CHAPTER IX.As the air was of an almost summer-like warmth, George proposed:"Shall we dine outside?"Hippolyte consented. They went down.On the stairway they held each other's hand; and went down step by step slowly, stopping to look at the crushed flowers, turning round towards each other simultaneously, as if they saw each other for the first time. Each saw in the other eyes larger, more profound, as if more distant, and circled by an almost supernatural shadow. They smiled at each other without speaking, both dominated by the charm of that indefinable sensation which seemed to disperse into the uncertainty of space the substance of their being, transformed into a fluid like a vapor. They walked towards the parapet; they stopped to look around, to listen to the sea.What they saw was unusual, extraordinarily great, yet illumined by an inner light and as if by an irradiation of their hearts. What they heard was unusual, extraordinarily high, yet contemplated as if a secret revealed to them alone.A second, as quickly passed! They were recalled to themselves, not by a gust of the wind nor by the noise of a wave, nor by a bellowing, nor by a bark, nor by a human voice, but by the very anxiety which arose from their too intense joy. A second, as quickly passed, irrevocable! And both recommenced to feel that life was slipping by, that time was flying; that everything was becoming once more foreign to their being, that their souls were becoming anxious again and their love imperfect. This second of supreme oblivion, this unique second, was gone forever.Hippolyte, moved by the solemnity of the solitude, oppressed by a vague fright in the presence of those vast waters, beneath that desert sky, which, from the zenith to the horizon, paled by slow gradations, murmured:"What endless space!"It seemed now to both that the point of space in which they breathed was infinitely distant from the frequented spots, out of the way, isolated, unknown, inaccessible, almost outside of the world. Now they saw the wish of their hearts realized, they both felt the same inward terror, as if they foresaw their impotence to sustain the plenitude of the new life. For a few instants longer, silent, standing side by side, but apart, they continued to contemplate the melancholy and icy Adriatic, whose great white-capped waves sported in endless playfulness. From time to time a stiff breeze swept through the tufts of the acacias, bearing off their perfume."Of what are you thinking?" asked George, drawing himself up, as if to rebel against the importunate sadness which was about to conquer him.He was there, alone with his mistress, living and free; and, nevertheless, his heart was not satisfied. Did he, then, bear in himself an inconsolable hopelessness?Feeling anew a separation between the silent creature and himself, he took her again by the hand, and gazed into the pupils of her eyes."Of what are you thinking?""I am thinking of Rimini," answered Hippolyte, with a smile.Always the past! She remembers bygone days at such a moment! Was it the same sea which lay extended before their eyes, veiled in the same illusion? His first motion was one of hostility against the unconscious evocatrice. Then, as if in a lightning flash, with sudden uneasiness, he saw all the summits of his love light up, and scintillate in the past, prodigiously. Far-distant things came back to his memory, accompanied by waves of music which exalted and transfigured them. He lived again, in one second, the most lyric hours of his passion, and he lived them again in propitious places, among the sumptuous scenery of nature and art which had rendered his joy nobler and more profound. Why then, now, in comparison with that past, had the moment just previous lost part of its charm? In his eyes, dazzled by the rapid gleam of his recollections, everything now seemed colorless. And he perceived that the progressive diminution of the light caused him a kind of indefinable corporeal uneasiness, as if this external phenomenon were in immediate correspondence with some element of his own life.He sought some phrase that would bring Hippolyte closer to him, to attach her to him by some sensitive tie, to restore to himself of the present reality the exact feeling which he had just lost. But this search was painful to him; the ideas escaped him, dispersed, left him void.As he had heard a rattle of plates, he asked:"Are you hungry?"This question, suggested by a slight material fact, and propounded unexpectedly, with puerile vivacity, made Hippolyte smile."Yes, a little," she answered, smiling.And they turned round to look at the table spread beneath the oak. In a few minutes the dinner would be ready."You must be satisfied with what there is," said George. "Very countrified cooking.""Oh! I should be very well satisfied with grass."And, gayly, she approached the table, examined with curiosity the cloth, the knives and forks, the glassware, the plates, found everything pretty; rejoiced like a child at the sight of the large flowers which decorated the white and fine porcelain."Everything here pleases me," she said.She bent over a large round loaf of bread, yet warm beneath its beautiful browned and rounded crust. She breathed in the odor with delight."Oh! what a delightful odor!"And, with childish greediness, she broke off the crusty edge of the loaf."What fine bread!"Her white and strong teeth shone in the bitten bread; the play of her sinuous mouth expressed vigorously the pleasure enjoyed. In this act, her whole person shed a pure and simple grace which seduced and surprised George as if it were an unexpected novelty."Here! taste how good it is."And she handed him the piece of bread on which was imprinted the humid trace of her bite; and she pushed it between his lips, laughing, imparting the sensual contagion of her hilarity."Just see!"He found the taste delicious; and he abandoned himself to this fugitive enchantment, permitted himself to be enveloped by this seduction which seemed a novelty. A mad longing suddenly seized him to embrace the temptress, to lift her in his arms, to carry her off like a prey. His heart swelled with a confused aspiration towards physical force, towards robust health, towards an almost savage life of joy, towards simple and primitive love, towards the great primordial liberty. He felt a sudden desire to rend the mortal frame which oppressed him, to leave it and be entirely renewed, indemnified for all the woes he had suffered, for all the deformity which had hindered his flight.He had the hallucination of a future existence which would be his, and in which, freed from every harmful habit, from every foreign tyranny, from every bad error, he would look at things as if he saw them for the first time and had before him all the surface of the World, exposed like a human visage."Was it then impossible that the miracle should come from this young woman, who, at the stone table, beneath the protecting oak, had broken the new bread and shared it with him? Could not the New Life really commence from to-day?"IV.THE NEW LIFE.CHAPTER I.Over the Adriatic swept the humid and oppressive heat of the east wind. The sky was cloudy, nebulous, white as milk. The sea, having lost all motion and all materiality, seemed mingled with the diffused vapors in the distance—very white, without respiration. A white sail, a single white sail—so rare a thing in the Adriatic—was visible yonder, near the Diomede Islands, motionless, indefinitely lengthened by the reflection of the water, the visible centre of this inert world, which gradually seemed to evaporate.Seated in a tired attitude, on the parapet of the loggia, Hippolyte fixed her gaze on the sail, her eyes magnetized by its whiteness. A little bent, her whole figure relaxed, she had an air of stupor, almost of hebetude, which revealed the momentary eclipse of her inner life. And this absence of expressive energy accentuated all that there was commonplace and irregular in her features, rendered heavier the lower part of her face. Even the mouth—that elastic and sinuous mouth—whose contact had so often communicated to George a sort of instinctive and indefinable terror, seemed now despoiled of its bewitching charm, and reduced to the physical appearance of a vulgar organ which only recalled kisses as a mechanical art deprived of all beauty.George considered with attention and clear-sightedness the naked reality of this unconscious woman, with whose life he had, up to now, so furiously joined his own life. And he thought: "In an instant, all has ended. The flame is extinguished. I love her no longer! ... How has that happened so quickly?" What he felt was not only the disgust following abuse, that carnal aversion which follows prolonged pleasures, but a more profound