CHAPTER III.The first few days, George gave all his care to the little house which was to receive the New Life within its great peace; and to help him in the preparations he had Colas di Sciampagne, who seemed expert at all trades. On a band of fresh plastering he had written with the point of a reed this old device, suggested by the illusion:Parva domus, magna quies. And he saw a favorable presage even in the three blades of bay sown by the wind between the interstices of the raised edge of the window.But, when all was ready and this false energy had gone, he found again in his inmost self the inquietude, the discontent, and that implacable anguish the true cause of which he did not know; he felt confusedly that his destiny had once more pushed him into an oblique and perilous pass. It seemed to him that, from another house and from other lips, there came to him now a voice of recall and reproach. In his soul there revived the heartbreaking farewells, tearless and yet so cruel, in which he had lied from shame on reading in his deceived mother's tired eyes the question, too sad: "For whomare you abandoning me?"Was it not this mute question, the recollection of that blush and that lie, which inspired him with the inquietude, the discontent, and the anguish, at the moment that he was about to enter the New Life? And how could he silence that voice? By what intoxication?He did not dare reply. In spite of his deep trouble, he wished still to believe in the promise of her who was going to come; he hoped to be able still to attribute to his love a high moral signification. Had he not an ardent desire to live, to give to all the forces of his nature a rhythmic development, to feel himself complete and harmonious? Love would finally effect this prodigy; he would finally find in love the plenitude of his humanity, deformed and diminished by so many miseries.With these hopes and these vague tendencies, he sought to cheat his remorse; but what dominated him in presence of this woman's image was always desire. In despite of all his platonic aspirations, he could not succeed in seeing in love anything else but the work of the flesh, could not imagine the days to come but as a succession of already familiar sensual pleasures. In that benign solitude, in the company of that passionate woman, what life could he live, if not a life of idleness and voluptuousness?And all the past sorrows came back to his mind, with all the painful pictures: his mother's haggard face and swollen red eyes, scorched by tears; Christine's sweet and heart-broken smile; the large head of the sickly child, always leaning on a bosom barren of all but sighs; the cadaveric mask of the poor idiotic gormand.And his mother's tired eyes asked: "For whomare you abandoning me?"CHAPTER IV.It was the afternoon. George explored the tortuous path which, by a succession of ups and downs, led towards the Vasto Point on the edge of the sea. He gazed before and around him with a curiosity always awake, almost betraying an effort to be attentive, as if he wished to surprise some obscure thought translated by these simple semblances, or to render himself master of some unseizable secret.In a fold of the hill which followed the sea line, the water of a stream derived from a sort of small aqueduct, made from hollowed trunks and sustained by dead trees, traversed the dale from one shore to the other. There were also trenches carried in hollow tiles, as far as the fertile field where the crops were prospering; and here and there on the reflecting and murmuring trenches, beautiful violet flowers bent with airy grace. All these humble things appeared to have a profound life.And the excess of water ran and spread on the slope towards the sandy beach, passing beneath a small bridge. In the shade of the arch, several women were washing linen, and their gestures were reflected in the water as in a mobile mirror. On the beach, the linen spread out in the sun was of dazzling whiteness. A man was walking along the railroad tracks, his feet naked, carrying his shoes hanging in his hand. A woman came out of the toll-house and, with a rapid gesture, threw some débris from out of a basket. Two little girls, loaded with linen, were running, each trying to outdo the other, laughing. An old woman was hanging blue-colored skeins from a pole.Beyond, on the slope of the earth wall that bordered the path, small shells made white spots, fragile roots fluttered in the wind. The traces of the pickaxe that had cut into the fawn-colored earth were still distinguishable. From the top of a heap of earth hung a tuft of dead roots, as light as the scales of a serpent.Farther on was a large farmhouse, with a porcelain flower at the summit of its tiled roof. An outer stairway led up to a covered gallery. At the head of the stairway two women were spinning, and, beneath the sun, their distaffs had the resplendency of gold. One could hear the clicking of a weaving machine. Through the window could be seen a weaver, and her rhythmic gesture as she plied the shuttle. Lying down in a neighboring field was a gray ox, a beast of enormous size, shaking ears and tail, peacefully and unceasingly, in order to chase away the flies. Around him, chickens were scratching.A little farther, a second stream traversed the path—laughing, rippling, gay, frisking, limpid.A little farther on still, near another house, there was a silent garden, full of bushy laurels, closed all round. The stems, slender and straight, rose up motionless, with their crown of shining foliage. And one of these laurels, the most robust, was entirely enveloped by a large, amorous bryonia which triumphed over the austere foliage by the delicacy of its snowlike flowers, and by the freshness of its nuptial perfume. Below, the earth seemed to have been newly turned over. In a corner a black cross shed over the mute enclosure that sort of resigned sadness which reigns in cemeteries. At the end of the path could be seen a stairway, half in the sun and half in the shadow, by which one mounted to a half-open door, which protected two branches of a blessed olive-tree, suspended at the rustic architrave. Below, on the last step, an old man was seated, asleep, his head bare, his chin on his breast, his hands resting on his knees; and the sun was about to touch his venerable brow. From above, through the half-open door, as if to favor the senile slumber, descended the equal sound of a cradle rocking and the equal cadence of a hummed ballad.All these humble things seemed to have a profound life.CHAPTER V.Hippolyte announced that, according to her promise, she would arrive at San Vito, Tuesday, May 20th, by train direct, about one o'clock in the afternoon.That would be in two days. George wrote to her:"Come, come! I await you, and never was waiting more tantalizing. Every minute that passes is irremediably lost to happiness. Come. Everything is ready. Or rather, no, nothing is ready, save my desire. It is necessary, my friend, that you provide yourself with an inextinguishable fund of patience and indulgence; because, in this savage and impracticable solitude, every commodity of life is lacking. Oh, how impracticable! Picture to yourself, my friend, that from the station of San Vito to the Hermitage takes three-quarters of an hour by road; and to cover this distance, the only means is to follow on foot the path cut through the granite, rising perpendicularly from the sea. You must be careful to come provided with heavy shoes, and gigantic parasols. As to dresses, it is useless to bring many; a few gay and durable costumes for our morning walks will suffice. Do not forget your bathing suit...."This letter is the last I shall write you. You will get it a few hours before you start. I am writing you inthe library, a room in which there are heaps of books which we are hardly likely to read. The afternoon is grayish, and the sea stretches out in endless monotony. The hour is discreet, languorous, propitious for delicate sensualities. Oh, if you were with me! This evening will be my second night at the Hermitage, and I shall spend it alone. If you only saw the bed! It is a rustic bed, a monumental hymeneal altar, large as a field, deep as the slumber of the just—thalamus thalamorum! The mattresses contain the wool of an entire flock, the straw-bed contains the shucks of an entire field of maize. Can these chaste things have the presentiment of your nudity?"Good-by, good-by. How slowly the hours go by! Who says time has wings? I do not know what I would give if I could go to sleep in this enervating languor, and not awake until Tuesday morning. But no, I will not sleep. I, too, have killed my sleep. I have the constant vision of your mouth."CHAPTER VI.For several days voluptuous visions had haunted him without a truce. Desire awoke in his flesh with inconceivable violence. A warm puff of air, a waft of perfume, the rustle of a skirt, mere trifles, sufficed to modify his entire being, to make him languorous, to light up his face with a flame, to accelerate the pulsations of his arteries, to throw him into an agitation bordering on delirium.At the profoundest depths of his substance he bore the germs inherited from his father. He, the creature of thought and sentiment, had in his flesh the fatal heredity of that brutish being. But in him instinct had become a passion, and sensuality had assumed almost morbid forms. He was as grieved over this as if it were a shameful malady: he had a horror of these fevers which assailed him unexpectedly, which consumed him miserably; which left him debased, arid, powerless to think. He suffered from certain passions as though they degraded him. Certain sudden passages of brutality, similar to hurricanes over a growing field, devastated his mind, dried up all his inner sources, made painful furrows which for a long time he could not succeed in filling up.At the dawn of the great day, as he awoke after a few hours of a restless dozing, he thought, with a thrill of all his nerves: "She arrives to-day! To-day, in the light of to-day, my eyes will see her! I will hold her in my arms! It almost seems to me as if it will be the first possession; it seems to me, too, that I could die of it." The vision conjured up gave him so rude a shock that he felt his body traversed from tip to toe by a start similar to that caused by an electric discharge. In him appeared those terrible physical phenomena against the tyranny of which he was defenceless. All his conscience fell beneath the absolute empire of desire. Once more the hereditary lewdness broke out with an invincible