XIII.It was ten o'clock when I left my room. On that April morning, the bright light that inundated the Badiola by the open windows and balconies made me timid. How could I wear my mask in such a light?Before entering Juliana's apartment, I wished to see my mother."You rose late," she said, on seeing me. "How are you?""Very well.""You are pale.""I think I had a little fever in the night. But it is gone now.""Have you seen Juliana?""Not yet.""She wished to get up, the dear girl! She said that she no longer feels ill; but her face...""I am going to her.""You must not neglect to write to the doctor. Do not listen to Juliana. Write this very day.""Did you tell her ... that Iknow?""Yes, I told her that youknow.""I am going, mother."I left her in front of her great walnut-wood closets perfumed with orris, in which two women were piling the beautiful washed linen, the pride of the Hermils. Maria, in the piano-room, was taking her lesson from Miss Edith, and the chromatic scales, rapid and even, succeeded one another. Pietro passed, the most faithful of the servants, white-haired, somewhat bent, bearing a tray of glasses that resounded because his arms trembled with age. The entire Badiola, bathed in air and light, had an aspect of tranquil joy. There was an atmosphere of goodness shed throughout—like the subtle and inextinguishable smile of the gods Lares.Never before had that sensation, that smile, penetrated to my soul so deeply. And that great peace, that great goodness, enveloped the ignoble secret which Juliana and I were condemned to keep without dying of it!"And now?" I thought, at the height of my anguish, wandering in the corridor as a lost stranger might have done, incapable of directing my steps toward the dreaded place, as if my body refused obedience to the impulsions imposed upon it by my will. "And now? She knows that I know the truth. Between us, henceforth, all dissimulation is useless. Necessity imposes upon us to face one another, to speak of the frightful thing. But it is impossible that this meeting should take place this morning. The consequences of it cannot be foreseen; and now, more than ever, it is necessary, absolutely necessary, that not one of our actions should seem singular or inexplicable, neither to my mother nor to my brother, nor to anyone else in this house. My agitation of last evening, my uneasiness, my grief, can be explained by the preoccupation of the peril of Juliana's condition; but logically, in others' eyes, such preoccupation should make me more tender toward her, more zealous, more eager than ever. To-day, my prudence must be extreme. To-day, I must avoid a scene with Juliana, cost what it may. To-day, I must avoid any occasion of remaining with heren tête-à-tête. But I must also find, without delay, means to make her understand the feeling that determined my attitude in regard to her, the intention that directs my conduct. And if she persists in the will to kill herself? If she had only deferred its execution a few hours? If she were already watching for an opportune moment?"That fear cut short my loitering, and forced me to action. I resembled one of those Oriental soldiers who are forced into battle by blows of a cudgel.I directed my steps toward the piano-room. On seeing me, Maria interrupted her scales and ran toward me, light and joyous, as toward a liberator. She had the grace, the agility, the lightness, of winged creatures. I raised her in my arms to kiss her."Will you take me out?" she asked. "I am tired. Miss Edith has kept me here for an hour. I cannot stand any more. Take me out with you. Let us go for a walk before breakfast.""Where?""Wherever you like.""Let us go, then, and see mamma first.""Yes; yesterday you were at the Lilacs, and we had to stay at the Badiola. It was you, you alone, who would not consent. Mamma was quite willing. Naughty papa! We should like to go there. Tell me how you amused yourselves."The child prattled on like a bird, delightfully. The ceaseless chatter kept company with my anguish, while we were going toward Juliana's apartment. I hesitated; but Maria knocked at the door, crying:"Mamma!"Without suspecting my presence, Juliana came to open the door herself. She saw me. She started violently, as if she had seen a phantom, a spectre, some terrifying thing."Is it you?" she stammered, in a voice so low that I scarcely heard her.And, while she spoke, her lips blanched. After the start, she became suddenly more rigid than a Hermes.And there, on the threshold, we looked at each other, read each other's faces; for an instant, even our souls were fixed upon each other. All about us disappeared; between us, all was said, all was understood, everything was decided, in the space of one second.What happened next? I do not know, I cannot remember. I remember that, for some time, I had an intermittent consciousness, so to speak, of what happened, with a succession of short eclipses. It was, it seemed to me, a phenomenon analogous to that which results from the enfeeblement of the voluntary attention in the case of certain patients. I lost the faculty of being attentive; I no longer saw, I no longer seized the sense of words, I no longer understood. Then, a moment later, I recovered that faculty, examined the things and persons about me, I became attentive and conscious.Juliana was seated, and held Natalia on her knees. I, too, had taken a seat. And Maria ran from her to me, from me to her, incessantly, with endless prattle, provoking her sister, asking us a number of questions which we only answered by a nod of the head. That lively chatter broke our silence. In one of the fragments of the phrases that I noticed, Maria said to her sister:"Ah! is it true that you slept with mamma last night?""Yes, because I am little.""Oh! well, to-night it's my turn. Is it not, mamma? Take me in your bed to-night, mamma."Juliana did not smile. She remained silent, and seemed absorbed. She had on her knees Natalia, whose shoulders were turned toward her, and whose arms were around her waist; her joined hands rested in the little girl's lap, whiter than the little white dress on which they reposed, taper, painful, so painful that they themselves revealed to me an immensity of sorrow. Juliana remained bent, and, as Natalia's head brushed her mouth, she seemed to press her lips to the child's curls; in such a manner that, when I glanced at her, I could not see the expression of her eyes, but saw only her lowered eyelids, somewhat reddened, and I was constantly agitated internally by this, as if through them I could distinguish the fixity of the pupils that they covered.Was she waiting for me to say something? Were inexpressible words rising to those hidden lips?When finally, by an effort, I conquered the condition of inertia in which extraordinary alternations of lucidity and darkness had succeeded each other, I said, in a tone of voice that I would have used, I believe, in continuing a conversation already begun, by adding new words to words already spoken—I said slowly:"Mother wants me to send for Doctor Vebesti. I have promised to write. I will write."She did not raise her eyelids; she remained mute. Maria, in her innocence, looked at her with surprise; then she looked at me, too.I rose to go out."To-day, after lunch, I will go with Federico to the Assoro woods. Shall we see one another this evening on my return?"She made no movement to answer. Then I repeated, in a voice that conveyed a thousand things understood:"Shall we see one another this evening on my return?" From between her lips, hidden among Natalia's curls, came like a sigh:"Yes."XIV.In the violence of my multiple and contrary agitations, in the first tumult of pain, beneath the menace of imminent perils, I had not yet had the leisure to think of the Other. Moreover, from the very first, I had not conceived even the shadow of a doubt of my former suspicion. In my mind, the Other had immediately taken the form of Filippo Arborio, and from the first outburst of carnal jealousy that had seized me in the alcove, it was his abominable image which was coupled with that of Juliana in a series of horrible visions.Even now, while Federico and I trotted toward the forest, along the banks of the tortuous river, contemplated so painfully on the afternoon of Holy Saturday, the Other trotted beside us. Between my brother and me interposed the image of Filippo Arborio, revived by my hate, animated by my hate with life so intense that, on regarding it with asensation of reality, I felt a physical spasm, something similar to the savage quivering that I had more than once felt on the duelling field, at the signal of attack, when face to face with an adversary.My brother's presence extraordinarily increased my uneasiness. Compared with Federico, that man's face, so thin, so nervous, so feminine, grew smaller, became impoverished, seemed contemptible and ignoble to me. Beneath the influence of the new ideal of virile strength and simplicity that my brother's example inspired in me, I not only hated, but I despised that complicated and equivocal being, who yet belonged to my own race, and who had several particularities in his cerebral constitution in common with me, to which his works of art bore witness. I pictured to myself a type of one of those literary men, affected by the saddest maladies of the mind, a libertine, cruelly curious, hardened by the habit of cold analysis of the warmest and most spontaneous passions of the soul, accustomed to consider every human creature as a subject of pure psychological speculation, incapable of love, incapable of a generous action, of an abnegation, of a sacrifice, hardened in falsehood, enervated by disgust, lascivious, cynical, cowardly.Such was the man who had seduced Juliana, but who had certainly not loved her. Did not the verymannerappear in the dedication written on the fly-leaf ofThe Secret, in that emphatic dedication, the only document known to me that bore on the relations between the romancer and my wife? To take by assault the "Ivory Tower," to corrupt a character whom public opinion declared to be incorruptible, to experiment with a method of seduction on so rare a subject, that was an enterprise, difficult but full of attraction, entirely worthy of the refined artist, the abstractor of physiological quintessence who had writtenThe True CatholicandAngelica Doni.The more I thought of it, the more the facts appeared to me in their ugliest crudity. Filippo Arborio had certainly made Juliana's acquaintance during one of those crises when the woman of whom people say, "She has a soul," after a long period of loneliness, feels herself overcome by poetical aspirations, by indefinable desires, vague languors—all those phenomena which are only the masks that disguise passion. Filippo Arborio, with his experience, had divined the special physical state of the woman whom he coveted, and had made use of the most appropriate and the surest method; that is to say, he had spoken of the ideal, of superior regions, of mystical alliance, while his thoughts were turned in more material channels. And Juliana, the "Ivory Tower," the great silent creature made of ductile gold and steel, the unique, had been captured by the old trick, had allowed herself to be taken in the old snare, had, she also, obeyed the old law as to the frailty of woman.A horrible irony tortured my soul. I seemed to have, not in the mouth but in the heart, the convulsion caused by the herb that produces death by making one hysterical with laughter.I spurred my horse and put him to a gallop on the steep bank of the river.The bank was dangerous, with very precipitous bends, and made more menacing in some places by deep holes, obstructed in others by the branches of great gnarled trees, in still others traversed by enormous roots close to the ground. I was perfectly conscious of the peril to which I exposed myself; yet, instead of tightening the rein, I still urged the beast forward, not with the intention of facing death, but because I sought in danger a respite from my intolerable torture. I already knew the efficacy of such madness. Ten years before, when still very young and while an attaché of the embassy at Constantinople, in order to overcome an attack of grief caused by the recollection of a recent passion, I entered on horseback, one moonlight night, one of the Mussulman cemeteries crowded with tombs, and I rode on the incline of polished stones exposing myself a thousand times to the risk of a fatal fall. Death, mounted with me on the crupper, overshadowed every other care."Tullio! Tullio!" cried Federico after me. "Stop! Stop!"I paid no attention to him. It is marvellous that a dozen times I escaped crushing in my forehead against the horizontal branches. It is marvellous that a dozen times I prevented my horse from stumbling against the trunk of a tree. A dozen times, at difficult passages, I saw a certain fall