detachment which seemed to him definite and irremediable. "How could anyone still love, after having seen what I see?" The usual phenomenon took place in him; with its first perceptions, real, isolated and exaggerated, he composed by association an inner phantom which gave to his nerves a much stronger impulse than the present object. Henceforth, what he saw in Hippolyte's person with inconceivable intensity was the sexual being exclusively, the inferior being deprived of all spiritual value, a simple instrument of pleasure and of luxury, the instrument of ruin and of death. And he had a horror of his father! But, after all, was he not doing the same thing? And the recollection of the concubine crossed his mind; he found in his memory certain details of the horrible altercation with that odious man, in the country house, in front of the open window through which he had heard the cries of the little bastards, in front of the large table littered with papers on which he had perceived the disk of glass and the obscene vignette."How heavy the air is!" murmured Hippolyte, removing her gaze from the white sail, which still remained motionless in the infinite. "Does it not oppress you, too?"She rose, took a few listless steps towards a willow seat, provided with cushions, and sank down as if dead with fatigue, sighing deeply, throwing back her head, half-closing her eyes, the curved lids of which trembled. She had suddenly become very beautiful again. Her beauty was rekindled, unexpectedly, like a torch."When will the mistral blow? Look at that sail. It is always in the same place. It's the first white sail since my arrival. It seems as if I dream it is there."As George remained silent, she added:"Have you seen any others?""No; it's the first I have seen, too!""From where did it come?""From Gargano, perhaps.""And where is it going?""Perhaps to Ortona.""What is her cargo?""Perhaps oranges."She began to laugh; and even her laugh, enveloping her as if in a live wave of freshness, transfigured her anew."Look, look!" she cried, raising herself on one elbow and pointing to the horizon of the sea, where it appeared as if a curtain had fallen. "Five other sails, over there in file. Do you see them?""Yes, I see them.""There are five?""Yes, five.""More, more! Over there! Look, another file! What a number there are!"The sails appeared at the extreme limit of the sea, red like little flames, motionless."The wind is changing. I feel that the wind is changing. Look there, how the water is beginning to ripple."A sudden breeze assailed the tufts of the acacias, which, bending on their stems, shed several blossoms like dead butterflies. Then, before those light remains could touch the earth, all was at peace again. During the interval of silence, the low murmur of the water as it was dashed against the beach could be heard; and this murmur died away with the flight of the wave as it passed along the shore, and then ceased."Did you hear it?"She had risen and leaned on the parapet, listening intently, in the attitude of a musician who is tuning his instrument."Here is the wave coming back," she cried again, pointing to the mobile rippling of the water, upon which the shower was advancing; and she waited, animated by impatience, ready to fill her lungs with the wind.After a few seconds the acacias, assailed, once more bent on their stems, causing a shower of other flowers. And the strong gust bore as far as the loggia the saline odor mingled with the perfume of the withered bunches. A silvery sound, of singular harmony, filled with its kettledrum vibrations the concavity of the little bay between the two promontories."Do you hear?" said Hippolyte, in a low but exulting voice as if this music had penetrated as far as her soul, and that all her life were participating in the vicissitudes of the things around her.George followed all her actions, all her gestures, all her movements, every word, with such intense attention that the rest was for him as if it had never existed. The preceding image no longer coincided with the actual appearance, though it still dominated his mind to the extent of maintaining the profound sensation of the moral detachment, and of preventing him from replacing this woman in her first frame, of not reëstablishing her in her original state of being, of not reintegrating her. But from every one of these actions, from every one of these gestures, from every one of these movements, from every one of these words, emanated an inevitable power. All these physical manifestations seemed to compose a web which trapped him, and held him prisoner. It seemed that between this woman and himself there was formed a sort of corporeal bond, a sort of organic dependence, a correspondence by virtue of which the slightest gesture provoked in him an involuntary sensual modification, and that henceforth he would no longer be capable of living and feeling independently. How could he reconcile this evident affinity with the occult hate which he had just discovered at the bottom of his heart?Hippolyte, through a spontaneous curiosity, through an instinctive desire to multiply her sensations and to make the surrounding neighborhood part of herself, was still absorbed in the spectacle. The facility she exhibited in entering into communication with every form of natural life and of finding a world of analogies between human expressions and the appearances of the most diverse things; this rapid and diffuse sympathy, which attached her not only to objects with which she was in daily contact, but also to foreign objects; that sort of imitative virtue which often permitted her to express by a single sign the distinctive character of an animate or inanimate being, of talking to the domestic animals and understanding their language—all these mimic faculties properly concurred in rendering more visible, in George's eyes, the predominance in her of the inferior life."What's that?" she said, surprised at noticing a sudden, mysterious rumbling. "Didn't you hear it?"It was like a dull blow, which other blows followed in rapid succession—blows so strange that it could not be discerned if they came from near or far, in the air that became more and more limpid."Didn't you hear that?""It may be distant thunder.""Oh, no!""What, then?"They looked around them, perplexed. Every moment the sea was changing color in proportion as the sky became clearer; here and there it took on that shade of indefinable green, like unripe flax, as when the sun's oblique rays pass through the diaphanous stems in an April twilight."Ah! it's the sail flapping—that white sail, yonder," cried Hippolyte, happy at being the first to discover the mystery. "Look. She's caught the wind. She's off."CHAPTER II.With a few intervals of drowsy indolence, she felt a mad desire to wander off, to venture out in the heat of the sun, to scour the beach and surrounding country, to explore unfamiliar paths. She stimulated her companion; at times she carried him off almost by force; at times, too, she started off alone, and he joined her unexpectedly.In order to climb a hill, they followed a small pathway bordered by thick hedges of violet flowers, among which blossomed the large and delicate calices of other snowy fragrant flowers with fine petals. On the other side of the hedges, ears of corn waved to and fro on their stems, yellowish-green in color, more or less ready to change into gold; and in other places the corn was so thick and high that it towered over the tops of the hedges, suggesting a beautiful, overflowing cup.Nothing escaped Hippolyte's vigilant eye. Every minute she stooped to blow away certain spheres of down, very fragile, at the tips of their long, slender peduncles. Every minute she stopped to observe the small spiders climbing by an invisible thread from a flower situated low down to a branch above.On the hill, in a narrow, sunny circle, there was a small field of flax already dry. The yellowish stems bore at their summits a ball of gold, and here and there the gold seemed tarnished by an ironlike rust. The highest stems were waving almost imperceptibly. And, because of this extreme lightness, the whole gave the idea of some delicate piece of gold-work."Look, it is just like filigree!" said Hippolyte.The furze was commencing to shed its flowers. A few feet away hung a sort of white foam in flakes; on others crawled large black and brown caterpillars, soft to the touch as velvet. Hippolyte took up one whose delicate down was streaked with vermilion, and she kept it calmly on the palm of her hand."It is more beautiful than a flower," she said.George remarked, and it was not the first time, that she was almost totally devoid of instinctive repugnance towards insects, and that, in general, she did not feel