sensation than that of the persistent and crushing weight of life, and that of the slight pulsation of an artery in my head. For long hours, I endured that strange fascination exerted by the uninterrupted and monotonous murmur of some indistinct thing on the soul. It drizzled; on the water, the fog at times took on lugubrious forms, advancing like spectres, with slow and solemn step. Often I found a sort of imaginary death in a gondola, as in a coffin. When the rower asked where I desired to be taken, I almost always answered by a vague gesture, and I comprehended internally the hopeless sincerity of the answer: "No matter where ... beyond the world."
I came back to Rome during the last days of March. I felt a new sensation of the reality, as if after a long eclipse of conscience. Sometimes, unexpectedly, a timidity, an uneasiness, an unreasoning fear seized me, and I felt as powerless as an infant. I looked about me ceaselessly with unusual attention, to grasp once more the true sense of things, to find again the proper connections, to take note of what was changed and what had disappeared. And, in proportion as I slowly reëntered into the ordinary existence, the equilibrium reëstablished itself in my being, hope revived, and I began to become preoccupied with the future.
I found Juliana's strength much reduced and her health very much changed. She was sadder than ever. We spoke but little and without looking at one another, without opening our hearts. We both sought the society of our two little daughters; and, with their happy innocence, Maria and Natalia filled our long silences with their fresh chatter. One day Maria asked:
"Mamma, shall we go this Easter to the Badiola?"
I answered, without hesitation, instead of her mother:
"Yes, we shall."
Then Maria began to dance around the room in token of her joy, dragging her sister with her. I looked at Juliana.
"Does it suit you that we should go there?" I asked, fearfully, almost humbly.
She consented by a nod.
"I see you are not well," I added, "nor am I well. Perhaps the country ... the spring..."
She was stretched out in an arm-chair, the arms of which supported her white hands, and that attitude recalled another attitude—that of the convalescent on the morning when she first rose, after I had told her.
The departure was decided upon. We made our preparations. A hope shone in the depth of my soul, but I dared not look straight at it.
I.
My first recollection is as follows:
By this, when I began this narrative, I meant: "Among my recollections this is the first in any way connected with the frightful thing."
It was, therefore, in April. We had been at the Badiola for several days.
"Ah! my children," my mother had said, with her unceremonious candor, "how pale you both look! Oh! that Rome, that Rome. To put some color in your cheeks you must stay in the country with me for a long, long time."
"Yes," Juliana had answered, with a smile; "yes, mother, we will stay as long as you wish."
That smile often appeared on Juliana's lips when my mother was by. And, although her eyes invariably retained their melancholy, that smile was so sweet, so profoundly kind, that I permitted even myself to be deceived by it. I dared now to entertain some hope.
During the first few days my mother could not tear herself away from her dear visitors; one might have thought she wished to surfeit them with tenderness. I saw her two or three times under the influence of some indefinable emotion, I saw her caress Juliana's hair with her blessed hand, I heard her ask her:
"Is he as kind to you as ever?"
"Yes, poor Tullio!" replied the other voice.
"So it is not true..."
"What?"
"I was told that..."
"What were you told?"
"Nothing, nothing ... I thought that Tullio had caused you some unhappiness."
They spoke in the embrasure of a window, behind waving curtains, while outside the wind sighed through the elm-trees. I came up to them before they were aware of my presence, and raising a portière, showed myself.
"Ah! Tullio!" cried my mother.
They exchanged a look, a little embarrassed.
"We were speaking of you," said my mother.
"Of me? Bad or good?" I asked lightly.
"Good," replied Juliana, quickly.
I detected in her voice the evident intention to reassure me.
The April sun shone on the window-sill, lit up my mother's gray hair, lightly touched Juliana's temples. The very white curtains were waving to and fro, reflected in the luminous window-panes. The lofty elms on the lawn, covered with young leaves, produced a murmur, at times loud, at times soft, on which the shadows, more or less stationary, regulated their swing. From the wall of the house, covered with thousands of bunches of violets, arose a paschal odor, like an invisible vapor of incense.
"How penetrating that odor is!" murmured Juliana, passing her hand over her brow and half-closing her eyes. "It makes one dizzy!"
I was between her and my mother, a little in the rear. A desire seized me to put my arms around both and lean out of the window. In that familiar and simple act I wished to put all the tenderness that swelled my heart, and make Juliana understand a multitude of inexpressible things and, by that one gesture, reconquer her entirely. But I was restrained by an almost infantile feeling of timidity.