into the river that glistened beneath my feet. But when I heard another gallop behind me, when I perceived Federico was following me with loosened rein, I became frightened for him, and I tightened the bit suddenly. The poor animal reared up, remained an instant upright as if to make a plunge into the river, and then came to a standstill, trembling."Are you mad?" cried Federico to me when he came up to me, very pale."Did I frighten you? Forgive me, I did not think there was any danger. It was to try the horse; and then I could not control him—he is a little hard in the mouth.""Orlando hard in the mouth!""Don't you find him so?"He looked at me fixedly, with an uneasy expression. I attempted a smile. His unusual pallor pained me and aroused my sympathy."I do not understand how you escaped breaking your head against a tree; I cannot imagine how it is you were not thrown.""And you?"To follow me, he had exposed himself to the same peril, perhaps to a still greater one; because his horse was heavier, and he had had to put him at his full speed for fear of not joining me in time. We both looked back at the distance just covered."It is a veritable miracle," he said. "To get out of the Assoro is almost impossible. Just look!"We looked down at the deadly river that rolled beneath our feet. Deep, shining, rapid, full of whirlpools and gulfs, the Assoro ran between two chalky cliffs, with a silence that rendered it still more sinister. The country harmonized with that treacherous and menacing aspect. The sky, which early in the afternoon was covered with vapors, was now overcast with diffused reflections of the tangle of reddish brushwood that still survived to the spring. The dead leaves mingled with the growth of new leaves, the dried brambles with the green shoots, the dead with the newly born vegetation, in an inextricable, symbolic confusion. Above the agitated surface of the river, above that incongruous thicket, the sky blanched, faded away, seemed to dissolve."An unexpected fall, and I should have ceased to think, I should have ceased to suffer, I should have ceased to support the weight of my miserable flesh. But perhaps I should have dragged my brother with me down the precipice; and my brother's life is a model of nobleness, my brother is a Man. I escaped by a miracle, as he escaped by a miracle. My madness has made him run a supreme risk. With him would have disappeared a world of beauty and of goodness. What is this fatality that condemns me to be harmful to those who love me?"I looked at Federico. He had become thoughtful and grave. I did not dare question him, but I felt a poignant remorse at having grieved him. Of what was he thinking? On what reflections did his agitation feed? Perhaps he had divined that I was dissimulating suffering and that the sole cause which had driven me to my perilous race was the spur of some fixed idea.We followed the path, one behind the other, step by step. Then we turned into a side-path that led through the bush, and, as it was wide enough, we trotted side by side, while our horses whinnied, bringing their nostrils together as if to exchange confidences, and mingling the froth from their bridles.From time to time I glanced at Federico, and, seeing that he was still pensive, I thought: "Assuredly, if I were to reveal the truth to him, he would not believe me. He could not believe in Juliana's sin, in the sister's stain. Between his affection and that of my mother for Juliana, I really could not decide whose is the more profound. Had he not always kept on his table the two portraits of Juliana and our poor Constance, united as in a diptych for the same adoration? This morning even, how gentle his voice became in naming her!" Suddenly, by contrast, the infamous image reappeared, more hideous. The bared chest I caught a glimpse of in the dressing-room of the fencing-salon flitted now before my imagination. And on that face my hate worked just like nitric acid on the engraver's copper plate: the bitten characters became sharper and sharper.Then, while I still felt in my blood the excitement produced by the ride, by the effect of that exuberance of physical courage, of that instinct of hereditary combativeness that, so often, surged up in me at the contact with other men, I felt that I would not have the strength to resist challenging Filippo Arborio. "I will go to Rome, I will find out all about him; I will incense him, no matter how; I will force him to fight. I will do everything to kill him or cripple him." I imagined the poltroon to myself.There recurred to my memory a rather ridiculous retreat which he had not been able to prevent at the salle d'armes, when he received a thrust in the breast from the fencing-master. I also remembered his questioning me regarding my duel, that puerile curiosity of those who have never been on the field of honor. I recalled that, during my assault, he had kept his eyes fixed on me ceaselessly. The consciousness of my superiority, the certainty of vanquishing him, excited me. In my imagination, a thread of red blood furrowed that pale and disgusting flesh. And I saw him bleeding and inert on a mattress, with two doctors leaning over him.How often I, the ideologist, the analyst, the sophist of an epoch of decadence, had prided myself on being the descendant of that Raymond Hermil of Panedo who, at the Goulette, had accomplished prodigies of valor and of ferocity beneath the eyes of Charles the Fifth! The excessive development of my intelligence and of my many-souled state had not been able to modify the depths of my substance, in the deepest stratifications of which were preserved the imprint of every hereditary characteristic of my race. In my brother, whose organization was well balanced, thought was always associated with labor; in me thought predominated. I was, in short, a violent and a passionate person conscious of himself, in whom the hypertrophy of certain cerebral centres rendered impossible the coördination necessary to the normal state of the mind. I was able to contemplate my actions with perfect clear-sightedness, and yet I had every undisciplinable impulse of primitive natures. More than once had I been possessed by sudden criminal ideas; more than once I had been surprised by feeling the surging up of a cruel instinct within me."There are the charcoal-burners." said my brother to me, putting his horse at a trot.The blows of the axe could be heard in the forest and the spirals of smoke could be seen rising between the trees. Federico interrogated the workmen as to the progress made in their labor, gave them advice, while examining their work with an experienced eye. Every one of them assumed a respectful attitude, and listened attentively. Around about, the labor seemed to become more eager, easier, lighter, and even the crackling of the fire more efficacious. Men ran right and left, throwing earth here and there wherever the smoke poured out in too great abundance, to stop up with clods the holes caused by the explosions; they ran, they shouted. With these rude voices mingled the guttural sounds of the wood-cutters. The surroundings resounded with the crash of some falling tree. During the few moments of our halt could be heard the whistling of blackbirds. And the great, motionless forest contemplated the wood-cutters, to whom its life served as food.While my brother proceeded in his examination of the work, I withdrew, leaving to my horse the choice of the unfamiliar paths that led into the bush. Behind me the sounds decreased, the echoes died away. A heavy silence fell from the tree-tops. I thought: "What shall I do to regain courage? What will my life henceforth be? Can I continue to live in my mother's house with my secret? Can I associate my life with that of Federico? What man in all this world, what event could ever resuscitate in my soul a spark of faith?" The sounds of the workers away behind me; the solitude became complete, "To work, to accomplish good, to live for others! ... Ihenceforthrecover in these things the true sense of life? And are there really only these things which, to the exclusion of individual happiness, permit of finding the true sense of life? The other day, while my brother was speaking, I believed I understood his remarks; I believed that thedoctrine of truthwas revealed to me by his mouth. The doctrine of truth, according to my brother, is not in laws, not in precepts, but simply and solely in the interpretation that man gives to life. It seemed to me I had understood it fully. But, all at once, I now found myself fallen back among the shadows; I had become blind again. I no longer understood. What man in all the world, what event, could console me for all the good I had lost?" And the future seemed frightful and hopeless to me. The undefined image of the infant to be born grew, enlarged, like horrible and formless things one sees sometimes in a nightmare, and ended by enveloping everything. It was no longer a question of regret, of remorse, of an indestructible recollection, of no matter what inner bitterness; it now concerned a living being. My future was fettered to a being whose life was tenacious and malefic; it was shackled to a stranger, to an intruder, to an abominable creature, against whom not only my mind, but also my flesh, all my blood and every fibre, rose with a brutal, ferocious, implacable aversion, until death, beyond death. I thought: "Who could have imagined a worse torture for torturing the soul and the flesh at the same time?"And it was just at the time that the nausea set in that I—who fed on dreams, who drank of the ideal—found the ingenuities of my adolescence, thought of nothing but of gathering flowers. Oh! those flowers, those heart-breaking flowers that I so timidly offered her. And, after a great intoxication, half-sentimental, half-sensual, I received the delightful news, from whom? from my mother! And after the news, I experience a feeling of generous exaltation, I accept in good faith a noble rôle, I sacrifice myself in silence, like one of Octave Feuillet's heroes! What heroism! The irony tortured my soul, bruised every fibre.... Then, for the second time, I conceived the mad idea of escaping from my fate.I looked before me. Close at hand, between the tree-trunks, unreal like the illusion of a hallucination, shone the glistening Assoro. "Strange!" I thought, with a curious shudder. Up to this time I had not noticed that my horse, left to himself, had entered a path that led to the river. The Assoro seemed to have a fatal fascination for me.I hesitated a moment between two things—to go on as far as the cliff, or return. Finally, I stopped, fascinated by the water and the guilty thought. I made my horse curvet.A heavy oppressiveness succeeded the internal convulsion. It seemed to me that, all at once, my soul had become a poor, faded thing, a bruised, diminished, miserable thing. I became softened; I felt pity for myself, I felt pity for Juliana, I felt pity for every creature upon whom suffering had set its seal, that trembled under the embrace of life as some vanquished enemy in the power of some pitiless conqueror. "What are we? What do we know? What do we wish for? No one has ever obtained what he would like; no one will ever obtain what he would like. We seek goodness, virtue, enthusiasm, the passion that will fill our soul, the faith that will calm our inquietudes, the inspiration that will give us courage, the work to which we consecrate ourselves, the cause for which we will joyfully die. And the result of so many efforts is an empty lassitude, the sensation of strength spent in pure loss, and of the flight of time." At that moment, life appeared to me like a distant vision, confused, strange, monstrous. Madness, imbecillity, poverty, blindness, every malady, every misfortune, the obscure and continuous agitation of unconscious atavic, bestial powers in the depths of our substance, the highest manifestations of the ever-unstable, fugitive mind necessarily subordinated to a physical condition, connected with the functions of an organ, instantaneous metamorphoses produced by an imperceptible cause, by a mere nothing, the infallible amount of egotism in the noblest actions, the inutility of so much moral energy directed toward an uncertain object, the futility of amours that we believe to be eternal, the frailty of virtue that we believe unshakable, the feebleness of the most robust wills, every shame, every misery, appeared before me in that instant. "How is it possible to live? How is it possible to love?"The axes resounded in the forest; a short and savage cry accompanied every blow. Here and there, in the clearings, great piles of wood, in the form of truncated cones or of quadrangular pyramids, were smoking. Columns of smoke, thick and straight as the trunks of trees, arose in the quiet air. To me, everything was symbolical at that moment.I turned my horse toward