II
“Grandissima grazia d’ombre e di lumi s’aggiunge ai visi di quelli cheseggono sulle porte di quelle abitazioni che sono oscure....”
Leonardo da Vinci.
I was sincerely glad when I recognised on the road to Rebursa, Oddo and Antonello Montaga, who had found out the hour of my arrival and had come to meet me. Both of them embraced me with effusion, delivered messages of welcome from Trigento, and asked me a thousand questions at the same moment; they seemed delighted to see me, and still more delighted when I spoke of my intention of remaining some time in the country.
“You are going to stay with us!” exclaimed Antonello, as he pressed my hand almost beside himself with joy. “Then you are sent by God....” “You must come this very day to Trigento,” said Oddo, interrupting his brother. “They are all expecting you there. You must come to-day....”
They both seemed to me overcome by a strange, almost feverish agitation; their gestures were wild and convulsive, their speech rapid and anxious; they were like two feeble prisoners just set free from an imprisonment which seems like a terrible dream,whom the first contact with outward life has disturbed and confused, making them almost dizzy. The more I looked at them, the more clearly I noticed these strange signs about their persons; and I began to feel anxious and distressed about them.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “I don’t know if I can come to-day. I am weary after so many hours of travelling. But to-morrow....”
I felt a vague desire to be alone, to collect myself, to taste the quality of the strange melancholy that had suddenly fallen upon me. A flood of memories rolled towards me from the things around, and the presence of those two unfortunate beings prevented my receiving it.
“Then,” said Oddo, “you will come to luncheon with us to-morrow. Do you consent?”
“Yes, I will come.”
“You cannot imagine how eagerly they are expecting you over there.”
“Then you had not forgotten me?”
“Oh, no! It is you who had forgotten us.”
“You had forgotten us,” repeated Antonello with a somewhat distorted smile. “You were right. We are buried.”
The tone of his voice struck me more than his words. His tones, gestures, looks, and all his actions had a singular intensity, like those of a man stricken by a mysterious disease or tormented by a continual hallucination, living in the midst of apparitions invisible to the eyes of others. It did not escape my notice that he was making an effort to break throughsome atmosphere that surrounded him, and to communicate more directly with me. This effort imparted a contracted and convulsed look to his whole person. My anxiety and distress grew greater.
“You will see our house,” he added with the same smile.
Involuntarily I asked—
“How is Donna Aldoina?”
Both the brothers hung their heads and did not answer.
They were like each other; in fact, they were twins. Both were tall and thin, and a little bent. They had the same light-coloured eyes, the same small silky beards, the same pale, restless, nervous hands, the hands of hysterical subjects. But in Antonello these marks of weakness and disorder were deeper and more irreparable. He was doomed.
During the pause that followed, I vainly sought for words to express myself. I was in bondage to a kind of melancholy stupor; it seemed as if the whole weight of my weary body had fallen on my soul. The road skirted a line of cliffs, and the horses’ trot as it resounded on the hard ground awoke echoes in the lonely hollows. At a turn of the road the river came in sight in the valley, its innumerable windings shining in the sun. A mass of white ruins was visible, enclosed like an island within one of these curves.
“Is not that Linturno over there?” I asked, as I recognised the dead city.
“Yes, that is Linturno,” replied Oddo. “Do you remember? We once went there together....”
“I remember.”
“What a long time ago it is!”
“What a long time!”
“Now there is not much difference between Linturno and Trigento,” said Antonello, stroking his beard hesitatingly with slender fingers, while his eyes seemed to have lost consciousness of outward things. “You will see to-morrow.”
“You are disheartening him!” interrupted Oddo with some irritation. “He won’t come to-morrow.”
“Yes, yes, I will come,” I assured them, but I had to force myself to smile and shake off my own overpowering melancholy. “I will come, and shall find some way of cheering you up. You seem to me a little ill from loneliness, a little depressed.”
Antonello, who was sitting opposite me, laid his hand on my knee and leant forward to look into my eyes with an indefinable expression of fear and anxiety written in his face, as though he had perceived some terrible meaning in my words, and wished to question me about it. And once more his white face close to my own seemed even in the daylight to belong to a different world, where it existed alone; and brought to my mind those emaciated, spiritual faces that stand out from the mysterious backgrounds of sacred pictures darkened by time and the smoke of candles.
It was only for a moment. He drew back again without speaking.
“I have brought my horses with me,” I added, controllingmy agitation; “we shall go for long rides every day. You must take exercise and shake off the idleness and ennui. How do you pass the hours?”
“In counting them,” said Oddo.
“And your sisters?”
“Oh, poor things!” murmured Oddo with tremulous tenderness in his voice. “Massimilla prays; Violante stifles herself with the perfumes sent her by the Queen; Anatolia—Anatolia is the one who keeps us alive, she is our soul, she lives entirely for us.”
“And the prince?”
“He has aged very much; he is quite white now.”
“And Don Ottavio?”
“He hardly ever leaves his rooms. We have almost forgotten the sound of his voice.”
“And Donna Aldoina?” I was just going to ask again, but I restrained myself and was silent.
We were now in the undulating valley of the Saurgo, in a warm hollow. “How early the spring is here!” I exclaimed, with a desire to console these wretched beings and myself as well. “In February the first flowers come out. Is not that in itself a privilege? You do not know how to enjoy the things life offers you. You convert a garden into a prison and torture yourselves within it.”
“Where are the flowers?” asked Antonello with his painful smile.
We all three began to look out for flowers. Theground was tawny and rugged as a lion’s skin; it seemed made to nourish this dry and harassed but in reality fruitful vegetation. “There they are!” I cried with a keen feeling of pleasure, as I pointed out a row of almond trees on a long billowy-looking mound.
“They are on your property,” said Oddo.
We had indeed reached the neighbourhood of Rebursa. The rocky chain of hills with its broken outlines and sharp peaks, and the winding Saurgo lapping at its foot, stretched out on the right, and rose step by step up to the highest summit, Mount Corace, which glittered in the sun like a helmet. To the left of the road the ground sloped away in undulations, like a wide stretch of sandy shore, and further away it rose into brown lumpy hills like the humps of camels in the desert.
“Look! look! There are some more up there!” I cried as I noticed another pale silvery cloud of blossom. “Don’t you see, Antonello?”
He looked less at the almond blossom than at me, a timorous smile of amazement hovering on his lips, wondering perhaps at the childish joy which the sight of the early flowers had awaked in me. “But what fairer welcome could the land beloved of my father have given me? What brighter festal decorations could this hardy country with its backbone of rock have worn?”
“If Anatolia, Violante, and Massimilla were only here!” exclaimed Oddo, who began to share my unexpected enthusiasm. “Ah, if they were only here!” and regret was expressed in his voice.
“We must bring them here among the flowers,” said Antonello softly.
“See what a quantity!” I continued, giving myself up to the novel pleasure with the more confidence that I felt able to transfer some share of it to these poor pent-up souls. “I am glad they belong to me, Oddo.”