that keen and invincible repulsion which he himself felt for a host of things considered unclean."Throw it away, I beg of you!"She began to laugh, and stretched out her hand as if to put the caterpillar on his neck. He gave a cry and sprang back, which made her laugh all the more."Oh, what a brave man!"In a spirit of mischief, she started to pursue him between the trunks of the young oaks, through the narrow paths that formed a sort of mountainous labyrinth. Her peals of laughter started from between the gray stones flocks of wild sparrows."Stop! Stop! You frighten the sheep."A small flock of frightened sheep dispersed, dragging behind them up the rocky incline a bundle of bluish rags."Stop. I have it no longer. See."And she showed the runaway her empty hands."Let us help the Mute."And she ran towards the woman in rags, who was making ineffectual efforts to hold back the sheep attached to the long cords of twisted osier. Hippolyte seized the bunch of cords, and braced her feet against a stone in order to have more resisting power. She panted, her face purple; and in this violent attitude she was very beautiful. Her beauty lighted up, unexpectedly, like a torch."Come, George, come you too!" she cried to George, communicating to him her frank and childish joy.The sheep stopped in a clump of furze. There were six of them, three black and three white, and bore the osier cords around their woolly necks. The woman who looked after them, emaciated, poorly covered by her bluish rags, gesticulated while giving vent, from her toothless mouth, to an incomprehensible grumbling. Her little greenish eyes, without eyelashes, bleary, tearful and congested, had a malignant look.When Hippolyte gave her alms, she kissed the pieces of money. Then, letting go the cords, she removed from her head a rag which no longer had either form or color, stooped to the ground, and slowly, with greatest care, tied up the pieces of money in a multiplicity of knots."I am tired," said Hippolyte. "Let us sit down here for a moment."They sat down. George then perceived that the spot was near the great furze field where, on that May morning, the five virgins had plucked the flowers to strew the path of the beautiful Roman. That morning already seemed very far off, lost in dreamy haze. He said:"Do you see, over yonder, those bushes which are now almost flowerless? Well, it was there that we filled the baskets to strew flowers on your path when you arrived. Oh, what a day! Do you remember?"She smiled, and in a transport of sudden tenderness took one of his hands, which she kept pressed in her own; and she leaned her cheek on the shoulder of the loved one, burying herself in the sweetness of that memory, of that solitude, of that peace, of that poesy.From time to time a breath of wind passed through the tops of the oaks; and below, farther on, in the gray of the olive-trees, passed, from time to time, a clear wave of silver. The Mute moved away slowly behind the feeding sheep; and she seemed to leave something fantastic in her traces, as if a reflect of the legends in which malignant fairies transform themselves into toads at every turn of the path."Aren't you happy now?" murmured Hippolyte.George thought: "It is already two weeks, and there has been no change in me. Still the same anxiety, the same inquietude, the same discontent! We are hardly at the beginning, and I already foresee the end. What shall we do to enjoy the passing hour?" Certain phrases of a letter from Hippolyte recurred to him: "Oh! when will it be given me to be near you during entire days, to live your life? You will see, I shall no longer be the same woman. I will be your mistress, your friend, your sister; and if you think me worthy, I will be also your adviser.... In me you should find nothing but sweetness and repose.... It will be a life of love such as has never before been seen." ...He thought: "For the past two weeks our whole existence has been composed of petty, material incidents, like those of to-day. It is true; I have already seen in heranother woman! She is commencing to change, even in appearance. It is unbelievable how rapidly she is gaining in health. One would say that every breath is a gain; that, for her, every fruit turns into blood; that the healthfulness of the air penetrates her every pore. She was made for this life of idleness, of liberty, of physical enjoyment, of carelessness. Up to now, she has not uttered a single thoughtful word which revealed preoccupation of the soul. Her intervals of silence and immobility are caused only by muscular fatigue, just as at the present moment.""Of what are you thinking?" she demanded."Of nothing. I am happy."After a pause, she added:"We'll go on now, shall we?"They rose. She bestowed upon his mouth a sonorous kiss. She was gay and restless. Every few minutes she darted away from him to run down an incline free from rocks; and when she wished to check her speed, she grasped the trunk of a young oak, which groaned and bent beneath the shock.She gathered a violet flower and sucked it."It's honey."She gathered another, and placed it on her lover's lips."Taste it!"And it seemed as if she enjoyed the savor for the second time, at seeing the motions of his mouth."With all these flowers, and all these bees, there must certainly be a hive near by," she went on. "One of these mornings, while you are asleep, I must come here and search for it.... I'll bring you a honeycomb."She prattled at a great rate about this adventure, which tickled her fancy; and in her words appeared, with the vivacity of an actual sensation, the freshness of the morning, the mystery of the woods, the impatience of the search, the joy of the discovery, the pale color and wild fragrance of honey.They halted half-way up the hill, at the border of the woody region, charmed by the melancholy which ascended from the sea.The sea was delicately colored, between a blue and a green, in which the green had a progressive tendency to dominate; but the sky, of a leaden azure at the zenith, and streaked here and there by clouds, was rose-colored in the curve toward Ortono. This light was reflected in pale tints on the surface of the water, and recalled deflowered roses floating. Against the maritime background were arranged in steps, in harmonious degrees, first the two large oaks with their dark foliage, then the silvery olive-trees, then the fig-trees with their bright foliage and violet branches. The moon, orange-colored, enormous, almost at its full, rose up above the ring of the horizon, like a globe of crystal through whose transparency could be seen a chimerical country figured in bas-relief on a massive disk of gold.One heard the warbling of birds, near and far. One heard the lowing of an ox; then a bleating; then the wailing of a child. There was a pause during which all these voices were silent, and only this single wail was heard.It was a wail, not violent or interrupted, but shrill, continuous, almost feeble. And it attracted the soul, detached it from all the rest, snatched it from the seduction of the twilight, to oppress it with a veritable anguish which responded to the suffering of the unknown creature, of the little, invisible being."Do you hear?" said Hippolyte, whose voice, already changed by compassion, became involuntarily lower. "I know who the child is that's crying.""You know?" asked George, to whom his mistress's voice and appearance had given a strange shock."Yes."She was again listening intently to the lamentable moaning, which now seemed to fill the whole place. She added: "It's the infant that the Ghouls are sucking."She had pronounced these words without the shadow of a smile, as if she herself were beneath the empire of the superstition."It lives over there, in that tumble-down cottage. Candia told me."After a slight hesitation, during which they listened to the wails and had a fantastic vision of the dying child, Hippolyte suggested:"Shall we go and see it? It's not far."George was perplexed, dreading the sadness of the spectacle, and the contact of the distressed and coarse people."Shall we?" repeated Hippolyte, whose curiosity became irresistible. "It is over there, in that old cottage, beneath the pine. I know the way.""Let's go!"She went straight ahead, hastening her steps, across a sloping field. Both were silent; both heard only the infantile wail which served them as a guide. And, step by step, their anguish became more poignant and in proportion as the wailing became more distinct and indicated better the poor, bloodless body from which pain forced it.They traversed a copse of odorous orange-trees, treading on the flowers scattered on the ground. On the threshold of a cottage close to the one they sought an enormously stout woman was seated; and on