XVI.Who will ever be able to describe in words the sensation of stupor and of desolate aridity which, in man, succeeds tears uselessly shed, paroxysms of useless hopelessness? Tears are a temporary phenomenon; each crisis ends in calm, every attack is brief; and, afterwards, man finds himself exhausted, his heart arid, more than ever convinced of his own impotence, corporeally stupid and sad, with the impassable reality before him.I was the first to cease weeping; I was the first to open my eyes to the light; I was the first to notice my posture and Juliana's, and of the surrounding objects. We were still on our knees, one facing the other, on the carpet. A few sobs still shook her. The candle was burning on the table, and every now and then its tiny flame flickered and bent as if under the breath of a breeze. In the silence my ear perceived the slight sound of a watch which was somewhere in the room. Life rolled on; time passed. My soul was empty and solitary.After the violence of the emotion had subsided, after the intoxication of the pain had become dissipated, our attitudes signified nothing any more, had no longer araison d'être. I must rise, raise up Juliana, say something, definitely close this scene; but I felt for all this a strange repugnance. It seemed to me that I had become incapable of the slightest physical or moral effort. I was vexed at being there, at having to submit to these necessities, at meeting with these difficulties, at not having the strength to leave my position. And a sort of deep rancor against Juliana began to stir confusedly in the depths of my being.I arose. I assisted her to arise. Each of the sobs that, from time to time, still shook her, increased in me this inexplicable rancor.It is then quite true that certain germs of hate are dissimulated at the bottom of every sentiment which unites two human creatures; that is to say, which connects two egoisms? It is then quite true that these germs of inevitable hate disturb our most affectionate moments, our best impulses? All there is beautiful in the soul bears in itself a latent germ of corruption, is condemned to become corrupted.I said (and I feared that involuntarily the tone of my voice was not sufficiently gentle):"Be calm, Juliana. The moment has come to be courageous. Come, sit down. Be calm. Will you have a drink of water? Will you smell some salts? Answer!""Yes, give me a little water. You will find it in the alcove on the night table."Her voice was still tearful; and she dried her face with a handkerchief, seated on a low divan, facing the large mirror of a closet. She had not ceased sobbing convulsively.I entered the alcove to get the glass. I perceived the bed in the shadow. It was already made; a corner of the covers was raised and thrown back, a long white night-dress was laid close to the pillow. Immediately my subtle and keen sense of smell detected the slight perfume of the batiste, a faint odor of orris and violet, so familiar to me. The sight of the bed, the odor of the familiar perfume, disturbed me deeply. I hastened to pour out the water, and I left the alcove to take the glass to Juliana, who was waiting.She swallowed a few mouthfuls, a little at a time, while I, standing before her, attentively observed the movement of her mouth."Thank you, Tullio," she said.She gave me back the glass, still half full. As I was thirsty, I drank the water which remained. That mechanical action sufficed to increase my agitation. I sat down, in my turn, on the divan. And we remained silent, both absorbed in our reflections, separated only by a short distance.The divan with our figures was reflected in the mirror of the closet. We could see each other's faces without looking at one another, but rather confusedly, because the light was feeble and vacillating. On the vague surface of the glass I intently examined Juliana's silhouette, which, in its immobility, gradually acquired a mysterious aspect, the disquieting fascination of certain women's portraits obscured by time, the intensity of fictitious life possessed by beings born of a hallucination. And, gradually, this distant image seemed to me more living than the real person. Gradually I saw in that image the caressing wife, the voluptuous woman, the mistress, the unfaithful one.I closed my eyes. The Other rose up before me. One of my usual visions appeared.I thought: "Up to now, she has made no direct allusion to her fall, to the circumstances of her fall. She has uttered only one significant phrase: 'Do you think the sin is gravewhen the soul has not consented?' And what did that mean? It was only one of those subtle distinctions to which one has usually recourse to excuse and extenuate one's treason and infamy. I suffered a nameless torture. The furious desire to know all racked my soul; the material visions exasperated me. The Other, since the instant in which he had risen in my thoughts, had not ceased for a moment to beset my mind. Was it Filippo Arborio? Had I guessed correctly?"Suddenly I turned toward Juliana. She looked at me. But the question choked in my throat. I lowered my eyes, bent my head, and with the same spasmodic resistance that I should have felt on plucking a fragment of my flesh from some part of my body, I dared to ask her:"The name ofthat man?"My voice, trembling and hoarse, frightened even myself.At this unexpected demand, Juliana started, but remained silent."You do not answer?" I insisted, forcing myself to repress the anger that was on the point of invading me, that blind anger which, on the previous night, already had passed over my mind like a whirlwind."Ah! My God!" she moaned, despairingly; and she sank down in a heap on the divan, burying her face in the cushion. "My God! My God!"But I wished to know; I wished, at any cost, to tear the avowal from her."Do you remember," I went on, "do you remember that morning when I entered your room unexpectedly, early in November? Do you remember? I entered without knowing why, perhaps because I heard you singing. You were singing the air from 'Orphée'; you were preparing to go out. Do you remember? I saw a book on your dressing-table, I opened it, I read on the fly-leaf a dedication. It was a novel,The Secret. Do you remember?"She remained with her face buried in the cushion, and made no reply. I stooped over her. I trembled with a chill like that which precedes a fever. I added:"It is perhaps he?"She did not answer, but she raised her head with a motion of despair. She seemed distracted. She made a gesture as if about to throw herself on me, then stopped, crying:"Have pity! Have pity! Let me die! What you are making me suffer is worse than a thousand deaths. I have borne everything, I am capable of bearing everything; but not that, no, I cannot, I cannot. If I live it will mean for us both a constant martyrdom—a martyrdom that will daily become more terrible. And you will begin to hate me, all your hate will be vented on me. I am sure of it, sure. I have already felt the hate in your voice. Have pity! Let me die!"She seemed distracted. She had a furious desire to seize hold of me; but not daring she twisted her hands in an effort to control herself, her whole body convulsed. I seized her by the arms, and drew her toward me."So I am to know nothing?" I said to her, speaking almost on her mouth, now distracted myself, carried away by a cruel instinct that made my hands rough."I love you, I have always loved you, I have always been yours. I expiate by this hell a moment's weakness—do you understand?One moment's weakness! That is the truth. Cannot you feel that it is the truth?"Once more, overwhelmed by the weight of our misfortune, I clasped the poor trembling creature to my heart and silently kissed away her scalding tears.XVII.The external indications of Juliana's condition were not yet visible. The tie that bound the infant to the mother must be very frail. How was it that the violent emotions of the day at the Lilacs and of the following night had not sufficed to provoke a liberating crisis? Everything was against me, everything conspired against me. And my hate became more savage. To prevent the birth of the child, such was my secret design.And I considered the future with a sort of divining clear-sightedness. Juliana would give birth to a boy, sole heir of our ancient name. The son who was not mine would grow up without accident; he would usurp the love of my mother and my brother; he would be caressed, adored; he would be preferred to Maria and to Natalia, my own creations. The force of habit would dull Juliana's remorse; she would abandon herself without restraint to her maternal feeling. And the son who was not mine would grow up under her protection, surrounded by her assiduous cares; he would become robust and handsome; he would become capricious like a little despot; he would reign in my house. By degrees these visions became particularized. Such or such an imaginary spectacle took the shape and motion of an actual scene; such or such a trait of that imaginary life was impressed so strongly in my consciousness that it retained there for some time the characteristics of an effective reality. The child's traits were modified to infinity; his acts, his gestures, were diversified without cease. At times I represented him to myself as being thin, pale, taciturn, with a large, heavy head bent on his chest; at other times I saw him all rosy, plump, gay, chattering, graceful and coaxing, particularly affectionate toward me, very good; at other times, on the contrary, he was nervous, bilious, a little spiteful, full of intelligence and evil instincts, rough with his sisters, cruel to animals, incapable of tenderness, undisciplinable. This last image ended by dominating all the others, eliminated them by becoming more lasting, fixed itself into a precise type, became animated with an intense chimerical life, ended by taking a name: the name that I had long since chosen for the male heir, my father's name, Raymond.That little perverse phantom was a direct emanation of my hate, and he bore against me a hostility equal to that I had for him. He was an enemy, an adversary, with whom I was about to begin a struggle. He was my victim, and I was his. I could not escape from him; he could not escape from me. We were both shut in as it were in a circle of iron.He had gray eyes like Filippo Arborio. Among the various expressions of his face one struck me above all, in an imaginary scene that often arose before me. This scene is as follows: I entered a room filled with darkness, with strange silence. I thought I was alone there. All at once, on turning round, I perceived Raymond looking at me fixedly with his gray and wicked eyes. Suddenly the temptation to commit the crime assailed me so strongly that, so as not to throw myself on the malefic being, I took to flight.XVIII.Between Juliana and me the compact appeared concluded. She lived. We both continued to live, simulating and dissimulating. Like dipsomaniacs, we had two alternate lives: the one tranquil, made up entirely of gentle appearances, of filial tendernesses, pure affection, reciprocal complaisances; the other agitated, feverish, troubled, uncertain, hopeless, a prey to a fixed idea, forever pursued by a menace, precipitated toward an unknown catastrophe. There were rare moments when my soul, seeking to avoid so much misery, to free itself from the curse that enveloped it like a thousand tentacles, burst forth with an aspiration toward the highest ideal of goodness, a glimpse of which I had more than once had. My memory recalled to me the singular words of my brother at the entrance to Assoro forest on the subject of Giovanni di Scordio: "You will do well, Tullio, not to forget that smile." And that smile on the old man's withered mouth acquired a profound significance, became extraordinarily luminous, exalted me like the revelation of a supreme verity.Almost always, during these rare moments, I also saw another smile, that of Juliana lying ill on her pillows, that unexpected smile, which decreased, decreased, without disappearing. And