the neighboring charcoal-burner, where I had recognized Federico.He had descended from his horse and was speaking to a tall old man with shaven chin."Ah! At last!" he cried, on seeing me. "I was afraid that you were lost.""No, I was not far off.""Let me introduce to you Giovanni di Scordio—a Man," he said, placing his hand on the old man's shoulder.I looked at the being whom he so designated. A singularly sweet smile gathered around his withered mouth. I had never seen such sad eyes before under a human brow."Adieu, Giovanni, and keep up your courage!" added my brother in that voice which seemed, at certain moments, like certain liquors, to have the power of stimulating the vital tone. "As for us, Tullio, let us return to the Badiola. It is getting late. They will be waiting for us."He remounted his horse. He again saluted the old man. On passing by the furnaces, he once more instructed the workmen concerning the operations of the coming night, on which thegreat firewas to take place. We then trotted off, side by side.The blue sky slowly appeared over our heads. The veils of vapor floated away, dispersed, reformed, in such a manner that the azure seemed to pale progressively, as if through its limpidity a continuous milky wave was spread and extended. We were nearing the hour when, the evening before, at the Lilacs, I had contemplated with Juliana the undulating garden in its ideal light. Around us the brushwood began to be gilded. The invisible birds were warbling."Did you take good notice of that old man, Giovanni di Scordio?" asked Federico."Yes," I replied. "I do not think I shall ever forget his smile or his eyes.""That old man is a saint," pursued Federico. "No man has worked or suffered so much as he has. He had fourteen sons, and all, one after the other, have left him, just as ripe fruit leaves the tree. His wife, a virago, is dead. He is left alone. His sons have despoiled and disowned him. He has experienced every human ingratitude. He has experienced the perversity, not of strangers, but of his own creations. Do you understand? His own blood has turned to venom in the beings for whom he had only love and affection, in the beings whom he has not ceased to love, whom he cannot curse, whom he will certainly bless at the hour of his death, even if they permit him to die in solitude. Is not such obstinacy of man in his goodness an extraordinary, an almost unbelievable thing? After so much suffering, his face still has the smile that you saw.You will do well, Tullio, not to forget that smile."XV.The hour of trial was drawing near, the hour dreaded yet desired at the same time.Juliana was ready. She had firmly opposed Maria's caprice; she wished to be alone in her room to await me."What shall I say to her? What will she say to me? What will be my attitude towards her?" All my prejudices, all my plans, were scattered. There remained to me only an intolerable anguish. Who could foresee the result of the meeting? I neither felt master of myself, nor of my words, nor of my acts. I only felt within me a fermentation of obscure thoughts that, at the slightest shock, would surge up. Never, as at that moment, had I had the clear and hopeless consciousness of the intestine discords that rent me, the perceptions of the irreconcilable elements that warred at the depths of my being, that overthrew one another, that destroyed each other by turns in a perpetual conflict, rebellious to all restraint. To the dejection of my mind was added a particular agitation of my feelings produced by the images which, on that day, had ceaselessly tortured me. I knew that agitation well, I knew it but too well; I knew it was more certain than any other thing to stir up the muddy depths in man. I knew but too well that base concupiscence from which nothing can save us—that dreadful sexual fever which, for months, had held me chained to a despised and odious woman, Teresa Raffo. And now, the sensations of goodness, of pity, and of strength, that were necessary to me to enable me to support a meeting with Juliana and to persist in my original project, died away in me like moving mists over a swamp of mire.It lacked but little of midnight when I left my room to go to Juliana's. Every sound had ceased. The Badiola reposed in profound silence. I listened intently, and it seemed to me I heard the calm respiration of my mother, of my brother, of my daughters, those innocent and spotless beings. I thought I saw the face of Maria again sleeping, as I had seen it the night before; I imagined I saw the other faces, with an expression of repose, of peace, of goodness on each. A sudden tenderness seized me. The feeling of happiness, experienced but for a moment the evening before, and then eclipsed, threw a great light over my mind. If nothing had happened, if I had remained under the illusion, what a night that would have been! I would have gone to Juliana as to a divine being. And what could I have wished sweeter than that silence to envelop the inquietude of my love? I traversed the room in which, the evening before, I had received from my mother's mouth the unexpected revelation. Again I heard the ticking of the clock that had marked the hour, and, I do not know why, that tick, tack, so invariably equal, increased my anguish. I do not know why, but I imagined I felt Juliana's anguish respond to mine through the space that still separated us, and that the palpitations of our hearts were accelerated in unison. I walked straight before me, without further stopping, without seeking to muffle the sound of my footfalls. I did not knock at the door; I opened it and entered. Juliana was standing, supporting herself with one hand on the corner of a table, motionless, more rigid than a Hermes.I can still see everything. Nothing at that hour escaped me; nothing eluded my attention. The actual world had vanished. There subsisted but a fictitious world in the midst of which I panted with anguish, with oppressed heart, incapable of articulating a syllable, and yet singularly lucid, as if I had been a spectator at a theatre. On the table burned a candle, which lent a sort of visible reality to this semblance of scenic fiction, because the little, flickering flame seemed to shed about it that vague horror which the actors in a drama diffuse in the ambient air with their great gestures of despair or menace.The strange sensation disappeared when, finally, powerless to longer support that silence and Juliana's marble-like immobility, I spoke the first words. There was nothing in my voice of the sound that I believed it would have when I would open my lips. Without wishing it, I spoke in a gentle, trembling, almost timid voice."Were you waiting for me?"She kept her eyes cast down. Without raising them she answered:"Yes."I looked at her arm, as motionless as marble, which seemed to become more and more rigid upon the hand placed on the corner of the table. I feared that that fragile support, on which she leaned her entire weight, would yield from one moment to another, and that she would fall."You know why I came?" I continued, with extreme slowness, plucking the words from my heart, one by one.She remained silent."Is it true?" I went on. "Is it true—what I have learned from my mother?"She still remained silent. She seemed to be gathering all her strength. Strange! During that interval it did not seem absolutely impossible that she would answer:"No."She answered, and I heard less the sound of her words than I saw them outlined by her bloodless lips:"It is true."It was a ruder shock perhaps than that given me by my mother's words. Of course, I knew all, I had already lived twenty-four hours with my certitude; and yet this confirmation, so clear, so precise, crushed me to earth, as if it were the first time I had heard the revelation of the irreparable truth."It is true!" I repeated instinctively, speaking to myself, with a sensation analogous to that which I would have had, had I found myself living and conscious at the bottom of an abyss.Then Juliana raised her eyes and fixed them on mine with a sort of spasmodic violence."Tullio," she said, "listen."A choking stopped the voice in her throat."Listen. I know what I must do. I was prepared for anything to spare you this; but destiny willed that I live until now to suffer that most horrible thing, the thing of which I had a mad terror—ah! you understand me—a thousand times more than of death. Tullio, Tullio, your look——"Another suffocation choked her at a moment when her voice had become so distressed in tone that it gave me the physical impression of the tearing out of the most hidden fibres. I dropped into a seat, covered my face with my hands, and waited for her to continue."I should have died before now, I should have died long ago! Without doubt it would have been better if I had not come to the Badiola; it would have been better if at your return from Venice you had not come to me again. I would have been dead, and you would not have known this shame; you would have regretted me, perhaps you would always have cherished my memory. Perhaps I should always have remained your great love, your unique love, as you said yesterday.... I did not fear death, you know; I do not fear it. It is the thought of our two little daughters and of our mother that has made me postpone the execution from day to day. And that has been an agony, Tullio, a cruel agony, in which I have consumed, not one, but a thousand lives. And I am still alive!"After a pause, she added:"How is it possible that with such poor health I have so much resistance to pain? That also is a misfortune for me. Think of it! In consenting to accompany you here, I thought: 'It is certain that I shall become ill; directly I arrive I shall have to go to my bed, and I shall rise from it no more. They will think I died a natural death. Tullio will never know anything, will never suspect anything. Everything will be ended.' On the contrary, I am still alive, and you know all, and all is lost, without hope."She spoke in a low voice, very feebly, and yet in as heart-breaking a tone as if it were a sharp and reiterated cry. I pressed my temples and felt them throbbing so violently that I was almost afraid, as if the arteries would burst the skin and their soft and warm membrane adhere, naked, to the cranial wall."My only preoccupation was to hide the truth from you, not for myself, but for you, for your good. You will never know what terrors have frozen me, what anguish has choked my throat. Since the day we arrived here, up to yesterday, you have hoped, you have dreamed, you have been almost happy. But my life, to me, in this blessed house, in contact with your mother, with my secret, can you imagine it? Yesterday, at the Lilacs, while we were at table, during that sweet chat which tortured me, you said to me: 'You knew nothing, you perceived nothing.' Oh! no, that is false; I knew all, I divined all; and, when I detected the affectionate look in your eyes, I felt my soul grow faint. Listen, Tullio. What I am going to say is the truth, the real truth. I am before you here as on my death-bed. It would be impossible for me to lie. Believe what I tell you. I do not care to exculpate myself, I do not dream of defending myself. Henceforth all is at an end. But I wish to tell you one thing, because it is true. You know what love I have had for you, since the day we first met. For years, for years, I was blindly devoted, and not only during the years of happiness, but also during the years of misery, when your love grew weary. You know it, Tullio. You could always do with me as you wished. You have always found in me the friend, the sister, the wife, the mistress, ready to make no matter what sacrifice to please you. Do not believe, Tullio, do not believe that I recall my long devotion in order to accuse you. No, no. There is not in my soul a single drop of bitterness against you, do you hear? Not a single drop! But let me now remind you of a devotion and a tenderness that have lasted for so many years, let me speak to you of love, of theuninterruptedness of my love, without any intermission, do you understand me?