“We must bring them here among the flowers,” repeated Antonello softly, as if in a dream.
It seemed to me that his feverish eyes were refreshed by the sight of these pure blossoms, and that in his gentle words they were fused with the vague outlines of his three sisters: “Massimilla prays; Violante stifles herself with perfumes; Anatolia is our life and soul.”
“Stop!” I rose and said to the coachman, for a sudden idea had struck me, and filled me with singular delight. “Let us get out; let us go into the fields. I want you to carry home some branches. It will be a treat for them down there.”
Oddo and Antonello looked at each other with rather a puzzled air, half smiling, half shy, as if the idea were something unforeseen and strange which at once scared them and gave them a delicious sensation. They had shown me their malady, they had revealed to me their sorrow, they had spoken to me of the gloomy prison from which they had come, and were now about to enter again; and here was I, on the high road, asking them to acknowledge and celebrate the feast of spring: of that spring which they had forgotten, and whichthey appeared to be seeing for the first time after long years, gazing on it with mingled fear and joy as if it were a miracle.
“Let us get out!”
I was tired no longer, for I felt within me the abundance of life, and that exaltation which spontaneous acts of generosity give to the spirit. I was liberal of myself to these two needy souls; I warmed them at my fire, I slaked their thirst with my wine. I read in their eyes (and they were continually looking at me) a kind of submission and faithful surrender. Already they both belonged to me; so I could exert my benevolence and my power over them without fear of failure. “What are you waiting for? Won’t you get out?” I asked Antonello, who was standing with his foot on the step, hesitating as if some danger threatened him.
The contracted smile was still on his face. He was making a visible effort as he put his foot to the ground; he staggered as though he had miscalculated the height, and his first steps were jerky and uncertain. I helped him up the path. As he felt the soft earth sink under his footsteps he paused; and with face turned towards the blossoming trees, he breathed hard, drank in the beautiful sight with his pale eyes, and appeared to be almost dazzled.
I touched his arm and said—
“You didn’t remember these things.”
Oddo, who had already entered the orchard, exclaimed in a kind of intoxication—
“Ah! if Violante were only here! This perfumeis worth far more than the essences sent her by Maria Sophia.”
Antonello repeated softly—
“We must bring them here among the flowers.”
It seemed as though the sound of these words had fascinated his ear from the first, like a musical cadence. His voice kept the same inflections as he repeated them. And as I heard the words again I felt strangely disturbed, almost as if he had addressed them to me. Again the desire to cut some of the branches arose within me. It had died out at the sight of so much living beauty. And vaguely I pictured to myself the great gift of spring arriving at the gloomy palace in the twilight.
“Is there no one about?” I asked impatiently. A peasant came running up. Breathlessly he bent his head, and began to kiss my hand passionately.
“Cut some of the finest branches,” I ordered him.
He was a magnificent example of his species, a worthy inhabitant of this rugged flint-strewn land. He seemed to me like a survivor of Deucalion’s ancient race, sprung from the pebbles. He brandished his bill-hook, and with clean, rapid strokes began to mutilate the joyous vegetable creation. Each stroke sent down a shower of loose petals, which lay like snow on the ground.
“Look,” I said to Antonello, showing him a branch; “did you ever see anything so delicate and so fresh?”
He raised his weak, effeminate hand and touched a flower with the tips of his fingers. It was the gesture of the invalid or convalescent, who touches aliving thing with the dim notion that the contact will leave some small part of its vitality with him, just as butterflies leave behind the ephemeral dust of their wings. He turned to his brother with almost tender melancholy in his painful smile.
“Do you see, Oddo? We had forgotten, we did not know ...”
“But don’t you live in a garden?” I asked, marvelling at the amazement and emotion caused by a simple branch of almond blossom, as though it were an unheard-of novelty. “Don’t you pass your whole time among leaves and flowers?”
“Yes, that is true,” answered Antonello; “but somehow I had ceased to notice them. Besides, these are, or seem to me,quite different. I can’t explain the impression they make on me. You would not understand.”
The ringing sound of the bill-hook went on, and he turned towards the almond tree, which was trembling under the blows. The man was sitting up in the tree, with the trunk in the grip of his muscular legs, and above his head, which was dark as a mulatto’s, hung the fresh silvery cloud, quivering at the glitter of the hooked steel.
“Tell him to stop,” begged Antonello. “We shall not be able to carry all those branches.”
“The carriage shall take you to Trigento with your burden.”
And I lingered on, picturing the arrival of the springlike gift at the gates of the park where the three sisters were waiting. Their faces came beforeme indistinctly, yet with some trace of the features associated with memories of childhood and youth. And the desire to see them again, to hear their voices, to recall those memories in their presence, to know their troubles, and to take part in their unknown life, grew stronger and stronger within me, till it began to take the acuteness of anxiety.
Following out my own line of thought and feeling (the carriage had already begun to roll towards Rebursa), I said—
“Long ago the park of Trigento used to be full of jonquils and violets.”
“So it is still,” said Oddo.
“There were great hedges of box.”
“So there are still.”
“I remember so well the year you came back from Monaco. Massimilla was very ill. I used to come over to Trigento nearly every day with my mother ...”
We were immersed in spring. The carriage was crammed with almond blossom; it was piled behind our backs and on our knees. Antonello’s white face looked more wasted than ever in the midst of that fragrant whiteness, and the melancholy of his feverish eyes, contrasted with that living expression of youth eternally renewed, went to my heart.
“What a pity you are not coming to Trigento to-day!” said Oddo, with deep regret in his voice. “I don’t like leaving you.”
“Yes, indeed,” added Antonello. “We have seen you to-day for the first time after years and years of silence and oblivion, and now it seems impossible to do without you.”
They spoke these affectionate words with that simplicity and candour which belong to solitary men, not accustomed to the affectations of ordinary life. I felt already that they cared for me and I for them; that the great gap made by the years was already bridged over; and that their fate was about to be bound up irrevocably with mine. Why did my soul incline so specially towards these two prostrate beings? why did it yearn with such infinite desire over graces and sorrows of which it had only caught a glimpse? why was it so impatient to pour out its riches over this poverty? Was it true, then, that the long and hard discipline I had undergone had not dried up the springs of emotion and imagination, but had made them deeper and more fervent? On that February afternoon, warmed by the breath of early spring, a vapour of poetry rose around me. The babbling flow of the Saurgo at the foot of rocks fashioned by fire; the dead city in the marshy river; the peak of Corace, glittering like a helmet on a threatening brow; the brown fields, strewn with flints full of dormant life; the vines and olives, contorted with the huge effort of producing such rich fruit from such meagre limbs; the whole aspect of the country around was symbolical of the power of thoughts nourished in secret, of the tragic mystery of destinies fulfilled, of painful energy, tyrannical constraint, proud passion, of every harsh and rigid virtue peculiar to lonely scenery or lonely man. And yet the softest of spring airs breathed over the austere land; silver almond blossom crowned the hills, as foam crowns the waves;under the slanting rays the slopes here and there wore the look of soft velvet; the rocky peaks were turned to rosy gold against a sky fading into delicate green. And so the influence of the season and the magic of the hour were able to soften the severe genius of the place, clothe its harshness with tenderness, temper its violence, and throw a gentle enchantment over that rocky basin, fashioned by fire at the terrible bidding of an ancient volcano; afterwards continually invaded and corroded by the greed, or enriched by the liberality, of an ancient river.