her monstrous body was a small round head, with soft eyes, white teeth, a placid smile."Where are you going, signora?" asked the woman, without rising."We are going to see the child whom the Ghouls are sucking.""What's the use? You'd better stay here, and take a rest. I do not lack children, either. Look!"Three or four naked children, who had also such large stomachs that one would have believed them to be dropsical, dragged themselves along on the ground, grunting and tumbling over, putting in their mouths everything that fell into their hands. And the woman held in her arms a fifth child, all covered with brownish scabs, from the midst of which shone out a pair of large clear blue eyes, like miraculous flowers."You see that I have plenty of them too, and that this one, here, is sick. Stay here a bit."She smiled, soliciting with her eyes the strangers' generosity. And, with an expression in which one guessed the desire to dissuade the curiosity of the woman by the vague presentiment of a peril:"What's the good of going there?" she repeated. "See how ill this one is."And again she showed the afflicted child, but without simulating any sorrow, as if she simply offered to the passer-by a nearer object of compassion in exchange for a more distant one—as if she wished to say: "Since you desire to be compassionate, have compassion for the one before you." George examined, with deep pain, the poor, spotted face, whose large, bright, and clear eyes seemed to drink in all the light shed on this June evening."What is he suffering from?" he asked."Ah! signor, who ever knows?" answered the fat woman, always with the same placidity. "He has what God wishes."Hippolyte gave her some money; and they resumed their way towards the other cottage, bearing with them the nauseous odor emanating from that door full of shadow.They did not speak. They felt a contraction of their hearts, a disgust in their mouths, a weakness in their limbs. They heard the shrill wailing, mingled with other voices, other sounds; and they were stupefied at having been able to hear this single sound so far away, and so distinctly. But what attracted their eyes was the tall and straight pine whose robust trunk stood out black against the diffused light of the twilight, sustaining a melodious summit filled with sparrows.At their approach, a whisper passed among the women gathered around the victim."Here are the gentlefolk—Candia's strangers.""Come, come!"And the women opened their circle to permit the arrivals to draw nearer. One of them, an old woman, with wrinkled skin, of the color of parched earth, expressionless eyes, whitish and as if vitrified in the depths of their hollow orbits, said, addressing Hippolyte, and touching her arm:"Look, signora! Look! The Ghouls are sucking it, poor creature! Look at the state they've reduced it to! May God protect your children!"Her voice was so dry that it appeared artificial, and resembled the sounds articulated by an automaton."Cross yourself, signora!" she added again.The advice seemed lugubrious in that lifeless mouth, in which the voice lost its human character and became a dead thing. Hippolyte made the sign of the cross, and looked at her companion.In the space before the door of the hut the women ere in a circle as around a spectacle, making; from time to time some mechanical sign of condolence. And the circle was unceasingly renewed; some, already tired of looking, went away; others arrived from neighboring houses. And almost all, at the sight of this slow death, repeated the same gesture, repeated the same words.The child reposed in a little cradle, of rough pine boards, like a small, lidless coffin. The poor creature, naked, sickly, emaciated, greenish, was wailing continuously and waving its debilitated arms and legs, which had nothing more than skin and bone, as if asking for help. And the mother, seated at the foot of the cradle, bent in two, her head so low that it almost touched her knees, seemed to hear nothing. It seemed as if some terrible weight rested on her neck and prevented her from rising. At times, mechanically, she placed on the edge of the cradle a coarse, callous hand, burnt by the sun; and she made the gesture of rocking without altering her attitude or breaking the silence. Then the holy images, the talismans, and the relics, with which the pine cradle was almost entirely covered, undulated and tinkled, during a momentary pause in the wail."Liberata! Liberata!" cried one of the women, shaking her. "Look, Liberata! The lady has come—the lady is in your house! Look!"The mother slowly raised her head and looked around her, with a bewildered air; then she fixed on her visitor her dry and mournful eyes, in whose depths there was less of fatigued sorrow than inert and shadowy terror—the terror of nocturnal witchcraft against which no exorcism prevailed, the terror of those insatiable beings who now had the house in their power, and who would not abandon it perhaps but with the last corpse."Speak! Speak!" insisted one of the women, shaking her again by the arm. "Speak! Ask the lady to send you to the Madonna of the Miracles."The others surrounded Hippolyte with supplications."Yes, signora. Be charitable to her! Send her to the Madonna. Send her to the Madonna!"The child cried louder. In the tops of the pine-tree the sparrows were emitting heart-rending cries. In the neighborhood, between the deformed trunks of the olive-trees, a dog barked. The moon was beginning to cast its shadows. "Yes," stammered Hippolyte, incapable of sustaining longer the fixed gaze of the silent mother. "Yes, yes, we will send her—to-morrow.""No, not to-morrow; Saturday, signora.""Saturday is the Vigil.""Let her buy him a candle.""A fine candle.""A ten-pound candle.""Do you hear, Liberata? Do you hear?""The lady will send you to the Madonna!""The Madonna will pity you.""Speak! Speak!""She's become dumb, signora.""She hasn't spoken for three days."In the midst of the confused cries of the women, the child cried still louder."Do you hear how he cries?""He always cries loudest, signora, at nightfall.""Perhaps it's coming soon.""Perhaps the child has seen——""Make the sign of the cross, signora.""It's getting dark.""Do you hear how he cries?""Isn't that the bell tolling?""No; one can't hear it here.""Silence!""One can't hear it here.""But I hear it.""I hear it, too.""Ave Maria!"All were silent, made the sign of the cross, and bowed. It seemed as if several sonorous waves, scarcely perceptible, arrived from the distant market-town; but the child's wail filled every listener's ear. Once more, only this single wail could be heard. The mother had fallen on her knees at the foot of the cradle, prostrated to the earth. Hippolyte, her head bowed, was praying with fervor."Look, there, in the doorway!" whispered one of the women to her neighbor.George, watchful and uneasy, turned his head. The doorway was full of shadow."Look, there, in the doorway! Don't you see something?""Yes, I see," replied the other, uncertain, a little frightened."What is it? What do you see?" asked a third."What is it?" demanded a fourth."What is it?"Suddenly curiosity and fright seized them all. They looked toward the door. The child cried. The mother rose, and she, too, began to fix her dilated eyes on the door which the shadows rendered mysterious. The dog barked among the olive-trees."What is it?" said George, in a low voice, but not without requiring some effort to shake off the increasing uneasiness of his imagination. "What do you see?"None of the women dared to answer. All, in the shadow, saw the outlines of a vague form.Then he advanced toward the door. When he crossed the threshold, a furnace-like heat and a repugnant stench cut short his breath. He turned round, went out."It's a scythe," he said.In fact, it was a scythe hanging on the wall."Ah! a scythe."And the voices recommenced."Liberata! Liberata!""Are you mad?""She is mad.""It's getting dark. Let us go.""He's not crying any more.""Poor creature! Is he asleep?""He has stopped crying.""Take in the cradle; the evening is damp. We will help you, Liberata.""Poor creature! Is he asleep?""One would think he were dead. He no longer moves.""Take in the cradle, won't you? Don't you hear us, Liberata?""She is mad.""Where is the lamp? Joseph will soon return. Have you no lamp? Joseph will soon return from the lime-kiln.""She is mad. She doesn't speak any more.""We are going. God be with you!""Poor tormented flesh! Is he sleeping?""He's sleeping, he's sleeping.... He's not in pain now.""Oh, Lord Jesus, save him!""Protect us, O Lord!""Farewell, farewell! Good night!""Good night!""Good night!"
CHAPTER IX.
As the air was of an almost summer-like warmth, George proposed:
"Shall we dine outside?"
Hippolyte consented. They went down.