the remembrance of the distant peaceful afternoon when I had intoxicated the poor invalid with deceptive transports, the recollection of the morning when she rose for the first time and when, in the middle of the room, she had fallen into my arms, laughing and panting, the recollection of the truly divine gesture with which she had offered me love, indulgence, peace, dreams, forgetfulness, all that there is beautiful and all that there is good, caused me hopeless regrets and infinite remorse. The sweet and terrible question that André Bolkonsky had read on the dead face of the Princess Lisa, I read unceasingly on the still living face of Juliana. "What have you done to me?" No reproach had issued from her lips; she had not attempted to lessen the gravity of her sin, to interpose any one of my own infamies; she had been humble before her executioner; not a drop of bitterness had tinged her words. And yet her eyes repeated to me, "What have you done to me?"A strange sacrificial ardor suddenly fired me, impelled me to take up my cross. The grandeur of the expiation seemed worthy of my courage. I felt in myself a superabundance of strength, a heroic soul, an inspired intelligence. On going toward the sorrowful sister, I thought: "I will find the kind words that will console her, I will find the fraternal tones that will alleviate her pain, that will clear her brow." But directly I entered her presence, I could no longer speak; my lips seemed sealed with an infrangible seal, all my being seemed stricken by a malefice. The internal light suddenly died out, as if extinguished by an icy wind of unknown origin. And in the shadows began to move vaguely that dull rancor which I had so often felt and which I was powerless to repress.It was the symptom of an attack. I stammered a few incoherent words. I avoided Juliana's eyes, and I fled from the room.XIX.It is unbelievable how much energy she displayed in dissimulating before those who were ignorant of the facts. She still succeeded in smiling! My known anxiety for her health furnished me with a pretext that justified a certain sadness that I could not succeed in disguising. This anxiety, shared by my mother and by my brother, resulted in the coming event not being looked upon as cause for rejoicing, as the previous births had been, and everyone avoided making the usual allusions or predictions. I was grateful for that.Finally, Dr. Vebesti arrived at the Badiola.His visit reassured us. He said Juliana was very much run down; he noticed in her a slight nervous irritability, an impoverishment of the blood, a general disturbance of the nutritive functions; but he affirmed that the progress of the gestation presented no notable anomaly, and that, when the general condition was improved, delivery could take place under normal conditions. Besides, he gave us to understand that he placed considerable confidence in Juliana's exceptional temperament, whose extraordinary power of resistance he had had occasion to test in the past. He prescribed careful hygiene and a reconstructive diet, approved of the stay at the Badiola, recommended regularity, moderate exercise, and tranquillity of mind."I count particularly on you," he said to me, seriously.It was a disappointment to me. I had placed in him a hope of salvation, and, lo, I had lost it. Before his arrival, I nourished this hope: "If he would only declare it necessary, in order to preserve the mother, to sacrifice the still formless child! If he would only declare it necessary, in order to avoid a certain catastrophe at the completion of the term, to have recourse to extreme measures and suppress the child! Juliana would be saved, she would get well; and I too would be saved, I should feel as if reborn. It would be possible, I believe, to almost forget, or at least to be resigned. Time heals so many wounds, and work consoles so many sorrows! I could, I believe, gradually recover my peace, and turn over a new leaf, follow my brother's example, become better, become a man, live for others, embrace the new religion. I believe that my very sorrow could help me in regaining my dignity. The man to whom it is given to suffer more than others is alsoworthyof suffering more than others. Is not that a verse from my brother's evangel? There is, then, an election for pain. Giovanni di Scordio, for instance, is one of the elect. To possess such a smile is to possess a divine gift. I could, I believe, merit that gift." Such had been my hope. By a curious contradiction, I had hoped by my expiatory fervor to obtain a diminution of my punishment!In fact, though I wished to be regenerated by my suffering, I was afraid to suffer, I had an atrocious fear of facing actual pain. My soul was already exhausted; although it had caught a glimpse of the true road and had been agitated by Christian aspirations, it stole away by an oblique path that led straight to the inevitable abyss.While speaking with the doctor, when showing a slight incredulity at his reassuring predictions, by manifesting anxiety, I found the means of conveying my thoughts to him. I made him understand that I desired him, at any cost, to free Juliana from all danger, and that, if it were necessary, I would renounce this new offspring without regret. I begged him to speak to me frankly.He reassured me a second time. He declared to me that, even in a hopeless case, he would not have recourse to extremes because, in the state that Juliana was in, a hemorrhage would be very dangerous. He repeated again that, above all, we must aid and stimulate the regeneration of the blood, reconstitute the debilitated organism, contrive, by every means in our power, that the mother should arrive at the natural term of gestation with her strength restored, with a confident and tranquil mind. He concluded:"I believe that your wife requires moral consolation more than anything else. I am an old friend. I know that she has suffered much. It depends on you to pacify her mind."XX.My mother redoubled her tenderness for Juliana. She let her know her cherished dream and her presentiment. It was a grandson whom she awaited, a little Raymond. She was sure, this time.My brother, too, expected Raymond.Maria and Natalia often asked their mother, and grandmother, and me, artless questions concerning their future companion.Thus the domestic love, expressed by presages, wishes, and hopes, began to surround the invisible fruit, the being that was yet without form.One day we were seated, Juliana and I, beneath the elms. My mother had just left us. During her affectionate chat, she had named Raymond; she had even brought again into use a pet name that called up distant memories of my dead father. Juliana and I answered her by a smile. She believed that we shared her dream, and she had left in order that we might go on dreaming undisturbed.It was the calm and limpid hour that follows the sunset. Above our heads, the foliage was motionless. From time to time a flock of swallows rapidly cleft the air with a sound of beating wings, with piercing cries, as at the Lilacs.Our eyes followed the sainted woman as long as she was visible; then we looked at one another, silently, in consternation. We remained for several minutes without breaking the silence, crushed by the immensity of our sorrow. And then, with a terrible effort of my entire being, making an abstraction of Juliana, I felt the little creature living alone at my side, as if, at that moment, no other creature existed near me, had existed around me. And it was not an illusory sensation, but a real and profound sensation. A thrill of horror ran through all my fibres; I started violently and fixed my eyes on my companion's face in order to dissipate the sensation. We looked at one another, without knowing what to say or do to combat the excess of our anguish. I saw in her face the reflection of my distress, I divined my own physiognomy. My eyes turned instinctively toward her body; and I perceived on her face the same expression of terror exhibited by invalids afflicted by a monstrous infirmity, when one looks at the member deformed by an incurable malady.After a pause, during which we both tried in vain to measure our suffering, she said, in a low voice:"Have you thought that this may endure as long as we live?"My lips remained closed; it was only within myself that was heard the determined answer:"No, it will not last."She went on:"Remember that, with a single word, you can solve the difficulty and free yourself. I am ready. Remember."I still remained silent, but I thought: "No, it is not you who must die."She went on, in a voice that tearful tenderness rendered trembling:"I cannot console you; there is consolation neither for you nor for me; there will never be any. Have you thought that someone will always be between us? If your mother's wish is granted— Think! Think!"But my soul shuddered beneath the sinister light of a single idea. I said: "They all love him already."I hesitated. I gave Juliana a rapid look. Then, suddenly, lowering my eyes, bending my head, I asked, in a voice that died away on my lips:"And you, do you love him?""Oh! what a question!"I could not restrain myself from persisting, although I suffered physically as if an open wound were being torn by nails."Do you love him?""No, no! I have a horror of him."I felt an instinctive joy, as if I had obtained, by this confession, an assent to my secret idea, and a sort of complicity. But had Juliana answered me sincerely? Or had she told a falsehood out of pity for me?I was assailed by a cruel and furious desire to persist, to make her confess fully, to penetrate to the very depths of her soul. But her appearance stopped me. I abstained. I now felt no bitterness toward her. I was now drawn toward her by an emotion of gratitude. It seemed to me that the horror she had shudderingly confessed separated her from the creature whom she was nourishing, and brought her closer to me. I felt a desire to make her understand these things, and increase her aversion to the infant to be born, as if against an irreconcilable enemy of us both.I took her hand; I said to her:"You have comforted me a little. I thank you. You understand——"And I added, masking my homicidal intention by a Christian hope:"There is a Providence. Who knows? The day of deliverance will come, perhaps. You understand me. Who knows? Pray to God."It was a presage of death for the infant to be born; it was a wish. And, by inducing Juliana to pray that it should come to pass, I was preparing her for the funereal event, I obtained from her a sort of moral complicity. I ended by thinking:"If, as a result of my words, the suggestion of crime should come to her, and, gradually, become strong enough to actuate her? Certainly it is possible that she may convince herself of the dreadful necessity, that she may elevate herself to the thought of my deliverance, that she may experience a burst of savage energy, that she may accomplish the supreme sacrifice. Did she not repeat just now that she was still ready to die? But her death includes that of her child. Therefore, she is not restrained by any religious prejudice, by the fear of sinning; since she is ready to die, she is ready to commit a double crime, against herself and against maternity. On the other hand, she is convinced that her existence on earth is useful, even indispensable to the persons who love her and whom she loves; and she is also convinced that the existence of the son who is not mine will make an intolerable torture of our lives. She knows, too, that we could draw closer together, that we could, perhaps, in forgiveness and forgetfulness, regain some happiness, that we could hope from time the cure of the wound, if between her and me no intruder interposed. It suffices, then, that she should reflect on all that to rapidly convert a useless desire and an inefficacious prayer into a resolution and an act." I meditated; she also meditated silently, her head lowered, without removing her hand from mine, while deep in the shadows of the great motionless elms.What were her