—without one intermission. I believe that my passion for you has never been as ardent as during the last few weeks. Yesterday you told me many things. Ah! what could not I, too, tell of my life during these last few days! I knew all, I divined all; and I was compelled to avoid you. How many times have I been on the point of falling in your arms, of closing my eyes, and yielding myself entirely to you, in my moments of feebleness and extreme lassitude! The other morning, Saturday morning, when you came in with the flowers, it seemed to me as I looked at you that I saw the lover of the old days, because of the ardor that animated you, and your smile, and your amiability, and the light that shone in your eyes. And you showed me the scratches on your hands! Then I felt a sudden impulse to take those hands, to kiss them. Where did I get the strength to restrain myself?I did not feel myself worthy. And I saw in a flash all the happiness that you offered me with the flowering thorns, all the happiness that I must renounce forever. Ah! Tullio, my heart is proof against all trials, since it can be so crushed without breaking. I die hard."She pronounced this last phrase in a deeper tone, with an indefinable accent of irony mingled with anger. I dared not raise my face to look at her. Her words caused me atrocious suffering, and yet I trembled every time she stopped. I feared that her strength would suddenly abandon her, that it would be impossible for her to continue. And I awaited from her mouth other confessions, other fragments of soul."It was a great, great mistake," she continued, "not to have died before you returned from Venice. But poor Maria, poor Natalia, could I abandon them?"She hesitated an instant:"Nor you either; I could not leave you in such a manner. I might have caused you remorse. You would have been the object of everybody's accusations. We could not have dissimulated with our mother. She would have asked you: 'Why should Juliana have wished to die?' She would have come to know the truth, which we have kept from her till now—poor saintly woman."Emotion choked her utterance, her voice became hoarse, began to tremble, tearfully. I felt a lump rise in my throat, too."I thought of all that; and, when you wished to bring me here, I thought, too, that I was no longer worthy of her, that I was no longer worthy to receive her kisses on my forehead and be called her daughter. But you know how weak we are, how easily we give way to the force of circumstances. I had no more hope; I knew that, outside of death, there remained no other refuge for me; I knew that, every day, the circle was closing in more. And yet I permitted the days to pass, one by one, without taking any resolution. Yet I had a sure means of death."She stopped. Obeying a sudden impulse, I raised my eyes, and looked at her fixedly. She shuddered violently; and the pain which my look caused her was so apparent that I lowered my forehead, and resumed my first attitude.Up to now she had been standing. She sat down. An interval of silence followed."Do you believe," she asked me, with a timid and unhappy air, "do you believe that the sin is great when the soul did not consent?"That allusion to thesinsufficed to stir up in me instantly the dregs that had settled, and a sort of bitter acridity rose to my mouth. An involuntary sarcasm left my lips. I said, affecting a smile:"Poor soul!"That expression caused a look of such intense pain to appear on Juliana's face that I felt immediately the acute sting of repentance. I understood that it were impossible for me to have inflicted a more cruel blow, and that, at that moment, and against such a poor, submissive creature, irony was the worst of cowardices."Forgive me," she said.She had the appearance of a woman smitten by death. And it seemed to me that her look had precisely the sad gentleness, almost infantile, that I had already seen on the wounded when they are placed on their biers."Forgive me. Yesterday, you, too, spoke of the soul. You think now: 'Women say those things to obtain forgiveness.' But I do not seek to exculpate myself. I know that pardon is impossible, and that it is impossible to forget. I know there is no hope. You understand me? I only seek to excuse myself for having received your mother's kisses."She still spoke in a low tone, very weak and yet heart-breaking, like a sharp and reiterated cry."I felt on my brow so heavy a weight of sorrows that, not for myself, Tullio, but for my pain, only for my pain, I let your mother kiss me then. I was unworthy of them; but my pain deserved them. You can forgive me."I felt an impulse of kindness, of pity; but I did not yield to it. My eyes avoided hers, and I made enormous efforts not to writhe in convulsive spasms, not to yield to extravagant actions."Certain days, I deferred from hour to hour the execution of my project; the thought of this house, of what would afterwards happen in this house, took away my courage. See how I have ended by losing even the hope of being able to hide the truth from you, of being able to spare you; for, from the first days, your mother guessed my condition. Do you remember the day when I was at the window and when the odor of the violets nauseated me? It was then that your mother noticed it. Imagine my terror! I thought: If I kill myself, he will learn the secret from his mother. And who knows how far the consequences of the sin I have committed will reach? Night and day I racked my soul to find a means of sparing you. On Sunday, when you asked me: 'Shall we go to the Lilacs on Tuesday?' I consented without reflecting, I abandoned myself to destiny, I trusted to chance. I was certain that that day would be my last, and this certitude exalted me, inspired me with a sort of dementia. But, Tullio, remember your words of yesterday, and tell me if, now, you appreciate my martyrdom. Do you appreciate it?"She bent toward me as if to project her painful question into my soul, and she entwined her fingers convulsively."You had never spoken to me like that before, you had never spoken in such a voice. When, on the bench, you asked me: 'It is too late, perhaps?' I looked at you, and your face frightened me. Could I reply: 'Yes, it is too late?' Could I have broken your heart at one blow? What would have become of us? Then I determined to yield to one last intoxication, and I saw nothing more but my death and my passion."Her voice had become strangely hoarse. I looked at her, and it seemed to me that I no longer recognized her, so transfigured was she. A convulsion contracted every line of her face; her lower lip trembled violently; her eyes burned with febrile ardor."Do you blame me?" she asked in a hoarse, distressed tone. "Do you despise me for what I did yesterday?"She covered her face with her hands. Then, after a pause, she shook off her weakness with a resolute gesture. Her voice became stronger."Destiny has willed that I should live until now. Destiny has willed that you should learn the truth from your mother. From your mother! Yesterday evening, when you came into this room, you knew all and you said nothing, and, before your mother, you kissed the cheek I offered you. Before I die, permit me to kiss your hands. It is the only favor I implore of you. Now, I await your commands. I am ready for anything. Speak."I said:"It is necessary that you should live.""Impossible, Tullio," she cried. "Impossible! Have you thought of what will happen if I live?""I have thought of it. It is necessary that you should live.""What horror!"And she started violently—an instinctive gesture of fright."Listen, Tullio. Henceforth you know everything; henceforth suicide can no longer serve me to hide my shame from you, nor keep me from appearing before you. You know all, and here we are together, and we can still look at one another, we can still speak to one another! The question is an entirely different one. I no longer seek to elude your vigilance in order to kill myself. On the contrary, I wish you to help me in disappearing in the most natural way possible; without awakening any suspicion around us. I have two poisons—morphine and corrosive sublimate. But perhaps poisons are useless; it is difficult to conceal poisoning. And it is necessary that my death should seem to be involuntary, caused by accident, by a mishap. You understand? It is the only way out of it. The secret will remain between us two."She began to speak rapidly, firmly and deliberately, as if she argued in order to persuade me to consent to some desirable compact and not to a compact of complicity in the execution of an extravagant project. I let her go on. A sort of singular fascination rooted me to the spot—constrained me to look at and listen to the fragile and pale creature, possessed by such impetuous waves of moral energy."Listen, Tullio. I have an idea. Federico told me of your insane ride, of the danger that you incurred on the bank of the Assoro. He told me everything. I thought, trembling: 'Who knows what mental torture made him incur such peril?' Then, as I thought of it, it seemed to me that I understood. It was like a prophetic revelation. My soul seemed to see a vision of all the pain that awaited you, pain against which nothing could guard you, pain that would grow day by day, inconsolable, intolerable. Ah! Tullio, it is certain that you have already felt this pain, and that you also foresee your powerlessness to bear it. There is but one means of salvation for you, for me, for our souls, for our love. Yes, let me say it—our love; let me still believe in your words of yesterday; let me repeat that I love you now as I have never loved you before. And it is precisely for that, precisely because we love each other, that I must disappear from the world, that you must no longer see me."An extraordinary moral elevation heightened her voice and entire person. A great thrill passed through me; a fugitive illusion seized upon my mind. For a moment, I really believed that my love and that of this woman were on an equal plane, of the same ideal, measureless height, freed from human misery, freed from all sin, irreproachable. I felt, for several moments, the same sensation that I had felt at the beginning, when the actual world had seemed to me to have completely vanished. Then, as always, the inevitable phenomena occurred: this state of consciousness ceased to be mine, it became objective, became a stranger to me."Listen," she went on, lowering her voice, as if she feared to be overheard. "I have told Federico that I have a great desire to revisit the woods, the charcoal-burners, the entire country. To-morrow morning, Federico will not have the leisure to accompany us because he must return to Casal Caldore. We two will go, alone. Federico has told me that I can ride Favilla. When we are on the cliff—I will do what you did this morning. An accident will happen. Federico told me it is impossible to be rescued from the Assoro. Will you?"Although her speech was connected, she seemed a prey to a kind of delirium. An unaccustomed flush tinged her cheeks; her eyes had an extraordinary lustre.The vision of the sinister river flashed rapidly through my mind.She repeated, bending toward me:"Will you?"I arose, and took her hands. I wished to calm her fever. Immense pity oppressed me. My voice was gentle, grew kind, trembled with affectionate emotion."Poor Juliana! Do not torment yourself thus. You are suffering too much; your grief has deprived you of your reason, poor soul. You must be brave; you must not think of the things you have just said. Think of Maria, of Natalia. As for me, I have accepted the punishment. It is a punishment that I have well deserved for all the wrongs that I have done you. I accept it; I will bear it. But you must live. Promise me, Juliana, in the name of Maria, in the name of Natalia, in the name of the tenderness that you bear for my mother, in the name of all that I told you at the Lilacs, promise me that you will in no way seek to kill yourself."She kept her head down. Then, all at once, freeing her hands, she seized mine, and began to kiss them furiously; and I felt on my skin the warmth of her mouth, the warmth of her tears. And, as I attempted to disengage myself, she fell from her seat on her knees, without freeing my hands, sobbing, showing me an agonized face over which the tears rolled in streams, in which the contraction of the mouth revealed the inexpressible spasm that convulsed her entire being.And I, incapable of raising her, incapable of uttering a word, suffocated by a cruel attack of anguish, overcome by the violence of the spasm that contracted that poor, pallid mouth, forgetful of all rancor, of every pride, without any other sensation than that of the blind terror of life, without seeing in myself and in this crushed woman anything else than human suffering, the eternal human suffering, the disaster of inevitable infractions, the weight of brute flesh, the horror of pitiless fatalities that attach themselves to the very roots of our being and the infinite physical sorrow of our love, I fell also on my knees before her, by an instinctive desire to prostrate myself, to take the same humble attitude as this creature who suffered and who made me suffer. And I burst into sobs; and, once more, after so long a time, our tears mingled, burning tears, alas! but powerless to change our destiny.
XIII.
It was ten o'clock when I left my room. On that April morning, the bright light that inundated the Badiola by the open windows and balconies made me timid. How could I wear my mask in such a light?
Before entering Juliana's apartment, I wished to see my mother.
"You rose late," she said, on seeing me. "How are you?"