“We shall see each other very often,” I said, after a pause, in reply to their kind words. “From Rebursa to Trigento is a short distance; and I know that in you I have found two brothers——”
They both started as a mountain keeper passed us at a gallop, discharging his carbine in the air to give the signal for the salute of welcome and joy. Rebursa rose before me with its four towers of stone, still strong and fair, still bearing intact the impress of its former pride, casting the shadow of its power over a vigorous race, among whom obedience and fidelity were transmitted from father to son as a portion of their inheritance.
But anguish such as I had not felt for long came over my soul as I set foot on the threshold, strewn with myrtle and laurel, where there was no beloved voice to bid me welcome and call me by name. The figures of my dead appeared to me at the foot of the staircase, and fixed their colourless eyes on me without a movement, without a sign, without a smile.
A little later I followed the carriage with my eyes for a long, long way on the road to Trigento, as it bore away the two sad invalids, nearly buried under flowers. And my soul was there before them at the park gates, where the three sisters were waiting—Anatolia, Violante, Massimilla!—and I caught a glimpse of them as they received the fresh gift of spring in their outstretched arms; and I tried to recognise their noble faces through the fragrant thicket, and to discern the brow of her whom my soul would have elected for the desired union. The gathering twilight heightened this strange and sudden agitation caused by the desire for love. Blue shadows filled the valley of the Saurgo, hid the dead city, crept slowly up the steep terraces of rock; and when stars began to twinkle in the sky, down below festal bonfires were lit; they flared up, multiplied, formed large wreaths. Lonely and lofty, far apart from these signs of life below, the pinnacles of rock still shone, withdrawn almost into the remoteness of a myth, into the sphere of a supernatural atmosphere. And all of a sudden they blazed like fireworks with an extraordinary light, which only lasted a few moments; then they grew paler, turned violet, faded away, and went out. The lofty peak of Corace was the last to remain aflame; its point clove the sky sharply, like the cry of hopeless passion; then, with the rapidity of a lightning flash, it faded away also, and entered the universal night.
“If the severity of thy discipline should have no other reward than the divine emotion that has overwhelmedthee since yesterday, thou mightest still rejoice over the result of thy efforts,” said thedæmonto me, as we rode slowly towards the walled garden. “Now at last thou hast reached maturity! Until yesterday thou knewest not what a degree of maturity and completeness thy soul had attained. The happy revelation comes to thee from the desire thou hast suddenly felt to pour out thy riches, to spread them, to spend them without stint. Thou dost feel thyself inexhaustible, capable of nourishing a thousand lives. This is indeed the prize of thy diligent efforts; thou possessest now the ready fertility of deeply cultivated land. Therefore enjoy thy spring; leave thyself open to all influences; welcome the unknown and unforeseen, and anything else that fate may bring thee; abolish all prohibitions. The first part of thy task is completed. Thou hast given integrity and intensity to thy nature; let it now be sacred to thee. Respect the slightest motions of thy thought and sentiment, because thy nature alone produces them. Since this nature is entirely thy own, thou mayest yield to it and enjoy it without limits. From henceforth everything is permitted to thee, even that which thou didst hate and despise in others, because everything becomes ennobled after passing through the ordeal of fire. Fear not to be merciful, thou who art strong and able to dominate and chastise. Be not ashamed of thy perplexity and thy languor, thou who hast made thyself a will tempered as hard as beaten swords. Repel not the tenderness which overwhelms thee, the illusion which enfolds thee, themelancholy which attracts thee, all the new indefinable feelings which now approach thy astonished soul. They are but the dim shapes of vapour which escape from the life fermenting in the depths of thy fertile nature. Therefore welcome them without suspicion, for they are not foreign to thee, nor will they diminish or corrupt thy nature. Perhaps on the morrow they will appear to thee as heralds of that new birth which is thy desire.”
Never since then have I passed an hour at once so delicious and so painful. I know not if the trees laden with blossom had as keen a sense of their vital power as I had of mine on that clear morning; but they certainly could not feel my vast bewildering perplexity, innumerable feelings, and innumerable thoughts. In order to prolong both pain and delight, I kept my horse at a walk, and lingered on the way, as if that hour were to close for ever a phase of my intimate life, and on my arrival at the fated spot a new and unforeseen phase were to open, the dim presentiment of which was to be found in my increasing uneasiness. From time to time the breath of spring, with its whispering warmth around me, seemed to waft me up into an ether of dreams, to efface in me for a few seconds the consciousness of real personality, and to breathe into me the virgin ardent soul of one of those hero lovers in fairy tales who ride to find Sleeping Beauties in the Wood. Was not I riding towards the maiden princesses imprisoned in a walled garden? And was not each one of them perhaps in her secret heart expecting the Bridegroom?
Already they appeared before me as pictured by my desire, and already my desire met its first perplexity in the triple image. I asked myself: “Which will be the chosen one?” for within my soul I felt at the same moment the nuptial joy of the one, and the sepulchral sadness of the other two; I felt all the germs of future trouble, and already perceived regret hidden under hope. And again that fear crossed my spirit which once before had disturbed me in the midst of my voluntary discipline: the fear of those blind forces of fate against which the strongest will may struggle in vain; the fear of that sudden whirlwind which in a second may seize the boldest and most tenacious of men, and carry him far away from the promised goal.
I drew up my horse. The road at that point was quite deserted; the groom was following me at a distance. Over the grand, lonely scenery reigned the deepest silence, only broken at intervals by the whispering olives; a steady light shone equally over everything; and in the light and the silence, all things from small leaves to gigantic rocks appeared with a clearness of outline that was almost crude. I felt more strongly than ever the ambiguous something which had entered into me. And I thought: “Was not my soul till yesterday filled with the same clear daylight which now reveals every line of scenery to my attentive sight? And does not this new uncertainty cover some great peril? What if a dangerously large store of poetry has accumulated within me during my solitude, and now requiresunlimited expansion? But if I give myself up to the rushing torrent, where will it carry me? Perhaps watchful guard against extraneous life may yet avail; perhaps it may yet avail to refuse to enter the circle which is suddenly opening before me, and will enclose me like a magic ring.” And thedæmonrepeated with unhesitating voice: “Fear not! Welcome the unknown and unforeseen and whatever else fate may bring thee; abolish all prohibitions; go onwards safe and free; have no anxiety save to live. Thy fate can only be fulfilled in the abundance of life.”