thoughts? Her brow still retained the pallor of death. With the fall of evening, was another shadow descending upon her, too?I seemed to see Raymond. But no longer in the form of a perverse and treacherous gray-eyed child; but with the form of a miserable little body, soft and reddish, scarcely breathing, and which the slightest pressure would kill.The bell at the Badiola sounded the first strokes of the Angelus. Juliana withdrew her hand from mine and made the sign of the cross.XXI.The fourth and fifth months passed and the gestation began to develop rapidly. Juliana's person, slender, supple, and flexible, enlarged and naturally conformed to her condition. She felt herself humiliated before me as by a disgraceful infirmity. A poignant suffering appeared on her face when she caught my eyes fixed on her heavy figure.I felt overwhelmed, incapable of bearing any longer the weight of this miserable existence. Every morning, when I opened my eyes after an agitated slumber, I felt as if someone had given me a deep cup, saying: "If you wish to drink, if you wish to live to-day, you must shed into this cup the last drop of your heart's blood." At each awakening a repugnance, a disgust, an indefinable repulsion assailed me in the most secret recesses of my being. And yet I must live.The days were cruelly long. Time scarcely passed: it fell drop by drop, lazily and heavily. And I still had the summer before me, part of the autumn, an eternity. I tried to imitate my brother, to aid him in the extensive agricultural labors that he had undertaken, to become enthusiastic with the fire of his faith. I remained on horseback for whole days, like abuttero; I tired myself out with manual labor, at some easy and monotonous employment; I sought to dull the point of my conscience by a prolonged contact with the men of the soil, simple and upright souls, those whom the moral precepts received from their ancestors prompted to perform their functions just as naturally as the corporeal organs performed theirs. Several times I went to visit Giovanni di Scordio, the hermit saint; I wished to hear his voice, I wished to interrogate him concerning his misfortunes, I wished to see once more his sad eyes and his sweet smile. But he hardly spoke; he was a little timid with me; he barely answered me by a few vague words; he did not love to speak of himself, he did not care to complain, he did not stop at the labor at which he was occupied. His hands, bony, dried, and sunburnt, that seemed as if cast in living bronze, were never idle, perhaps did not know fatigue. One day, I exclaimed:"When will your hands ever rest?"The good man looked down at his hands with a smile; he looked at the backs and then at the palms, turned them over and over in the sunlight. That look, that smile, that sunlight, that gesture, conferred on those great calloused hands a sovereign nobility. Hardened by the agricultural instruments, sanctified by the good they had shed, by the immense labor they had performed, those hands were now worthy of bearing the palm.The old man crossed them on his breast, according to the Christian mortuary rites, and answered, without ceasing to smile:"Very soon, signor, if it please God. When I am laid, in this fashion, in the coffin. Amen!"XXII.Every remedy was tried in vain. Labor did not solace me, did not console me, because it was excessive, unequal, irregular, feverish, frequently interrupted by periods of unconquerable inertia and depression.My brother warned me:"You are not following the proper rule. You spend in one week six months' energy; then you let yourself fall back into indolence; then, without moderation, you recommence to exhaust yourself with fatigue. That is not what health demands. To be effective, your work must be calm, concordant, harmonic. Do you understand? We must prescribe a method for you. But you have the fault of all novices—excessive ardor. Later on you will be calmer."My brother said:"You have not yet found your equilibrium. You do not yet feelterra firmabeneath your feet. But have no fear. Sooner or later, you will succeed in grasping the law. That will come to you unexpectedly, when you least expect it."He said also:"This time, Juliana will surely give you an heir—Raymond. I have already thought of the godfather. Giovanni di Scordio will hold your son at the baptismal font. He is the worthiest godfather you could possibly find for him. Giovanni will inspire him with goodness and strength. When Raymond is old enough to understand, we will speak to him of this noble old man. And your son will be what we could not have been, what we have not been able to be."He often returned to this subject, he often pronounced the name of Raymond, he prayed for the child to be born his incarnate ideal of the human type—the Model. He did not know that every one of his words was for me like the thrust of a poniard which exasperated my hate, and rendered my despair more violent.Everyone conspired against me unknowingly, everyone was constantly distressing me. When I approached one of my family, I felt anxious and fearful, as if I were compelled to remain near a person who, holding some terrible weapon, knew neither how to use it nor its danger. I was in continual expectation of being wounded. To enjoy a short truce, I was compelled to seek solitude and flee far from my own; but in solitude I found myself face to face with my worst enemy, myself.I felt that I was secretly going into a decline; it seemed to me that my life was ebbing away through every pore. At times there were reproduced in me conditions of soul that had belonged to the most obscure period of my past, henceforth so distant. At times I preserved only the intimate feeling of my own isolation amidst the inert phantoms of all things. For long hours, I had no other sensation but that of the continuous and crushing weight of life and of that of the slight throbbing of an artery in my head.Then survened ironies, sarcasms against myself, sudden furious desires to rend and destroy, pitiless derisions, ferocious wickedness, an acute fermentation of the most abject dregs. It seemed to me that I no longer knew what indulgence, pity, tenderness, goodness meant. Every inner source of good was obstructed, dried up like fountains stricken by a malediction. And then I no longer saw in Juliana anything but the brutal fact, the pregnancy; I no longer saw in myself anything but the ridiculed person, the satirized husband, the stupid hero of the classic farce. The inner sarcasm spared none of my actions, none of Juliana's actions. The drama became metamorphosed for me into a bitter and farcical comedy. Nothing restrained me longer; every bond broke; a violent rupture took place. And I said to myself: "Why should I rest here and play this odious rôle? I will go away, go back into society, back to my early life, back to libertinism. I will close my eyes to everything. I will lose myself. What does it matter? I do not wish to be what I am, mire within mire. Phew!"XXIII.During one of these attacks I resolved to leave the Badiola, to depart for Rome, to go I knew not where.I had a pretext ready. As we had not anticipated so long an absence, we had left the town house temporarily. It was urgent to regulate various affairs and take measures that our absence might be prolonged indefinitely.I announced my departure. I persuaded my mother, brother, and Juliana that it was necessary; I promised to hurry and return in a few days. I made my preparations.The evening before I left, late in the night, while I was strapping a valise, I heard a knock at my door. I said:"Come in!"I was surprised to see Juliana."Ah! Is it you?"I went forward to meet her. She was panting a little, fatigued perhaps by the stairs. I made her sit down. I offered her a cup of cold tea with a thin slice of lemon, a beverage that used to please her and that had been prepared for me. She scarcely wet her lips, and handed it back. Her eyes revealed her anxiety.Finally she said timidly:"So you are going?""Yes," I replied. "To-morrow morning, as you know."Then followed a long interval of silence. Through the open windows entered a delicious coolness; the rays of the full moon lit up the house and garden; the choir of chirping crickets could be heard, like the sharp and indefinitely distant sound of a flute.She asked me in a changed voice:"When will you return? Tell me frankly.""I do not know," I answered.There was a new pause. A light breeze came in from time to time, and the curtains swelled; every breath carried into the room as far as us the voluptuousness of that summer night."Are you deserting me?"There was such profound distress in her voice that my studied coolness suddenly gave way to regret and pity."No," I answered. "Don't be alarmed, Juliana. I need a little rest. I can stand it no longer. I must have breathing room.""You are right," she answered."I think I shall soon come back, as I promised. I will write to you. You, too, will perhaps feel relief at not seeing me suffer.""Relief," she said. "No, never."A choking sob quivered in her voice. She added, immediately, in a tone of heart-breaking anguish:"Tullio, Tullio, tell me the truth! Do you hate me? Tell me the truth!"Her eyes interrogated me, more agonized even than her words. For an instant her very soul seemed fixed on me. And those poor eyes, wide open, that pure-looking brow, that contracted mouth, that emaciated chin, all that frail, unhappy face which contrasted with the lower ignominious deformity, and those hands, those frail, sorrowful hands that stretched toward me with such a supplicating gesture, pained me more than ever, moved me to pity and sympathy."Believe me, Juliana; believe me once for all. I feel no resentment toward you, and I never shall. I do not forget that I am your debtor; I forget nothing. Have I not already proved it? Be reassured. Think now of yourdeliverance. And, besides, who knows? But, in any case, Juliana, I will not disappoint you. Let me go for the time being. Perhaps a few days' absence will do me good. I shall be calmer when I return. Calmness is very necessary for what is to follow. You will need all my assistance."She said:"Thank you. Do with me what you will."A human chant now came to us through the darkness, covering the shrill sound of the rural concert—perhaps a choir of reapers in the moonlight on some distant field."Do you hear?" I said.We listened. We felt the breath of the breeze. All the voluptuousness of the summer night filled my heart."Shall we go and sit down on the terrace?" I asked Juliana, gently.She consented, and rose. We passed through an adjoining room, where there was no other light than that of the full moon. A great white wave, resembling immaterial milk, inundated the floor. As she preceded me to go out on the terrace, I could see her deformed shadow outlined in black in the light.Ah! where was the slender and supple creature whom I had taken in my arms? Where was the lover I had found once more beneath the flowering lilacs, that April noon? In a second, my heart was invaded with every regret, with every desire, with every despair.Juliana sat down and leaned her head on the iron of the balustrade. Her face, fully illuminated, was whiter than all its surroundings, whiter than the wall. Her eyes were half-closed. The eyelids cast a shadow on her cheek-bones that agitated me more than a look would have done.How could I utter a word?I turned toward the valley, and leaned on the balustrade, grasping the cold iron with my fingers. I saw beneath me an enormous heap of confused appearances, in which I noticed only the reflection of the Assoro. The chant came to us or was interrupted, as the breeze rose or fell, and, during the pauses, was again heard the shrill flute-sound, indefinitely distant. Never had a night appeared to me so full of sweetness and sorrow. From the extreme depth of my soul arose a cry, piercing and yet not audible, towards the lost felicity.XXIV.Scarcely had I arrived in Rome, when I was sorry I had come. I found the city burning hot, on fire, almost deserted; and that