"Very well."
"You are pale."
"I think I had a little fever in the night. But it is gone now."
"Have you seen Juliana?"
"Not yet."
"She wished to get up, the dear girl! She said that she no longer feels ill; but her face..."
"I am going to her."
"You must not neglect to write to the doctor. Do not listen to Juliana. Write this very day."
"Did you tell her ... that Iknow?"
"Yes, I told her that youknow."
"I am going, mother."
I left her in front of her great walnut-wood closets perfumed with orris, in which two women were piling the beautiful washed linen, the pride of the Hermils. Maria, in the piano-room, was taking her lesson from Miss Edith, and the chromatic scales, rapid and even, succeeded one another. Pietro passed, the most faithful of the servants, white-haired, somewhat bent, bearing a tray of glasses that resounded because his arms trembled with age. The entire Badiola, bathed in air and light, had an aspect of tranquil joy. There was an atmosphere of goodness shed throughout—like the subtle and inextinguishable smile of the gods Lares.
Never before had that sensation, that smile, penetrated to my soul so deeply. And that great peace, that great goodness, enveloped the ignoble secret which Juliana and I were condemned to keep without dying of it!
"And now?" I thought, at the height of my anguish, wandering in the corridor as a lost stranger might have done, incapable of directing my steps toward the dreaded place, as if my body refused obedience to the impulsions imposed upon it by my will. "And now? She knows that I know the truth. Between us, henceforth, all dissimulation is useless. Necessity imposes upon us to face one another, to speak of the frightful thing. But it is impossible that this meeting should take place this morning. The consequences of it cannot be foreseen; and now, more than ever, it is necessary, absolutely necessary, that not one of our actions should seem singular or inexplicable, neither to my mother nor to my brother, nor to anyone else in this house. My agitation of last evening, my uneasiness, my grief, can be explained by the preoccupation of the peril of Juliana's condition; but logically, in others' eyes, such preoccupation should make me more tender toward her, more zealous, more eager than ever. To-day, my prudence must be extreme. To-day, I must avoid a scene with Juliana, cost what it may. To-day, I must avoid any occasion of remaining with heren tête-à-tête. But I must also find, without delay, means to make her understand the feeling that determined my attitude in regard to her, the intention that directs my conduct. And if she persists in the will to kill herself? If she had only deferred its execution a few hours? If she were already watching for an opportune moment?"
That fear cut short my loitering, and forced me to action. I resembled one of those Oriental soldiers who are forced into battle by blows of a cudgel.
I directed my steps toward the piano-room. On seeing me, Maria interrupted her scales and ran toward me, light and joyous, as toward a liberator. She had the grace, the agility, the lightness, of winged creatures. I raised her in my arms to kiss her.
"Will you take me out?" she asked. "I am tired. Miss Edith has kept me here for an hour. I cannot stand any more. Take me out with you. Let us go for a walk before breakfast."
"Where?"
"Wherever you like."
"Let us go, then, and see mamma first."
"Yes; yesterday you were at the Lilacs, and we had to stay at the Badiola. It was you, you alone, who would not consent. Mamma was quite willing. Naughty papa! We should like to go there. Tell me how you amused yourselves."
The child prattled on like a bird, delightfully. The ceaseless chatter kept company with my anguish, while we were going toward Juliana's apartment. I hesitated; but Maria knocked at the door, crying:
"Mamma!"
Without suspecting my presence, Juliana came to open the door herself. She saw me. She started violently, as if she had seen a phantom, a spectre, some terrifying thing.
"Is it you?" she stammered, in a voice so low that I scarcely heard her.
And, while she spoke, her lips blanched. After the start, she became suddenly more rigid than a Hermes.
And there, on the threshold, we looked at each other, read each other's faces; for an instant, even our souls were fixed upon each other. All about us disappeared; between us, all was said, all was understood, everything was decided, in the space of one second.
What happened next? I do not know, I cannot remember. I remember that, for some time, I had an intermittent consciousness, so to speak, of what happened, with a succession of short eclipses. It was, it seemed to me, a phenomenon analogous to that which results from the enfeeblement of the voluntary attention in the case of certain patients. I lost the faculty of being attentive; I no longer saw, I no longer seized the sense of words, I no longer understood. Then, a moment later, I recovered that faculty, examined the things and persons about me, I became attentive and conscious.
Juliana was seated, and held Natalia on her knees. I, too, had taken a seat. And Maria ran from her to me, from me to her, incessantly, with endless prattle, provoking her sister, asking us a number of questions which we only answered by a nod of the head. That lively chatter broke our silence. In one of the fragments of the phrases that I noticed, Maria said to her sister:
"Ah! is it true that you slept with mamma last night?"
"Yes, because I am little."
"Oh! well, to-night it's my turn. Is it not, mamma? Take me in your bed to-night, mamma."
Juliana did not smile. She remained silent, and seemed absorbed. She had on her knees Natalia, whose shoulders were turned toward her, and whose arms were around her waist; her joined hands rested in the little girl's lap, whiter than the little white dress on which they reposed, taper, painful, so painful that they themselves revealed to me an immensity of sorrow. Juliana remained bent, and, as Natalia's head brushed her mouth, she seemed to press her lips to the child's curls; in such a manner that, when I glanced at her, I could not see the expression of her eyes, but saw only her lowered eyelids, somewhat reddened, and I was constantly agitated internally by this, as if through them I could distinguish the fixity of the pupils that they covered.
Was she waiting for me to say something? Were inexpressible words rising to those hidden lips?
When finally, by an effort, I conquered the condition of inertia in which extraordinary alternations of lucidity and darkness had succeeded each other, I said, in a tone of voice that I would have used, I believe, in continuing a conversation already begun, by adding new words to words already spoken—I said slowly:
"Mother wants me to send for Doctor Vebesti. I have promised to write. I will write."
She did not raise her eyelids; she remained mute. Maria, in her innocence, looked at her with surprise; then she looked at me, too.
I rose to go out.
"To-day, after lunch, I will go with Federico to the Assoro woods. Shall we see one another this evening on my return?"
She made no movement to answer. Then I repeated, in a voice that conveyed a thousand things understood:
"Shall we see one another this evening on my return?" From between her lips, hidden among Natalia's curls, came like a sigh:
"Yes."
XIV.
In the violence of my multiple and contrary agitations, in the first tumult of pain, beneath the menace of imminent perils, I had not yet had the leisure to think of the Other. Moreover, from the very first, I had not conceived even the shadow of a doubt of my former suspicion. In my mind, the Other had immediately taken the form of Filippo Arborio, and from the first outburst of carnal jealousy that had seized me in the alcove, it was his abominable image which was coupled with that of Juliana in a series of horrible visions.
Even now, while Federico and I trotted toward the forest, along the banks of the tortuous river, contemplated so painfully on the afternoon of Holy Saturday, the Other trotted beside us. Between my brother and me interposed the image of Filippo Arborio, revived by my hate, animated by my hate with life so intense that, on regarding it with asensation of reality, I felt a physical spasm, something similar to the savage quivering that I had more than once felt on the duelling field, at the signal of attack, when face to face with an adversary.
My brother's presence extraordinarily increased my uneasiness. Compared with Federico, that man's face, so thin, so nervous, so feminine, grew smaller, became impoverished, seemed contemptible and ignoble to me. Beneath the influence of the new ideal of virile strength and simplicity that my brother's example inspired in me, I not only hated, but I despised that complicated and equivocal being, who yet belonged to my own race, and who had several particularities in his cerebral constitution in common with me, to which his works of art bore witness. I pictured to myself a type of one of those literary men, affected by the saddest maladies of the mind, a libertine, cruelly curious, hardened by the habit of cold analysis of the warmest and most spontaneous passions of the soul, accustomed to consider every human creature as a subject of pure psychological speculation, incapable of love, incapable of a generous action, of an abnegation, of a sacrifice, hardened in falsehood, enervated by disgust, lascivious, cynical, cowardly.
Such was the man who had seduced Juliana, but who had certainly not loved her. Did not the verymannerappear in the dedication written on the fly-leaf ofThe Secret, in that emphatic dedication, the only document known to me that bore on the relations between the romancer and my wife? To take by assault the "Ivory Tower," to corrupt a character whom public opinion declared to be incorruptible, to experiment with a method of seduction on so rare a subject, that was an enterprise, difficult but full of attraction, entirely worthy of the refined artist, the abstractor of physiological quintessence who had writtenThe True CatholicandAngelica Doni.
The more I thought of it, the more the facts appeared to me in their ugliest crudity. Filippo Arborio had certainly made Juliana's acquaintance during one of those crises when the woman of whom people say, "She has a soul," after a long period of loneliness, feels herself overcome by poetical aspirations, by indefinable desires, vague languors—all those phenomena which are only the masks that disguise passion. Filippo Arborio, with his experience, had divined the special physical state of the woman whom he coveted, and had made use of the most appropriate and the surest method; that is to say, he had spoken of the ideal, of superior regions, of mystical alliance, while his thoughts were turned in more material channels. And Juliana, the "Ivory Tower," the great silent creature made of ductile gold and steel, the unique, had been captured by the old trick, had allowed herself to be taken in the old snare, had, she also, obeyed the old law as to the frailty of woman.
A horrible irony tortured my soul. I seemed to have, not in the mouth but in the heart, the convulsion caused by the herb that produces death by making one hysterical with laughter.
I spurred my horse and put him to a gallop on the steep bank of the river.
The bank was dangerous, with very precipitous bends, and made more menacing in some places by deep holes, obstructed in others by the branches of great gnarled trees, in still others traversed by enormous roots close to the ground. I was perfectly conscious of the peril to which I exposed myself; yet, instead of tightening the rein, I still urged the beast forward, not with the intention of facing death, but because I sought in danger a respite from my intolerable torture. I already knew the efficacy of such madness. Ten years before, when still very young and while an attaché of the embassy at Constantinople, in order to overcome an attack of grief caused by the recollection of a recent passion, I entered on horseback, one moonlight night, one of the Mussulman cemeteries crowded with tombs, and I rode on the incline of polished stones exposing myself a thousand times to the risk of a fatal fall. Death, mounted with me on the crupper, overshadowed every other care.
"Tullio! Tullio!" cried Federico after me. "Stop! Stop!"