On the stairway they held each other's hand; and went down step by step slowly, stopping to look at the crushed flowers, turning round towards each other simultaneously, as if they saw each other for the first time. Each saw in the other eyes larger, more profound, as if more distant, and circled by an almost supernatural shadow. They smiled at each other without speaking, both dominated by the charm of that indefinable sensation which seemed to disperse into the uncertainty of space the substance of their being, transformed into a fluid like a vapor. They walked towards the parapet; they stopped to look around, to listen to the sea.
What they saw was unusual, extraordinarily great, yet illumined by an inner light and as if by an irradiation of their hearts. What they heard was unusual, extraordinarily high, yet contemplated as if a secret revealed to them alone.
A second, as quickly passed! They were recalled to themselves, not by a gust of the wind nor by the noise of a wave, nor by a bellowing, nor by a bark, nor by a human voice, but by the very anxiety which arose from their too intense joy. A second, as quickly passed, irrevocable! And both recommenced to feel that life was slipping by, that time was flying; that everything was becoming once more foreign to their being, that their souls were becoming anxious again and their love imperfect. This second of supreme oblivion, this unique second, was gone forever.
Hippolyte, moved by the solemnity of the solitude, oppressed by a vague fright in the presence of those vast waters, beneath that desert sky, which, from the zenith to the horizon, paled by slow gradations, murmured:
"What endless space!"
It seemed now to both that the point of space in which they breathed was infinitely distant from the frequented spots, out of the way, isolated, unknown, inaccessible, almost outside of the world. Now they saw the wish of their hearts realized, they both felt the same inward terror, as if they foresaw their impotence to sustain the plenitude of the new life. For a few instants longer, silent, standing side by side, but apart, they continued to contemplate the melancholy and icy Adriatic, whose great white-capped waves sported in endless playfulness. From time to time a stiff breeze swept through the tufts of the acacias, bearing off their perfume.
"Of what are you thinking?" asked George, drawing himself up, as if to rebel against the importunate sadness which was about to conquer him.
He was there, alone with his mistress, living and free; and, nevertheless, his heart was not satisfied. Did he, then, bear in himself an inconsolable hopelessness?
Feeling anew a separation between the silent creature and himself, he took her again by the hand, and gazed into the pupils of her eyes.
"Of what are you thinking?"
"I am thinking of Rimini," answered Hippolyte, with a smile.
Always the past! She remembers bygone days at such a moment! Was it the same sea which lay extended before their eyes, veiled in the same illusion? His first motion was one of hostility against the unconscious evocatrice. Then, as if in a lightning flash, with sudden uneasiness, he saw all the summits of his love light up, and scintillate in the past, prodigiously. Far-distant things came back to his memory, accompanied by waves of music which exalted and transfigured them. He lived again, in one second, the most lyric hours of his passion, and he lived them again in propitious places, among the sumptuous scenery of nature and art which had rendered his joy nobler and more profound. Why then, now, in comparison with that past, had the moment just previous lost part of its charm? In his eyes, dazzled by the rapid gleam of his recollections, everything now seemed colorless. And he perceived that the progressive diminution of the light caused him a kind of indefinable corporeal uneasiness, as if this external phenomenon were in immediate correspondence with some element of his own life.
He sought some phrase that would bring Hippolyte closer to him, to attach her to him by some sensitive tie, to restore to himself of the present reality the exact feeling which he had just lost. But this search was painful to him; the ideas escaped him, dispersed, left him void.
As he had heard a rattle of plates, he asked:
"Are you hungry?"
This question, suggested by a slight material fact, and propounded unexpectedly, with puerile vivacity, made Hippolyte smile.
"Yes, a little," she answered, smiling.
And they turned round to look at the table spread beneath the oak. In a few minutes the dinner would be ready.
"You must be satisfied with what there is," said George. "Very countrified cooking."
"Oh! I should be very well satisfied with grass."
And, gayly, she approached the table, examined with curiosity the cloth, the knives and forks, the glassware, the plates, found everything pretty; rejoiced like a child at the sight of the large flowers which decorated the white and fine porcelain.
"Everything here pleases me," she said.
She bent over a large round loaf of bread, yet warm beneath its beautiful browned and rounded crust. She breathed in the odor with delight.
"Oh! what a delightful odor!"
And, with childish greediness, she broke off the crusty edge of the loaf.
"What fine bread!"
Her white and strong teeth shone in the bitten bread; the play of her sinuous mouth expressed vigorously the pleasure enjoyed. In this act, her whole person shed a pure and simple grace which seduced and surprised George as if it were an unexpected novelty.
"Here! taste how good it is."
And she handed him the piece of bread on which was imprinted the humid trace of her bite; and she pushed it between his lips, laughing, imparting the sensual contagion of her hilarity.
"Just see!"
He found the taste delicious; and he abandoned himself to this fugitive enchantment, permitted himself to be enveloped by this seduction which seemed a novelty. A mad longing suddenly seized him to embrace the temptress, to lift her in his arms, to carry her off like a prey. His heart swelled with a confused aspiration towards physical force, towards robust health, towards an almost savage life of joy, towards simple and primitive love, towards the great primordial liberty. He felt a sudden desire to rend the mortal frame which oppressed him, to leave it and be entirely renewed, indemnified for all the woes he had suffered, for all the deformity which had hindered his flight.
He had the hallucination of a future existence which would be his, and in which, freed from every harmful habit, from every foreign tyranny, from every bad error, he would look at things as if he saw them for the first time and had before him all the surface of the World, exposed like a human visage.
"Was it then impossible that the miracle should come from this young woman, who, at the stone table, beneath the protecting oak, had broken the new bread and shared it with him? Could not the New Life really commence from to-day?"
IV.
THE NEW LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
Over the Adriatic swept the humid and oppressive heat of the east wind. The sky was cloudy, nebulous, white as milk. The sea, having lost all motion and all materiality, seemed mingled with the diffused vapors in the distance—very white, without respiration. A white sail, a single white sail—so rare a thing in the Adriatic—was visible yonder, near the Diomede Islands, motionless, indefinitely lengthened by the reflection of the water, the visible centre of this inert world, which gradually seemed to evaporate.
Seated in a tired attitude, on the parapet of the loggia, Hippolyte fixed her gaze on the sail, her eyes magnetized by its whiteness. A little bent, her whole figure relaxed, she had an air of stupor, almost of hebetude, which revealed the momentary eclipse of her inner life. And this absence of expressive energy accentuated all that there was commonplace and irregular in her features, rendered heavier the lower part of her face. Even the mouth—that elastic and sinuous mouth—whose contact had so often communicated to George a sort of instinctive and indefinable terror, seemed now despoiled of its bewitching charm, and reduced to the physical appearance of a vulgar organ which only recalled kisses as a mechanical art deprived of all beauty.
George considered with attention and clear-sightedness the naked reality of this unconscious woman, with whose life he had, up to now, so furiously joined his own life. And he thought: "In an instant, all has ended. The flame is extinguished. I love her no longer! ... How has that happened so quickly?" What he felt was not only the disgust following abuse, that carnal aversion which follows prolonged pleasures, but a more profound detachment which seemed to him definite and irremediable. "How could anyone still love, after having seen what I see?" The usual phenomenon took place in him; with its first perceptions, real, isolated and exaggerated, he composed by association an inner phantom which gave to his nerves a much stronger impulse than the present object. Henceforth, what he saw in Hippolyte's person with inconceivable intensity was the sexual being exclusively, the inferior being deprived of all spiritual value, a simple instrument of pleasure and of luxury, the instrument of ruin and of death. And he had a horror of his father! But, after all, was he not doing the same thing? And the recollection of the concubine crossed his mind; he found in his memory certain details of the horrible altercation with that odious man, in the country house, in front of the open window through which he had heard the cries of the little bastards, in front of the large table littered with papers on which he had perceived the disk of glass and the obscene vignette.