I urged my horse into a trot, vehemently, as if at that point a great act had been resolved upon. And Trigento appeared on the slope of the hill with its stone houses clustering against the parent rock. At the summit appeared the ancient palace with its walled garden stretching down the opposite slope to the plain. It produced the effect of a great cloister full of forgotten or dead things.
As I dismounted at the gate I heard the voice of Oddo, who was looking out for me.
“Welcome, Claudio!”
He ran to meet me with outstretched arms, as much delighted as the first time.
“I thought you would have come earlier,” he said in a reproachful tone; “I have been waiting for you here for the last two hours.”
“I lingered on the way,” I answered. “I wanted to renew acquaintance with every tree and stone.”
With one of those strange sudden movements of his, in which curiosity and timidity were mingled, he went up to my horse and stroked his neck.
“How beautiful he is!” he murmured, and the animal’s sensitive neck quivered under the touch of his slender white hand.
“You can ride him whenever you like,” I said to him, “either this one or another.”
“I hardly think I could sit in the saddle now,” he answered; “I believe I should be nervous.... But come! Come! You are expected.”
And he led me up a path enclosed within walls of box-wood, feeble with age, and broken here and there by deep gaps, from which a fresh scent of invisible violets seemed to issue, strange as the breath of youth out of a decrepit mouth.
“Yesterday evening,” said Oddo rather uneasily, “yesterday evening we brought back joy with your almond blossom. You don’t know what we felt, alone in that carriage, buried under the flowers! Antonello was like a child. I never saw him like that before.”
At intervals the green walls opened out into archways, and I caught sight of grassy glades where some long slanting ray of sun pierced the shadow with a sharp outline.
“I never saw him like that before; I never heard him talk so much nonsense.”
Stone vases deep and round alternated with statuesalmost clothed with lichen, maimed or headless statues whose attitudes seemed eloquent to me. And a few daffodils were flowering round their pedestals.
“When we arrived here, we could not get out for the branches. The sisters came to set us free. How happy they were! They went away laden. We heard them laughing up the stairs. All such things are new to us, Claudio.”
A whispered splash reached my ear; the vague sound of a hidden fountain. An indefinable anxiety weighed upon my heart.
“We talked about you the whole evening, and remembered many things of long ago, and perhaps made some air-castles for the future. Who would ever have thought of your coming back? But none of us can believe yet that you will stay.... We feel as if after a few days you would escape us. It is not easy to bear this life of ours. Massimilla, you see, prefers a convent.... Did you not know that Massimilla is just going to leave us?”
As I walked up the path, brushing against the walls of vegetation, a strong, bitter odour reached my nostrils from the little, fresh box leaves which shone like beryls among the thick green.
“Ah! here is Violante!” exclaimed Oddo, touching my arm.
At the sudden apparition my heart gave a great bound, and I felt the colour rise in my face.
She was sitting under a lofty arch of box, with her feet upon the grass; a strip of meadow seenthrough the opening lay behind her, streaked with gold.
She smiled without rising, waiting till we came near; and she seemed to be offering her whole beauty to my astonished gaze in that calm attitude, as she sat on the green sward where perhaps her fingers had gathered the numerous violets ornamenting her girdle. As she stretched out her hand to me, she looked me full in the face, and said in a voice which was the perfect musical expression of the form it came from—
“You are welcome. We were expecting you yesterday. Oddo and Antonello brought us your gift instead, and it was no less acceptable.”
I said: “After many years I am once again entering your grounds, where I used long ago to accompany my mother, and already I begin to regret having stayed so long away. On leaving Rome I knew that I should find an empty house at Rebursa, but I did not know how richly Trigento would compensate for it. I owe you much gratitude.”
“We shall owe you gratitude,” she interrupted, “if you do not find our society wearisome. You know that this place is destitute of joy.”
“Even sadness has its benefit for him who understands how to taste it, has it not?”
“Perhaps.”
“Besides, I assure you, since I passed the gate I have experienced none but exquisite sensations here. This great garden seems to me delicious. It is impossible not to feel the poetry of its antiquity!Yesterday when I saw Oddo and Antonello in raptures over that almond blossom, as if they had never seen a flowering tree before, I thought everything here must be withered and dead. Instead of which I find within your gates a more enchanting display of spring than that which I left outside. Aren’t you tired with gathering violets in the grass? Your girdle is full of them.”
She smiled and looked down towards her waist, and with her bare fingers caressed the violets which adorned it.
“You come from the city,” she said. Her voice was musical but rather veiled, and the richness of its tone was a little exhausted, as if very slightly cracked; “you come from the city, and the country is offering you her firstfruits.”
“I don’t know how it is, but certain things always seem new.”
“We see these things no longer, and love them no longer,” said Oddo, with some melancholy. “Probably Violante cannot smell the scent of the flowers she picks.”
“Is that true?” I asked, turning to her. My eyes were struck by the profile of marble under her abundant hair and the motionless attitude, which reminded one of immortal statues.
“What were you saying?” she asked, like one returning from far off; she had not heard her brother’s words.
“Oddo says you cannot smell the scent of the flowers you pick. Is it true?”
A faint touch of red coloured her cheeks.
“Oh, no!” she answered, with a vivacity quite in contrast with the slow rhythm to which her life seemed set. “Don’t believe Oddo. He says that because I am fond of strong scents; but I can smell the faintest also, even those of the stones.”
“Of the stones?” said Oddo, laughing.
“What do you know about it, Oddo? Be quiet.”
We were walking up the great flight of steps covered with trellises leading in symmetrical order to the palace; she went up slowly between us, step by step. The stairs were very wide, and she made a step forward on each, and then each time paused an instant before putting her foot on the next, and this movement caused her always to lift the same foot. Wearied by the frequent repetition of the movement, she sometimes relaxed her body a little as she stood with bended knee and slackened the proud will which kept her figure as erect as a perfect stalk. An unexpected softness then came over her superb form; a new rhythm revealed what I should call the docile graces, the pliant qualities of love. So strong was the power emanating from this beautiful being, that I could not take my eyes off her movements; and I lingered behind so that my entire gaze should encircle her. She seemed to drive my spirit back into the marvellous epoch when artists drew from dormant matter those perfect forms which men regarded as the only truths worthy of worship on earth. And I thought as I looked at her and ascended behind her: “It is right she shouldremain untouched. Only by a god could she be possessed without shame.” And as her queenly head passed onwards in the light—her native element—I felt that her beauty was on the verge of its perfect maturity, of its highest effort, and I thanked fortune for having permitted me such a sight. “Ah, I shall worship her, but I shall not dare to love her; I shall not dare to look into her soul and surprise its secrets. Yet her every movement reveals that she was made for love; but it was for barren love, not for the love that creates. Her body will never bear the disfiguring burden; the flood of milk will never mar the pure outline of her bosom.”
She stopped, impatient at the effort, and a little out of breath, and said—
“How tiring these stairs are! Let us take a rest here, if you don’t mind.”
