Front matter (continued 3)

"You are not eating," I said, making an effort to dissipate the vapors that rapidly mounted to my brain.

"Nor are you."

"Take a bite, at least. Do you not recognize this wine?"

"Oh, yes! I recognize it."

"Do you remember?"

And we looked into the depths of each other's eyes, agitated by the evocation of the memory of our love, over which floated the delicate vapor of that pale and somewhat bitter wine, her favorite beverage.

"Let us drink together to our happiness!"

We clinked our glasses, and I drank mine at a single draught, but she did not even moisten her lip, arrested by an insurmountable repugnance.

"Well?"

"I cannot, Tullio."

"Why?"

"I cannot. Do not compel me to. One single drop would, I believe, suffice to make me ill."

She had become as pale as death.

"Juliana, you are ill!"

"A little. Let us rise. Let us go out on the balcony."

Putting my arm round her, I felt the softness of her waist; for, in my absence, she had removed her corset. I said to her:

"Would you like to lie down? You can rest, and I will remain near you."

"No, Tullio. You see, I already feel better."

We stopped on the sill of the balcony, with the cypress before us. She leaned against the side-post, and placed one hand on my shoulder.

From the projection of the architrave, below the cornice, hung a group of nests. The swallows were coming and going, with incessant activity. But below, the calm of the garden was so profound, the top of the cypress was so motionless, that the sounds of the wings, these flights, these cries, displeased me, tired me. Since, in this tranquil light, everything hid itself, I sought repose, a long period of silence, in order to taste in plenitude the suavity of the hour and the isolation.

"Are the nightingales always there?" I asked, pointing to the top of the venerable tree.

"Who knows? Perhaps."

"They sing at night. Would you not like to hear them again?"

"But at what time will Federico come back?"

"Let us hope, late."

"Oh, yes! late, very late," she cried, with such warm sincerity of hope that it caused me a thrill of joy.

"Are you happy?" I asked her, and I sought the answer in her eyes.

"Yes, I am happy," she answered, lowering her eyelids.

"You know that I love only you, that I am yours forever?"

"I know it."

"And you—how do you love me?"

"You will never know how much, my poor Tullio."

As she uttered these words, she left the side-post and leaned her entire weight on me, with one of those indescribable motions in which she threw all the sweetness and abandon that the most feminine of creatures could show to a man.

"How beautiful you are! How beautiful you are!"

Beautiful, in fact, beautiful from languor, beautiful in soft suppleness, and, how shall I say? so fluid that she made me think of the possibility of drinking her down in small portions, to quench my thirst of her. On the pallor of her face the mass of loosened hair seemed on the point of spreading out like a wave. The eyelashes threw a shadow on her cheeks, agitating me more than a look would have done.

"Nor will you ever know how much. If I told you the mad thoughts that are born in me! My happiness is so great that it becomes anguish, it makes me wish to die."

"Die!" she repeated, very low, with a feeble smile. "Who knows, Tullio, if you will not see me die before long?"

"Oh! Juliana!"

She turned round to look at me, and added:

"Tell me, what would you do if I were to die suddenly?"

"Child!"

"If, for instance, I were dead to-morrow?"

"Won't you be silent?"

I took her head, and kissed her on the mouth, cheeks, eyes, forehead, hair, with light and rapid kisses. She did not attempt to stop me; and even when I ceased, she murmured:

"More!"

"Let us return to our room," I begged her, drawing her away.

She permitted herself to be led.

In our room the balcony was permitted to remain open. And there entered through it, with the light, the musk-like odor of the tea-roses that flourished in the vicinity. Against the bright-colored tapestries, the little blue flowers seemed so faded that they were scarcely distinguishable. A corner of the garden was reflected in the mirror of a closet, receding in it like a chimerical landscape. Juliana's gloves, hat, and bracelet, lying on the table, seemed to have reawakened in this interior the happy life of long ago, to have shed a renewed intimacy.

"To-morrow, to-morrow, we must return here, not later," I said, burning with impatience, feeling an ardor and seduction from every one of these objects. "To-morrow we must sleep here. You wish it, too, do you not?

"To-morrow!"

"To begin to love again, in this house, in that garden, in this springtime; to begin to love once more as if oblivion had effaced everything; to seek once more one by one our old-time caresses, and find in each one a new savor, as if we had never before tasted it; to have before us days, long days..."