"How heavy the air is!" murmured Hippolyte, removing her gaze from the white sail, which still remained motionless in the infinite. "Does it not oppress you, too?"
She rose, took a few listless steps towards a willow seat, provided with cushions, and sank down as if dead with fatigue, sighing deeply, throwing back her head, half-closing her eyes, the curved lids of which trembled. She had suddenly become very beautiful again. Her beauty was rekindled, unexpectedly, like a torch.
"When will the mistral blow? Look at that sail. It is always in the same place. It's the first white sail since my arrival. It seems as if I dream it is there."
As George remained silent, she added:
"Have you seen any others?"
"No; it's the first I have seen, too!"
"From where did it come?"
"From Gargano, perhaps."
"And where is it going?"
"Perhaps to Ortona."
"What is her cargo?"
"Perhaps oranges."
She began to laugh; and even her laugh, enveloping her as if in a live wave of freshness, transfigured her anew.
"Look, look!" she cried, raising herself on one elbow and pointing to the horizon of the sea, where it appeared as if a curtain had fallen. "Five other sails, over there in file. Do you see them?"
"Yes, I see them."
"There are five?"
"Yes, five."
"More, more! Over there! Look, another file! What a number there are!"
The sails appeared at the extreme limit of the sea, red like little flames, motionless.
"The wind is changing. I feel that the wind is changing. Look there, how the water is beginning to ripple."
A sudden breeze assailed the tufts of the acacias, which, bending on their stems, shed several blossoms like dead butterflies. Then, before those light remains could touch the earth, all was at peace again. During the interval of silence, the low murmur of the water as it was dashed against the beach could be heard; and this murmur died away with the flight of the wave as it passed along the shore, and then ceased.
"Did you hear it?"
She had risen and leaned on the parapet, listening intently, in the attitude of a musician who is tuning his instrument.
"Here is the wave coming back," she cried again, pointing to the mobile rippling of the water, upon which the shower was advancing; and she waited, animated by impatience, ready to fill her lungs with the wind.
After a few seconds the acacias, assailed, once more bent on their stems, causing a shower of other flowers. And the strong gust bore as far as the loggia the saline odor mingled with the perfume of the withered bunches. A silvery sound, of singular harmony, filled with its kettledrum vibrations the concavity of the little bay between the two promontories.
"Do you hear?" said Hippolyte, in a low but exulting voice as if this music had penetrated as far as her soul, and that all her life were participating in the vicissitudes of the things around her.
George followed all her actions, all her gestures, all her movements, every word, with such intense attention that the rest was for him as if it had never existed. The preceding image no longer coincided with the actual appearance, though it still dominated his mind to the extent of maintaining the profound sensation of the moral detachment, and of preventing him from replacing this woman in her first frame, of not reëstablishing her in her original state of being, of not reintegrating her. But from every one of these actions, from every one of these gestures, from every one of these movements, from every one of these words, emanated an inevitable power. All these physical manifestations seemed to compose a web which trapped him, and held him prisoner. It seemed that between this woman and himself there was formed a sort of corporeal bond, a sort of organic dependence, a correspondence by virtue of which the slightest gesture provoked in him an involuntary sensual modification, and that henceforth he would no longer be capable of living and feeling independently. How could he reconcile this evident affinity with the occult hate which he had just discovered at the bottom of his heart?
Hippolyte, through a spontaneous curiosity, through an instinctive desire to multiply her sensations and to make the surrounding neighborhood part of herself, was still absorbed in the spectacle. The facility she exhibited in entering into communication with every form of natural life and of finding a world of analogies between human expressions and the appearances of the most diverse things; this rapid and diffuse sympathy, which attached her not only to objects with which she was in daily contact, but also to foreign objects; that sort of imitative virtue which often permitted her to express by a single sign the distinctive character of an animate or inanimate being, of talking to the domestic animals and understanding their language—all these mimic faculties properly concurred in rendering more visible, in George's eyes, the predominance in her of the inferior life.
"What's that?" she said, surprised at noticing a sudden, mysterious rumbling. "Didn't you hear it?"
It was like a dull blow, which other blows followed in rapid succession—blows so strange that it could not be discerned if they came from near or far, in the air that became more and more limpid.
"Didn't you hear that?"
"It may be distant thunder."
"Oh, no!"
"What, then?"
They looked around them, perplexed. Every moment the sea was changing color in proportion as the sky became clearer; here and there it took on that shade of indefinable green, like unripe flax, as when the sun's oblique rays pass through the diaphanous stems in an April twilight.
"Ah! it's the sail flapping—that white sail, yonder," cried Hippolyte, happy at being the first to discover the mystery. "Look. She's caught the wind. She's off."
CHAPTER II.
With a few intervals of drowsy indolence, she felt a mad desire to wander off, to venture out in the heat of the sun, to scour the beach and surrounding country, to explore unfamiliar paths. She stimulated her companion; at times she carried him off almost by force; at times, too, she started off alone, and he joined her unexpectedly.
In order to climb a hill, they followed a small pathway bordered by thick hedges of violet flowers, among which blossomed the large and delicate calices of other snowy fragrant flowers with fine petals. On the other side of the hedges, ears of corn waved to and fro on their stems, yellowish-green in color, more or less ready to change into gold; and in other places the corn was so thick and high that it towered over the tops of the hedges, suggesting a beautiful, overflowing cup.
Nothing escaped Hippolyte's vigilant eye. Every minute she stooped to blow away certain spheres of down, very fragile, at the tips of their long, slender peduncles. Every minute she stopped to observe the small spiders climbing by an invisible thread from a flower situated low down to a branch above.
On the hill, in a narrow, sunny circle, there was a small field of flax already dry. The yellowish stems bore at their summits a ball of gold, and here and there the gold seemed tarnished by an ironlike rust. The highest stems were waving almost imperceptibly. And, because of this extreme lightness, the whole gave the idea of some delicate piece of gold-work.
"Look, it is just like filigree!" said Hippolyte.
The furze was commencing to shed its flowers. A few feet away hung a sort of white foam in flakes; on others crawled large black and brown caterpillars, soft to the touch as velvet. Hippolyte took up one whose delicate down was streaked with vermilion, and she kept it calmly on the palm of her hand.
"It is more beautiful than a flower," she said.
George remarked, and it was not the first time, that she was almost totally devoid of instinctive repugnance towards insects, and that, in general, she did not feel that keen and invincible repulsion which he himself felt for a host of things considered unclean.
"Throw it away, I beg of you!"
She began to laugh, and stretched out her hand as if to put the caterpillar on his neck. He gave a cry and sprang back, which made her laugh all the more.
"Oh, what a brave man!"
In a spirit of mischief, she started to pursue him between the trunks of the young oaks, through the narrow paths that formed a sort of mountainous labyrinth. Her peals of laughter started from between the gray stones flocks of wild sparrows.
"Stop! Stop! You frighten the sheep."
A small flock of frightened sheep dispersed, dragging behind them up the rocky incline a bundle of bluish rags.