“Here are Antonello and Anatolia coming down,” remarked Oddo, who had seen the two, through the open bars of the trellises, descending the first flight of steps. “Let us wait for them.”
Moving towards us came she who had been represented to me as the giver of strength, the beneficent powerful maiden, the rich and generous soul. She appeared from the first as a support, for Antonello was leaning on her arm, and setting his hesitating steps to the measure of her firm ones.
“Which of us,” asked Violante suddenly, but so lightly as to remove all indiscretion from the question, “which of us do you remember least indistinctly?”
“I really don’t know,” I answered vaguely, for myears were listening to the rustle of Anatolia’s dress.
“But certainly the figures I remember have hardly anything in common with the present reality. Since the day I went away we have passed through that period of life when transformations are most rapid and most deep.”
The two others had come up. Anatolia also put out her hand, saying—
“You are welcome.”
Her actions had a kind of manly frankness, and the contact of her hand gave me an impression of generous strength and genuine kindness; it seemed to inspire me suddenly with brotherly confidence.
It was a hand unadorned with rings, not too white nor too slim, but robust in its pure shape, ready to clasp and to give support, flexible and firm at the same time. There was an impress of pride on its surface, varied as it was by the low relief of the joints and the intricacy of the veins, and there were lines of softness in the hollow warmth of the palm, where a radiant fire of feeling seemed to glow.
“You are welcome,” said the warm, cordial voice. “You have brought us spring and sunshine from Rome——”
“Oh no!” I interrupted. “I found them both here. In Rome I left nothing but mist and other gloomy things. I have just been saying how much I regret having stayed away from here so long.”
“You must make amends to us for your forgetfulness,” said Antonello with his painful smile.
“What do you think of Trigento?” asked Anatolia.“It is hardly changed at all, is it? You used to come here with your mother. You remember, don’t you? We have never forgotten her, nor ever shall. Among the things which have remained unchanged here, you will find the memory of that saintly soul and her wonderful kindness.”
A grave silence followed these words of recollection. For a few moments the sense of death which fell upon my filial heart threw an aspect of unreality on all the persons and things present. For a few moments everything seemed to become as far away and empty as the sky whose fading colour I could see through the bare vine branches of the trellis as if through a ragged net. But as the brief illusion vanished, I felt myself nearer to her who had produced it, and I could not waste time again in idle words. I wanted to penetrate into the heart of their sadness.
“And Donna Aldoina?” I asked in a low voice, turning to Anatolia, and speaking now to her alone.
Was she not probably the real guardian of the gloomy dwelling? By calling up the memory of death had she not herself raised the image of the lunatic?
“She is still just the same,” she replied, also in a low voice. “It is better you should not see her, to-day at least. It would be too painful for you. And imagine what it is for us! It is a daily torture, a torture that has lasted for years without pause, to the wearing of our souls....” Her eyes cast a momentary furtive look towards Antonello, and Iread in them the secret terror that she felt for the poor invalid who was trembling on the precipice.
“We have never had the courage to separate her from us, to send her away,” she added, “for she is not violent; in fact, she is quite gentle. Sometimes she seems cured; we almost believe that a miracle has come to pass; she calls us by our names, remembers some little thing that happened long ago, and smiles calmly. Although we know that it is all an illusion, every time we tremble with hope, every time we choke with anxiety. You understand....”
Her voice lost its tone in her sorrow, like a loose musical string.
“It is impossible to confine her to her rooms, to keep her shut up; it is impossible. And we have not the heart to avoid her when she appears, when she comes to meet us, when she speaks to us. So she is continually at our side; she is mingled with our existence....”
“Some days,” interrupted Antonello suddenly, with a kind of impetuosity, as if driven on by uncontrollable excitement, “some days the whole house is full of her. We breathe her madness. One or other of us stays by her for hours and hours while she talks on; sits opposite her with hands imprisoned in those trembling hands of hers. Do you understand?”
A new and still more oppressive silence fell upon us all. And every one of us was suffering, as he acknowledged in his soul the reality of the sorrow which the slender blue shadows of the trellis, mingled with the gentle gold of the sun, seemed to wrap ina veil of dreams. Through the silence the sound of a light footfall was heard coming up the lower flight of steps. At regular intervals came a faint bubbling sound as if a fountain was overflowing its basin. A mysterious quiver seemed to shake the lonely garden below. And I understood how a gloomy and feeble mind might construct an unreal life out of these phantoms, and nourish it till overcome by it.
Thus the torture to which destiny had condemned these last survivors of a fallen race was suddenly revealed to me in all its horrors; and the vision called up by the words of one who was certainly to become a victim appeared to me magnified by a tragic light. In imagination I could see the mad old princess sitting in the shadow of her distant apartment, and one of her children leaning over her, with hands imprisoned in hers. The attitude of this mournful enchantress seemed to me fatal and inexorable. I felt as if she were unconsciously drawing all the children of her blood one after the other into the circle of her madness, and as if not one of them would be able to escape that blind and cruel force. Like an ancestral Erinnys, she was presiding over the dissolution of her race.
Then through the bare branches of the trellis I gazed up at the silent palace, which till that day had harboured in its grim depths such desperate anguish, and hidden so many useless tears—tears falling from pure and eager eyes, worthy of reflecting the most glorious sights of the world, and of pouring joy into the soul of poets and rulers.
“Eyes of Beauty!” I thought, gazing again at the motionless Violante. “What earthly misery can veil the splendour of the truth that shines forth from you? What afflicted soul can fail to acknowledge the consoling power that flows from you?” The pain I had been feeling ceased suddenly, as if balm had been applied; the troublous images faded away like a mournful vapour.
She was seated motionless on a stone plinth which had once supported an urn. Her elbow rested on her knee, her chin in her hand; in this simple attitude her whole figure expressed that succession of mute harmonies which is the secret of supreme art. She seemed to be present with us, and yet apart. Upon her low forehead was visible the reflection of the ideal crown that she wore upon her thoughts; and her hair, gathered up in a great knot on her neck, seemed to have obeyed the same rhythm which regulates the repose of the sea.
“Massimilla,” said Oddo, introducing the third sister.
I turned, and found she was already close to us. She was ascending the last steps with her light tread. Her face and her whole person bore traces of the dream in which she had been plunged, of the intimate poetry of the hour just past, spent with a faithful book in the solitude of the nook known to her alone.
“Where have you been?” asked Oddo before she reached us.
She smiled shyly, and a faint colour tinged her thin cheeks.
“Down there,” she answered, “reading.”
Her voice sounded liquid and silvery as it came through the delicate lips. There was a blade of grass as a marker in the pages of her book.
As I bowed she gave me her hand, still with the same shy smile. And something of the tender compassion I used to feel long ago for the little invalid my mother visited awoke again in my soul; for her hand was so slight and soft, that it reminded me of those slender flowers called day lilies, which bloom for one day only in the hot sand.