"No, no, Tullio; we must not speak of the future. You know that it is an evil omen. To-day, to-day—think of to-day, of the present hour."

IX.

"I believe I heard the horses' bells," said Juliana, rising. "It's Federico."

We listened. She must have been mistaken.

"Is it not time?" she asked.

"Yes, it is almost six o'clock."

"Oh, mio Dio!"

We listened again. But no sound announced the approach of the carriage.

"It would be better to go and see, Tullio."

I left the room and descended the stairs. I hesitated a little; a cloud was before my eyes; it seemed to me that a mist rose from my brain. From the little side door that opened in the surrounding wall, I called Calisto, whose dwelling was near by. I interrogated him. The carriage had not been seen yet.

The old man would have liked to detain me in conversation.

"Do you know, Calisto," I said to him, "that probably we will return here to-morrow to stay?"

He raised his arms in token of his delight.

"Really?"

"Really. We shall have time to chat. When you see the carriage, come and let me know. Good-night, Calisto."

I left him to reënter the house. The day was waning and the swallows cried still more loudly. The sky seemed to be alive with them, as the flocks rapidly cleft the air.

"Well?" asked Juliana, turning from the mirror which she had approached in order to adjust her hat.

"Nothing."

"Look at me. Is not my hair dishevelled?"

"No."

"But what a face! Just look."

One would have thought that she had stepped from a coffin, she seemed so exhausted. Great violet rings encircled her eyes.

"And yet I still live," she added, attempting to smile.

"Are you suffering?"

"No, Tullio. But I do not know what ails me. It seems to me that I am entirely empty, that my head is empty, my veins empty, my heart empty. You might say I had given you all. You see—I am now a shadow, a shadow of life."

While pronouncing these words, she smiled in a strange manner; she smiled a subtle and sibylline smile, that troubled me, that raised up in me confused inquietudes. I was too enervated, I was too languid, too much blinded by my intoxication; the activity of my mind had become indolent, my consciousness became dulled. No sinister suspicion had penetrated me yet. Meanwhile I looked at her attentively, I examined her with anxiety, without knowing why.

She turned to the mirror again, and put on her hat; then she approached the table, and took her bracelet and gloves.

"I am ready," she said. She seemed to be still seeking something, and added:

"I had a parasol, had I not?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Ah! I must have left it in the alley, on the bench."

"Let us go and look for it together."

"I am too tired."

"Then I will go alone."

"No, send Calisto."

"I will go myself. I will gather you a few lilacs, a bouquet of musk-roses. Shall I?"

"No, don't pluck the flowers."

"Come, sit down here while waiting. Perhaps Federico will be late."

I drew up an arm-chair for her from the balcony, and she sank into it.

"As you are going down," she said, "see if my cloak is at Calisto's. I did not leave it in the carriage, did I? I feel a little cold."

In fact, she was shivering.

"Shall I close the balcony?"

"No, no. Let me look at the garden. How beautiful it is now! Do you see? How beautiful it is!"

The garden, here and there, had vague golden tones. The blooming cimes of the lilac-trees took on an ardent violet tone in the fading light; and as, below, the rest of the flowering branches formed a bluish-gray mass that undulated in the wind, one could have imagined it the reflections of a changeable moiré. At the fountain, the weeping willows bent their graceful tresses. The water seen between the trees had the soft brilliancy of mother-of-pearl. This motionless brilliancy, these weeping trees, that delightful forest of flowers in that fading gold, composed an illusory, enchanting, unreal picture.

For several minutes we both remained silent beneath the empire of this magic. A confused melancholy enveloped my soul; the sombre despair that lies at the root of all human love arose within me. Before this ideal spectacle, my physical fatigue, the torpor of my senses, seemed to become heavier. I had become the prey of an uneasiness, a discontent, an indefinable remorse, like one experiences after an indulgence that has been too acute or too prolonged. I suffered.

Juliana said to me, as if in a dream:

"Yes, now, I would like to close my eyes never to reopen them again."

She added, with a thrill:

"I'm cold, Tullio. Go quickly."

Stretched out in the arm-chair, she huddled up as if to resist the fits of shivering that assailed her. Her face, particularly around the nose, was as transparent as certain white albatrosses. She was in pain.

"You don't feel well, poor soul!" I said to her, stirred by pity, and also by a slight fear, as I looked at her fixedly.