"Stop. I have it no longer. See."
And she showed the runaway her empty hands.
"Let us help the Mute."
And she ran towards the woman in rags, who was making ineffectual efforts to hold back the sheep attached to the long cords of twisted osier. Hippolyte seized the bunch of cords, and braced her feet against a stone in order to have more resisting power. She panted, her face purple; and in this violent attitude she was very beautiful. Her beauty lighted up, unexpectedly, like a torch.
"Come, George, come you too!" she cried to George, communicating to him her frank and childish joy.
The sheep stopped in a clump of furze. There were six of them, three black and three white, and bore the osier cords around their woolly necks. The woman who looked after them, emaciated, poorly covered by her bluish rags, gesticulated while giving vent, from her toothless mouth, to an incomprehensible grumbling. Her little greenish eyes, without eyelashes, bleary, tearful and congested, had a malignant look.
When Hippolyte gave her alms, she kissed the pieces of money. Then, letting go the cords, she removed from her head a rag which no longer had either form or color, stooped to the ground, and slowly, with greatest care, tied up the pieces of money in a multiplicity of knots.
"I am tired," said Hippolyte. "Let us sit down here for a moment."
They sat down. George then perceived that the spot was near the great furze field where, on that May morning, the five virgins had plucked the flowers to strew the path of the beautiful Roman. That morning already seemed very far off, lost in dreamy haze. He said:
"Do you see, over yonder, those bushes which are now almost flowerless? Well, it was there that we filled the baskets to strew flowers on your path when you arrived. Oh, what a day! Do you remember?"
She smiled, and in a transport of sudden tenderness took one of his hands, which she kept pressed in her own; and she leaned her cheek on the shoulder of the loved one, burying herself in the sweetness of that memory, of that solitude, of that peace, of that poesy.
From time to time a breath of wind passed through the tops of the oaks; and below, farther on, in the gray of the olive-trees, passed, from time to time, a clear wave of silver. The Mute moved away slowly behind the feeding sheep; and she seemed to leave something fantastic in her traces, as if a reflect of the legends in which malignant fairies transform themselves into toads at every turn of the path.
"Aren't you happy now?" murmured Hippolyte.
George thought: "It is already two weeks, and there has been no change in me. Still the same anxiety, the same inquietude, the same discontent! We are hardly at the beginning, and I already foresee the end. What shall we do to enjoy the passing hour?" Certain phrases of a letter from Hippolyte recurred to him: "Oh! when will it be given me to be near you during entire days, to live your life? You will see, I shall no longer be the same woman. I will be your mistress, your friend, your sister; and if you think me worthy, I will be also your adviser.... In me you should find nothing but sweetness and repose.... It will be a life of love such as has never before been seen." ...
He thought: "For the past two weeks our whole existence has been composed of petty, material incidents, like those of to-day. It is true; I have already seen in heranother woman! She is commencing to change, even in appearance. It is unbelievable how rapidly she is gaining in health. One would say that every breath is a gain; that, for her, every fruit turns into blood; that the healthfulness of the air penetrates her every pore. She was made for this life of idleness, of liberty, of physical enjoyment, of carelessness. Up to now, she has not uttered a single thoughtful word which revealed preoccupation of the soul. Her intervals of silence and immobility are caused only by muscular fatigue, just as at the present moment."
"Of what are you thinking?" she demanded.
"Of nothing. I am happy."
After a pause, she added:
"We'll go on now, shall we?"
They rose. She bestowed upon his mouth a sonorous kiss. She was gay and restless. Every few minutes she darted away from him to run down an incline free from rocks; and when she wished to check her speed, she grasped the trunk of a young oak, which groaned and bent beneath the shock.
She gathered a violet flower and sucked it.
"It's honey."
She gathered another, and placed it on her lover's lips.
"Taste it!"
And it seemed as if she enjoyed the savor for the second time, at seeing the motions of his mouth.
"With all these flowers, and all these bees, there must certainly be a hive near by," she went on. "One of these mornings, while you are asleep, I must come here and search for it.... I'll bring you a honeycomb."
She prattled at a great rate about this adventure, which tickled her fancy; and in her words appeared, with the vivacity of an actual sensation, the freshness of the morning, the mystery of the woods, the impatience of the search, the joy of the discovery, the pale color and wild fragrance of honey.
They halted half-way up the hill, at the border of the woody region, charmed by the melancholy which ascended from the sea.
The sea was delicately colored, between a blue and a green, in which the green had a progressive tendency to dominate; but the sky, of a leaden azure at the zenith, and streaked here and there by clouds, was rose-colored in the curve toward Ortono. This light was reflected in pale tints on the surface of the water, and recalled deflowered roses floating. Against the maritime background were arranged in steps, in harmonious degrees, first the two large oaks with their dark foliage, then the silvery olive-trees, then the fig-trees with their bright foliage and violet branches. The moon, orange-colored, enormous, almost at its full, rose up above the ring of the horizon, like a globe of crystal through whose transparency could be seen a chimerical country figured in bas-relief on a massive disk of gold.
One heard the warbling of birds, near and far. One heard the lowing of an ox; then a bleating; then the wailing of a child. There was a pause during which all these voices were silent, and only this single wail was heard.
It was a wail, not violent or interrupted, but shrill, continuous, almost feeble. And it attracted the soul, detached it from all the rest, snatched it from the seduction of the twilight, to oppress it with a veritable anguish which responded to the suffering of the unknown creature, of the little, invisible being.
"Do you hear?" said Hippolyte, whose voice, already changed by compassion, became involuntarily lower. "I know who the child is that's crying."
"You know?" asked George, to whom his mistress's voice and appearance had given a strange shock.
"Yes."
She was again listening intently to the lamentable moaning, which now seemed to fill the whole place. She added: "It's the infant that the Ghouls are sucking."
She had pronounced these words without the shadow of a smile, as if she herself were beneath the empire of the superstition.
"It lives over there, in that tumble-down cottage. Candia told me."
After a slight hesitation, during which they listened to the wails and had a fantastic vision of the dying child, Hippolyte suggested:
"Shall we go and see it? It's not far."
George was perplexed, dreading the sadness of the spectacle, and the contact of the distressed and coarse people.
"Shall we?" repeated Hippolyte, whose curiosity became irresistible. "It is over there, in that old cottage, beneath the pine. I know the way."
"Let's go!"
She went straight ahead, hastening her steps, across a sloping field. Both were silent; both heard only the infantile wail which served them as a guide. And, step by step, their anguish became more poignant and in proportion as the wailing became more distinct and indicated better the poor, bloodless body from which pain forced it.
They traversed a copse of odorous orange-trees, treading on the flowers scattered on the ground. On the threshold of a cottage close to the one they sought an enormously stout woman was seated; and on her monstrous body was a small round head, with soft eyes, white teeth, a placid smile.
"Where are you going, signora?" asked the woman, without rising.
"We are going to see the child whom the Ghouls are sucking."
"What's the use? You'd better stay here, and take a rest. I do not lack children, either. Look!"
Three or four naked children, who had also such large stomachs that one would have believed them to be dropsical, dragged themselves along on the ground, grunting and tumbling over, putting in their mouths everything that fell into their hands. And the woman held in her arms a fifth child, all covered with brownish scabs, from the midst of which shone out a pair of large clear blue eyes, like miraculous flowers.