She did not speak, and neither could I find words delicate enough to be appropriate to her timid grace.
“Shall we go up?” said Anatolia, turning to me, her clear voice at once breaking through the kind of spell which the unutterable melancholy of our thoughts had cast over us as we sat in the warmth under the trellis.
“Our father wants so much to see you again,” and we all began to ascend the steps towards the palace.
The three sisters went first, a little apart from each other, Anatolia first, Massimilla last. They said a few words now and then in turn, for the silence of things around demanded the sound of their voices, and perhaps they hoped to chase away the sadness of that silence from over the head of their guest. Those short sonorous cadences flowing from unseen lips grew fainter as I advanced; and I ascended with the voices and the shadows of the maidens round me, feeling as amazed and perplexed as if I were in enchantment. But though the threerhythms alternated in my ear, to my sight they appeared simultaneous and continuous, so that from time to time my spirit would listen attentively to seize the difference, or would take a concave form, so to speak, that therein they might melt into one deep harmony. And like those episodes which in a fugue fill up the silence of the theme, the aspect of the things we passed, or the peculiarities of the forms, entered into me, and enriched my musical sense without ruffling it. Marks of decay and neglect were strewn over the ancient steps, here and there still encumbered with the spoils of the previous autumn. There was the statue of a recumbent nymph, with the head bent in a painful position, for the moss-stained brow was deprived of the support of the arm. In a long vase of reddish clay, like a sarcophagus, common grass was growing, and in the midst of this hostile invasion a single plant of daffodils was flowering feebly and tremulously. Under a bit of broken parapet thrown down by the penetrating roots of the ivy appeared an inner channel like a broken artery; and one saw the sparkle and heard the murmur of the water as it flowed to fill the heart of the weeping fountain. Marks of decay and neglect were strewn on our path. The statue, the flower, and the water spoke to me of the same truth. And Violante, and Massimilla, and Anatolia were transfigured in my mind by means of mysterious analogies.
“Oh, beautiful souls,” I thought, as I measured the rhythm of their visible existence, “is not the perfection of human love perhaps to be found in yourtrinity? You are the triple form which appeared to my desire in the hour of the great harmony. In you all the highest needs of my flesh and spirit might be satisfied; and you might become the miraculous instruments of my will and of my fate in the fulfilment of the work I have to do. Are you not such as I myself would have created to adorn with sublime beauty and sorrow, the mysterious world of which I am the creator? To-day, I know nothing of you beyond the outward appearance and a few passing words; but I feel that ere long each one of you in her entire being will correspond to the image which breathes and throbs within me.”
Thus did the three sisters ascend in my aspirations and my prayers, each one obedient to the secret music that was guiding her life towards an unknown end. And their figures threw great shadows on the stone.
When I set foot on the threshold, the fantastic image of the mad woman took hold of my mind so vividly and fiercely that I gave a secret shudder. The whole place seemed to me to be under her sinister sway, saddened and cast down by her perpetual presence. I thought I read the same uneasiness in the faces of her children. And I felt as if we should find her awaiting us at the top of the stairs.
Anatolia guessed my thoughts, and softly said to reassure me—
“Don’t be afraid.... You won’t see her.... I have arranged that you should not see her, just nowat any rate.... Try not to think of her, so that our hospitality may not seem too gloomy.”
Antonello was looking up through the glass of the loggia which surrounded the court, and watching with those anxious eyes and trembling eyelids of his.
“Do you see the grass?” exclaimed Oddo, pointing out to me the long blades of green growing along the walls and in the interstices of the paving-stones.
“It is the token and augury of peace,” I said, trying to shake off the oppression and be cheerful. “I was sorry not to find it yesterday in my own courtyard. They had taken it away, but I should have preferred it to all the festive leaves of myrtle and laurel. Grass ought to be allowed to grow, especially in very large houses. It is a living thing the more.”
The courtyard resounded like the nave of a church, and the echoes were quick to catch up even the words spoken lowest. As I looked at the silent fountain, I thought of the mysterious music with which the water might have invited those attentive and favourable echoes.
“Why is the fountain dumb?” I asked, wishing to take every opportunity of supporting the cause of life in that cloister filled with forgotten or dead things. “Further down on the steps, I heard the sound of water.”
“You must apply to Antonello,” said Violante. “It is he who imposed silence on it.”
The face of the unfortunate invalid coloured slightly, and his eyes grew troubled, as though he were going to yield to an impulse of anger. Itseemed almost as if Violante’s harmless accusation had made him ashamed and sorrowful, or as if a dispute already closed had been reopened. He contained himself, but annoyance altered his voice.
“Fancy, Claudio, my rooms are up there,” he said, pointing to one side of the loggia, “and from there one can hear the fountain roaring like a waterfall. Just think! The noise is distracting, something incredible. Don’t you hear what an echo the voice has here? And in the daytime too!”
His whole tall, thin body quivered with aversion to noise, with the nervous horror, the uncontrollable abhorrence of which he had shown signs the day before when he started at the shots from the carbine and the shouts of the men.
“But I wish you could hear it at night,” he continued excitedly. “I wish you could hear it! The water is water no longer; it is a lost soul, howling, laughing, sobbing, stammering, jeering, calling, commanding. It is something incredible! Sometimes as I have lain awake listening, I have forgotten that it was water; and I have not been able to remember.... Do you understand?”
He stopped suddenly, evidently trying to control himself, and he looked distractedly at Anatolia. The pain in her face disappeared under that look; it was hidden and controlled. And she, as if to disperse the uneasiness we all felt, said almost gaily: “Indeed, Antonello is not exaggerating. Shall we call up the lost soul? Nothing is easier.”
We were all there round the dry fountain. Theunexpected halt, the words and the look of the unhappy man, the solemnity of the enclosed court, the silvery coldness of the light that rained down from above, and the approaching metamorphosis, seemed to confer something of the mystery of a work of magic on that ancient, lifeless thing. The mass of marble—a pompous composition of Neptune’s horses, tritons, dolphins, and shells in triple order—rose before our eyes, covered with a greyish crust of dried-up lichens, glittering white here and there like an aspen stem; and all the human and animal mouths seemed still in their silence to preserve the same attitudes in which but lately liquid voices had flowed from their lips.
“Stand back,” added Anatolia, as she stooped down over a bronze disc that covered a round aperture in the pavement near the edge of the lower basin. “I am going to turn on the water.”
And she put her finger through the ring in the middle of the disc, and tried to lift its weight; but she could not, and rose up with her face scarlet from the exertion. I came to her assistance, and when it was open, she stooped again and found the secret spring with her hand. We both stood back in mutual agreement, and now the bubbling water was to be heard rising in the veins of the empty fountain.
And there was a moment of anxious expectation, as if the mouths of the monsters were about to give answer. Involuntarily I pictured the joy of the stone as the fresh liquid life invaded it, and imagined to myself the impossible shudders it must feel.