"I'm cold. Go, Tullio. Bring me my cloak, quick. Please!"

I ran down to Calisto's lodge, got the cloak, and went up again immediately. She hastened to put it on. I assisted her. When she was seated in the arm-chair again she said to me, burying her hands in her sleeves:

"That is better."

"Now, I'll go and fetch the parasol which you left over there."

"No. It doesn't matter."

I had a strange and mad desire to go back to the old stone bench where we had made our first halt, where she had cried, where she had spoken the three divine words: "Yes, still more." Was it a sentimental attraction? Was it the curiosity of a new sensation? Was it the fascination exercised over me by the mysterious aspect of the garden in the deepening twilight?

"I'll go and come back in a minute," I said.

I went out. When I was under the balcony, I cried:

"Juliana!"

She showed herself. I shall always retain in the eyes of my soul that silent, ghostly apparition, yet distinct as a living thing, her tall figure rendered still taller by the length of the amaranthine cloak, and, against this dark silhouette, that pale face, so pale! The words of Jacques to Amanda are indissolubly associated in my mind with that unchangeable vision:

"How pale you are to-night, Amanda! Have you opened your veins to tint your robe?"

She withdrew, or rather, to describe the sensation I felt, she evaporated. I advanced rapidly along the path, without full consciousness of what impelled me. I heard the sound of my own foot-falls resound in my brain. I was so preoccupied that I was obliged to stop to find out where I was. What caused this blind agitation in me? A simple physical cause, perhaps—a particular condition of my nerves. That is what I believed. Incapable of an effort of thought, of a methodical examination, of meditation, I submitted to the tyranny of my nerves, by which the external appearances were reflected, provoking phenomena of extraordinary intensity, as in hallucinations. But, like lightning-flashes, certain thoughts lit up all the rest, and increased the oppressive feeling that several unexpected incidents had already given rise to in me.

No, Juliana had not appeared to me to-day as I had imagined she would, as she should have done had she still been the same creature I knew before, "the Juliana of the old days." She had not assumed toward me the attitudes that I had expected, in certain circumstances. A strange element, something obscure, violent, and excessive had modified and deformed her personality. Must this change be attributed to the sickly condition of her organism? "I am ill, I am very ill," she had often repeated, as if in justification. Truly, illness produces profound changes, and may render a human being unrecognizable. But what was her malady? Was it the old one, not extirpated by the surgeon's steel, complicated perhaps, perhaps incurable? "Who knows if you will not see me die before long?" she had said in a singular tone, that may have been prophetic. She had spoken of death several times. She therefore knew that she carried within her a fatal germ? Was she dominated by this lugubrious thought? It was perhaps such a thought that had fired in her those sombre, almost hopeless, almost demented ardors, when she was in my arms? It was perhaps the great sudden light of happiness that had rendered more visible and more frightful the spectre that pursued her?

"Could it be possible that she might die? Could death strike her even while in my arms, in the midst of happiness?" I thought with a fright that froze me, that for several moments rooted me to the spot, as if the peril were immediate, as if Juliana had predicted truly when she had said:

"If, for instance, I were to die to-morrow?"

The twilight fell, slightly damp. Breaths of humid air ran over the bushes, causing a rustling like that which the rapid passage of animals through them would have produced. A few scattered swallows cleft the air with cries, like the flight of a stone propelled by a sling. At sunset, the horizon, still luminous, had the immense reverberations of a sinister forge.

I arrived at the bench, and found the parasol. I did not linger there, in spite of the recent memories, still keen, still warm, that disturbed my soul. It was there she had fallen fainting, vanquished; it was there I had spoken to her the supreme words, that I had made to her the intoxicating avowal: "You were in my house, while I sought you afar off"; there that I had gathered from her lips the breath that had ravished my soul to the supreme heights of joy; there that I had drunk her first tears, that I had heard her sobs, that I had uttered the obscure question: "It is too late, perhaps? Is it too late?"