frightened me. The house was silent as the tomb, and the familiar objects I knew so well presented an unusual and strange aspect; and that also frightened me. I felt a sensation of solitude, frightful solitude; and yet I did not go in search of friends, I did not wish to remember or meet anyone. But I began a search for the man whom I detested with an implacable hate, the search for Filippo Arborio.I hoped to meet him in some public place. I went to the restaurant which I knew he frequented. I waited for him an entire evening, premeditating the way in which I would provoke him. Each time I heard a step of a new arrival, my heart gave a bound. But he did not come. I questioned the waiters. They had not seen him for a long time.I went to the salle d'armes. The rooms were empty, bathed in the greenish shadow made by the closed blinds, filled with that peculiar odor which rises from wooden floors when they are sprinkled. The maestro, deserted by his pupils, greeted me with the greatest demonstrations of amiability. I listened attentively to the minute details of the last assault; then I asked him for news of several of my friends who frequented the salle; finally I asked him about Filippo Arborio."He has not been in Rome for four or five months," replied the maestro. "I have heard that he has a very serious and almost incurable nervous malady. I heard it from Galiffa. But that's all I know about it."He added:"In fact, he was very, very weak. He only took a few lessons from me. He was afraid to fence; he could not bear to see the point of a sword before his eyes.""Is Galiffa still in Rome?""No, he is at Rimini."Shortly after I went away.This unexpected news startled me. "If it were only true," I thought. And I took pleasure in imagining that it was one of those terrible maladies of the spinal cord or of the cerebral substance that reduce a man to the lowest degradations, to idiocy, to the most pitiful forms of madness, and finally to death. The knowledge I had gained from scientific books, the recollections of a visit I had paid to an insane asylum, the images, still more precise, that I retained of a special case of one of my friends, Spinelli, repassed through my memory in a crowd. And once more I saw poor Spinelli seated in his big red-leather arm-chair, the color of clay, every line of his face paralyzed, his mouth drawn and gaping, full of saliva and stammering incomprehensibly; again I saw the gesture he made every little while to receive in his handkerchief that inexhaustible saliva that ran down the corners of his mouth; again I saw the blond, thin, and sorrowful face of the sister adjusting a napkin beneath the invalid's chin as on a baby, and introducing into his stomach, with the pharyngeal sound, the nourishment he was no longer capable of swallowing."So much the better," I thought. "If I had fought a duel with so celebrated an adversary, if I had wounded him seriously, if I had killed him, the fact would certainly not pass unnoticed; it would be in every mouth, it would get into the papers, and perhaps the true cause of the duel would also be found out. This providential malady, on the contrary, spares me all danger, all annoyance, all gossip. I may well renounce a sanguinary joy, a punishment inflicted by my own hand (and, besides, am I sure of the result?), since I know that disease paralyzes and saps the power of the man I detest. But is the news true? Perhaps it is only a temporary illness?" A happy idea struck me. I jumped into a cab and drove to the office of his publisher. During the drive I mentally pictured to myself—with a sincere wish that he might be stricken by them—the two cerebral diseases most terrible for a man of letters, for an artist in language, for a stylist, aphasia and agraphia. And an imaginary vision presented their symptoms to me.I entered the office. At first I could distinguish nothing, my eyes still blinded by the outer light. But I heard a nasal voice questioning me in a strange tone:"What can I do for signor?"I perceived behind the desk a person of uncertain age, a dry, pallid, fair man, a sort of an albino. I turned toward him, mentioned the titles of several works. I bought a few, then I inquired for the last novel by Filippo Arborio. The albino handed meThe Secret. I feigned to be a fanatical admirer of the novelist."Is this really his last?""Yes, signor. A month or two ago, we announced a new novel by him:Turris Eburnea.""Turris Eburnea!"My heart throbbed."But I do not think we can publish it.""Why not?""The author is very ill.""Ill? What's the matter?""A progressive paralysis of the medulla oblongata," replied the albino, separating the terrible words, with a certain scientific affectation."Oh! The same illness that Spinelli had! So it is serious?""Very serious," said the albino sententiously. "Signor knows that there is no cure for that form of paralysis.""But it is still only in its earliest stage?""Yes; but there is no doubt as to its nature. The last time he came here I could already detect that he had difficulty in articulating certain words.""Ah! you heard him?""Yes, signor. His pronunciation was already indefinite, and vacillating."I encouraged the albino by the extreme and, so to speak, admiring attention that I paid to him. I believe that he would voluntarily have acquainted me with the words that had been pronounced with such difficulty by the illustrious novelist."And where is he now?""He is at Naples. The doctors are treating him with electricity.""Electric treatment!" I repeated with artless stupor, an affectation of ignorance, so as to please the albino's vanity and thus prolong the conversation.It is true that in the shop, narrow and long like a corridor, there flowed a draught of cool air that favored chatting. The place was shaded. A clerk slept peacefully in a chair, his chin on his bosom, in the shadow of a terrestrial globe. Nobody entered.There was something ridiculous about the bookseller. His sallow face, his shrivelled mouth, and nasal twang amused me, and in the quiet of the bookshop it was very agreeable to hear the confirmation of the incurable malady of a man abhorred."Have the doctors no hope of curing him?" I said, to stimulate the albino."Impossible.""Let us hope it is possible, for the sake of literature.""Impossible.""But it seems to me that, in progressive paralysis, there are cases that have been cured.""No, signor, no. He may live two, three, four years yet, but he cannot be cured.""It seems to me, however——"I do not know from whence came this lightness of heart that made me make sport of the narrator of this news, this curious complaisance to relish the cruelty of my sentiment. But I certainly found pleasure in it. And the albino, piqued by my contradictions, climbed, without further argument, up a small wooden ladder leaning against the high shelves. Thin as he was, he resembled one of those vagabond cats, fleshless and hairless, that crouch on the edge of a roof. As he reached the top, his head brushed against a cord stretched from one corner of the shop to the other, and which served as a resting place for flies. A cloud of the insects swarmed around his head with a furious buzzing. He came down, holding a book in his hand—the authority which declared in favor of death. The implacable flies descended with him.He showed me the title. It was a special work on pathology."Signor will see."He turned over the leaves. As the book was not cut, he separated the leaves with his finger, and, lowering his whitish eyes, read inside: "The prognosis of progressive bulbar paralysis is unfavorable." He added:"Is signor convinced now?""Yes, but what a misfortune! Such a talented man!"The flies could not be quieted. They were buzzing in a provoking manner. They attacked the albino, me, and the assistant who was sleeping under the terrestrial globe."How oldwas he?" I asked, involuntarily erring about the tense of the verb, as if I referred to a dead man."Who, signor?""Filippo Arborio.""Thirty-five, I believe.""So young!"I felt a strange desire to laugh, a puerile desire to laugh in the albino's face, and to leave him. It was a very singular excitation, rather convulsive, never before felt, indefinable. My mind was shaken by something similar to the strange and uncontrollable hilarity that seizes one at times in the surprising incoherences of a dream. The book was still open and lay on the bench, and I bent over it to examine a vignette that represented a human face contorted by a grimace, atrocious and grotesque: "Hemiatrophy of the left face." The implacable flies still buzzed ceaselessly."Have you not received the manuscript ofTurris Eburneayet?" I asked."No, signor. We have announced the book; but the title is all that exists.""Only the title?""Yes, signor. And, in fact, we have stopped announcing the book.""Thank you. Please send these books to my house sometime to-day."I gave my address and left.On the pavement, I felt a strange sensation of bewilderment. It seemed to me as if I had left behind me a fragment of an artificial, false, factitious life. What I had done, what I had said, what I had felt, and the albino's face, his voice, his gestures, all seemed unreal, took on the appearance of a dream, the character of an impression, received, not from contact with the reality, but from a book recently read. I entered the cab again and returned home. The vague sensation faded away. I began to calmly reflect. I assured myself that all was real, indisputable. Spontaneously visions of the sick man formed before me, copied on those furnished me by my recollections of poor Spinelli. And I was seized by new curiosity. "Suppose I go to Naples to see him?" I pictured to myself the pitiful spectacle of that intellectual man, degraded by disease, stammering like an idiot. I no longer felt any joy; all the exaltation of my hate had fallen; a profound sadness overwhelmed me. In fact, the ruin of this man had no influence on my own position, did not repair my own ruin. There was nothing changed, neither in me, nor in my actual situation, nor in my previsions of the future.And I thought of the title of the book announced by Filippo Arborio:Turris Eburnea. Doubts pressed in a crowd in my mind. Did that dedication refer to an accidental encounter? Or rather, on the contrary, had the writer had the intention of creating a literary type after the image of Juliana Hermil, of relating his recent and personal adventure? The torturing problem presented itself anew. What had been the progressive incidents of this adventure, from the beginning to its close?And I thought I could hear the words uttered by Juliana that unforgettable night: "I love you, I have always loved you, I have always been yours; I expiate by this hell one moment's weakness, you understand?One moment's weakness. It is the truth. Do you not feel that it is the truth?"Alas! how often we believe we feel the truth in a voice that lies. Nothing can guard us from being thus duped. But if what I had felt in Juliana's voice was the pure truth, then, had she really been taken during a physical languor, in my very house? Had she submitted with a sort of unconsciousness? And, on awakening, had she felt only horror and disgust at the irreparable act, and had she banished that man, had she never seen him again?This supposition, in fact, was in nowise contradicted by appearances; and appearances even supported the supposition that, for a long time, the rupture between Juliana and him was complete and definite."In my own house!" I repeated. And, in this house, silent as a tomb, in these deserted and close rooms, I was followed by the obsession of the vision.
XVI.
Who will ever be able to describe in words the sensation of stupor and of desolate aridity which, in man, succeeds tears uselessly shed, paroxysms of useless hopelessness? Tears are a temporary phenomenon; each crisis ends in calm, every attack is brief; and, afterwards, man finds himself exhausted, his heart arid, more than ever convinced of his own impotence, corporeally stupid and sad, with the impassable reality before him.