The tritons were blowing their trumpets, the dolphins’ throats were gurgling. From the top a jet of water sprang up hissing, clear and quick as a sword-thrust sent into the blue; it broke, retired, hesitated, rose again straighter and stronger than ever; it hung in the air, turned adamant, shot up like a stalk, and seemed to burst into flower. First a short, sharp sound like the crack of a whip echoed through the court, then came something like a burst of Homeric laughter, then a thunder of applause, then a shower of rain. Every mouth sent out a jet of water, and each jet curved into an arch to fill the shell beneath. Here and there the stone was sprinkled with dark stains, and the smooth parts shone, and the rivulets grew more and more numerous; at last every part of it rejoiced at the touch of the water; it seemed to open all its pores to the countless drops, and revive like a tree refreshed by a cloud. Rapidly the slightest hollows filled up, overflowed, and took the shape of silver crowns, continually destroyed and as continually renewed. Every instant as the play was multiplied by the variety of the sculpture, the continuous sounds grew louder and formed a deeper and deeper music in the great echo of the walls. Above the voluble symphony of water falling into water rose the mighty bubbling and gushing of the central jet, as it dashed the marvellous flowers that came out from moment to moment at the top of its stalk against the necks of the Tritons.
“Do you hear?” exclaimed Antonello, as he lookedat this triumph with eyes of enmity. “Do you think this racket would be tolerable for long?”
“Ah, I could stay here for hours and days listening to it,” I thought I heard Violante saying, in a voice more veiled than ever. “There is no music I love so well.”
She had stayed so near the fountain that she was sprinkled all over with drops, and her hair was strewn with sparkling dust. The power of her beauty again excluded any other thought, any discordant image from my mind. Again she seemed to me isolated and unapproachable, outside of the sphere of ordinary life, more like a vision of art than a creature of our own species. Everything round her acknowledged the sovereignty of her presence, for everything referred to, and submitted to, and harmonised with, her beauty. Like the great arch of green that bent over her when first she appeared to me, like the ancient plinth on which she had rested, this musical fountain open to the sky seemed created for her alone; it seemed to correspond perfectly with that ideal harmony expressed in her simple attitude. Secret and inexplicable affinities united the most diverse things to her being, and brought back all surrounding mysteries to the mystery of herself. Since nature in this human form had revealed one of her supreme ideas of perfection, it seemed to me that all other ideas in all other mortal shapes should by nature serve to lead the spirit of the beholder to contemplate that one supreme idea.
And so it came about, that as I watched themaiden by the fountain I discovered and treasured up a pure truth: “When Beauty reveals herself, all the elements of life converge towards her as towards a centre, and so she has for her tribute the entire Universe.”
“One of our troubles,” said Oddo, as we walked up the wide balustraded staircase, upon whose silent walls the sixteenth century decorations of streamers and clouds imitated the fury of a tempest, “one of our troubles is the vastness of the house; it gives us a feeling of being astray, a humiliating feeling of our own littleness.”
The building was, in fact, a great deal too spacious and too empty. It had been restored in the seventeenth century, and transformed from a feudal fortress into a country villa, and all the formidable hugeness of its walls and vaults remained, although successive epochs had left the impress of art and of luxury, sometimes on their surface, and sometimes in contrast to them. The enormous number of mirrors with which whole walls were covered multiplied the space into infinity. And nothing was more mournful than those pale, delusive abysses, which seemed to open into a supernatural world, and to promise at every moment to show the living beholder visions of the dead.
“Claudio, my boy!” exclaimed Prince Luzio in a voice full of emotion, coming forward as soon as he saw me. “Dear, dear boy!”
I felt his old worn body tremble as he embraced me and kissed me on the forehead in a fatherly way.With his hand still on my shoulder, he gazed long into my face as if in a dream, while a wave of memories, sorrows, and complaints passed across the ashy blue of his feeble eyes.
“How like you are to your father!” he added, in a still more affectionate voice, and his emotion took possession of me also. “It is a marvellous likeness. I feel as though I beheld Massenzio again in his youth, when we were companions in the Life Guards.... He seems to have come to life again. How like him you are, my boy!”
He took me by the hand and led me to the window, as if he wished to withdraw with me into the contemplation of long past things.
“How like him you are!” he repeated when he saw my face in the full light. “Oh, if that blessed soul were only living still. He ought not to have died, my God, he ought not to have died.”
He shook his head in token of regret over the phantom of that beautiful life so early cut off. And the sincerity of his affection was so great, that I was touched to the bottom of my soul, and I could no longer feel a stranger in that house where the memory of my dead was kept so reverently fresh. “Look,” added the Prince, stroking the point of his white beard, and smiling a smile in which I caught glimpses of Anatolia’s noble sweetness; “look how old I have grown!”
His whole figure betrayed a painful feebleness, but the radiance of his premature white hair gave his head a look of venerable majesty, and his brow stillbore the hereditary stamp of his lordly race. His hands had escaped almost by a miracle from any injury by sickness and old age; there was no aged deformity about them. They were still strong and fair as if embalmed; those liberal hands of the munificent noble who had lavished his riches on the path of the exile, only that the eyes of his king might shine awhile longer with the reflection of fallen royalty. And as a kind of memorial of the treasures so prodigally spent there shone a cameo in his signet ring.
Those hands with their slow movements seemed, as the sluggish blood revived with the heat of memories, to be drawing some remnant of a vanished world out of a sphere of shadow, and this faculty gave them a singular meaning in my eyes. When the old man sat down and laid his hands on the arms of the chair, they seemed to me like relics, and I looked at them with a strange feeling of almost superstitious respect. They made me feel, very strongly, as if I were living at that moment in my own world of poetry, and not in the world of fact.
Seeing my eyes fixed on the carved gem, the prince smiled and said: “It is Violante’s portrait.”
He took off the ring and handed it to me.
The delicate work was by some ancient artist not unworthy of Pirgotelus or Dioscuridas; but the divine features of the Medusa, relieved against the blood-red background of sardonyx, corresponded so perfectly to the likeness of the proud creature, that I thought: “Truly then did she illuminate the artof bygone days, and from time immemorial bestowed upon durable matter the privilege of perpetuating the Idea of which she is to-day the Incarnation.”
“Her mother used to wear this ring just before she was born,” added the prince with the same gentle smile, “and she was always looking at it.”
In such a manner, and at every moment, the conformity of things raised my spirit into an ideal state, which resembled a state of reverie and second-sight without actually attaining to it, and this same conformity furnished harmonious material to my sensibility and imagination. And I watched the continuous generation of a higher life within myself, which transfigured everything as if by the virtue of a magic glass.
The three elect beings seemed mutually to throw light and shade on each other, and the lights and shades had the significance of a language which I was already able to interpret as clearly as if it had been familiar to me for long. And so I stood not only bewildered by the reflection of the rock, but struck by the lightning flashes of my thoughts, when Violante went up to an open window, pointed out a view which she seemed to have called up with a wave of her hand, and said—
“Look.”