Only a few hours had passed, and all that was already so far! Only a few hours had passed, and already the happiness had faded away. Now with a new, but none the less dreadful signification, the question was repeated within me: "It is too late, perhaps? Is it too late?" And my exaltation grew; and that uncertain light, and that silent nightfall, and those suspicious rustlings in the already shadowy bushes, and all those deceptive phantasmagorias of the twilight had for my mind a fatal meaning. "If really it were too late? If really she knew herself to be doomed? If she already knew that she carried death in her bosom? Tired of living, tired of suffering, hoping nothing more from me, not daring to kill herself at once with a fire-arm or with poison, she had perhaps cultivated, has perhaps nourished her malady, has kept it secret in order to facilitate its progress, to permit it to take root, to render it incurable. She has wished to arrive slowly and in secret at her final liberation. While observing herself she has become familiar with the science of her malady, and now she knows, she is sure, that she will succumb; she knows, too, that love, that voluptuousness, that my kisses will precipitate the catastrophe. I return to her for good; an unhoped for happiness opens out before her; she loves me, she knows that I love her greatly; in one day the dream has become for us a reality. And it is then that there rises to her lips the word, "Death!" Confusedly I saw pass before me the cruel images that had tormented me during those two hours of waiting, on the morning of the surgical operation, when I seemed to have before my eyes, as clearly as the figures on an anatomical atlas, all the frightful ravages produced by maladies in the organisms of women. And there recurred to me another recollection still more distant, with an accompaniment of precise images: the darkened room, the open window, the waving curtains, the flickering candle-flame before the dim mirror, the sinister appearance of things, and she, Juliana, upright, leaning against a closet, convulsed, writhing as if she had swallowed poison.... And the accusing voice, the same voice, also repeated to me: "It is for you, for you that she wanted to die. It is you, you, who have urged her on to death."

Seized by a blind fright, by a sort of panic, as if all these images had been veritable realities, I ran back to the house.

On raising my eyes, the house seemed without signs of life, the window openings and the balconies were filled with shadows.

"Juliana!" I cried, with supreme anguish, springing to the stairway, as if I feared I should not arrive soon enough to see her again.

What ailed me? What was this dementia?

I panted as I climbed the stairs in the semi-darkness. I rushed into the room.

"What is the matter?" asked Juliana, rising.

"Nothing, nothing. I thought you had called me. I have run a little. How are you feeling now?"

"I am so cold, Tullio, so cold! Feel my hands."

She stretched her hands out to me. They were icy.

"I am frozen all over like that."

"My God! Where did you get this terrible chill? What can I do to warm you up?"

"Do not worry, Tullio. This is not the first time. It lasts hours and hours. I can do nothing for it. I must wait until it passes away. But why is Federico so long? It is almost dark."

She sank back in the arm-chair, as if she had exhausted all her strength in pronouncing these words.

"I will close the window," I said, turning toward the balcony.

"No, no; leave it open. It is not the air that chills me. On the contrary, I need all the air I can get. Come here, nearer to me. Take this stool."

I knelt down. With a feeble gesture she passed her cold hand over my head and murmured:

"My poor Tullio!"

I broke out, incapable of containing myself:

"Oh! tell me, Juliana, my love, my life! In pity, tell me the truth. You are hiding something from me. Surely you have something you do not want to confess; there, in the centre of your forehead, there is a fixed idea, some sombre preoccupation that has not left you for an instant since we have been here, since we have been—happy. But are we truly happy? Are you, can you be happy? Tell the truth, Juliana. Why would you deceive me? Yes, it is true, you have been ill; you are still ill, it is true. But no, it is not that! There is something else that I do not understand, that I do not know of.... Tell me the truth, even if the truth must be to me annihilation. This morning when you sobbed, I asked you: 'Is it too late?' And you answered me: 'No, no.' Then I believed your words. But might it not be too late for another motive? Could not something prevent you from enjoying the great happiness into which we have just entered? I mean something you know, that you already foresee? Tell me the truth."

I looked at her fixedly; and, as she remained silent, I ended by seeing nothing but her large eyes, extraordinarily large, deep and motionless. All else had disappeared. And I was compelled to close my eyes to dissipate the sensation of terror that these eyes caused in me. How long did this last? An hour? A second?

"I am ill," she said at last, with agonized slowness.

"Ill? But what's the matter?" I stammered, beside myself, convinced that, in her tone, I detected an avowal that corresponded with my suspicion. "What's the matter? Dangerously?"

I know not in what voice, I know not in what tone, I know not with what gesture I articulated the last question; I do not even know if it really and entirely left my lips, or if she heard it entirely.