fury in this delicate lover whom it pleased to call his mistress "sister," and who had a thirst for spiritual communions. He contemplated, in mind, his mistress's beauty; and every contour, seen through the flame, assumed in his eyes a radiant splendor, chimerical, almost superhuman. He contemplated, in mind, his mistress's grace; and every attitude assumed a voluptuous fascination of inconceivable intensity. In her, all was light, perfume, and rhythm.This admirable creature he possessed—he, he alone.... But, spontaneously, as the smoke rises from a poor fire, a jealous thought disengaged itself from his desire. To dissipate the agitation which he felt growing, he sprang from the bed.At the window, at dawn, the olive-tree branches had an imperceptible undulation, pale, between gray and white. The sound of the sparrows discreetly twittering was heard above the dull, monotonous wash of the sea. In a stable a lamb bleated timidly.He went out into the loggia, comforted by the tonic virtue of a bath, and drank in deeply the morning air charged with savory odors. His lungs dilated; his thoughts took their flight, agile, each marked with the image of the waited-for woman; a feeling of renewed youth made his heart palpitate.Before him was the maturity of the sun, pure, simple, without a vestige of clouds, without mystery. Above the silver sea arose a crimson disk, clearly defined, almost sharp, like a disk of metal fresh from the forge.Colas di Sciampagne, who was busy cleaning the court, cried out to him:"To-day is a great holiday. The lady is coming. The corn comes into the ear without waiting for the Ascension."George smiled at the courteous remark of the old man, and asked:"Did you think of the women to gather the furze flowers? The entire length of the road must be strewn with them."The old man gave an impatient gesture, as if to signify that he required no reminder."I sent for five!"And he named them, showing the places where the young girls lived."The Monkey's daughter, the Ogress's daughter, Favetta, Splendor, and Garbin's daughter."These names provoked in George a sudden mirth. It seemed to him that all the spirit of springtime entered into his heart, that a wave of fragrant poesy inundated it. Did not these virgins step out of a fairy tale to strew flowers on the road under the feet of the beautiful Roman?He abandoned himself to the anxious enjoyment of expectation. He asked, restlessly:"Where are they gathering their harvest of furze?""Up yonder," replied Colas di Sciampagne, pointing to the hillock; "up yonder, on the Chesnaie. Their singing will guide you."In fact, a feminine chant came at intervals from the hill. George started up the incline, in search of the singers. The small, tortuous path wound through a copse of young oaks. At a certain place it branched out into a number of paths, the ends of which could not be seen; and the narrow groves, hollowed between the thickets, crossed by innumerable roots close to the ground, formed a sort of mountainous labyrinth in which the sparrows twittered and the blackbirds whistled. George, led by both chant and perfume, did not go astray. He found the field of furze.It was a plateau on which the furze flourished so plentifully that it presented to the eye the uniformity of a vast yellow mantle, sulphur-colored, resplendent. The five lasses were gathering the flowering branches in order to fill their baskets, and were singing. They were singing at the top of their voices, in a perfect chord of the third and fifth. When they came to the refrain, they straightened up above the bushes to permit the note to more freely emerge from their unconfined chests; and they held the note a long time, looking in each other's eyes, holding before them their hands full of flowers.At the sight of the stranger they stopped, and bent over the bushes. Ill-suppressed laughter ran along the yellow carpet. George asked:"Which of you is named Favetta?"A young girl, brown as an olive, rose to reply, astonished, almost afraid."It is I, signor.""Aren't you the best singer in San Vito?""No, signor. That is not true.""It is true, it is true!" cried all her companions. "Make her sing, signor."She denied it, laughing, her face on fire; and while her companions insisted, she twisted her apron. She was of small stature, but very well formed, her bosom large and heaving, developed by singing. She had curly hair, heavy eyebrows, an aquiline nose, a rather defiant carriage of her head.After several refusals, she consented. Her companions threw their arms around her, imprisoned her in their circle. They emerged from among the flowering tufts up to their waists, amid the buzzing of the diligent bees.Favetta commenced, at first timidly; then, note by note, her voice became more assured. She had a limpid voice, fluid, crystalline as a spring of water. She sang a distich, and her companions took up the refrain in chorus. They prolonged the final notes in unison, their mouths close together so as to make but one vocal wave; and this wave undulated in the light with the slowness of liturgic cadences.Favetta sang:All the fountains are dry,My love is dying of thirst,Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!Love, I am thirsty, oh! so thirsty,Where is the water you bring me?Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!I bring you a bowl of potter's clay.Suspended from a chain of gold,Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!And her companions repeated:Love, forever!This salutation of May to love, gushing from these bosoms, which perhaps did not know it yet, which perhaps would never know its veritable sorrows, resounded in George's ears like a good augury. The girls, the flowers, the woods, the sea, all these free and unconscious things which breathed around him the voluptuousness of life—all that caressed the surface of his soul, soothed, lulled him in the habitual sentiment that he had concerning his own being, gave him an increasing, harmonious, and rhythmic sensation of a new faculty which had developed little by little in the intimacy of his substance, and that would be revealed to him in a very vague manner, as in a sort of confused vision of a divine secret. It was a fugitive enchantment, a state of consciousness so exceptional and so incomprehensible that he could not retain even its phantom.The singers pointed to the already overflowing baskets—a heap of flowers humid with dew. Favetta asked:"Will that do?""No, no, that won't be enough. Keep on gathering them. The entire road from the Trabocco to the house must be strewn. The stairway, the loggia, must be covered.""But what shall we do for Ascension Day? Won't you leave a single flower for Jesus?"CHAPTER VII.She had arrived. She had trod on the flowers, like the Madonna who is going to perform a miracle; she had trod on a carpet of flowers. She had at last arrived! She had at last crossed the threshold!And now, tired, happy, she presented to her lover's lips a face all bathed in tears, without speaking, with a gesture of inexpressible abandon. Tired, happy, she wept and smiled beneath the innumerable kisses of the adored one. What mattered the recollections of the days from which he had been absent? What mattered the miseries, the chagrins, the anxieties, the heart-breaking struggles against the inexorable brutalities of life? What mattered all the discouragements and all the despairs, in comparison with this supreme joy? She lived, she respired between her lover's arms; she felt herself infinitely loved. All else disappeared, returned to oblivion, seemed to have never existed."Oh, Hippolyte, Hippolyte! Oh, my soul! how much, how much I have longed for you! And here you are! And now, you will stay with me a long, long time, will you not? Before leaving me, you will kill me."And he kissed her on the mouth, on the cheeks, on the neck, on the eyes, insatiable, profoundly thrilled every time he met a tear. Those tears, that smile, that expression of felicity on the tired-looking face, the thought that this woman had not hesitated for a second in consenting; the thought that she had come to him from a great distance, and that, after a fatiguing journey, she wept beneath his kisses, powerless to say a word because her heart was too full—all these passionate and delightful things refined his sensations, freed his desire from impurity, gave him an emotion of almost chaste love, exalted his soul.Removing the long pin that fastened the hat and veil, he said:"How tired you must be, my poor Hippolyte! You are very pale!"Her veil was raised on her brow; she still had on her travelling cloak and her gloves. He removed the veil and hat, with a gesture that was customary with him. The beautiful brown head appeared, unencumbered, with that simple coiffure which made of the hair a sort of adherent helmet, without altering the delicate and elegant outline of the occiput, without hiding any of the nape of the neck.She wore a gorget of white lace, and a narrow black velvet ribbon which was defined with exquisite violence against the whiteness of the skin. Under the cloak could be seen a gray cloth dress—the dress of the memorable Albano days. She spread around her a faint odor of violets, the familiar perfume.George's lips became more ardent, and, as she used to say, morevoracious. He checked himself; he removed her cloak; he helped her to remove her gloves; he took her bare hands and pressed them against his temples, in a mad desire to be caressed. And Hippolyte, holding him thus by the temples, drew him towards her, enveloped him in a long caress, passed over his entire face a mouth which, languishing and warm, crept along in a multiple kiss. George recognized the divine, the incomparable mouth, the mouth which, he had thought so often, felt as if it rested on the surface of his soul, for a voluptuousness which would surpass carnal sensibility and would communicate itself to an ultra-sensible element of the inner being."You will kill me," he murmured, vibrating like a bundle of stretched cords, feeling at the back of his neck a lancinating cold which, from vertebra to vertebra, was propagated through all the marrow.And, at the bottom of himself, he noticed a vague movement of that instinctive terror which he had already observed under other circumstances.Hippolyte disengaged herself."Now, I'll leave you," she said. "Where is—my room? Oh, George, how comfortable we shall be here."She glanced around her, smiling. She made a few steps towards the threshold, stooped to gather a handful of furze, breathed in the perfume with visible sensual pleasure. She