I paid no attention to him. It is marvellous that a dozen times I escaped crushing in my forehead against the horizontal branches. It is marvellous that a dozen times I prevented my horse from stumbling against the trunk of a tree. A dozen times, at difficult passages, I saw a certain fall into the river that glistened beneath my feet. But when I heard another gallop behind me, when I perceived Federico was following me with loosened rein, I became frightened for him, and I tightened the bit suddenly. The poor animal reared up, remained an instant upright as if to make a plunge into the river, and then came to a standstill, trembling.
"Are you mad?" cried Federico to me when he came up to me, very pale.
"Did I frighten you? Forgive me, I did not think there was any danger. It was to try the horse; and then I could not control him—he is a little hard in the mouth."
"Orlando hard in the mouth!"
"Don't you find him so?"
He looked at me fixedly, with an uneasy expression. I attempted a smile. His unusual pallor pained me and aroused my sympathy.
"I do not understand how you escaped breaking your head against a tree; I cannot imagine how it is you were not thrown."
"And you?"
To follow me, he had exposed himself to the same peril, perhaps to a still greater one; because his horse was heavier, and he had had to put him at his full speed for fear of not joining me in time. We both looked back at the distance just covered.
"It is a veritable miracle," he said. "To get out of the Assoro is almost impossible. Just look!"
We looked down at the deadly river that rolled beneath our feet. Deep, shining, rapid, full of whirlpools and gulfs, the Assoro ran between two chalky cliffs, with a silence that rendered it still more sinister. The country harmonized with that treacherous and menacing aspect. The sky, which early in the afternoon was covered with vapors, was now overcast with diffused reflections of the tangle of reddish brushwood that still survived to the spring. The dead leaves mingled with the growth of new leaves, the dried brambles with the green shoots, the dead with the newly born vegetation, in an inextricable, symbolic confusion. Above the agitated surface of the river, above that incongruous thicket, the sky blanched, faded away, seemed to dissolve.
"An unexpected fall, and I should have ceased to think, I should have ceased to suffer, I should have ceased to support the weight of my miserable flesh. But perhaps I should have dragged my brother with me down the precipice; and my brother's life is a model of nobleness, my brother is a Man. I escaped by a miracle, as he escaped by a miracle. My madness has made him run a supreme risk. With him would have disappeared a world of beauty and of goodness. What is this fatality that condemns me to be harmful to those who love me?"
I looked at Federico. He had become thoughtful and grave. I did not dare question him, but I felt a poignant remorse at having grieved him. Of what was he thinking? On what reflections did his agitation feed? Perhaps he had divined that I was dissimulating suffering and that the sole cause which had driven me to my perilous race was the spur of some fixed idea.
We followed the path, one behind the other, step by step. Then we turned into a side-path that led through the bush, and, as it was wide enough, we trotted side by side, while our horses whinnied, bringing their nostrils together as if to exchange confidences, and mingling the froth from their bridles.
From time to time I glanced at Federico, and, seeing that he was still pensive, I thought: "Assuredly, if I were to reveal the truth to him, he would not believe me. He could not believe in Juliana's sin, in the sister's stain. Between his affection and that of my mother for Juliana, I really could not decide whose is the more profound. Had he not always kept on his table the two portraits of Juliana and our poor Constance, united as in a diptych for the same adoration? This morning even, how gentle his voice became in naming her!" Suddenly, by contrast, the infamous image reappeared, more hideous. The bared chest I caught a glimpse of in the dressing-room of the fencing-salon flitted now before my imagination. And on that face my hate worked just like nitric acid on the engraver's copper plate: the bitten characters became sharper and sharper.
Then, while I still felt in my blood the excitement produced by the ride, by the effect of that exuberance of physical courage, of that instinct of hereditary combativeness that, so often, surged up in me at the contact with other men, I felt that I would not have the strength to resist challenging Filippo Arborio. "I will go to Rome, I will find out all about him; I will incense him, no matter how; I will force him to fight. I will do everything to kill him or cripple him." I imagined the poltroon to myself.
There recurred to my memory a rather ridiculous retreat which he had not been able to prevent at the salle d'armes, when he received a thrust in the breast from the fencing-master. I also remembered his questioning me regarding my duel, that puerile curiosity of those who have never been on the field of honor. I recalled that, during my assault, he had kept his eyes fixed on me ceaselessly. The consciousness of my superiority, the certainty of vanquishing him, excited me. In my imagination, a thread of red blood furrowed that pale and disgusting flesh. And I saw him bleeding and inert on a mattress, with two doctors leaning over him.
How often I, the ideologist, the analyst, the sophist of an epoch of decadence, had prided myself on being the descendant of that Raymond Hermil of Panedo who, at the Goulette, had accomplished prodigies of valor and of ferocity beneath the eyes of Charles the Fifth! The excessive development of my intelligence and of my many-souled state had not been able to modify the depths of my substance, in the deepest stratifications of which were preserved the imprint of every hereditary characteristic of my race. In my brother, whose organization was well balanced, thought was always associated with labor; in me thought predominated. I was, in short, a violent and a passionate person conscious of himself, in whom the hypertrophy of certain cerebral centres rendered impossible the coördination necessary to the normal state of the mind. I was able to contemplate my actions with perfect clear-sightedness, and yet I had every undisciplinable impulse of primitive natures. More than once had I been possessed by sudden criminal ideas; more than once I had been surprised by feeling the surging up of a cruel instinct within me.
"There are the charcoal-burners." said my brother to me, putting his horse at a trot.
The blows of the axe could be heard in the forest and the spirals of smoke could be seen rising between the trees. Federico interrogated the workmen as to the progress made in their labor, gave them advice, while examining their work with an experienced eye. Every one of them assumed a respectful attitude, and listened attentively. Around about, the labor seemed to become more eager, easier, lighter, and even the crackling of the fire more efficacious. Men ran right and left, throwing earth here and there wherever the smoke poured out in too great abundance, to stop up with clods the holes caused by the explosions; they ran, they shouted. With these rude voices mingled the guttural sounds of the wood-cutters. The surroundings resounded with the crash of some falling tree. During the few moments of our halt could be heard the whistling of blackbirds. And the great, motionless forest contemplated the wood-cutters, to whom its life served as food.
While my brother proceeded in his examination of the work, I withdrew, leaving to my horse the choice of the unfamiliar paths that led into the bush. Behind me the sounds decreased, the echoes died away. A heavy silence fell from the tree-tops. I thought: "What shall I do to regain courage? What will my life henceforth be? Can I continue to live in my mother's house with my secret? Can I associate my life with that of Federico? What man in all this world, what event could ever resuscitate in my soul a spark of faith?" The sounds of the workers away behind me; the solitude became complete, "To work, to accomplish good, to live for others! ... Ihenceforthrecover in these things the true sense of life? And are there really only these things which, to the exclusion of individual happiness, permit of finding the true sense of life? The other day, while my brother was speaking, I believed I understood his remarks; I believed that thedoctrine of truthwas revealed to me by his mouth. The doctrine of truth, according to my brother, is not in laws, not in precepts, but simply and solely in the interpretation that man gives to life. It seemed to me I had understood it fully. But, all at once, I now found myself fallen back among the shadows; I had become blind again. I no longer understood. What man in all the world, what event, could console me for all the good I had lost?" And the future seemed frightful and hopeless to me. The undefined image of the infant to be born grew, enlarged, like horrible and formless things one sees sometimes in a nightmare, and ended by enveloping everything. It was no longer a question of regret, of remorse, of an indestructible recollection, of no matter what inner bitterness; it now concerned a living being. My future was fettered to a being whose life was tenacious and malefic; it was shackled to a stranger, to an intruder, to an abominable creature, against whom not only my mind, but also my flesh, all my blood and every fibre, rose with a brutal, ferocious, implacable aversion, until death, beyond death. I thought: "Who could have imagined a worse torture for torturing the soul and the flesh at the same time?"
And it was just at the time that the nausea set in that I—who fed on dreams, who drank of the ideal—found the ingenuities of my adolescence, thought of nothing but of gathering flowers. Oh! those flowers, those heart-breaking flowers that I so timidly offered her. And, after a great intoxication, half-sentimental, half-sensual, I received the delightful news, from whom? from my mother! And after the news, I experience a feeling of generous exaltation, I accept in good faith a noble rôle, I sacrifice myself in silence, like one of Octave Feuillet's heroes! What heroism! The irony tortured my soul, bruised every fibre.... Then, for the second time, I conceived the mad idea of escaping from my fate.
I looked before me. Close at hand, between the tree-trunks, unreal like the illusion of a hallucination, shone the glistening Assoro. "Strange!" I thought, with a curious shudder. Up to this time I had not noticed that my horse, left to himself, had entered a path that led to the river. The Assoro seemed to have a fatal fascination for me.
I hesitated a moment between two things—to go on as far as the cliff, or return. Finally, I stopped, fascinated by the water and the guilty thought. I made my horse curvet.
A heavy oppressiveness succeeded the internal convulsion. It seemed to me that, all at once, my soul had become a poor, faded thing, a bruised, diminished, miserable thing. I became softened; I felt pity for myself, I felt pity for Juliana, I felt pity for every creature upon whom suffering had set its seal, that trembled under the embrace of life as some vanquished enemy in the power of some pitiless conqueror. "What are we? What do we know? What do we wish for? No one has ever obtained what he would like; no one will ever obtain what he would like. We seek goodness, virtue, enthusiasm, the passion that will fill our soul, the faith that will calm our inquietudes, the inspiration that will give us courage, the work to which we consecrate ourselves, the cause for which we will joyfully die. And the result of so many efforts is an empty lassitude, the sensation of strength spent in pure loss, and of the flight of time." At that moment, life appeared to me like a distant vision, confused, strange, monstrous. Madness, imbecillity, poverty, blindness, every malady, every misfortune, the obscure and continuous agitation of unconscious atavic, bestial powers in the depths of our substance, the highest manifestations of the ever-unstable, fugitive mind necessarily subordinated to a physical condition, connected with the functions of an organ, instantaneous metamorphoses produced by an imperceptible cause, by a mere nothing, the infallible amount of egotism in the noblest actions, the inutility of so much moral energy directed toward an uncertain object, the futility of amours that we believe to be eternal, the frailty of virtue that we believe unshakable, the feebleness of the most robust wills, every shame, every misery, appeared before me in that instant. "How is it possible to live? How is it possible to love?"
The axes resounded in the forest; a short and savage cry accompanied every blow. Here and there, in the clearings, great piles of wood, in the form of truncated cones or of quadrangular pyramids, were smoking. Columns of smoke, thick and straight as the trunks of trees, arose in the quiet air. To me, everything was symbolical at that moment.