"No, no, Tullio; it is not that. I meant, no—I meant that it is not my fault if I am a little strange. It is not my fault.... You must have patience with me; you must take me now as I am. Believe me, there is nothing more. I am concealing nothing from you. I shall be cured perhaps, later; yes, I shall be cured. You will be patient, will you not? You will be good. Come here, Tullio, my soul! You, too, it seems to me, are a little strange, a little suspicious. You have sudden fears; you turn white. Who knows what you suppose? Come, come here; give me a kiss ... another one ... another one.... That's right.... Embrace me, warm me up again.... There is Federico."

She spoke in a broken and rather low voice, with that inexpressible, caressing, tender, restless expression that she had already done a few hours before on the bench, to calm me and console me. I embraced her. In the wide and low arm-chair, she, so thin, made room for me at her side, and pressed close to me, shivering, and gathered up the end of her cloak to cover me with it. We were as if on a couch, entwined, breast to breast, our breaths mingling. And I thought: "If my breath, if my contact, could imbue her with all my heat!" And I made an illusory effort of will to bring about this transfusion.

"This evening," I whispered, "this evening, I will hold you better; you won't tremble, then..."

"Yes, yes."

"You'll see how nicely I'll hold you. I'll put you to sleep. All night long you will sleep on my heart."

"Yes, yes."

"I will watch over you; I will quench my thirst with your breath; I will read in your face the dreams you are dreaming. You will perhaps speak my name, dreaming."

"Yes, yes."

"At that time, on certain nights, you spoke in your dream. How charming you were! Ah! what a voice! You cannot know.... A voice that you could never have heard, that I alone know—I alone... And I will hear it again. Who knows what you will say? You will speak my name perhaps. How I love the movement of your mouth when it pronounces the u of my name! One could call it the outline of a kiss.... You know? I will prompt words into your ear that they may enter into your dream. Do you remember that at that time, on certain mornings, I divined your dreams? Ah! you will see, dear soul; I will be more caressing than at that time, You will see how tender I will be in order to cure you. You need so much affection, poor soul!"

"Yes, yes," she repeated every moment, yieldingly, favoring thereby my last illusion, and also augmenting that sort of drowsy intoxication that arose from my own voice and the belief that my words were cradled there like a voluptuous song.

"Did you hear anything?" I asked suddenly; and I raised myself a little in order to hear better.

"What? Is it Federico?"

"No; listen."

We both listened, our eyes turned toward the garden. The garden was but a confused and violet-colored mass, touched here and there by the darkening light of the dying day. A zone of light persisted on the limit of the sky, a long, tricolored zone: below of a blood-red, then orange, then green, then a fading vegetable green. In the silence of the twilight a strong and limpid voice resounded, like the prelude of a flute.

The nightingale was singing.

"It is on the cypress," murmured Juliana.

We both listened, our eyes turned toward the edge of the horizon that paled beneath the impalpable ashy color of the evening. My soul was in suspense, as if it had expected from this language some high revelation of love. "What, then, is this poor creature at my side feeling? To what summit of despair is this poor soul raised?"

The nightingale was singing. At first, it was like an explosion of melodious joyfulness, a burst of smooth trills that rippled with the sound of pearls resounding on the crystals of musical glasses. First pause. Then arose a roll of marvellous agility, extraordinarily sustained, in which was mingled the energy that attempts a burst of courage, a defiance thrown to an unknown rival. Second pause. Then a theme on three notes, of an interrogative expression, unrolled the chain of its light variations, repeating five or six times the sweet question, modulated as if on a slender reed flute, on a pastoral pipe. Third pause. And the chant became an elegy, developed in a minor key, became softened like a sigh, weakened to a plaint, described the sorrow of a solitary lover, the vexation of desire, the waiting in vain, burst into a final appeal, unexpected, piercing like a cry of anguish, and died away. New pause, more prolonged. Then there were new tones, that did not seem to issue from the same throat, so humble, timid, tearful, were they, so much did they resemble the piping of newly hatched birds, the twittering of a little sparrow; then, with admirable flexibility, these innocent accents were transformed into a whirlwind of notes more and more hurried, that sparkled in trains of trills, vibrated in dazzling roulades, softened into bold periods, descended, ascended, mounted to prodigious heights. The singer became intoxicated by his song. With pauses so brief that they scarcely permitted the notes to die away, his intoxication overflowed in a melody that varied without cease, passionate and soft, broken and vibrant, light and grave, interspersed now with feeble moans and plaintive supplications, now with abrupt lyric bursts, supreme adjurations. Even the garden seemed to be listening; the sky seemed to incline toward the venerable tree whose top sheltered the invisible poet who shed these torrents of poetry. The forest of flowers respired deeply and silently. At sunset several yellow streaks of light lingered on the horizon, and this last glance of daylight was sad, almost mournful. But a star appeared, palpitating and trembling like a drop of timorous dew.