once more felt agitated, and as if intoxicated by this sovereign homage, by this fragrant glory which George had scattered along her path. Was she not dreaming? Was it she herself—was it really Hippolyte Sanzio who, in this unknown place, in this magic landscape, found herself surrounded and glorified by all this poesy?Suddenly, with new tears in her eyes, she threw her arms around George's neck, and said:"How grateful I am to you."This poesy intoxicated her heart. She felt herself lifted above her humble existence by the ideal apotheosis which enveloped her lover; she felt that she lived another life, a superior life which at times gave to her soul that kind of choking sensation which a strong wind provokes in a breast accustomed to breathe an impoverished air."How proud I am to belong to you! You are my pride. One single minute passed near you suffices to make me feel another woman, absolutely other. You suddenly communicate to me another blood and another mind. I am no longer Hippolyte, the Hippolyte of yesterday. Give me a new name."He named her:"Soul!"They fell into each other's arms in a furious embrace, as if to pluck and unroot the kisses which blossomed on their lips. Then Hippolyte disengaged herself, and repeated:"Now, I'll leave you. Where's my room? Let me see it."George passed an arm around her waist and led her into the bedroom. She gave a cry of admiration when she perceived thethalamus thalamorum, draped with a large yellow damask counterpane."But we shall get lost in it!"And she laughed as she walked all round the monument."The most difficult thing will be to get into it.""First, you'll place your foot upon my knee, in accordance with the old-time custom of the peasants in these parts.""What a lot of saints!" she exclaimed, looking at the long line of pious images on the wall, at the head of the bed."They must be covered.""Yes, you are right."Both had difficulty in finding words; both their voices were changed in tone; both of them trembled, agitated by irresistible desire, feeling almost faint at the thought of the approaching ecstasies.They heard someone knock at the door of the staircase. George went into the loggia. It was Helen, Candia's daughter; she came to say that luncheon was ready."What do you wish to do?" said George, turning toward Hippolyte, irresolute, almost convulsed."Really, George, I have not the least appetite. I will eat this evening, if you'll let me."In an agonized voice, George said:"Come into your room. Everything is ready for your bath. Come!"He led her into a room which he had covered all over with large rustic mats."You see, your trunks and your boxes are already here. Now, I'll leave you—alone. Be quick. Remember, I'm waiting. Every minute's delay will be one torture more. Remember——"He left her alone. A few moments later he heard the splashing of the water which ran from the enormous sponge and fell back again into the bath-tub. He knew the icy coldness of this spring water well, and he imagined the little starts of Hippolyte's body, that long and flexible body, beneath the refreshing shower.Then there remained nothing in his mind than thoughts of fire. Everything about him disappeared. And, when the splashing stopped, he was seized by a trembling so strong that his teeth began to chatter, as if shivering from a mortal fever. With the terrible eyes of desire, he saw the woman disengage herself from her dressing-gown, already dried, pure, delicate as an alabaster with golden tones.CHAPTER VIII.More fatigued now, almost fainting, Hippolyte sank gradually into slumber. By degrees the smile on her mouth became unconscious, disappeared. Her lips met for a second; then, with infinite slowness, they opened, and from between appeared a jasminelike whiteness. Again the lips met for a second; and again, slowly, very slowly, they parted, and from between reappeared the whiteness, moistened.Raised on one elbow, George looked at her. She appeared so beautiful, so beautiful, beautiful in the same way as he had seen her the first time, in the mysterious oratory, in front of the philosopher Alexander Memmi's orchestra, amidst the evaporated perfume of the incense and the violets. She was pale, very pale, just as on that day.She was pale, but it was that singular pallor which George had never found in any other woman—an almost mortal pallor, a profound and dead pallor which, when in the shade, became almost livid. A long shadow was cast on the upper part of her cheeks by the eyelashes; a masculine shadow, barely perceptible, veiled the upper lip. The mouth, large if anything, had a sinuous curve, very soft and yet sad, which, in the absolute silence, took on a very intense expression.George thought: "How spiritual her beauty becomes in illness and in languor! Tired as she is now, she pleases me more. I recognize the unknown woman who passed before me that February evening—the womanwho had not a single drop of blood left in her body. I believe that when she is dead she will attain the supreme perfection of her beauty.... Dead? And if she were to die? She would then become an object for thought, a pure ideality. I should love her after life without jealous inquietude, with a soothed and always even sorrow."He recalled that in other circumstances he had already imagined Hippolyte's beauty in the peacefulness of death. "Oh, that day of the roses! Great sheafs of white roses languished in the vases in June, at the beginning of their love. She was dozing on the divan, motionless, almost breathless. And he had contemplated her for a long time; then a sudden phantasy had taken him to cover her with roses, softly, softly, so as not to awaken her; and he had arranged a few roses in her hair. But thus flowered and garlanded, she had appeared to him like a body without a soul, a corpse. This spectacle had filled him with terror; he had shaken her to arouse her; but she remained inert, paralyzed by one of those syncopes to which she was subject at that time. Oh, what terror, what anguish, until she recovered her senses! And also what enthusiasm for the sovereign beauty of that face, which was so extraordinarily ennobled by that reflection of death!" This episode recurred to his memory; but while he lingered over these strange thoughts, he felt a sudden impulse of pity and of remorse. He bent over to kiss the forehead of the sleeper, who remained unconscious of his kiss. It was with the greatest difficulty that he restrained himself from embracing her more ardently, so that she might be cognizant of his caress, and respond to it. And then he felt all the vanity of a caress which would not be to the loved object a rapid communication of joy; he felt all the vanity of a love which would not be a continual and immediate correspondence of acute sensations; he felt the impossibility of becoming intoxicated unless an equally intense intoxication should correspond with his own."Am I certain," he thought, "am I positively certain that always, when I have enjoyed her, she has enjoyed me? How often has she been present, a lucid witness, during my moments of delirium? How often has my ardor appeared senseless to her?" A heavy wave of anxieties invaded him while he contemplated the sleeping woman. "The true and profound sensual communion is also a chimera. The senses of my mistress are as obscure as her soul. Never shall I succeed in surprising in her fibres a secret disgust, an appetite unsatisfied, an irritation unappeased. Never shall I succeed in knowing the different sensations which are given to her by a similar caress repeated at different moments. In the course of a single day, an organism as unhealthy as hers passes through a great number of physical states, each in discord with the other, and sometimes in complete opposition. Such an instability misleads the most penetrating clairvoyance. The same caress which, at dawn, draws from her moans of pleasure, may, an hour later, seem to her importunate. Consequently, it is possible that her nerves become hostile towards me, in spite of her will. A kiss which I prolong too far, and which gives me the vertigo of supreme enjoyment, may in her flesh arouse impatience. In the matter of sensuality, however, simulation and dissimulation are common to all women, to those who love and to those who do not. What do I say? The woman who loves, the passionate woman, is more inclined to physical simulation and dissimulation; because she fears to grieve her lover if she shows she is little disposed to surrender herself entirely. Moreover, the passionate woman often delights in exaggerating the semblance of pleasure; because she knows well that that will flatter the man's virile pride and increase his ecstasy. I confess that a proud joy swells my heart when I see Hippolyte delirious with sensual delight. I feel she is happy at thus showing herself so vanquished and prostrated by my power; and she also knows that my vain ambition as a young lover is precisely to succeed in making her plead for mercy, in drawing from her a convulsive cry, in seeing her fall back exhausted on the pillow. Which, then, in these demonstrations, is the share of the physical sincerity and that of the passionate exaggeration? Is not her ardor an artificial attitude, assumed to please me? Does she not often sacrifice herself to my desire without desiring me? Has she not, at times, to repress a commencement of repugnance?"Attentive and almost anxious, he leaned over the impenetrable creature. But, little by little, the contemplation of her beauty seemed to appease him. And he began to consider his new state. So, from this day on, a new life commenced for him.For a minute, he concentrated mind and ear, in order to lose nothing of the great peace surrounding him. Only the slow, monotonous wash of the calm sea was to be heard in the propitious silence. Against the window-panes the branches of the olive-tree swayed imperceptibly, silvered by the sun, balancing light shadows on the whiteness of the curtains. At intervals a few human voices were heard, and almost unintelligible.After this perception of the environing peace, he leaned once more over the adored one. A manifest harmony existed between the respiration of the woman and the respiration of the sea; and the concordance of the two rhythms gave an added charm to the sleeper.She reposed on her right side, in a graceful attitude. Her form was supple and long, rather too long perhaps, but of serpentine elegance. The narrowness of the thigh made it resemble that of an adolescent. The sterile abdomen had preserved its primitive virginal purity. The bosom was