It was a window facing north, on the opposite side of the palace from the garden, and it looked outover a precipice. As I leant out an impetuous shudder ran through me, and raised me suddenly to a sentiment of appreciation of this silent and terrible grandeur.
“Is this your secret?” I asked the enchantress, but I did not put my question into words, for at her side silence itself seemed eloquent. The rock descended abruptly from the massive buttresses which supported the northern wall, till at the bottom it ended in a hard white river bed, whose very dryness seemed ominous of the ruinous anger of a torrent. With that same atrocious, desperate violence which the lava streams have as they rush down to the Sicilian Sea, and rebound and rise up and twist themselves into black and red masses, screaming, roaring, hissing at the first contact with the water; with that same violence the rock at the bottom of the river-bed rose and flung itself heavenwards, and towered opposite the great wall built by man, with a kind of dumb fury animating its gigantic mass. All the wildest convulsions and contortions of bodies possessed by demoniac power or deadly spasms seemed petrified for ever in that terrible form, terrible as the cliff whence Dante caught sight of fresh horrors on his way to the river of blood guarded by the Centaurs. All the shapes of which pliable metal and scoriæ are capable were there contrasted with the hard stone; ringlets of rebellious hair, coils of angry serpents, intricacies of roots laid bare, sheaves of muscles, circles of the whirlpool, folds of draperies, twists of rope. This vision of frenzied turbulencerose perfectly motionless in the blaze of the midday sun, without a line of shadow. The throbbing of a high fever seemed hidden beneath the lifeless crust.
“Is this your secret?” I repeated to the enchantress, still without words, for my inward agitation would not allow me to select or control the accents of my voice.
She stood beside me, silent also; and I did not look at her, nor did she look at me. But as we leant out towards the many shaped rock, we were united to each other by the same fascination which draws together those who read out of the same book. We were both reading out of the same fascinating, dangerous book.
She said, as she raised her head with a slight start—
“Do you hear the hawks?”
And we both searched the summits with dazzled eyes.
“Listen.”
The rock rose to heaven bristling with points and stained a reddish colour like rust or clotted blood; and the screams of the birds of prey heightened the impression of its savage pride.
Then a sudden giddiness overwhelmed me—a sort of horror of too vast ambitions and desires. Perhaps in the very depths of my being the primitive feelings of early forefathers awoke; for my indescribable agitation took the form of a lightning-like succession of flashing visions, in which I saw men like myself pouring into vanquished cities, leaping over heaps of corpses and ruins, with untiring gestures, thrustingtheir swords into men’s bodies, carrying half-naked women on their saddle-bows through the innumerable flames of a conflagration, while their horses, lithe cruel animals like leopards, waded up to their bellies in blood.
“Ah, I should have known how to possess thee in the midst of slaughter under a canopy of fire, overshadowed by the wing of death!” said the soul of my ancestors to her who stood by my side. “My will would have urged my body to the performance of prodigies of valour; and though I had had to clamber up the smooth sides of this wall, defended by a thousand bowmen, yet I should have borne thee away alive.”
Filled with the glow from this magnificent and tremendous desolation reaching to the heavens, my eyes fell on the maiden’s face, and saw it so strongly lit up by the reflection, that an almost painful joy swept over me. And I felt a mad desire to take that head in my hands, turn it back, bring it close to my lips, gaze on it more closely, impress every line of it in my thought—a feeling not unlike his who finds under the barren soil some sublime fragment which will reveal to the world the glory of an idea for long nearly extinct.
She was like a statue placed in full view of the rising sun; her perfection did not fear the light. In her bodily form I saw the impress of the eternal type, and at the same moment I recognised the fragility of the flesh, which bore no immunity from human fate. She was like a delicious fruit at the highest pointof its maturity, beyond which point corruption sets in. The skin of her face had the wonderful transparency of the blossom which to-morrow will fade.
“Who shall deliver thee from the sacrilege of Time the destroyer? Who shall slay thee with a mortal dart at the summit of thy perfection when the miserable signs of decay begin to appear?” The dark saying of her brother came back to my mind: “Violante is killing herself with perfumes.” ... And silently I worshipped her, with a religious desire to praise her in her every movement. “Oh sovereign being, feeling thou art perfect, thou dost also feel the necessity of death; thou dost know that only death can preserve thee from all base injury; and since everything in thee is noble, thou dost purpose to offer to that solemn custody a body royally embalmed in perfumes.”
After such draughts of balmy wine, how could the meal to which we sat down have any savour?
Yet the vague and colourless things that surrounded my musings composed themselves into a kind of quiet harmony, which little by little soothed the passion that had been kindled in my soul by the volcanic rock.
The walls were covered with mirrors, symmetrically divided all round into compartments by little gilt pillars, while the surface of each compartment was painted with festoons and clusters of roses alternately,and the mirrors were tarnished and green as the waters of lonely pools, and the little pillars were delicately twisted like the fair locks of girls, and the roses were faint and languid as the garlands which crown the waxen martyrs in sanctuaries. But in honour perhaps of the guest who was the donor, the long branches of almond blossom had been ingeniously wreathed among the sconces of the candelabra. They spread their still fresh and living blossoms over the ancient mirrors, and multiplied reflections in the green pallor seemed to create the semblance of a far-off watery springtime.
There was a kind of quiet charm about all these things which seemed to descend and mingle with Massimilla’s grace; so much so, that I felt as if the maiden already promised to Jesus shared their nature. She seemed already to wear the appearance of a being “who has departed from this present age,” like Beatrice in the vision of the Vita Nuova, as if, with her meek air, she were saying also: “I am about to behold the beginning of peace.”
She sat opposite me, and I looked at her, till this fancy of mine grew so strong that I began to imagine her absent and her place empty for a few moments. And immediately the empty space was filled with a deep shadow resembling the mouth of a pit into which all the kindred were to be cast, one afteranother. And thus I was able to attain a unique and tragic vision of all these living beings, in the extraordinarily clear relief afforded by that background of shadow.
They were eating a meal round the accustomed table; they made the ordinary movements demanded by natural necessity; from time to time they said a few simple words. But their tones and actions seemed accompanied by a mystery which at times endowed them with an almost terrible significance or again at times made them almost as laughable as the play of automatons. One contrast was cruelly clear, that between the manner of vital functions they were fulfilling and the signs of inevitable destruction which were being fulfilled in them. Seated on the right of Massimilla, Antonello displayed in his whole behaviour a sort of repressed impatience, as if he were compelled to use his hands to feed, not himself, but a stranger. And as I gazed at him, an intuition flashed through me of the horror that strangled him as he realised the presence of a stranger within him, a presence dimly felt as yet, but still certain. And my eyes, passing instinctively to Oddo, who sat on Massimilla’s left, noticed in his attitude something like a feeble reflection of his brother’s discomfort. Nothing seemed to me sweeter than that virginal figure sitting calm amidst their restlessness, like a statue of prayer.