"To-morrow," I murmured, almost unconsciously.

And that word, to me so full of promise, responded to an internal supplication.

To better listen, we had raised ourselves a little and we had remained several minutes in that position, attentive. Suddenly, I felt Juliana's head fall on my shoulder, heavily, like a thing without life.

"Juliana! Juliana!" I cried with fright.

By the movement I made, her head fell back, heavily, like a thing without life.

"Juliana!"

She did not hear. When I saw the cadaverous pallor of that face lit up by the last yellowish rays of light from the balcony, I was struck by a terrible thought. Distracted, allowing Juliana to fall back on the back of the arm-chair, inert, calling her ceaselessly by name, I began to open her corsage with contracted fingers, anxious to feel her heart.

My brother's jovial voice called out:

"Where are you, you lovers?"

X.

She had rapidly regained consciousness. Although scarcely able to stand, she wanted to immediately enter the carriage and go back to the Badiola.

And now, covered with our rugs, she sat back in her seat motionless, exhausted, mute. My brother and I, from time to time, looked at her with uneasiness. The coachman whipped up his horses. Their rapid trot resounded on the road, bordered here and there by blossoming bushes, on that mild April evening, beneath a cloudless sky.

Every now and then, Federico and I asked: "How are you feeling, Juliana?"

She answered: "So, so. A little better."

"Are you cold?"

"Yes; a little."

She answered with a manifest effort. One would almost have said that our questions irritated her; so much so, that finally, as Federico persisted in engaging her in conversation, she said:

"Excuse me, Federico. It tires me to speak."

The hood had been lowered, and Juliana was in the shadow, invisible, buried beneath the covers. Twenty times I bent over her to look at her face, either with the hope that she was napping, or with the fear that she had collapsed from weakness. But each time, I felt the same sensation of surprise and of fear on noticing, in the dark, that her eyes were wide open and staring.

There was a long silence. Federico and I were also silent. The trot of the horses was not rapid enough to suit me. I wanted the coachman to make the horses gallop.

"Faster, Giovanni."

It was almost ten o'clock when we arrived at the Badiola.

My mother awaited us, very much worried by our delay. When she saw Juliana's condition, she said:

"I knew the fatigue would hurt her."

Juliana tried to reassure her.

"It is nothing, mother.... You will see, to-morrow morning I shall be well. I am just a little tired...."

But, on looking at her in the light, my mother cried out, alarmed:

"Mio Dio! your face frightens me. You can't stand on your feet. Edith, Cristina, quick, run upstairs and warm the bed. And you, Tullio, come; we will carry her."

Juliana resisted obstinately.

"No, no, mother; it is nothing, do not be frightened."

"I will go to Tussi with the carriage, and bring the doctor," suggested Federico. "I will be back in half an hour."

"No, Federico, no," cried Juliana almost violently, as if this proposition exasperated her. "I do not wish it. The doctor can do nothing. I know what I must do. I have everything upstairs. Let us go up, mother. Dear me! How easily you are alarmed! Let us go up. Let us go up."

It seemed as if she had suddenly recovered her strength. She made several steps without assistance. Going up the stairs, my mother and I supported her. But, in her room, she had an attack of convulsive vomiting that lasted several minutes. The women began to disrobe her.

"Go out, Tullio; leave the room, I beg of you," she said. "You may return later. Mother will remain with me. Do not be uneasy."

I went out. I remained in an adjoining room, seated on a divan, waiting. I heard the hurried movements of the maids; I was being consumed with impatience: "When may I return? When may I find myself again alone with her? I will watch there, I will pass the entire night at her bedside. In a few hours perhaps she will be calmer, she will feel better. I will stroke her hair, and perhaps succeed in lulling her to sleep. Who knows if, in that drowsiness which is neither wakefulness nor slumber, she might not say 'Come.' I have a strange confidence in the efficacy of my caresses. I hope yet that this night may have a delightful end." And, as always, in the midst of the anguish that the thoughts of Juliana's sufferings caused me, the sensual vision acquired determined contours, became a clear and persistent vision. "White as her night-dress, in the light of the lamp that burned behind the curtains of the alcove, she awoke after a first, very short slumber, looked at me with her half-closed eyes, languishing, and murmured: 'Go to sleep!'"