small and firm, as if sculptured in very delicate alabaster, and the points of her extraordinarily erect breasts were of a rose-violet hue. The posterior part of her body, from the nape of the neck down to the middle, made one think once more of an Ephebe: it was one of those fragments of the ideal human type which Nature sometimes throws among the multitude of mediocre imprints by which the race perpetuates itself. But the most precious singularity of this body was, in George's eyes, the coloration. The skin had an indescribable color, very rare, very different from the ordinary color of brunettes. The comparison of an alabaster gilded by an inner flame but scarcely conveyed the idea of this divine fineness. It seemed that a diffusion of gold and impalpable amber enriched the tissues, variegating them with a variety of harmonious pallors, like music, darker in the depressions of the loins and where the loins join the sides, lighter on the breast and on the groins, where the epidermis makes its most exquisite suavity.George thought of Othello's words: "I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others' uses."In her slumber, Hippolyte made a movement, with a vague air of suffering, which disappeared immediately. She threw back her head on the pillow, exposing her extended breast, on which was defined the light network of the veins. Her lower jaws were rather powerful, the chin rather long in profile, the nostrils broad. In the abstract, the defects of her head were accentuated; but they did not displease George, because it would have been impossible for him to imagine that they could be corrected without removing from the physiognomy an element of living expression. The expression, that immaterial thing which irradiates all matter, that changing and immeasurable force which invades the corporeal face and transfigures it, that significative external which superposes a symbolic beauty of an order far more elevated and complex on the precise reality of the lines—that was Hippolyte Sanzio's great charm, because it offered to the passionate thinker a continual motive of emotions and dreams."Such a woman," he thought, "has belonged to others before being mine. She has shared the couch of another man; she has slept with another man in the same bed, on the same pillow. In all women there exists a sort of extraordinarily active physical memory, the memory of sensations. Does she remember the sensations which she received from that man? Can she have forgotten him who was the first, and who violated her? What were her feelings beneath her husband's caress?" At these questions, which he repeated to himself for the thousandth time, a well-known anguish oppressed his heart. "Oh! why can we not put to death the creature we love, and resuscitate her afterwards with a virgin body, with a new soul?"He recalled certain words which Hippolyte had said in an hour of supreme intoxication: "You are embracing a virgin; I have never knownany voluptuousnessin love."Hippolyte was married the spring preceding that of their love. A few weeks after the wedding, she had begun to suffer from a slow and cruel malady which had confined her to bed, and kept her for a long time between life and death. But, happily, this malady had spared her all new contact with the odious man who had seized her like an inert prey. When she emerged from her long convalescence, she gave herself up to passion as in a dream: suddenly, blindly, passionately, she abandoned herself to the young stranger whose soft and curious voice had addressed to her words she had never heard before. And she had not lied when saying to him: "You are embracing a virgin; I have never known any voluptuousness."Since then, what a profound change in this woman! Something new, indefinable yet real, had entered into her voice, into her gestures, into her eyes, into her slightest tones, into her slightest movements, into the slightest external signs. George had been present at the most intoxicating spectacle of which an intellectual lover can dream. He had seen the loved woman become metamorphosed after his own image, borrow his thoughts, his judgments, his tastes, his disdains, his predilections, his melancholies, all that which gives a special imprint and character to the mind. In speaking, Hippolyte used the forms of speech he preferred, pronounced certain words with the inflexion peculiar to him. In writing, she imitated even his hand. Never had the influence of one being on another been so rapid and so strong. Hippolyte had merited the device which George had given her:Gravis dum suavis. But this grave and suave creature, she in whom he had succeeded in inculcating, with so much art, the disdain for a commonplace existence, among what humiliating contacts had she spent the distant hours?George thought again of his anguish of long ago, when he saw her go away, return beneath the conjugal roof, into the house of a man of whom he knew nothing, into a world of which he knew nothing, into the platitudes and the pettiness of the middle-class life in which she was born, and in which she had grown like a rare plant in a common flower-pot. Had she, at that time, never hidden anything from him? Had she never lied to him? Had she always been able to withdraw from her husband's importunities on the pretext that her cure was not yet complete? Always?George remembered the horrible pang he felt one day when she came late, panting, her cheeks more colored and warmer than usual, with a persistent odor of tobacco in her hair, that bad odor which impregnates him who remains a long time in a room where there are many smokers. "Pardon me, if I am late," she had said to him; "but I had several of my husband's friends to dinner, and they kept me until now." And these words had suggested to him the vision of a vulgar-looking dining-table around which the boors exhibited their brutality.George recalled a thousand similar little details, and an infinity of other cruel sufferings, and also recent sufferings, caused by Hippolyte's new condition—her stay at her mother's, in a house not less unknown and not less free from suspicion. "At last, here she is now with me! Every day, every minute, continually, I shall see her, I shall enjoy her; I will see that her thoughts are occupied continually with me, my thoughts, my dreams, my sorrows. I will consecrate to her every instant, uninterruptedly; I will invent a thousand new ways of pleasing her, of agitating her, of making her sad, of exalting her; I will so penetrate her with my being that she will end by believing me to be an essential element of her own life."He bent over her softly; he kissed her softly on the shoulder near the arm, on that little rounded eminence of exquisite form and color, whose skin had the softness of velvet fine enough as to seem almost impalpable. He respired the perfume of this woman, so subtle and sweet, that cutaneous perfume which, during the instant of pleasure, became as intoxicating as that of tuberoses and gave a terrible lash to desire. Watching thus closely the sleep of this delicate and complicated creature, whom slumber enveloped in a mystery, that strange creature who from every pore seemed to irradiate towards him some occult fascination of unbelievable intensity, he remarked once more in his inner self a vague movement of instinctive terror.Again Hippolyte changed her position, without awakening, but with a faint moan. She turned on her back. A light perspiration imparted a dampness to her temples; through her half-closed mouth the breathing respired came more rapidly, rather irregularly; at moments, her eyebrows contracted. She was dreaming. Of what was she dreaming?George, seized by an inquietude which soon increased to an insane anxiety, set himself to detect upon her face the slightest indications, in the hope of surprising there some revealing sign. Revealing what? He was incapable of reflecting, incapable of repressing the furious tumults of fears, doubts, and suspicions.In her slumber Hippolyte started; her entire body was convulsed as if racked by nightmare; she turned over on her side towards George; she groaned, and cried:"No, no!"Then she drew two or three breaths, almost like sobs, and started again.A prey to insane fear, George watched her fixedly, his ear strained—fearing to hear other words, another's name, the name of a man! He waited, in horrible uncertainty, as if under the menace of a thunderbolt which could destroy him in a second.Hippolyte awoke; she saw him confusedly, without thinking, still sleeping; she nestled close up to him, with an almost unconscious movement."Of what were you dreaming?" he asked her, in a changed voice which seemed to reverberate his heart-beats."I do not know," she answered, languid, still drowsy, leaning her cheek on her lover's breast. "I don't remember."She fell asleep again.Under the soft pressure of her cheek, George remained motionless, with a dull rancor at the bottom of his soul. He felt himself a stranger to her, isolated from her, uselessly curious. All his bitter recollections came back to him in a tumult. He lived over again, in a single instant, his miseries of two years. He could oppose nothing to the immense doubts which crushed his soul and made the head of his loved one seem as heavy as a rock.Suddenly Hippolyte started a second time, moaned, twisted, cried again. And she opened her eyes, frightened, groaning."Oh! my God!""What ails you? Of what were you dreaming?""I do not know."Her face was contracted convulsively.She added:"You must have been leaning on me. I thought you were pushing me, hurting me."She suffered visibly."Oh! my God! My pains have come back."Since her illness, she sometimes had short attacks, spasms that quickly passed, but whose passage forced from her a groan or cry.She turned towards George, looked fixedly into his eyes, and found there the traces of the tempest. And in a coaxing, reproachful tone she repeated:"You did so hurt me!"All at once George seized her in his arms, clasped her passionately to his breast, and smothered her under his kisses.
CHAPTER III.
The first few days, George gave all his care to the little house which was to receive the New Life within its great peace; and to help him in the preparations he had Colas di Sciampagne, who seemed expert at all trades. On a band of fresh plastering he had written with the point of a reed this old device, suggested by the illusion:Parva domus, magna quies. And he saw a favorable presage even in the three blades of bay sown by the wind between the interstices of the raised edge of the window.