"Look, Juliana," said my mother, pointing to the top of the hill, "look at your dear Lilacs. Can you see them?"
"Yes, yes."
And, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand, she made an effort to see better. I, who was watching her, remarked a slight trembling of her lower lip.
"Can you see the cypress?" I asked her, with the intention of increasing her agitation by this suggestive question.
And I saw once more, in imagination, the venerable old cypress, whose trunk rose amid a rose-bush, and whose top sheltered a nest of nightingales.
"Yes, yes; I see it, but with difficulty."
The Lilacs stood out white against its background of foliage half-way up the slope. The chain of hills rolled away in the distance in a noble, peaceful, undulating line, and the olive-tree plantations on their sides appeared of extraordinary lightness, like a kind of greenish fog piled up in motionless shapes. The trees in blossom, dotted here and there with bouquets of red and white, broke the uniformity. The sky seemed to pale from minute to minute as if a stream of milk were being continually spread in and mixed with its fluid atmosphere.
"We will go to the Lilacs after Easter; everything there will be in flower," I said, trying to revive in that soul the dream which I had so brutally shattered.
I dared to draw closer to her, and put my arms around Juliana and my mother, and lean out of the window, advancing my head between theirs in such a manner that the hair of each brushed me. The spring, the purity of the air, the nobleness of the country, the peaceful transfiguration of every creature by the season's maternal influence, and that sky, that sky of divine paleness, more divine in measure as it became paler—all awoke in me such a new sentiment of life that I thought, with an internal tremor: "Can it be possible? Can it be possible? After all that has happened, after all that I have suffered, after so many transgressions, can I still find enjoyment in life? Can I, then, stillhope? Can I still have a presentiment of happiness? From whence does this blessing come to me?" It seemed to me that all my being was relieved, became expanded, became dilated beyond its limits, with a subtle, rapid, and continuous vibration. Nothing can convey an idea of the feeling developed in me by the imperceptible sensation of a hair grazing my cheek.
We remained several minutes in this attitude, without speaking. The elms moaned. The constant thrill of the thousands of yellow and violet flowers that carpeted the wall beneath our window enchanted my eyes. A heavy and warm perfume arose in the sunshine with the rhythm of a breath.
All at once Juliana drew back, and grew pale. Her eyes looked troubled, her mouth was contracted as if with nausea. She said:
"That odor is terrible. It makes one giddy. Are you not affected by it too, mother?"
She turned round, tottered a few steps, and left the room hastily. My mother followed her.
I watched them as they passed through the corridors, still dominated by what rested of my former sensations, lost in the dream.
II.
My confidence in the future increased from day to day. It was as if I had forgotten everything. My soul, too fatigued, no longer remembered its sufferings. At certain periods of complete abandon, all became disintegrated, diluted, dissolved, lost in the original fluidity, became unrecognizable. Then, after these strange internal decompositions, it seemed to me that a new principle of life had entered into me, that a new power had penetrated me.
A multitude of sensations, involuntary, spontaneous, unconscious, and instinctive, made up my real existence. Between the exterior and the interior there was established a play of minute actions and instantaneous minute reactions, that vibrated in endless repercussions, and each one of these incalculable repercussions became converted into an astonishing psychic phenomenon. My entire being was modified by the slightest odor of the circumambient atmosphere, by a breath, by a shadow, by a flash of light.
The great maladies of the soul, like those of the body, renew a man, and the convalescences of the mind are not less charming nor less miraculous than the physical convalescences. Before a small, flowering shrub, before a branch covered with small buds, before a vigorous shoot growing out of an old and almost dead trunk, before the most modest metamorphoses accomplished by spring, I stopped, artless, ingenuous, stupefied.
Often, in the morning, I went out with my brother. At that hour, everything was cool, graceful, unconstrained.
Federico's company purified me and strengthened me not less than the good country air. Federico was then twenty-seven years old; he had almost always lived in the country, where he led a sober and laborious existence, and the earth seemed to have communicated to him its mild sincerity. He was in possession of the rule of life. Leon Tolstoï, as he kissed his fine, serene brow, would have called him, "My son."
We walked across the fields, without an object, exchanging but few words. He praised the fertility of our domains, explained to me the innovations introduced in their cultivation, pointing out the progress made. The cottages of our peasants were large and airy and coquettishly kept. Our stables were full of healthy and well-nourished cattle. Our dairies were admirably equipped. Often, on the way, he stopped to examine a plant, and his virile hands could touch with the greatest delicacy the little green leaves at the tip of a new shoot. At times we passed through an orchard. The peach-trees, apple-trees, pear-trees, cherry-trees, plum-trees, and apricot-trees bore on their branches thousands of flowers, and, below, the transparency of the rosy and silvery petals metamorphosed the light into a sort of humid atmosphere, into an indescribable thing, divinely graceful and hospitable. Through the small interstices of these light garlands smiled the blue sky.