"You see that I have plenty of them too, and that this one, here, is sick. Stay here a bit."
She smiled, soliciting with her eyes the strangers' generosity. And, with an expression in which one guessed the desire to dissuade the curiosity of the woman by the vague presentiment of a peril:
"What's the good of going there?" she repeated. "See how ill this one is."
And again she showed the afflicted child, but without simulating any sorrow, as if she simply offered to the passer-by a nearer object of compassion in exchange for a more distant one—as if she wished to say: "Since you desire to be compassionate, have compassion for the one before you." George examined, with deep pain, the poor, spotted face, whose large, bright, and clear eyes seemed to drink in all the light shed on this June evening.
"What is he suffering from?" he asked.
"Ah! signor, who ever knows?" answered the fat woman, always with the same placidity. "He has what God wishes."
Hippolyte gave her some money; and they resumed their way towards the other cottage, bearing with them the nauseous odor emanating from that door full of shadow.
They did not speak. They felt a contraction of their hearts, a disgust in their mouths, a weakness in their limbs. They heard the shrill wailing, mingled with other voices, other sounds; and they were stupefied at having been able to hear this single sound so far away, and so distinctly. But what attracted their eyes was the tall and straight pine whose robust trunk stood out black against the diffused light of the twilight, sustaining a melodious summit filled with sparrows.
At their approach, a whisper passed among the women gathered around the victim.
"Here are the gentlefolk—Candia's strangers."
"Come, come!"
And the women opened their circle to permit the arrivals to draw nearer. One of them, an old woman, with wrinkled skin, of the color of parched earth, expressionless eyes, whitish and as if vitrified in the depths of their hollow orbits, said, addressing Hippolyte, and touching her arm:
"Look, signora! Look! The Ghouls are sucking it, poor creature! Look at the state they've reduced it to! May God protect your children!"
Her voice was so dry that it appeared artificial, and resembled the sounds articulated by an automaton.
"Cross yourself, signora!" she added again.
The advice seemed lugubrious in that lifeless mouth, in which the voice lost its human character and became a dead thing. Hippolyte made the sign of the cross, and looked at her companion.
In the space before the door of the hut the women ere in a circle as around a spectacle, making; from time to time some mechanical sign of condolence. And the circle was unceasingly renewed; some, already tired of looking, went away; others arrived from neighboring houses. And almost all, at the sight of this slow death, repeated the same gesture, repeated the same words.
The child reposed in a little cradle, of rough pine boards, like a small, lidless coffin. The poor creature, naked, sickly, emaciated, greenish, was wailing continuously and waving its debilitated arms and legs, which had nothing more than skin and bone, as if asking for help. And the mother, seated at the foot of the cradle, bent in two, her head so low that it almost touched her knees, seemed to hear nothing. It seemed as if some terrible weight rested on her neck and prevented her from rising. At times, mechanically, she placed on the edge of the cradle a coarse, callous hand, burnt by the sun; and she made the gesture of rocking without altering her attitude or breaking the silence. Then the holy images, the talismans, and the relics, with which the pine cradle was almost entirely covered, undulated and tinkled, during a momentary pause in the wail.
"Liberata! Liberata!" cried one of the women, shaking her. "Look, Liberata! The lady has come—the lady is in your house! Look!"
The mother slowly raised her head and looked around her, with a bewildered air; then she fixed on her visitor her dry and mournful eyes, in whose depths there was less of fatigued sorrow than inert and shadowy terror—the terror of nocturnal witchcraft against which no exorcism prevailed, the terror of those insatiable beings who now had the house in their power, and who would not abandon it perhaps but with the last corpse.
"Speak! Speak!" insisted one of the women, shaking her again by the arm. "Speak! Ask the lady to send you to the Madonna of the Miracles."
The others surrounded Hippolyte with supplications.
"Yes, signora. Be charitable to her! Send her to the Madonna. Send her to the Madonna!"
The child cried louder. In the tops of the pine-tree the sparrows were emitting heart-rending cries. In the neighborhood, between the deformed trunks of the olive-trees, a dog barked. The moon was beginning to cast its shadows. "Yes," stammered Hippolyte, incapable of sustaining longer the fixed gaze of the silent mother. "Yes, yes, we will send her—to-morrow."
"No, not to-morrow; Saturday, signora."
"Saturday is the Vigil."
"Let her buy him a candle."
"A fine candle."
"A ten-pound candle."
"Do you hear, Liberata? Do you hear?"
"The lady will send you to the Madonna!"
"The Madonna will pity you."
"Speak! Speak!"
"She's become dumb, signora."
"She hasn't spoken for three days."
In the midst of the confused cries of the women, the child cried still louder.
"Do you hear how he cries?"
"He always cries loudest, signora, at nightfall."
"Perhaps it's coming soon."
"Perhaps the child has seen——"
"Make the sign of the cross, signora."
"It's getting dark."
"Do you hear how he cries?"
"Isn't that the bell tolling?"
"No; one can't hear it here."
"Silence!"
"One can't hear it here."
"But I hear it."
"I hear it, too."
"Ave Maria!"
All were silent, made the sign of the cross, and bowed. It seemed as if several sonorous waves, scarcely perceptible, arrived from the distant market-town; but the child's wail filled every listener's ear. Once more, only this single wail could be heard. The mother had fallen on her knees at the foot of the cradle, prostrated to the earth. Hippolyte, her head bowed, was praying with fervor.
"Look, there, in the doorway!" whispered one of the women to her neighbor.
George, watchful and uneasy, turned his head. The doorway was full of shadow.
"Look, there, in the doorway! Don't you see something?"
"Yes, I see," replied the other, uncertain, a little frightened.
"What is it? What do you see?" asked a third.
"What is it?" demanded a fourth.
"What is it?"
Suddenly curiosity and fright seized them all. They looked toward the door. The child cried. The mother rose, and she, too, began to fix her dilated eyes on the door which the shadows rendered mysterious. The dog barked among the olive-trees.
"What is it?" said George, in a low voice, but not without requiring some effort to shake off the increasing uneasiness of his imagination. "What do you see?"
None of the women dared to answer. All, in the shadow, saw the outlines of a vague form.
Then he advanced toward the door. When he crossed the threshold, a furnace-like heat and a repugnant stench cut short his breath. He turned round, went out.
"It's a scythe," he said.
In fact, it was a scythe hanging on the wall.
"Ah! a scythe."
And the voices recommenced.
"Liberata! Liberata!"
"Are you mad?"
"She is mad."
"It's getting dark. Let us go."
"He's not crying any more."
"Poor creature! Is he asleep?"
"He has stopped crying."
"Take in the cradle; the evening is damp. We will help you, Liberata."
"Poor creature! Is he asleep?"
"One would think he were dead. He no longer moves."
"Take in the cradle, won't you? Don't you hear us, Liberata?"
"She is mad."
"Where is the lamp? Joseph will soon return. Have you no lamp? Joseph will soon return from the lime-kiln."
"She is mad. She doesn't speak any more."
"We are going. God be with you!"
"Poor tormented flesh! Is he sleeping?"
"He's sleeping, he's sleeping.... He's not in pain now."
"Oh, Lord Jesus, save him!"
"Protect us, O Lord!"
"Farewell, farewell! Good night!"
"Good night!"
"Good night!"