I was the first to cease weeping; I was the first to open my eyes to the light; I was the first to notice my posture and Juliana's, and of the surrounding objects. We were still on our knees, one facing the other, on the carpet. A few sobs still shook her. The candle was burning on the table, and every now and then its tiny flame flickered and bent as if under the breath of a breeze. In the silence my ear perceived the slight sound of a watch which was somewhere in the room. Life rolled on; time passed. My soul was empty and solitary.
After the violence of the emotion had subsided, after the intoxication of the pain had become dissipated, our attitudes signified nothing any more, had no longer araison d'être. I must rise, raise up Juliana, say something, definitely close this scene; but I felt for all this a strange repugnance. It seemed to me that I had become incapable of the slightest physical or moral effort. I was vexed at being there, at having to submit to these necessities, at meeting with these difficulties, at not having the strength to leave my position. And a sort of deep rancor against Juliana began to stir confusedly in the depths of my being.
I arose. I assisted her to arise. Each of the sobs that, from time to time, still shook her, increased in me this inexplicable rancor.
It is then quite true that certain germs of hate are dissimulated at the bottom of every sentiment which unites two human creatures; that is to say, which connects two egoisms? It is then quite true that these germs of inevitable hate disturb our most affectionate moments, our best impulses? All there is beautiful in the soul bears in itself a latent germ of corruption, is condemned to become corrupted.
I said (and I feared that involuntarily the tone of my voice was not sufficiently gentle):
"Be calm, Juliana. The moment has come to be courageous. Come, sit down. Be calm. Will you have a drink of water? Will you smell some salts? Answer!"
"Yes, give me a little water. You will find it in the alcove on the night table."
Her voice was still tearful; and she dried her face with a handkerchief, seated on a low divan, facing the large mirror of a closet. She had not ceased sobbing convulsively.
I entered the alcove to get the glass. I perceived the bed in the shadow. It was already made; a corner of the covers was raised and thrown back, a long white night-dress was laid close to the pillow. Immediately my subtle and keen sense of smell detected the slight perfume of the batiste, a faint odor of orris and violet, so familiar to me. The sight of the bed, the odor of the familiar perfume, disturbed me deeply. I hastened to pour out the water, and I left the alcove to take the glass to Juliana, who was waiting.
She swallowed a few mouthfuls, a little at a time, while I, standing before her, attentively observed the movement of her mouth.
"Thank you, Tullio," she said.
She gave me back the glass, still half full. As I was thirsty, I drank the water which remained. That mechanical action sufficed to increase my agitation. I sat down, in my turn, on the divan. And we remained silent, both absorbed in our reflections, separated only by a short distance.
The divan with our figures was reflected in the mirror of the closet. We could see each other's faces without looking at one another, but rather confusedly, because the light was feeble and vacillating. On the vague surface of the glass I intently examined Juliana's silhouette, which, in its immobility, gradually acquired a mysterious aspect, the disquieting fascination of certain women's portraits obscured by time, the intensity of fictitious life possessed by beings born of a hallucination. And, gradually, this distant image seemed to me more living than the real person. Gradually I saw in that image the caressing wife, the voluptuous woman, the mistress, the unfaithful one.
I closed my eyes. The Other rose up before me. One of my usual visions appeared.
I thought: "Up to now, she has made no direct allusion to her fall, to the circumstances of her fall. She has uttered only one significant phrase: 'Do you think the sin is gravewhen the soul has not consented?' And what did that mean? It was only one of those subtle distinctions to which one has usually recourse to excuse and extenuate one's treason and infamy. I suffered a nameless torture. The furious desire to know all racked my soul; the material visions exasperated me. The Other, since the instant in which he had risen in my thoughts, had not ceased for a moment to beset my mind. Was it Filippo Arborio? Had I guessed correctly?"
Suddenly I turned toward Juliana. She looked at me. But the question choked in my throat. I lowered my eyes, bent my head, and with the same spasmodic resistance that I should have felt on plucking a fragment of my flesh from some part of my body, I dared to ask her:
"The name ofthat man?"
My voice, trembling and hoarse, frightened even myself.
At this unexpected demand, Juliana started, but remained silent.
"You do not answer?" I insisted, forcing myself to repress the anger that was on the point of invading me, that blind anger which, on the previous night, already had passed over my mind like a whirlwind.
"Ah! My God!" she moaned, despairingly; and she sank down in a heap on the divan, burying her face in the cushion. "My God! My God!"
But I wished to know; I wished, at any cost, to tear the avowal from her.
"Do you remember," I went on, "do you remember that morning when I entered your room unexpectedly, early in November? Do you remember? I entered without knowing why, perhaps because I heard you singing. You were singing the air from 'Orphée'; you were preparing to go out. Do you remember? I saw a book on your dressing-table, I opened it, I read on the fly-leaf a dedication. It was a novel,The Secret. Do you remember?"
She remained with her face buried in the cushion, and made no reply. I stooped over her. I trembled with a chill like that which precedes a fever. I added:
"It is perhaps he?"
She did not answer, but she raised her head with a motion of despair. She seemed distracted. She made a gesture as if about to throw herself on me, then stopped, crying:
"Have pity! Have pity! Let me die! What you are making me suffer is worse than a thousand deaths. I have borne everything, I am capable of bearing everything; but not that, no, I cannot, I cannot. If I live it will mean for us both a constant martyrdom—a martyrdom that will daily become more terrible. And you will begin to hate me, all your hate will be vented on me. I am sure of it, sure. I have already felt the hate in your voice. Have pity! Let me die!"
She seemed distracted. She had a furious desire to seize hold of me; but not daring she twisted her hands in an effort to control herself, her whole body convulsed. I seized her by the arms, and drew her toward me.
"So I am to know nothing?" I said to her, speaking almost on her mouth, now distracted myself, carried away by a cruel instinct that made my hands rough.
"I love you, I have always loved you, I have always been yours. I expiate by this hell a moment's weakness—do you understand?One moment's weakness! That is the truth. Cannot you feel that it is the truth?"
Once more, overwhelmed by the weight of our misfortune, I clasped the poor trembling creature to my heart and silently kissed away her scalding tears.
XVII.
The external indications of Juliana's condition were not yet visible. The tie that bound the infant to the mother must be very frail. How was it that the violent emotions of the day at the Lilacs and of the following night had not sufficed to provoke a liberating crisis? Everything was against me, everything conspired against me. And my hate became more savage. To prevent the birth of the child, such was my secret design.
And I considered the future with a sort of divining clear-sightedness. Juliana would give birth to a boy, sole heir of our ancient name. The son who was not mine would grow up without accident; he would usurp the love of my mother and my brother; he would be caressed, adored; he would be preferred to Maria and to Natalia, my own creations. The force of habit would dull Juliana's remorse; she would abandon herself without restraint to her maternal feeling. And the son who was not mine would grow up under her protection, surrounded by her assiduous cares; he would become robust and handsome; he would become capricious like a little despot; he would reign in my house. By degrees these visions became particularized. Such or such an imaginary spectacle took the shape and motion of an actual scene; such or such a trait of that imaginary life was impressed so strongly in my consciousness that it retained there for some time the characteristics of an effective reality. The child's traits were modified to infinity; his acts, his gestures, were diversified without cease. At times I represented him to myself as being thin, pale, taciturn, with a large, heavy head bent on his chest; at other times I saw him all rosy, plump, gay, chattering, graceful and coaxing, particularly affectionate toward me, very good; at other times, on the contrary, he was nervous, bilious, a little spiteful, full of intelligence and evil instincts, rough with his sisters, cruel to animals, incapable of tenderness, undisciplinable. This last image ended by dominating all the others, eliminated them by becoming more lasting, fixed itself into a precise type, became animated with an intense chimerical life, ended by taking a name: the name that I had long since chosen for the male heir, my father's name, Raymond.
That little perverse phantom was a direct emanation of my hate, and he bore against me a hostility equal to that I had for him. He was an enemy, an adversary, with whom I was about to begin a struggle. He was my victim, and I was his. I could not escape from him; he could not escape from me. We were both shut in as it were in a circle of iron.
He had gray eyes like Filippo Arborio. Among the various expressions of his face one struck me above all, in an imaginary scene that often arose before me. This scene is as follows: I entered a room filled with darkness, with strange silence. I thought I was alone there. All at once, on turning round, I perceived Raymond looking at me fixedly with his gray and wicked eyes. Suddenly the temptation to commit the crime assailed me so strongly that, so as not to throw myself on the malefic being, I took to flight.
XVIII.
Between Juliana and me the compact appeared concluded. She lived. We both continued to live, simulating and dissimulating. Like dipsomaniacs, we had two alternate lives: the one tranquil, made up entirely of gentle appearances, of filial tendernesses, pure affection, reciprocal complaisances; the other agitated, feverish, troubled, uncertain, hopeless, a prey to a fixed idea, forever pursued by a menace, precipitated toward an unknown catastrophe. There were rare moments when my soul, seeking to avoid so much misery, to free itself from the curse that enveloped it like a thousand tentacles, burst forth with an aspiration toward the highest ideal of goodness, a glimpse of which I had more than once had. My memory recalled to me the singular words of my brother at the entrance to Assoro forest on the subject of Giovanni di Scordio: "You will do well, Tullio, not to forget that smile." And that smile on the old man's withered mouth acquired a profound significance, became extraordinarily luminous, exalted me like the revelation of a supreme verity.