But, when all was ready and this false energy had gone, he found again in his inmost self the inquietude, the discontent, and that implacable anguish the true cause of which he did not know; he felt confusedly that his destiny had once more pushed him into an oblique and perilous pass. It seemed to him that, from another house and from other lips, there came to him now a voice of recall and reproach. In his soul there revived the heartbreaking farewells, tearless and yet so cruel, in which he had lied from shame on reading in his deceived mother's tired eyes the question, too sad: "For whomare you abandoning me?"
Was it not this mute question, the recollection of that blush and that lie, which inspired him with the inquietude, the discontent, and the anguish, at the moment that he was about to enter the New Life? And how could he silence that voice? By what intoxication?
He did not dare reply. In spite of his deep trouble, he wished still to believe in the promise of her who was going to come; he hoped to be able still to attribute to his love a high moral signification. Had he not an ardent desire to live, to give to all the forces of his nature a rhythmic development, to feel himself complete and harmonious? Love would finally effect this prodigy; he would finally find in love the plenitude of his humanity, deformed and diminished by so many miseries.
With these hopes and these vague tendencies, he sought to cheat his remorse; but what dominated him in presence of this woman's image was always desire. In despite of all his platonic aspirations, he could not succeed in seeing in love anything else but the work of the flesh, could not imagine the days to come but as a succession of already familiar sensual pleasures. In that benign solitude, in the company of that passionate woman, what life could he live, if not a life of idleness and voluptuousness?
And all the past sorrows came back to his mind, with all the painful pictures: his mother's haggard face and swollen red eyes, scorched by tears; Christine's sweet and heart-broken smile; the large head of the sickly child, always leaning on a bosom barren of all but sighs; the cadaveric mask of the poor idiotic gormand.
And his mother's tired eyes asked: "For whomare you abandoning me?"
CHAPTER IV.
It was the afternoon. George explored the tortuous path which, by a succession of ups and downs, led towards the Vasto Point on the edge of the sea. He gazed before and around him with a curiosity always awake, almost betraying an effort to be attentive, as if he wished to surprise some obscure thought translated by these simple semblances, or to render himself master of some unseizable secret.
In a fold of the hill which followed the sea line, the water of a stream derived from a sort of small aqueduct, made from hollowed trunks and sustained by dead trees, traversed the dale from one shore to the other. There were also trenches carried in hollow tiles, as far as the fertile field where the crops were prospering; and here and there on the reflecting and murmuring trenches, beautiful violet flowers bent with airy grace. All these humble things appeared to have a profound life.
And the excess of water ran and spread on the slope towards the sandy beach, passing beneath a small bridge. In the shade of the arch, several women were washing linen, and their gestures were reflected in the water as in a mobile mirror. On the beach, the linen spread out in the sun was of dazzling whiteness. A man was walking along the railroad tracks, his feet naked, carrying his shoes hanging in his hand. A woman came out of the toll-house and, with a rapid gesture, threw some débris from out of a basket. Two little girls, loaded with linen, were running, each trying to outdo the other, laughing. An old woman was hanging blue-colored skeins from a pole.
Beyond, on the slope of the earth wall that bordered the path, small shells made white spots, fragile roots fluttered in the wind. The traces of the pickaxe that had cut into the fawn-colored earth were still distinguishable. From the top of a heap of earth hung a tuft of dead roots, as light as the scales of a serpent.
Farther on was a large farmhouse, with a porcelain flower at the summit of its tiled roof. An outer stairway led up to a covered gallery. At the head of the stairway two women were spinning, and, beneath the sun, their distaffs had the resplendency of gold. One could hear the clicking of a weaving machine. Through the window could be seen a weaver, and her rhythmic gesture as she plied the shuttle. Lying down in a neighboring field was a gray ox, a beast of enormous size, shaking ears and tail, peacefully and unceasingly, in order to chase away the flies. Around him, chickens were scratching.
A little farther, a second stream traversed the path—laughing, rippling, gay, frisking, limpid.
A little farther on still, near another house, there was a silent garden, full of bushy laurels, closed all round. The stems, slender and straight, rose up motionless, with their crown of shining foliage. And one of these laurels, the most robust, was entirely enveloped by a large, amorous bryonia which triumphed over the austere foliage by the delicacy of its snowlike flowers, and by the freshness of its nuptial perfume. Below, the earth seemed to have been newly turned over. In a corner a black cross shed over the mute enclosure that sort of resigned sadness which reigns in cemeteries. At the end of the path could be seen a stairway, half in the sun and half in the shadow, by which one mounted to a half-open door, which protected two branches of a blessed olive-tree, suspended at the rustic architrave. Below, on the last step, an old man was seated, asleep, his head bare, his chin on his breast, his hands resting on his knees; and the sun was about to touch his venerable brow. From above, through the half-open door, as if to favor the senile slumber, descended the equal sound of a cradle rocking and the equal cadence of a hummed ballad.
All these humble things seemed to have a profound life.
CHAPTER V.
Hippolyte announced that, according to her promise, she would arrive at San Vito, Tuesday, May 20th, by train direct, about one o'clock in the afternoon.
That would be in two days. George wrote to her:
"Come, come! I await you, and never was waiting more tantalizing. Every minute that passes is irremediably lost to happiness. Come. Everything is ready. Or rather, no, nothing is ready, save my desire. It is necessary, my friend, that you provide yourself with an inextinguishable fund of patience and indulgence; because, in this savage and impracticable solitude, every commodity of life is lacking. Oh, how impracticable! Picture to yourself, my friend, that from the station of San Vito to the Hermitage takes three-quarters of an hour by road; and to cover this distance, the only means is to follow on foot the path cut through the granite, rising perpendicularly from the sea. You must be careful to come provided with heavy shoes, and gigantic parasols. As to dresses, it is useless to bring many; a few gay and durable costumes for our morning walks will suffice. Do not forget your bathing suit....
"This letter is the last I shall write you. You will get it a few hours before you start. I am writing you inthe library, a room in which there are heaps of books which we are hardly likely to read. The afternoon is grayish, and the sea stretches out in endless monotony. The hour is discreet, languorous, propitious for delicate sensualities. Oh, if you were with me! This evening will be my second night at the Hermitage, and I shall spend it alone. If you only saw the bed! It is a rustic bed, a monumental hymeneal altar, large as a field, deep as the slumber of the just—thalamus thalamorum! The mattresses contain the wool of an entire flock, the straw-bed contains the shucks of an entire field of maize. Can these chaste things have the presentiment of your nudity?
"Good-by, good-by. How slowly the hours go by! Who says time has wings? I do not know what I would give if I could go to sleep in this enervating languor, and not awake until Tuesday morning. But no, I will not sleep. I, too, have killed my sleep. I have the constant vision of your mouth."
CHAPTER VI.
For several days voluptuous visions had haunted him without a truce. Desire awoke in his flesh with inconceivable violence. A warm puff of air, a waft of perfume, the rustle of a skirt, mere trifles, sufficed to modify his entire being, to make him languorous, to light up his face with a flame, to accelerate the pulsations of his arteries, to throw him into an agitation bordering on delirium.
At the profoundest depths of his substance he bore the germs inherited from his father. He, the creature of thought and sentiment, had in his flesh the fatal heredity of that brutish being. But in him instinct had become a passion, and sensuality had assumed almost morbid forms. He was as grieved over this as if it were a shameful malady: he had a horror of these fevers which assailed him unexpectedly, which consumed him miserably; which left him debased, arid, powerless to think. He suffered from certain passions as though they degraded him. Certain sudden passages of brutality, similar to hurricanes over a growing field, devastated his mind, dried up all his inner sources, made painful furrows which for a long time he could not succeed in filling up.
At the dawn of the great day, as he awoke after a few hours of a restless dozing, he thought, with a thrill of all his nerves: "She arrives to-day! To-day, in the light of to-day, my eyes will see her! I will hold her in my arms! It almost seems to me as if it will be the first possession; it seems to me, too, that I could die of it." The vision conjured up gave him so rude a shock that he felt his body traversed from tip to toe by a start similar to that caused by an electric discharge. In him appeared those terrible physical phenomena against the tyranny of which he was defenceless. All his conscience fell beneath the absolute empire of desire. Once more the hereditary lewdness broke out with an invincible fury in this delicate lover whom it pleased to call his mistress "sister," and who had a thirst for spiritual communions. He contemplated, in mind, his mistress's beauty; and every contour, seen through the flame, assumed in his eyes a radiant splendor, chimerical, almost superhuman. He contemplated, in mind, his mistress's grace; and every attitude assumed a voluptuous fascination of inconceivable intensity. In her, all was light, perfume, and rhythm.
This admirable creature he possessed—he, he alone.... But, spontaneously, as the smoke rises from a poor fire, a jealous thought disengaged itself from his desire. To dissipate the agitation which he felt growing, he sprang from the bed.