I turned my horse toward the neighboring charcoal-burner, where I had recognized Federico.
He had descended from his horse and was speaking to a tall old man with shaven chin.
"Ah! At last!" he cried, on seeing me. "I was afraid that you were lost."
"No, I was not far off."
"Let me introduce to you Giovanni di Scordio—a Man," he said, placing his hand on the old man's shoulder.
I looked at the being whom he so designated. A singularly sweet smile gathered around his withered mouth. I had never seen such sad eyes before under a human brow.
"Adieu, Giovanni, and keep up your courage!" added my brother in that voice which seemed, at certain moments, like certain liquors, to have the power of stimulating the vital tone. "As for us, Tullio, let us return to the Badiola. It is getting late. They will be waiting for us."
He remounted his horse. He again saluted the old man. On passing by the furnaces, he once more instructed the workmen concerning the operations of the coming night, on which thegreat firewas to take place. We then trotted off, side by side.
The blue sky slowly appeared over our heads. The veils of vapor floated away, dispersed, reformed, in such a manner that the azure seemed to pale progressively, as if through its limpidity a continuous milky wave was spread and extended. We were nearing the hour when, the evening before, at the Lilacs, I had contemplated with Juliana the undulating garden in its ideal light. Around us the brushwood began to be gilded. The invisible birds were warbling.
"Did you take good notice of that old man, Giovanni di Scordio?" asked Federico.
"Yes," I replied. "I do not think I shall ever forget his smile or his eyes."
"That old man is a saint," pursued Federico. "No man has worked or suffered so much as he has. He had fourteen sons, and all, one after the other, have left him, just as ripe fruit leaves the tree. His wife, a virago, is dead. He is left alone. His sons have despoiled and disowned him. He has experienced every human ingratitude. He has experienced the perversity, not of strangers, but of his own creations. Do you understand? His own blood has turned to venom in the beings for whom he had only love and affection, in the beings whom he has not ceased to love, whom he cannot curse, whom he will certainly bless at the hour of his death, even if they permit him to die in solitude. Is not such obstinacy of man in his goodness an extraordinary, an almost unbelievable thing? After so much suffering, his face still has the smile that you saw.You will do well, Tullio, not to forget that smile."
XV.
The hour of trial was drawing near, the hour dreaded yet desired at the same time.
Juliana was ready. She had firmly opposed Maria's caprice; she wished to be alone in her room to await me.
"What shall I say to her? What will she say to me? What will be my attitude towards her?" All my prejudices, all my plans, were scattered. There remained to me only an intolerable anguish. Who could foresee the result of the meeting? I neither felt master of myself, nor of my words, nor of my acts. I only felt within me a fermentation of obscure thoughts that, at the slightest shock, would surge up. Never, as at that moment, had I had the clear and hopeless consciousness of the intestine discords that rent me, the perceptions of the irreconcilable elements that warred at the depths of my being, that overthrew one another, that destroyed each other by turns in a perpetual conflict, rebellious to all restraint. To the dejection of my mind was added a particular agitation of my feelings produced by the images which, on that day, had ceaselessly tortured me. I knew that agitation well, I knew it but too well; I knew it was more certain than any other thing to stir up the muddy depths in man. I knew but too well that base concupiscence from which nothing can save us—that dreadful sexual fever which, for months, had held me chained to a despised and odious woman, Teresa Raffo. And now, the sensations of goodness, of pity, and of strength, that were necessary to me to enable me to support a meeting with Juliana and to persist in my original project, died away in me like moving mists over a swamp of mire.
It lacked but little of midnight when I left my room to go to Juliana's. Every sound had ceased. The Badiola reposed in profound silence. I listened intently, and it seemed to me I heard the calm respiration of my mother, of my brother, of my daughters, those innocent and spotless beings. I thought I saw the face of Maria again sleeping, as I had seen it the night before; I imagined I saw the other faces, with an expression of repose, of peace, of goodness on each. A sudden tenderness seized me. The feeling of happiness, experienced but for a moment the evening before, and then eclipsed, threw a great light over my mind. If nothing had happened, if I had remained under the illusion, what a night that would have been! I would have gone to Juliana as to a divine being. And what could I have wished sweeter than that silence to envelop the inquietude of my love? I traversed the room in which, the evening before, I had received from my mother's mouth the unexpected revelation. Again I heard the ticking of the clock that had marked the hour, and, I do not know why, that tick, tack, so invariably equal, increased my anguish. I do not know why, but I imagined I felt Juliana's anguish respond to mine through the space that still separated us, and that the palpitations of our hearts were accelerated in unison. I walked straight before me, without further stopping, without seeking to muffle the sound of my footfalls. I did not knock at the door; I opened it and entered. Juliana was standing, supporting herself with one hand on the corner of a table, motionless, more rigid than a Hermes.
I can still see everything. Nothing at that hour escaped me; nothing eluded my attention. The actual world had vanished. There subsisted but a fictitious world in the midst of which I panted with anguish, with oppressed heart, incapable of articulating a syllable, and yet singularly lucid, as if I had been a spectator at a theatre. On the table burned a candle, which lent a sort of visible reality to this semblance of scenic fiction, because the little, flickering flame seemed to shed about it that vague horror which the actors in a drama diffuse in the ambient air with their great gestures of despair or menace.
The strange sensation disappeared when, finally, powerless to longer support that silence and Juliana's marble-like immobility, I spoke the first words. There was nothing in my voice of the sound that I believed it would have when I would open my lips. Without wishing it, I spoke in a gentle, trembling, almost timid voice.
"Were you waiting for me?"
She kept her eyes cast down. Without raising them she answered:
"Yes."
I looked at her arm, as motionless as marble, which seemed to become more and more rigid upon the hand placed on the corner of the table. I feared that that fragile support, on which she leaned her entire weight, would yield from one moment to another, and that she would fall.
"You know why I came?" I continued, with extreme slowness, plucking the words from my heart, one by one.
She remained silent.
"Is it true?" I went on. "Is it true—what I have learned from my mother?"
She still remained silent. She seemed to be gathering all her strength. Strange! During that interval it did not seem absolutely impossible that she would answer:
"No."
She answered, and I heard less the sound of her words than I saw them outlined by her bloodless lips:
"It is true."
It was a ruder shock perhaps than that given me by my mother's words. Of course, I knew all, I had already lived twenty-four hours with my certitude; and yet this confirmation, so clear, so precise, crushed me to earth, as if it were the first time I had heard the revelation of the irreparable truth.
"It is true!" I repeated instinctively, speaking to myself, with a sensation analogous to that which I would have had, had I found myself living and conscious at the bottom of an abyss.
Then Juliana raised her eyes and fixed them on mine with a sort of spasmodic violence.
"Tullio," she said, "listen."
A choking stopped the voice in her throat.
"Listen. I know what I must do. I was prepared for anything to spare you this; but destiny willed that I live until now to suffer that most horrible thing, the thing of which I had a mad terror—ah! you understand me—a thousand times more than of death. Tullio, Tullio, your look——"
Another suffocation choked her at a moment when her voice had become so distressed in tone that it gave me the physical impression of the tearing out of the most hidden fibres. I dropped into a seat, covered my face with my hands, and waited for her to continue.
"I should have died before now, I should have died long ago! Without doubt it would have been better if I had not come to the Badiola; it would have been better if at your return from Venice you had not come to me again. I would have been dead, and you would not have known this shame; you would have regretted me, perhaps you would always have cherished my memory. Perhaps I should always have remained your great love, your unique love, as you said yesterday.... I did not fear death, you know; I do not fear it. It is the thought of our two little daughters and of our mother that has made me postpone the execution from day to day. And that has been an agony, Tullio, a cruel agony, in which I have consumed, not one, but a thousand lives. And I am still alive!"
After a pause, she added:
"How is it possible that with such poor health I have so much resistance to pain? That also is a misfortune for me. Think of it! In consenting to accompany you here, I thought: 'It is certain that I shall become ill; directly I arrive I shall have to go to my bed, and I shall rise from it no more. They will think I died a natural death. Tullio will never know anything, will never suspect anything. Everything will be ended.' On the contrary, I am still alive, and you know all, and all is lost, without hope."
She spoke in a low voice, very feebly, and yet in as heart-breaking a tone as if it were a sharp and reiterated cry. I pressed my temples and felt them throbbing so violently that I was almost afraid, as if the arteries would burst the skin and their soft and warm membrane adhere, naked, to the cranial wall.
"My only preoccupation was to hide the truth from you, not for myself, but for you, for your good. You will never know what terrors have frozen me, what anguish has choked my throat. Since the day we arrived here, up to yesterday, you have hoped, you have dreamed, you have been almost happy. But my life, to me, in this blessed house, in contact with your mother, with my secret, can you imagine it? Yesterday, at the Lilacs, while we were at table, during that sweet chat which tortured me, you said to me: 'You knew nothing, you perceived nothing.' Oh! no, that is false; I knew all, I divined all; and, when I detected the affectionate look in your eyes, I felt my soul grow faint. Listen, Tullio. What I am going to say is the truth, the real truth. I am before you here as on my death-bed. It would be impossible for me to lie. Believe what I tell you. I do not care to exculpate myself, I do not dream of defending myself. Henceforth all is at an end. But I wish to tell you one thing, because it is true. You know what love I have had for you, since the day we first met. For years, for years, I was blindly devoted, and not only during the years of happiness, but also during the years of misery, when your love grew weary. You know it, Tullio. You could always do with me as you wished. You have always found in me the friend, the sister, the wife, the mistress, ready to make no matter what sacrifice to please you. Do not believe, Tullio, do not believe that I recall my long devotion in order to accuse you. No, no. There is not in my soul a single drop of bitterness against you, do you hear? Not a single drop! But let me now remind you of a devotion and a tenderness that have lasted for so many years, let me speak to you of love, of theuninterruptedness of my love, without any intermission, do you understand me?—without one intermission. I believe that my passion for you has never been as ardent as during the last few weeks. Yesterday you told me many things. Ah! what could not I, too, tell of my life during these last few days! I knew all, I divined all; and I was compelled to avoid you. How many times have I been on the point of falling in your arms, of closing my eyes, and yielding myself entirely to you, in my moments of feebleness and extreme lassitude! The other morning, Saturday morning, when you came in with the flowers, it seemed to me as I looked at you that I saw the lover of the old days, because of the ardor that animated you, and your smile, and your amiability, and the light that shone in your eyes. And you showed me the scratches on your hands! Then I felt a sudden impulse to take those hands, to kiss them. Where did I get the strength to restrain myself?I did not feel myself worthy. And I saw in a flash all the happiness that you offered me with the flowering thorns, all the happiness that I must renounce forever. Ah! Tullio, my heart is proof against all trials, since it can be so crushed without breaking. I die hard."