Almost always, during these rare moments, I also saw another smile, that of Juliana lying ill on her pillows, that unexpected smile, which decreased, decreased, without disappearing. And the remembrance of the distant peaceful afternoon when I had intoxicated the poor invalid with deceptive transports, the recollection of the morning when she rose for the first time and when, in the middle of the room, she had fallen into my arms, laughing and panting, the recollection of the truly divine gesture with which she had offered me love, indulgence, peace, dreams, forgetfulness, all that there is beautiful and all that there is good, caused me hopeless regrets and infinite remorse. The sweet and terrible question that André Bolkonsky had read on the dead face of the Princess Lisa, I read unceasingly on the still living face of Juliana. "What have you done to me?" No reproach had issued from her lips; she had not attempted to lessen the gravity of her sin, to interpose any one of my own infamies; she had been humble before her executioner; not a drop of bitterness had tinged her words. And yet her eyes repeated to me, "What have you done to me?"
A strange sacrificial ardor suddenly fired me, impelled me to take up my cross. The grandeur of the expiation seemed worthy of my courage. I felt in myself a superabundance of strength, a heroic soul, an inspired intelligence. On going toward the sorrowful sister, I thought: "I will find the kind words that will console her, I will find the fraternal tones that will alleviate her pain, that will clear her brow." But directly I entered her presence, I could no longer speak; my lips seemed sealed with an infrangible seal, all my being seemed stricken by a malefice. The internal light suddenly died out, as if extinguished by an icy wind of unknown origin. And in the shadows began to move vaguely that dull rancor which I had so often felt and which I was powerless to repress.
It was the symptom of an attack. I stammered a few incoherent words. I avoided Juliana's eyes, and I fled from the room.
XIX.
It is unbelievable how much energy she displayed in dissimulating before those who were ignorant of the facts. She still succeeded in smiling! My known anxiety for her health furnished me with a pretext that justified a certain sadness that I could not succeed in disguising. This anxiety, shared by my mother and by my brother, resulted in the coming event not being looked upon as cause for rejoicing, as the previous births had been, and everyone avoided making the usual allusions or predictions. I was grateful for that.
Finally, Dr. Vebesti arrived at the Badiola.
His visit reassured us. He said Juliana was very much run down; he noticed in her a slight nervous irritability, an impoverishment of the blood, a general disturbance of the nutritive functions; but he affirmed that the progress of the gestation presented no notable anomaly, and that, when the general condition was improved, delivery could take place under normal conditions. Besides, he gave us to understand that he placed considerable confidence in Juliana's exceptional temperament, whose extraordinary power of resistance he had had occasion to test in the past. He prescribed careful hygiene and a reconstructive diet, approved of the stay at the Badiola, recommended regularity, moderate exercise, and tranquillity of mind.
"I count particularly on you," he said to me, seriously.
It was a disappointment to me. I had placed in him a hope of salvation, and, lo, I had lost it. Before his arrival, I nourished this hope: "If he would only declare it necessary, in order to preserve the mother, to sacrifice the still formless child! If he would only declare it necessary, in order to avoid a certain catastrophe at the completion of the term, to have recourse to extreme measures and suppress the child! Juliana would be saved, she would get well; and I too would be saved, I should feel as if reborn. It would be possible, I believe, to almost forget, or at least to be resigned. Time heals so many wounds, and work consoles so many sorrows! I could, I believe, gradually recover my peace, and turn over a new leaf, follow my brother's example, become better, become a man, live for others, embrace the new religion. I believe that my very sorrow could help me in regaining my dignity. The man to whom it is given to suffer more than others is alsoworthyof suffering more than others. Is not that a verse from my brother's evangel? There is, then, an election for pain. Giovanni di Scordio, for instance, is one of the elect. To possess such a smile is to possess a divine gift. I could, I believe, merit that gift." Such had been my hope. By a curious contradiction, I had hoped by my expiatory fervor to obtain a diminution of my punishment!
In fact, though I wished to be regenerated by my suffering, I was afraid to suffer, I had an atrocious fear of facing actual pain. My soul was already exhausted; although it had caught a glimpse of the true road and had been agitated by Christian aspirations, it stole away by an oblique path that led straight to the inevitable abyss.
While speaking with the doctor, when showing a slight incredulity at his reassuring predictions, by manifesting anxiety, I found the means of conveying my thoughts to him. I made him understand that I desired him, at any cost, to free Juliana from all danger, and that, if it were necessary, I would renounce this new offspring without regret. I begged him to speak to me frankly.
He reassured me a second time. He declared to me that, even in a hopeless case, he would not have recourse to extremes because, in the state that Juliana was in, a hemorrhage would be very dangerous. He repeated again that, above all, we must aid and stimulate the regeneration of the blood, reconstitute the debilitated organism, contrive, by every means in our power, that the mother should arrive at the natural term of gestation with her strength restored, with a confident and tranquil mind. He concluded:
"I believe that your wife requires moral consolation more than anything else. I am an old friend. I know that she has suffered much. It depends on you to pacify her mind."
XX.
My mother redoubled her tenderness for Juliana. She let her know her cherished dream and her presentiment. It was a grandson whom she awaited, a little Raymond. She was sure, this time.
My brother, too, expected Raymond.
Maria and Natalia often asked their mother, and grandmother, and me, artless questions concerning their future companion.
Thus the domestic love, expressed by presages, wishes, and hopes, began to surround the invisible fruit, the being that was yet without form.
One day we were seated, Juliana and I, beneath the elms. My mother had just left us. During her affectionate chat, she had named Raymond; she had even brought again into use a pet name that called up distant memories of my dead father. Juliana and I answered her by a smile. She believed that we shared her dream, and she had left in order that we might go on dreaming undisturbed.
It was the calm and limpid hour that follows the sunset. Above our heads, the foliage was motionless. From time to time a flock of swallows rapidly cleft the air with a sound of beating wings, with piercing cries, as at the Lilacs.
Our eyes followed the sainted woman as long as she was visible; then we looked at one another, silently, in consternation. We remained for several minutes without breaking the silence, crushed by the immensity of our sorrow. And then, with a terrible effort of my entire being, making an abstraction of Juliana, I felt the little creature living alone at my side, as if, at that moment, no other creature existed near me, had existed around me. And it was not an illusory sensation, but a real and profound sensation. A thrill of horror ran through all my fibres; I started violently and fixed my eyes on my companion's face in order to dissipate the sensation. We looked at one another, without knowing what to say or do to combat the excess of our anguish. I saw in her face the reflection of my distress, I divined my own physiognomy. My eyes turned instinctively toward her body; and I perceived on her face the same expression of terror exhibited by invalids afflicted by a monstrous infirmity, when one looks at the member deformed by an incurable malady.
After a pause, during which we both tried in vain to measure our suffering, she said, in a low voice:
"Have you thought that this may endure as long as we live?"
My lips remained closed; it was only within myself that was heard the determined answer:
"No, it will not last."
She went on:
"Remember that, with a single word, you can solve the difficulty and free yourself. I am ready. Remember."
I still remained silent, but I thought: "No, it is not you who must die."
She went on, in a voice that tearful tenderness rendered trembling:
"I cannot console you; there is consolation neither for you nor for me; there will never be any. Have you thought that someone will always be between us? If your mother's wish is granted— Think! Think!"
But my soul shuddered beneath the sinister light of a single idea. I said: "They all love him already."
I hesitated. I gave Juliana a rapid look. Then, suddenly, lowering my eyes, bending my head, I asked, in a voice that died away on my lips:
"And you, do you love him?"
"Oh! what a question!"
I could not restrain myself from persisting, although I suffered physically as if an open wound were being torn by nails.
"Do you love him?"
"No, no! I have a horror of him."
I felt an instinctive joy, as if I had obtained, by this confession, an assent to my secret idea, and a sort of complicity. But had Juliana answered me sincerely? Or had she told a falsehood out of pity for me?
I was assailed by a cruel and furious desire to persist, to make her confess fully, to penetrate to the very depths of her soul. But her appearance stopped me. I abstained. I now felt no bitterness toward her. I was now drawn toward her by an emotion of gratitude. It seemed to me that the horror she had shudderingly confessed separated her from the creature whom she was nourishing, and brought her closer to me. I felt a desire to make her understand these things, and increase her aversion to the infant to be born, as if against an irreconcilable enemy of us both.
I took her hand; I said to her:
"You have comforted me a little. I thank you. You understand——"
And I added, masking my homicidal intention by a Christian hope:
"There is a Providence. Who knows? The day of deliverance will come, perhaps. You understand me. Who knows? Pray to God."
It was a presage of death for the infant to be born; it was a wish. And, by inducing Juliana to pray that it should come to pass, I was preparing her for the funereal event, I obtained from her a sort of moral complicity. I ended by thinking:
"If, as a result of my words, the suggestion of crime should come to her, and, gradually, become strong enough to actuate her? Certainly it is possible that she may convince herself of the dreadful necessity, that she may elevate herself to the thought of my deliverance, that she may experience a burst of savage energy, that she may accomplish the supreme sacrifice. Did she not repeat just now that she was still ready to die? But her death includes that of her child. Therefore, she is not restrained by any religious prejudice, by the fear of sinning; since she is ready to die, she is ready to commit a double crime, against herself and against maternity. On the other hand, she is convinced that her existence on earth is useful, even indispensable to the persons who love her and whom she loves; and she is also convinced that the existence of the son who is not mine will make an intolerable torture of our lives. She knows, too, that we could draw closer together, that we could, perhaps, in forgiveness and forgetfulness, regain some happiness, that we could hope from time the cure of the wound, if between her and me no intruder interposed. It suffices, then, that she should reflect on all that to rapidly convert a useless desire and an inefficacious prayer into a resolution and an act." I meditated; she also meditated silently, her head lowered, without removing her hand from mine, while deep in the shadows of the great motionless elms.
What were her thoughts? Her brow still retained the pallor of death. With the fall of evening, was another shadow descending upon her, too?
I seemed to see Raymond. But no longer in the form of a perverse and treacherous gray-eyed child; but with the form of a miserable little body, soft and reddish, scarcely breathing, and which the slightest pressure would kill.