At the window, at dawn, the olive-tree branches had an imperceptible undulation, pale, between gray and white. The sound of the sparrows discreetly twittering was heard above the dull, monotonous wash of the sea. In a stable a lamb bleated timidly.
He went out into the loggia, comforted by the tonic virtue of a bath, and drank in deeply the morning air charged with savory odors. His lungs dilated; his thoughts took their flight, agile, each marked with the image of the waited-for woman; a feeling of renewed youth made his heart palpitate.
Before him was the maturity of the sun, pure, simple, without a vestige of clouds, without mystery. Above the silver sea arose a crimson disk, clearly defined, almost sharp, like a disk of metal fresh from the forge.
Colas di Sciampagne, who was busy cleaning the court, cried out to him:
"To-day is a great holiday. The lady is coming. The corn comes into the ear without waiting for the Ascension."
George smiled at the courteous remark of the old man, and asked:
"Did you think of the women to gather the furze flowers? The entire length of the road must be strewn with them."
The old man gave an impatient gesture, as if to signify that he required no reminder.
"I sent for five!"
And he named them, showing the places where the young girls lived.
"The Monkey's daughter, the Ogress's daughter, Favetta, Splendor, and Garbin's daughter."
These names provoked in George a sudden mirth. It seemed to him that all the spirit of springtime entered into his heart, that a wave of fragrant poesy inundated it. Did not these virgins step out of a fairy tale to strew flowers on the road under the feet of the beautiful Roman?
He abandoned himself to the anxious enjoyment of expectation. He asked, restlessly:
"Where are they gathering their harvest of furze?"
"Up yonder," replied Colas di Sciampagne, pointing to the hillock; "up yonder, on the Chesnaie. Their singing will guide you."
In fact, a feminine chant came at intervals from the hill. George started up the incline, in search of the singers. The small, tortuous path wound through a copse of young oaks. At a certain place it branched out into a number of paths, the ends of which could not be seen; and the narrow groves, hollowed between the thickets, crossed by innumerable roots close to the ground, formed a sort of mountainous labyrinth in which the sparrows twittered and the blackbirds whistled. George, led by both chant and perfume, did not go astray. He found the field of furze.
It was a plateau on which the furze flourished so plentifully that it presented to the eye the uniformity of a vast yellow mantle, sulphur-colored, resplendent. The five lasses were gathering the flowering branches in order to fill their baskets, and were singing. They were singing at the top of their voices, in a perfect chord of the third and fifth. When they came to the refrain, they straightened up above the bushes to permit the note to more freely emerge from their unconfined chests; and they held the note a long time, looking in each other's eyes, holding before them their hands full of flowers.
At the sight of the stranger they stopped, and bent over the bushes. Ill-suppressed laughter ran along the yellow carpet. George asked:
"Which of you is named Favetta?"
A young girl, brown as an olive, rose to reply, astonished, almost afraid.
"It is I, signor."
"Aren't you the best singer in San Vito?"
"No, signor. That is not true."
"It is true, it is true!" cried all her companions. "Make her sing, signor."
She denied it, laughing, her face on fire; and while her companions insisted, she twisted her apron. She was of small stature, but very well formed, her bosom large and heaving, developed by singing. She had curly hair, heavy eyebrows, an aquiline nose, a rather defiant carriage of her head.
After several refusals, she consented. Her companions threw their arms around her, imprisoned her in their circle. They emerged from among the flowering tufts up to their waists, amid the buzzing of the diligent bees.
Favetta commenced, at first timidly; then, note by note, her voice became more assured. She had a limpid voice, fluid, crystalline as a spring of water. She sang a distich, and her companions took up the refrain in chorus. They prolonged the final notes in unison, their mouths close together so as to make but one vocal wave; and this wave undulated in the light with the slowness of liturgic cadences.
Favetta sang:
All the fountains are dry,My love is dying of thirst,Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!Love, I am thirsty, oh! so thirsty,Where is the water you bring me?Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!I bring you a bowl of potter's clay.Suspended from a chain of gold,Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!
All the fountains are dry,My love is dying of thirst,Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!
All the fountains are dry,
My love is dying of thirst,
Tromme lari, lira....
Love, forever!
Love, forever!
Love, I am thirsty, oh! so thirsty,Where is the water you bring me?Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!
Love, I am thirsty, oh! so thirsty,
Where is the water you bring me?
Tromme lari, lira....
Love, forever!
Love, forever!
I bring you a bowl of potter's clay.Suspended from a chain of gold,Tromme lari, lira....Love, forever!
I bring you a bowl of potter's clay.
Suspended from a chain of gold,
Tromme lari, lira....
Love, forever!
Love, forever!
And her companions repeated:
Love, forever!
Love, forever!
Love, forever!
This salutation of May to love, gushing from these bosoms, which perhaps did not know it yet, which perhaps would never know its veritable sorrows, resounded in George's ears like a good augury. The girls, the flowers, the woods, the sea, all these free and unconscious things which breathed around him the voluptuousness of life—all that caressed the surface of his soul, soothed, lulled him in the habitual sentiment that he had concerning his own being, gave him an increasing, harmonious, and rhythmic sensation of a new faculty which had developed little by little in the intimacy of his substance, and that would be revealed to him in a very vague manner, as in a sort of confused vision of a divine secret. It was a fugitive enchantment, a state of consciousness so exceptional and so incomprehensible that he could not retain even its phantom.
The singers pointed to the already overflowing baskets—a heap of flowers humid with dew. Favetta asked:
"Will that do?"
"No, no, that won't be enough. Keep on gathering them. The entire road from the Trabocco to the house must be strewn. The stairway, the loggia, must be covered."
"But what shall we do for Ascension Day? Won't you leave a single flower for Jesus?"
CHAPTER VII.
She had arrived. She had trod on the flowers, like the Madonna who is going to perform a miracle; she had trod on a carpet of flowers. She had at last arrived! She had at last crossed the threshold!
And now, tired, happy, she presented to her lover's lips a face all bathed in tears, without speaking, with a gesture of inexpressible abandon. Tired, happy, she wept and smiled beneath the innumerable kisses of the adored one. What mattered the recollections of the days from which he had been absent? What mattered the miseries, the chagrins, the anxieties, the heart-breaking struggles against the inexorable brutalities of life? What mattered all the discouragements and all the despairs, in comparison with this supreme joy? She lived, she respired between her lover's arms; she felt herself infinitely loved. All else disappeared, returned to oblivion, seemed to have never existed.
"Oh, Hippolyte, Hippolyte! Oh, my soul! how much, how much I have longed for you! And here you are! And now, you will stay with me a long, long time, will you not? Before leaving me, you will kill me."
And he kissed her on the mouth, on the cheeks, on the neck, on the eyes, insatiable, profoundly thrilled every time he met a tear. Those tears, that smile, that expression of felicity on the tired-looking face, the thought that this woman had not hesitated for a second in consenting; the thought that she had come to him from a great distance, and that, after a fatiguing journey, she wept beneath his kisses, powerless to say a word because her heart was too full—all these passionate and delightful things refined his sensations, freed his desire from impurity, gave him an emotion of almost chaste love, exalted his soul.
Removing the long pin that fastened the hat and veil, he said:
"How tired you must be, my poor Hippolyte! You are very pale!"
Her veil was raised on her brow; she still had on her travelling cloak and her gloves. He removed the veil and hat, with a gesture that was customary with him. The beautiful brown head appeared, unencumbered, with that simple coiffure which made of the hair a sort of adherent helmet, without altering the delicate and elegant outline of the occiput, without hiding any of the nape of the neck.
She wore a gorget of white lace, and a narrow black velvet ribbon which was defined with exquisite violence against the whiteness of the skin. Under the cloak could be seen a gray cloth dress—the dress of the memorable Albano days. She spread around her a faint odor of violets, the familiar perfume.
George's lips became more ardent, and, as she used to say, morevoracious. He checked himself; he removed her cloak; he helped her to remove her gloves; he took her bare hands and pressed them against his temples, in a mad desire to be caressed. And Hippolyte, holding him thus by the temples, drew him towards her, enveloped him in a long caress, passed over his entire face a mouth which, languishing and warm, crept along in a multiple kiss. George recognized the divine, the incomparable mouth, the mouth which, he had thought so often, felt as if it rested on the surface of his soul, for a voluptuousness which would surpass carnal sensibility and would communicate itself to an ultra-sensible element of the inner being.
"You will kill me," he murmured, vibrating like a bundle of stretched cords, feeling at the back of his neck a lancinating cold which, from vertebra to vertebra, was propagated through all the marrow.