She pronounced this last phrase in a deeper tone, with an indefinable accent of irony mingled with anger. I dared not raise my face to look at her. Her words caused me atrocious suffering, and yet I trembled every time she stopped. I feared that her strength would suddenly abandon her, that it would be impossible for her to continue. And I awaited from her mouth other confessions, other fragments of soul.
"It was a great, great mistake," she continued, "not to have died before you returned from Venice. But poor Maria, poor Natalia, could I abandon them?"
She hesitated an instant:
"Nor you either; I could not leave you in such a manner. I might have caused you remorse. You would have been the object of everybody's accusations. We could not have dissimulated with our mother. She would have asked you: 'Why should Juliana have wished to die?' She would have come to know the truth, which we have kept from her till now—poor saintly woman."
Emotion choked her utterance, her voice became hoarse, began to tremble, tearfully. I felt a lump rise in my throat, too.
"I thought of all that; and, when you wished to bring me here, I thought, too, that I was no longer worthy of her, that I was no longer worthy to receive her kisses on my forehead and be called her daughter. But you know how weak we are, how easily we give way to the force of circumstances. I had no more hope; I knew that, outside of death, there remained no other refuge for me; I knew that, every day, the circle was closing in more. And yet I permitted the days to pass, one by one, without taking any resolution. Yet I had a sure means of death."
She stopped. Obeying a sudden impulse, I raised my eyes, and looked at her fixedly. She shuddered violently; and the pain which my look caused her was so apparent that I lowered my forehead, and resumed my first attitude.
Up to now she had been standing. She sat down. An interval of silence followed.
"Do you believe," she asked me, with a timid and unhappy air, "do you believe that the sin is great when the soul did not consent?"
That allusion to thesinsufficed to stir up in me instantly the dregs that had settled, and a sort of bitter acridity rose to my mouth. An involuntary sarcasm left my lips. I said, affecting a smile:
"Poor soul!"
That expression caused a look of such intense pain to appear on Juliana's face that I felt immediately the acute sting of repentance. I understood that it were impossible for me to have inflicted a more cruel blow, and that, at that moment, and against such a poor, submissive creature, irony was the worst of cowardices.
"Forgive me," she said.
She had the appearance of a woman smitten by death. And it seemed to me that her look had precisely the sad gentleness, almost infantile, that I had already seen on the wounded when they are placed on their biers.
"Forgive me. Yesterday, you, too, spoke of the soul. You think now: 'Women say those things to obtain forgiveness.' But I do not seek to exculpate myself. I know that pardon is impossible, and that it is impossible to forget. I know there is no hope. You understand me? I only seek to excuse myself for having received your mother's kisses."
She still spoke in a low tone, very weak and yet heart-breaking, like a sharp and reiterated cry.
"I felt on my brow so heavy a weight of sorrows that, not for myself, Tullio, but for my pain, only for my pain, I let your mother kiss me then. I was unworthy of them; but my pain deserved them. You can forgive me."
I felt an impulse of kindness, of pity; but I did not yield to it. My eyes avoided hers, and I made enormous efforts not to writhe in convulsive spasms, not to yield to extravagant actions.
"Certain days, I deferred from hour to hour the execution of my project; the thought of this house, of what would afterwards happen in this house, took away my courage. See how I have ended by losing even the hope of being able to hide the truth from you, of being able to spare you; for, from the first days, your mother guessed my condition. Do you remember the day when I was at the window and when the odor of the violets nauseated me? It was then that your mother noticed it. Imagine my terror! I thought: If I kill myself, he will learn the secret from his mother. And who knows how far the consequences of the sin I have committed will reach? Night and day I racked my soul to find a means of sparing you. On Sunday, when you asked me: 'Shall we go to the Lilacs on Tuesday?' I consented without reflecting, I abandoned myself to destiny, I trusted to chance. I was certain that that day would be my last, and this certitude exalted me, inspired me with a sort of dementia. But, Tullio, remember your words of yesterday, and tell me if, now, you appreciate my martyrdom. Do you appreciate it?"
She bent toward me as if to project her painful question into my soul, and she entwined her fingers convulsively.
"You had never spoken to me like that before, you had never spoken in such a voice. When, on the bench, you asked me: 'It is too late, perhaps?' I looked at you, and your face frightened me. Could I reply: 'Yes, it is too late?' Could I have broken your heart at one blow? What would have become of us? Then I determined to yield to one last intoxication, and I saw nothing more but my death and my passion."
Her voice had become strangely hoarse. I looked at her, and it seemed to me that I no longer recognized her, so transfigured was she. A convulsion contracted every line of her face; her lower lip trembled violently; her eyes burned with febrile ardor.
"Do you blame me?" she asked in a hoarse, distressed tone. "Do you despise me for what I did yesterday?"
She covered her face with her hands. Then, after a pause, she shook off her weakness with a resolute gesture. Her voice became stronger.
"Destiny has willed that I should live until now. Destiny has willed that you should learn the truth from your mother. From your mother! Yesterday evening, when you came into this room, you knew all and you said nothing, and, before your mother, you kissed the cheek I offered you. Before I die, permit me to kiss your hands. It is the only favor I implore of you. Now, I await your commands. I am ready for anything. Speak."
I said:
"It is necessary that you should live."
"Impossible, Tullio," she cried. "Impossible! Have you thought of what will happen if I live?"
"I have thought of it. It is necessary that you should live."
"What horror!"
And she started violently—an instinctive gesture of fright.
"Listen, Tullio. Henceforth you know everything; henceforth suicide can no longer serve me to hide my shame from you, nor keep me from appearing before you. You know all, and here we are together, and we can still look at one another, we can still speak to one another! The question is an entirely different one. I no longer seek to elude your vigilance in order to kill myself. On the contrary, I wish you to help me in disappearing in the most natural way possible; without awakening any suspicion around us. I have two poisons—morphine and corrosive sublimate. But perhaps poisons are useless; it is difficult to conceal poisoning. And it is necessary that my death should seem to be involuntary, caused by accident, by a mishap. You understand? It is the only way out of it. The secret will remain between us two."
She began to speak rapidly, firmly and deliberately, as if she argued in order to persuade me to consent to some desirable compact and not to a compact of complicity in the execution of an extravagant project. I let her go on. A sort of singular fascination rooted me to the spot—constrained me to look at and listen to the fragile and pale creature, possessed by such impetuous waves of moral energy.
"Listen, Tullio. I have an idea. Federico told me of your insane ride, of the danger that you incurred on the bank of the Assoro. He told me everything. I thought, trembling: 'Who knows what mental torture made him incur such peril?' Then, as I thought of it, it seemed to me that I understood. It was like a prophetic revelation. My soul seemed to see a vision of all the pain that awaited you, pain against which nothing could guard you, pain that would grow day by day, inconsolable, intolerable. Ah! Tullio, it is certain that you have already felt this pain, and that you also foresee your powerlessness to bear it. There is but one means of salvation for you, for me, for our souls, for our love. Yes, let me say it—our love; let me still believe in your words of yesterday; let me repeat that I love you now as I have never loved you before. And it is precisely for that, precisely because we love each other, that I must disappear from the world, that you must no longer see me."
An extraordinary moral elevation heightened her voice and entire person. A great thrill passed through me; a fugitive illusion seized upon my mind. For a moment, I really believed that my love and that of this woman were on an equal plane, of the same ideal, measureless height, freed from human misery, freed from all sin, irreproachable. I felt, for several moments, the same sensation that I had felt at the beginning, when the actual world had seemed to me to have completely vanished. Then, as always, the inevitable phenomena occurred: this state of consciousness ceased to be mine, it became objective, became a stranger to me.
"Listen," she went on, lowering her voice, as if she feared to be overheard. "I have told Federico that I have a great desire to revisit the woods, the charcoal-burners, the entire country. To-morrow morning, Federico will not have the leisure to accompany us because he must return to Casal Caldore. We two will go, alone. Federico has told me that I can ride Favilla. When we are on the cliff—I will do what you did this morning. An accident will happen. Federico told me it is impossible to be rescued from the Assoro. Will you?"
Although her speech was connected, she seemed a prey to a kind of delirium. An unaccustomed flush tinged her cheeks; her eyes had an extraordinary lustre.
The vision of the sinister river flashed rapidly through my mind.
She repeated, bending toward me:
"Will you?"
I arose, and took her hands. I wished to calm her fever. Immense pity oppressed me. My voice was gentle, grew kind, trembled with affectionate emotion.
"Poor Juliana! Do not torment yourself thus. You are suffering too much; your grief has deprived you of your reason, poor soul. You must be brave; you must not think of the things you have just said. Think of Maria, of Natalia. As for me, I have accepted the punishment. It is a punishment that I have well deserved for all the wrongs that I have done you. I accept it; I will bear it. But you must live. Promise me, Juliana, in the name of Maria, in the name of Natalia, in the name of the tenderness that you bear for my mother, in the name of all that I told you at the Lilacs, promise me that you will in no way seek to kill yourself."
She kept her head down. Then, all at once, freeing her hands, she seized mine, and began to kiss them furiously; and I felt on my skin the warmth of her mouth, the warmth of her tears. And, as I attempted to disengage myself, she fell from her seat on her knees, without freeing my hands, sobbing, showing me an agonized face over which the tears rolled in streams, in which the contraction of the mouth revealed the inexpressible spasm that convulsed her entire being.
And I, incapable of raising her, incapable of uttering a word, suffocated by a cruel attack of anguish, overcome by the violence of the spasm that contracted that poor, pallid mouth, forgetful of all rancor, of every pride, without any other sensation than that of the blind terror of life, without seeing in myself and in this crushed woman anything else than human suffering, the eternal human suffering, the disaster of inevitable infractions, the weight of brute flesh, the horror of pitiless fatalities that attach themselves to the very roots of our being and the infinite physical sorrow of our love, I fell also on my knees before her, by an instinctive desire to prostrate myself, to take the same humble attitude as this creature who suffered and who made me suffer. And I burst into sobs; and, once more, after so long a time, our tears mingled, burning tears, alas! but powerless to change our destiny.