The bell at the Badiola sounded the first strokes of the Angelus. Juliana withdrew her hand from mine and made the sign of the cross.
XXI.
The fourth and fifth months passed and the gestation began to develop rapidly. Juliana's person, slender, supple, and flexible, enlarged and naturally conformed to her condition. She felt herself humiliated before me as by a disgraceful infirmity. A poignant suffering appeared on her face when she caught my eyes fixed on her heavy figure.
I felt overwhelmed, incapable of bearing any longer the weight of this miserable existence. Every morning, when I opened my eyes after an agitated slumber, I felt as if someone had given me a deep cup, saying: "If you wish to drink, if you wish to live to-day, you must shed into this cup the last drop of your heart's blood." At each awakening a repugnance, a disgust, an indefinable repulsion assailed me in the most secret recesses of my being. And yet I must live.
The days were cruelly long. Time scarcely passed: it fell drop by drop, lazily and heavily. And I still had the summer before me, part of the autumn, an eternity. I tried to imitate my brother, to aid him in the extensive agricultural labors that he had undertaken, to become enthusiastic with the fire of his faith. I remained on horseback for whole days, like abuttero; I tired myself out with manual labor, at some easy and monotonous employment; I sought to dull the point of my conscience by a prolonged contact with the men of the soil, simple and upright souls, those whom the moral precepts received from their ancestors prompted to perform their functions just as naturally as the corporeal organs performed theirs. Several times I went to visit Giovanni di Scordio, the hermit saint; I wished to hear his voice, I wished to interrogate him concerning his misfortunes, I wished to see once more his sad eyes and his sweet smile. But he hardly spoke; he was a little timid with me; he barely answered me by a few vague words; he did not love to speak of himself, he did not care to complain, he did not stop at the labor at which he was occupied. His hands, bony, dried, and sunburnt, that seemed as if cast in living bronze, were never idle, perhaps did not know fatigue. One day, I exclaimed:
"When will your hands ever rest?"
The good man looked down at his hands with a smile; he looked at the backs and then at the palms, turned them over and over in the sunlight. That look, that smile, that sunlight, that gesture, conferred on those great calloused hands a sovereign nobility. Hardened by the agricultural instruments, sanctified by the good they had shed, by the immense labor they had performed, those hands were now worthy of bearing the palm.
The old man crossed them on his breast, according to the Christian mortuary rites, and answered, without ceasing to smile:
"Very soon, signor, if it please God. When I am laid, in this fashion, in the coffin. Amen!"
XXII.
Every remedy was tried in vain. Labor did not solace me, did not console me, because it was excessive, unequal, irregular, feverish, frequently interrupted by periods of unconquerable inertia and depression.
My brother warned me:
"You are not following the proper rule. You spend in one week six months' energy; then you let yourself fall back into indolence; then, without moderation, you recommence to exhaust yourself with fatigue. That is not what health demands. To be effective, your work must be calm, concordant, harmonic. Do you understand? We must prescribe a method for you. But you have the fault of all novices—excessive ardor. Later on you will be calmer."
My brother said:
"You have not yet found your equilibrium. You do not yet feelterra firmabeneath your feet. But have no fear. Sooner or later, you will succeed in grasping the law. That will come to you unexpectedly, when you least expect it."
He said also:
"This time, Juliana will surely give you an heir—Raymond. I have already thought of the godfather. Giovanni di Scordio will hold your son at the baptismal font. He is the worthiest godfather you could possibly find for him. Giovanni will inspire him with goodness and strength. When Raymond is old enough to understand, we will speak to him of this noble old man. And your son will be what we could not have been, what we have not been able to be."
He often returned to this subject, he often pronounced the name of Raymond, he prayed for the child to be born his incarnate ideal of the human type—the Model. He did not know that every one of his words was for me like the thrust of a poniard which exasperated my hate, and rendered my despair more violent.
Everyone conspired against me unknowingly, everyone was constantly distressing me. When I approached one of my family, I felt anxious and fearful, as if I were compelled to remain near a person who, holding some terrible weapon, knew neither how to use it nor its danger. I was in continual expectation of being wounded. To enjoy a short truce, I was compelled to seek solitude and flee far from my own; but in solitude I found myself face to face with my worst enemy, myself.
I felt that I was secretly going into a decline; it seemed to me that my life was ebbing away through every pore. At times there were reproduced in me conditions of soul that had belonged to the most obscure period of my past, henceforth so distant. At times I preserved only the intimate feeling of my own isolation amidst the inert phantoms of all things. For long hours, I had no other sensation but that of the continuous and crushing weight of life and of that of the slight throbbing of an artery in my head.
Then survened ironies, sarcasms against myself, sudden furious desires to rend and destroy, pitiless derisions, ferocious wickedness, an acute fermentation of the most abject dregs. It seemed to me that I no longer knew what indulgence, pity, tenderness, goodness meant. Every inner source of good was obstructed, dried up like fountains stricken by a malediction. And then I no longer saw in Juliana anything but the brutal fact, the pregnancy; I no longer saw in myself anything but the ridiculed person, the satirized husband, the stupid hero of the classic farce. The inner sarcasm spared none of my actions, none of Juliana's actions. The drama became metamorphosed for me into a bitter and farcical comedy. Nothing restrained me longer; every bond broke; a violent rupture took place. And I said to myself: "Why should I rest here and play this odious rôle? I will go away, go back into society, back to my early life, back to libertinism. I will close my eyes to everything. I will lose myself. What does it matter? I do not wish to be what I am, mire within mire. Phew!"
XXIII.
During one of these attacks I resolved to leave the Badiola, to depart for Rome, to go I knew not where.
I had a pretext ready. As we had not anticipated so long an absence, we had left the town house temporarily. It was urgent to regulate various affairs and take measures that our absence might be prolonged indefinitely.
I announced my departure. I persuaded my mother, brother, and Juliana that it was necessary; I promised to hurry and return in a few days. I made my preparations.
The evening before I left, late in the night, while I was strapping a valise, I heard a knock at my door. I said:
"Come in!"
I was surprised to see Juliana.
"Ah! Is it you?"
I went forward to meet her. She was panting a little, fatigued perhaps by the stairs. I made her sit down. I offered her a cup of cold tea with a thin slice of lemon, a beverage that used to please her and that had been prepared for me. She scarcely wet her lips, and handed it back. Her eyes revealed her anxiety.
Finally she said timidly:
"So you are going?"
"Yes," I replied. "To-morrow morning, as you know."
Then followed a long interval of silence. Through the open windows entered a delicious coolness; the rays of the full moon lit up the house and garden; the choir of chirping crickets could be heard, like the sharp and indefinitely distant sound of a flute.
She asked me in a changed voice:
"When will you return? Tell me frankly."
"I do not know," I answered.
There was a new pause. A light breeze came in from time to time, and the curtains swelled; every breath carried into the room as far as us the voluptuousness of that summer night.
"Are you deserting me?"
There was such profound distress in her voice that my studied coolness suddenly gave way to regret and pity.
"No," I answered. "Don't be alarmed, Juliana. I need a little rest. I can stand it no longer. I must have breathing room."
"You are right," she answered.
"I think I shall soon come back, as I promised. I will write to you. You, too, will perhaps feel relief at not seeing me suffer."
"Relief," she said. "No, never."
A choking sob quivered in her voice. She added, immediately, in a tone of heart-breaking anguish:
"Tullio, Tullio, tell me the truth! Do you hate me? Tell me the truth!"
Her eyes interrogated me, more agonized even than her words. For an instant her very soul seemed fixed on me. And those poor eyes, wide open, that pure-looking brow, that contracted mouth, that emaciated chin, all that frail, unhappy face which contrasted with the lower ignominious deformity, and those hands, those frail, sorrowful hands that stretched toward me with such a supplicating gesture, pained me more than ever, moved me to pity and sympathy.
"Believe me, Juliana; believe me once for all. I feel no resentment toward you, and I never shall. I do not forget that I am your debtor; I forget nothing. Have I not already proved it? Be reassured. Think now of yourdeliverance. And, besides, who knows? But, in any case, Juliana, I will not disappoint you. Let me go for the time being. Perhaps a few days' absence will do me good. I shall be calmer when I return. Calmness is very necessary for what is to follow. You will need all my assistance."
She said:
"Thank you. Do with me what you will."
A human chant now came to us through the darkness, covering the shrill sound of the rural concert—perhaps a choir of reapers in the moonlight on some distant field.
"Do you hear?" I said.
We listened. We felt the breath of the breeze. All the voluptuousness of the summer night filled my heart.
"Shall we go and sit down on the terrace?" I asked Juliana, gently.
She consented, and rose. We passed through an adjoining room, where there was no other light than that of the full moon. A great white wave, resembling immaterial milk, inundated the floor. As she preceded me to go out on the terrace, I could see her deformed shadow outlined in black in the light.
Ah! where was the slender and supple creature whom I had taken in my arms? Where was the lover I had found once more beneath the flowering lilacs, that April noon? In a second, my heart was invaded with every regret, with every desire, with every despair.
Juliana sat down and leaned her head on the iron of the balustrade. Her face, fully illuminated, was whiter than all its surroundings, whiter than the wall. Her eyes were half-closed. The eyelids cast a shadow on her cheek-bones that agitated me more than a look would have done.
How could I utter a word?
I turned toward the valley, and leaned on the balustrade, grasping the cold iron with my fingers. I saw beneath me an enormous heap of confused appearances, in which I noticed only the reflection of the Assoro. The chant came to us or was interrupted, as the breeze rose or fell, and, during the pauses, was again heard the shrill flute-sound, indefinitely distant. Never had a night appeared to me so full of sweetness and sorrow. From the extreme depth of my soul arose a cry, piercing and yet not audible, towards the lost felicity.
XXIV.