And, at the bottom of himself, he noticed a vague movement of that instinctive terror which he had already observed under other circumstances.
Hippolyte disengaged herself.
"Now, I'll leave you," she said. "Where is—my room? Oh, George, how comfortable we shall be here."
She glanced around her, smiling. She made a few steps towards the threshold, stooped to gather a handful of furze, breathed in the perfume with visible sensual pleasure. She once more felt agitated, and as if intoxicated by this sovereign homage, by this fragrant glory which George had scattered along her path. Was she not dreaming? Was it she herself—was it really Hippolyte Sanzio who, in this unknown place, in this magic landscape, found herself surrounded and glorified by all this poesy?
Suddenly, with new tears in her eyes, she threw her arms around George's neck, and said:
"How grateful I am to you."
This poesy intoxicated her heart. She felt herself lifted above her humble existence by the ideal apotheosis which enveloped her lover; she felt that she lived another life, a superior life which at times gave to her soul that kind of choking sensation which a strong wind provokes in a breast accustomed to breathe an impoverished air.
"How proud I am to belong to you! You are my pride. One single minute passed near you suffices to make me feel another woman, absolutely other. You suddenly communicate to me another blood and another mind. I am no longer Hippolyte, the Hippolyte of yesterday. Give me a new name."
He named her:
"Soul!"
They fell into each other's arms in a furious embrace, as if to pluck and unroot the kisses which blossomed on their lips. Then Hippolyte disengaged herself, and repeated:
"Now, I'll leave you. Where's my room? Let me see it."
George passed an arm around her waist and led her into the bedroom. She gave a cry of admiration when she perceived thethalamus thalamorum, draped with a large yellow damask counterpane.
"But we shall get lost in it!"
And she laughed as she walked all round the monument.
"The most difficult thing will be to get into it."
"First, you'll place your foot upon my knee, in accordance with the old-time custom of the peasants in these parts."
"What a lot of saints!" she exclaimed, looking at the long line of pious images on the wall, at the head of the bed.
"They must be covered."
"Yes, you are right."
Both had difficulty in finding words; both their voices were changed in tone; both of them trembled, agitated by irresistible desire, feeling almost faint at the thought of the approaching ecstasies.
They heard someone knock at the door of the staircase. George went into the loggia. It was Helen, Candia's daughter; she came to say that luncheon was ready.
"What do you wish to do?" said George, turning toward Hippolyte, irresolute, almost convulsed.
"Really, George, I have not the least appetite. I will eat this evening, if you'll let me."
In an agonized voice, George said:
"Come into your room. Everything is ready for your bath. Come!"
He led her into a room which he had covered all over with large rustic mats.
"You see, your trunks and your boxes are already here. Now, I'll leave you—alone. Be quick. Remember, I'm waiting. Every minute's delay will be one torture more. Remember——"
He left her alone. A few moments later he heard the splashing of the water which ran from the enormous sponge and fell back again into the bath-tub. He knew the icy coldness of this spring water well, and he imagined the little starts of Hippolyte's body, that long and flexible body, beneath the refreshing shower.
Then there remained nothing in his mind than thoughts of fire. Everything about him disappeared. And, when the splashing stopped, he was seized by a trembling so strong that his teeth began to chatter, as if shivering from a mortal fever. With the terrible eyes of desire, he saw the woman disengage herself from her dressing-gown, already dried, pure, delicate as an alabaster with golden tones.
CHAPTER VIII.
More fatigued now, almost fainting, Hippolyte sank gradually into slumber. By degrees the smile on her mouth became unconscious, disappeared. Her lips met for a second; then, with infinite slowness, they opened, and from between appeared a jasminelike whiteness. Again the lips met for a second; and again, slowly, very slowly, they parted, and from between reappeared the whiteness, moistened.
Raised on one elbow, George looked at her. She appeared so beautiful, so beautiful, beautiful in the same way as he had seen her the first time, in the mysterious oratory, in front of the philosopher Alexander Memmi's orchestra, amidst the evaporated perfume of the incense and the violets. She was pale, very pale, just as on that day.
She was pale, but it was that singular pallor which George had never found in any other woman—an almost mortal pallor, a profound and dead pallor which, when in the shade, became almost livid. A long shadow was cast on the upper part of her cheeks by the eyelashes; a masculine shadow, barely perceptible, veiled the upper lip. The mouth, large if anything, had a sinuous curve, very soft and yet sad, which, in the absolute silence, took on a very intense expression.
George thought: "How spiritual her beauty becomes in illness and in languor! Tired as she is now, she pleases me more. I recognize the unknown woman who passed before me that February evening—the womanwho had not a single drop of blood left in her body. I believe that when she is dead she will attain the supreme perfection of her beauty.... Dead? And if she were to die? She would then become an object for thought, a pure ideality. I should love her after life without jealous inquietude, with a soothed and always even sorrow."
He recalled that in other circumstances he had already imagined Hippolyte's beauty in the peacefulness of death. "Oh, that day of the roses! Great sheafs of white roses languished in the vases in June, at the beginning of their love. She was dozing on the divan, motionless, almost breathless. And he had contemplated her for a long time; then a sudden phantasy had taken him to cover her with roses, softly, softly, so as not to awaken her; and he had arranged a few roses in her hair. But thus flowered and garlanded, she had appeared to him like a body without a soul, a corpse. This spectacle had filled him with terror; he had shaken her to arouse her; but she remained inert, paralyzed by one of those syncopes to which she was subject at that time. Oh, what terror, what anguish, until she recovered her senses! And also what enthusiasm for the sovereign beauty of that face, which was so extraordinarily ennobled by that reflection of death!" This episode recurred to his memory; but while he lingered over these strange thoughts, he felt a sudden impulse of pity and of remorse. He bent over to kiss the forehead of the sleeper, who remained unconscious of his kiss. It was with the greatest difficulty that he restrained himself from embracing her more ardently, so that she might be cognizant of his caress, and respond to it. And then he felt all the vanity of a caress which would not be to the loved object a rapid communication of joy; he felt all the vanity of a love which would not be a continual and immediate correspondence of acute sensations; he felt the impossibility of becoming intoxicated unless an equally intense intoxication should correspond with his own.
"Am I certain," he thought, "am I positively certain that always, when I have enjoyed her, she has enjoyed me? How often has she been present, a lucid witness, during my moments of delirium? How often has my ardor appeared senseless to her?" A heavy wave of anxieties invaded him while he contemplated the sleeping woman. "The true and profound sensual communion is also a chimera. The senses of my mistress are as obscure as her soul. Never shall I succeed in surprising in her fibres a secret disgust, an appetite unsatisfied, an irritation unappeased. Never shall I succeed in knowing the different sensations which are given to her by a similar caress repeated at different moments. In the course of a single day, an organism as unhealthy as hers passes through a great number of physical states, each in discord with the other, and sometimes in complete opposition. Such an instability misleads the most penetrating clairvoyance. The same caress which, at dawn, draws from her moans of pleasure, may, an hour later, seem to her importunate. Consequently, it is possible that her nerves become hostile towards me, in spite of her will. A kiss which I prolong too far, and which gives me the vertigo of supreme enjoyment, may in her flesh arouse impatience. In the matter of sensuality, however, simulation and dissimulation are common to all women, to those who love and to those who do not. What do I say? The woman who loves, the passionate woman, is more inclined to physical simulation and dissimulation; because she fears to grieve her lover if she shows she is little disposed to surrender herself entirely. Moreover, the passionate woman often delights in exaggerating the semblance of pleasure; because she knows well that that will flatter the man's virile pride and increase his ecstasy. I confess that a proud joy swells my heart when I see Hippolyte delirious with sensual delight. I feel she is happy at thus showing herself so vanquished and prostrated by my power; and she also knows that my vain ambition as a young lover is precisely to succeed in making her plead for mercy, in drawing from her a convulsive cry, in seeing her fall back exhausted on the pillow. Which, then, in these demonstrations, is the share of the physical sincerity and that of the passionate exaggeration? Is not her ardor an artificial attitude, assumed to please me? Does she not often sacrifice herself to my desire without desiring me? Has she not, at times, to repress a commencement of repugnance?"
Attentive and almost anxious, he leaned over the impenetrable creature. But, little by little, the contemplation of her beauty seemed to appease him. And he began to consider his new state. So, from this day on, a new life commenced for him.
For a minute, he concentrated mind and ear, in order to lose nothing of the great peace surrounding him. Only the slow, monotonous wash of the calm sea was to be heard in the propitious silence. Against the window-panes the branches of the olive-tree swayed imperceptibly, silvered by the sun, balancing light shadows on the whiteness of the curtains. At intervals a few human voices were heard, and almost unintelligible.