While I was admiring the flowers, he was already anticipating the future treasure suspended from the branches, and said:
"You will see—you will see the fruit."
"Yes, I shall see it," I repeated to myself, inwardly. "I shall see the flowers fall, the leaves born, the fruit grow, color, ripen, and fall."
It was from my brother's mouth that this affirmation first issued, and it assumed for me a grave importance, as if it presaged I know not what promised and expected happiness, that was certain to arrive during the period of the vegetal labor, at the period separating the flower from the fruit. "Even before I manifested my intention to do so, it already seems natural to my brother that, henceforth, I should live here, in the country, with him and our mother; for he said I shall see the fruit of his trees. He issureI shall see them. So it is quite true that a new life has begun again for me, and that my innate sensation does not deceive me. In fact, everything, now, is being accomplished with a strange, unusual facility, with an abundance of love. How I love Federico! Never have I loved him so much before." Such were the soliloquies that I indulged in, soliloquies somewhat disconnected, incoherent, at times puerile, because of the singular disposition of soul that made me recognize in no matter what insignificant fact a favorable sign, a happy prognostication.
My keenest joy was in knowing myself to be far removed from the past, far from certain places and certain persons, freed forever. Sometimes, in order to better enjoy the peace of this vernal country, I imagined to myself the space that separated me now from the shadowy world in which I had suffered so many and such culpable sufferings. Sometimes, too, a confused fear seized me again, compelled me to restlessly seek about me the motives of my present security, forced me to place my arm on my brother's arm, and read in his eyes the indubitable and protecting affection.
I had a blind confidence in Federico. I should have liked not only that he should love me, but that he should dominate me. I should have liked to cede to him my right as the elder, because he was more worthy, to submit to his advice, to have him for a guide, to obey him. At his side, I should not have run the peril of being lost, since he knew the right way and trod it with an infallible step. And, more than that, he was strong of arm, he would have defended me. He was the exemplary man—good, energetic, sagacious. To me, nothing equalled in nobleness the sight of his youth devoted to the religion of "to act conscientiously," consecrated to the love of the Earth. One would say that his eyes, in the continual contemplation of verdant nature, had borrowed something of its limpid vegetal color.
"Jesus of the soil," I called him one day, smiling. That was on a morning pregnant with innocence, one of those mornings that evoked the images of primordial daybreaks at the infancy of the world. My brother was speaking to a group of laborers at the edge of a field. He spoke standing, taller by a head than those around him, and his calm gesture indicated the simplicity of his words. Old men grown white in wisdom, mature men already on the confines of old age, were listening to the young man. All bore on their knotty bodies the mark of the great common toil. As there were no trees in the vicinity, and as the wheat was low in the furrows, their attitudes were fully outlined in the sanctity of the light. When he saw that I was coming towards him, he dismissed his men in order to come forward to meet me. And then fell spontaneously from my lips this salutation:
"Jesus of the soil, hosanna!"
To every vegetable growth he paid infinite attentions. Nothing escaped his penetrating and, so to speak, omnispective regard. During our matinal walks, he stopped at every step to remove from some leaf a snail, a caterpillar, or an ant. One day, while carelessly walking along, I struck the plants with the end of my stick, and at every blow the ends of the verdant stems flew in all directions. That gave him pain, since he took the stick from my hands, but with a gentle movement, and he blushed, thinking perhaps that his pity might seem to me an exaggeration of sickly sentimentality. Oh! that blush on that manly face.
Another day, as I was breaking off a flowering branch from an apple-tree, I surprised in Federico's eyes a shadow of sorrow. I stopped immediately, and withdrew my hands, saying:
"Does it displease you..."
He burst into a laugh.
"Not at all, not at all. You may despoil the entire tree."
Yet the broken branch, held by several live fibres, hung down the trunk, and, truly, that wound, moist with sap, had an appearance of a thing in pain; those fragile flowers, flesh-colored with pale spots, like bunches of simple roses, grown from a germ henceforth condemned, continued to thrill in the breeze.
Then, so as to excuse the cruelty of my aggression, I said:
"It is for Juliana."
And, breaking the last live fibres, I detached the broken branch.