Scarcely had I arrived in Rome, when I was sorry I had come. I found the city burning hot, on fire, almost deserted; and that frightened me. The house was silent as the tomb, and the familiar objects I knew so well presented an unusual and strange aspect; and that also frightened me. I felt a sensation of solitude, frightful solitude; and yet I did not go in search of friends, I did not wish to remember or meet anyone. But I began a search for the man whom I detested with an implacable hate, the search for Filippo Arborio.
I hoped to meet him in some public place. I went to the restaurant which I knew he frequented. I waited for him an entire evening, premeditating the way in which I would provoke him. Each time I heard a step of a new arrival, my heart gave a bound. But he did not come. I questioned the waiters. They had not seen him for a long time.
I went to the salle d'armes. The rooms were empty, bathed in the greenish shadow made by the closed blinds, filled with that peculiar odor which rises from wooden floors when they are sprinkled. The maestro, deserted by his pupils, greeted me with the greatest demonstrations of amiability. I listened attentively to the minute details of the last assault; then I asked him for news of several of my friends who frequented the salle; finally I asked him about Filippo Arborio.
"He has not been in Rome for four or five months," replied the maestro. "I have heard that he has a very serious and almost incurable nervous malady. I heard it from Galiffa. But that's all I know about it."
He added:
"In fact, he was very, very weak. He only took a few lessons from me. He was afraid to fence; he could not bear to see the point of a sword before his eyes."
"Is Galiffa still in Rome?"
"No, he is at Rimini."
Shortly after I went away.
This unexpected news startled me. "If it were only true," I thought. And I took pleasure in imagining that it was one of those terrible maladies of the spinal cord or of the cerebral substance that reduce a man to the lowest degradations, to idiocy, to the most pitiful forms of madness, and finally to death. The knowledge I had gained from scientific books, the recollections of a visit I had paid to an insane asylum, the images, still more precise, that I retained of a special case of one of my friends, Spinelli, repassed through my memory in a crowd. And once more I saw poor Spinelli seated in his big red-leather arm-chair, the color of clay, every line of his face paralyzed, his mouth drawn and gaping, full of saliva and stammering incomprehensibly; again I saw the gesture he made every little while to receive in his handkerchief that inexhaustible saliva that ran down the corners of his mouth; again I saw the blond, thin, and sorrowful face of the sister adjusting a napkin beneath the invalid's chin as on a baby, and introducing into his stomach, with the pharyngeal sound, the nourishment he was no longer capable of swallowing.
"So much the better," I thought. "If I had fought a duel with so celebrated an adversary, if I had wounded him seriously, if I had killed him, the fact would certainly not pass unnoticed; it would be in every mouth, it would get into the papers, and perhaps the true cause of the duel would also be found out. This providential malady, on the contrary, spares me all danger, all annoyance, all gossip. I may well renounce a sanguinary joy, a punishment inflicted by my own hand (and, besides, am I sure of the result?), since I know that disease paralyzes and saps the power of the man I detest. But is the news true? Perhaps it is only a temporary illness?" A happy idea struck me. I jumped into a cab and drove to the office of his publisher. During the drive I mentally pictured to myself—with a sincere wish that he might be stricken by them—the two cerebral diseases most terrible for a man of letters, for an artist in language, for a stylist, aphasia and agraphia. And an imaginary vision presented their symptoms to me.
I entered the office. At first I could distinguish nothing, my eyes still blinded by the outer light. But I heard a nasal voice questioning me in a strange tone:
"What can I do for signor?"
I perceived behind the desk a person of uncertain age, a dry, pallid, fair man, a sort of an albino. I turned toward him, mentioned the titles of several works. I bought a few, then I inquired for the last novel by Filippo Arborio. The albino handed meThe Secret. I feigned to be a fanatical admirer of the novelist.
"Is this really his last?"
"Yes, signor. A month or two ago, we announced a new novel by him:Turris Eburnea."
"Turris Eburnea!"
My heart throbbed.
"But I do not think we can publish it."
"Why not?"
"The author is very ill."
"Ill? What's the matter?"
"A progressive paralysis of the medulla oblongata," replied the albino, separating the terrible words, with a certain scientific affectation.
"Oh! The same illness that Spinelli had! So it is serious?"
"Very serious," said the albino sententiously. "Signor knows that there is no cure for that form of paralysis."
"But it is still only in its earliest stage?"
"Yes; but there is no doubt as to its nature. The last time he came here I could already detect that he had difficulty in articulating certain words."
"Ah! you heard him?"
"Yes, signor. His pronunciation was already indefinite, and vacillating."
I encouraged the albino by the extreme and, so to speak, admiring attention that I paid to him. I believe that he would voluntarily have acquainted me with the words that had been pronounced with such difficulty by the illustrious novelist.
"And where is he now?"
"He is at Naples. The doctors are treating him with electricity."
"Electric treatment!" I repeated with artless stupor, an affectation of ignorance, so as to please the albino's vanity and thus prolong the conversation.
It is true that in the shop, narrow and long like a corridor, there flowed a draught of cool air that favored chatting. The place was shaded. A clerk slept peacefully in a chair, his chin on his bosom, in the shadow of a terrestrial globe. Nobody entered.
There was something ridiculous about the bookseller. His sallow face, his shrivelled mouth, and nasal twang amused me, and in the quiet of the bookshop it was very agreeable to hear the confirmation of the incurable malady of a man abhorred.
"Have the doctors no hope of curing him?" I said, to stimulate the albino.
"Impossible."
"Let us hope it is possible, for the sake of literature."
"Impossible."
"But it seems to me that, in progressive paralysis, there are cases that have been cured."
"No, signor, no. He may live two, three, four years yet, but he cannot be cured."
"It seems to me, however——"
I do not know from whence came this lightness of heart that made me make sport of the narrator of this news, this curious complaisance to relish the cruelty of my sentiment. But I certainly found pleasure in it. And the albino, piqued by my contradictions, climbed, without further argument, up a small wooden ladder leaning against the high shelves. Thin as he was, he resembled one of those vagabond cats, fleshless and hairless, that crouch on the edge of a roof. As he reached the top, his head brushed against a cord stretched from one corner of the shop to the other, and which served as a resting place for flies. A cloud of the insects swarmed around his head with a furious buzzing. He came down, holding a book in his hand—the authority which declared in favor of death. The implacable flies descended with him.
He showed me the title. It was a special work on pathology.
"Signor will see."
He turned over the leaves. As the book was not cut, he separated the leaves with his finger, and, lowering his whitish eyes, read inside: "The prognosis of progressive bulbar paralysis is unfavorable." He added:
"Is signor convinced now?"
"Yes, but what a misfortune! Such a talented man!"
The flies could not be quieted. They were buzzing in a provoking manner. They attacked the albino, me, and the assistant who was sleeping under the terrestrial globe.
"How oldwas he?" I asked, involuntarily erring about the tense of the verb, as if I referred to a dead man.
"Who, signor?"
"Filippo Arborio."
"Thirty-five, I believe."
"So young!"
I felt a strange desire to laugh, a puerile desire to laugh in the albino's face, and to leave him. It was a very singular excitation, rather convulsive, never before felt, indefinable. My mind was shaken by something similar to the strange and uncontrollable hilarity that seizes one at times in the surprising incoherences of a dream. The book was still open and lay on the bench, and I bent over it to examine a vignette that represented a human face contorted by a grimace, atrocious and grotesque: "Hemiatrophy of the left face." The implacable flies still buzzed ceaselessly.
"Have you not received the manuscript ofTurris Eburneayet?" I asked.
"No, signor. We have announced the book; but the title is all that exists."
"Only the title?"
"Yes, signor. And, in fact, we have stopped announcing the book."
"Thank you. Please send these books to my house sometime to-day."
I gave my address and left.
On the pavement, I felt a strange sensation of bewilderment. It seemed to me as if I had left behind me a fragment of an artificial, false, factitious life. What I had done, what I had said, what I had felt, and the albino's face, his voice, his gestures, all seemed unreal, took on the appearance of a dream, the character of an impression, received, not from contact with the reality, but from a book recently read. I entered the cab again and returned home. The vague sensation faded away. I began to calmly reflect. I assured myself that all was real, indisputable. Spontaneously visions of the sick man formed before me, copied on those furnished me by my recollections of poor Spinelli. And I was seized by new curiosity. "Suppose I go to Naples to see him?" I pictured to myself the pitiful spectacle of that intellectual man, degraded by disease, stammering like an idiot. I no longer felt any joy; all the exaltation of my hate had fallen; a profound sadness overwhelmed me. In fact, the ruin of this man had no influence on my own position, did not repair my own ruin. There was nothing changed, neither in me, nor in my actual situation, nor in my previsions of the future.
And I thought of the title of the book announced by Filippo Arborio:Turris Eburnea. Doubts pressed in a crowd in my mind. Did that dedication refer to an accidental encounter? Or rather, on the contrary, had the writer had the intention of creating a literary type after the image of Juliana Hermil, of relating his recent and personal adventure? The torturing problem presented itself anew. What had been the progressive incidents of this adventure, from the beginning to its close?
And I thought I could hear the words uttered by Juliana that unforgettable night: "I love you, I have always loved you, I have always been yours; I expiate by this hell one moment's weakness, you understand?One moment's weakness. It is the truth. Do you not feel that it is the truth?"
Alas! how often we believe we feel the truth in a voice that lies. Nothing can guard us from being thus duped. But if what I had felt in Juliana's voice was the pure truth, then, had she really been taken during a physical languor, in my very house? Had she submitted with a sort of unconsciousness? And, on awakening, had she felt only horror and disgust at the irreparable act, and had she banished that man, had she never seen him again?
This supposition, in fact, was in nowise contradicted by appearances; and appearances even supported the supposition that, for a long time, the rupture between Juliana and him was complete and definite.
"In my own house!" I repeated. And, in this house, silent as a tomb, in these deserted and close rooms, I was followed by the obsession of the vision.