After this perception of the environing peace, he leaned once more over the adored one. A manifest harmony existed between the respiration of the woman and the respiration of the sea; and the concordance of the two rhythms gave an added charm to the sleeper.
She reposed on her right side, in a graceful attitude. Her form was supple and long, rather too long perhaps, but of serpentine elegance. The narrowness of the thigh made it resemble that of an adolescent. The sterile abdomen had preserved its primitive virginal purity. The bosom was small and firm, as if sculptured in very delicate alabaster, and the points of her extraordinarily erect breasts were of a rose-violet hue. The posterior part of her body, from the nape of the neck down to the middle, made one think once more of an Ephebe: it was one of those fragments of the ideal human type which Nature sometimes throws among the multitude of mediocre imprints by which the race perpetuates itself. But the most precious singularity of this body was, in George's eyes, the coloration. The skin had an indescribable color, very rare, very different from the ordinary color of brunettes. The comparison of an alabaster gilded by an inner flame but scarcely conveyed the idea of this divine fineness. It seemed that a diffusion of gold and impalpable amber enriched the tissues, variegating them with a variety of harmonious pallors, like music, darker in the depressions of the loins and where the loins join the sides, lighter on the breast and on the groins, where the epidermis makes its most exquisite suavity.
George thought of Othello's words: "I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others' uses."
In her slumber, Hippolyte made a movement, with a vague air of suffering, which disappeared immediately. She threw back her head on the pillow, exposing her extended breast, on which was defined the light network of the veins. Her lower jaws were rather powerful, the chin rather long in profile, the nostrils broad. In the abstract, the defects of her head were accentuated; but they did not displease George, because it would have been impossible for him to imagine that they could be corrected without removing from the physiognomy an element of living expression. The expression, that immaterial thing which irradiates all matter, that changing and immeasurable force which invades the corporeal face and transfigures it, that significative external which superposes a symbolic beauty of an order far more elevated and complex on the precise reality of the lines—that was Hippolyte Sanzio's great charm, because it offered to the passionate thinker a continual motive of emotions and dreams.
"Such a woman," he thought, "has belonged to others before being mine. She has shared the couch of another man; she has slept with another man in the same bed, on the same pillow. In all women there exists a sort of extraordinarily active physical memory, the memory of sensations. Does she remember the sensations which she received from that man? Can she have forgotten him who was the first, and who violated her? What were her feelings beneath her husband's caress?" At these questions, which he repeated to himself for the thousandth time, a well-known anguish oppressed his heart. "Oh! why can we not put to death the creature we love, and resuscitate her afterwards with a virgin body, with a new soul?"
He recalled certain words which Hippolyte had said in an hour of supreme intoxication: "You are embracing a virgin; I have never knownany voluptuousnessin love."
Hippolyte was married the spring preceding that of their love. A few weeks after the wedding, she had begun to suffer from a slow and cruel malady which had confined her to bed, and kept her for a long time between life and death. But, happily, this malady had spared her all new contact with the odious man who had seized her like an inert prey. When she emerged from her long convalescence, she gave herself up to passion as in a dream: suddenly, blindly, passionately, she abandoned herself to the young stranger whose soft and curious voice had addressed to her words she had never heard before. And she had not lied when saying to him: "You are embracing a virgin; I have never known any voluptuousness."
Since then, what a profound change in this woman! Something new, indefinable yet real, had entered into her voice, into her gestures, into her eyes, into her slightest tones, into her slightest movements, into the slightest external signs. George had been present at the most intoxicating spectacle of which an intellectual lover can dream. He had seen the loved woman become metamorphosed after his own image, borrow his thoughts, his judgments, his tastes, his disdains, his predilections, his melancholies, all that which gives a special imprint and character to the mind. In speaking, Hippolyte used the forms of speech he preferred, pronounced certain words with the inflexion peculiar to him. In writing, she imitated even his hand. Never had the influence of one being on another been so rapid and so strong. Hippolyte had merited the device which George had given her:Gravis dum suavis. But this grave and suave creature, she in whom he had succeeded in inculcating, with so much art, the disdain for a commonplace existence, among what humiliating contacts had she spent the distant hours?
George thought again of his anguish of long ago, when he saw her go away, return beneath the conjugal roof, into the house of a man of whom he knew nothing, into a world of which he knew nothing, into the platitudes and the pettiness of the middle-class life in which she was born, and in which she had grown like a rare plant in a common flower-pot. Had she, at that time, never hidden anything from him? Had she never lied to him? Had she always been able to withdraw from her husband's importunities on the pretext that her cure was not yet complete? Always?
George remembered the horrible pang he felt one day when she came late, panting, her cheeks more colored and warmer than usual, with a persistent odor of tobacco in her hair, that bad odor which impregnates him who remains a long time in a room where there are many smokers. "Pardon me, if I am late," she had said to him; "but I had several of my husband's friends to dinner, and they kept me until now." And these words had suggested to him the vision of a vulgar-looking dining-table around which the boors exhibited their brutality.
George recalled a thousand similar little details, and an infinity of other cruel sufferings, and also recent sufferings, caused by Hippolyte's new condition—her stay at her mother's, in a house not less unknown and not less free from suspicion. "At last, here she is now with me! Every day, every minute, continually, I shall see her, I shall enjoy her; I will see that her thoughts are occupied continually with me, my thoughts, my dreams, my sorrows. I will consecrate to her every instant, uninterruptedly; I will invent a thousand new ways of pleasing her, of agitating her, of making her sad, of exalting her; I will so penetrate her with my being that she will end by believing me to be an essential element of her own life."
He bent over her softly; he kissed her softly on the shoulder near the arm, on that little rounded eminence of exquisite form and color, whose skin had the softness of velvet fine enough as to seem almost impalpable. He respired the perfume of this woman, so subtle and sweet, that cutaneous perfume which, during the instant of pleasure, became as intoxicating as that of tuberoses and gave a terrible lash to desire. Watching thus closely the sleep of this delicate and complicated creature, whom slumber enveloped in a mystery, that strange creature who from every pore seemed to irradiate towards him some occult fascination of unbelievable intensity, he remarked once more in his inner self a vague movement of instinctive terror.
Again Hippolyte changed her position, without awakening, but with a faint moan. She turned on her back. A light perspiration imparted a dampness to her temples; through her half-closed mouth the breathing respired came more rapidly, rather irregularly; at moments, her eyebrows contracted. She was dreaming. Of what was she dreaming?
George, seized by an inquietude which soon increased to an insane anxiety, set himself to detect upon her face the slightest indications, in the hope of surprising there some revealing sign. Revealing what? He was incapable of reflecting, incapable of repressing the furious tumults of fears, doubts, and suspicions.
In her slumber Hippolyte started; her entire body was convulsed as if racked by nightmare; she turned over on her side towards George; she groaned, and cried:
"No, no!"
Then she drew two or three breaths, almost like sobs, and started again.
A prey to insane fear, George watched her fixedly, his ear strained—fearing to hear other words, another's name, the name of a man! He waited, in horrible uncertainty, as if under the menace of a thunderbolt which could destroy him in a second.
Hippolyte awoke; she saw him confusedly, without thinking, still sleeping; she nestled close up to him, with an almost unconscious movement.
"Of what were you dreaming?" he asked her, in a changed voice which seemed to reverberate his heart-beats.
"I do not know," she answered, languid, still drowsy, leaning her cheek on her lover's breast. "I don't remember."
She fell asleep again.
Under the soft pressure of her cheek, George remained motionless, with a dull rancor at the bottom of his soul. He felt himself a stranger to her, isolated from her, uselessly curious. All his bitter recollections came back to him in a tumult. He lived over again, in a single instant, his miseries of two years. He could oppose nothing to the immense doubts which crushed his soul and made the head of his loved one seem as heavy as a rock.
Suddenly Hippolyte started a second time, moaned, twisted, cried again. And she opened her eyes, frightened, groaning.
"Oh! my God!"
"What ails you? Of what were you dreaming?"
"I do not know."
Her face was contracted convulsively.
She added:
"You must have been leaning on me. I thought you were pushing me, hurting me."
She suffered visibly.
"Oh! my God! My pains have come back."
Since her illness, she sometimes had short attacks, spasms that quickly passed, but whose passage forced from her a groan or cry.
She turned towards George, looked fixedly into his eyes, and found there the traces of the tempest. And in a coaxing, reproachful tone she repeated:
"You did so hurt me!"
All at once George seized her in his arms, clasped her passionately to his breast, and smothered her under his kisses.