Federico entered.

"Well," he said affectionately, "it seems that it is nothing. I have spoken to Miss Edith on the stairway. Will you come down and take something? The table is set downstairs."

"No, I am not hungry now. Later on, perhaps.... I expect to be called."

"If I am not required, I will go."

"Go, Federico; I will come down very soon. Thanks."

I glanced after him as he withdrew, and once more the sight of my good brother inspired in me a feeling of confidence; again I felt my heart dilate.

Almost three minutes passed. The clock on the wall facing me ticked off the time with the beats of its pendulum. The hands pointed to a quarter to eleven. As I rose impatiently to go toward Juliana's room, my mother entered, agitated, and said in a low voice:

"She is quieter now. What she must have is rest. Poor child!"

"May I go in?"

"Yes; but don't disturb her."

As I made a motion to go cut, my mother recalled me.

"Tullio!"

"What, mother?"

She seemed to hesitate.

"Tell me ... have you seen the doctor since the time of the operation?"

"Yes, several times.... Why?"

"Did he speak about the danger——"

She hesitated and then added:

"About the danger Juliana might run by a new pregnancy?"

I had not spoken to the doctor, and I did not know what to answer. In my agitation I repeated:

"Why?"

She still hesitated.

"Have you not noticed that Juliana is pregnant?"

The blow was too sudden for me to be able at first to grasp the truth.

"Pregnant?" I stammered.

My mother took my hands

"Well, well, Tullio?"

"I did not know."

"You frighten me. So the doctor——"

"Yes, the doctor——"

"Come, Tullio, sit down."

She made me sit down on the divan. She looked at me with fear, waiting for me to speak. For several moments, although she was before my eyes, I ceased to see her. Then, suddenly, a brutal light burst in on my mind, and the drama was all clear to me.

Where did I find the strength to resist? What preserved my reason? Without doubt I drew from the very excess of my pain and horror the heroic sentiment that saved me.

I said:

"I did not know—Juliana told me nothing—I perceived nothing—it is a surprise—yes, the doctor thinks there is still some danger— That is why the news has made this impression on me— You know, Juliana is so weak now— However, the doctor did not say it was serious— The operation was a success—we will see—we will send for him, we will consult him——"

"Yes, that is indispensable."

"But, are you sure, mother? Has Juliana told you? Or——"

"I noticed it myself. It is impossible to be mistaken. Up to within the last two or three days, Juliana denied it, or at least, pretended that she was not certain. Knowing how easily you are alarmed, she begged me to say nothing to you. But I wanted to tell you—you know Juliana: she takes so little care of her health! Just think. Since she lives here, instead of getting better she seems to be getting worse every day. Formerly, a week in the country sufficed to make a new woman of her, do you remember?"

"Yes, that is true."

"One can never take enough precautions. You must write immediately to Doctor Vebesti."

"Yes, at once."

As I felt incapable of controlling myself longer I arose, and added:

"I'll go to see her."

"Go; but let her rest to-night, let her remain quiet. I am going downstairs. I'll come up again."

"Thank you, mother."

I touched her forehead with my lips.

"Dear boy!" she murmured, as she withdrew.

I stopped on the threshold of the door opposite, turned around, and watched her gentle and still erect figure disappear.

I felt an indescribable sensation, similar, without doubt, to that which I should have felt had the entire house collapsed about me in an explosion. In me, about me, all fell, sank irresistibly into an abyss.

XI.

Who has not at times heard some unfortunate being say: "In one hour I lived ten years." It is something inconceivable. Well, I understand it. During that short interview with my mother, so peaceful apparently, had I not lived ten years? The acceleration of the inner life of man is the most prodigious and frightful phenomenon there is in the world.

What must be done? I was seized by frenzied desires to flee far away in the night, or to run to my room and lock myself in, to remain alone to contemplate my ruin, to review its extent. But I was able to resist. It was on that night that the superiority of my nature was revealed, was able to shake off every atrocious torture of my most virile faculties. And I thought: "It is absolutely necessary that none of my actions should seem singular or inexplicable, either to my mother or to my brother, or anyone else in this house."

I stopped before the door of Juliana's room, powerless to repress the physical trembling that shook me. But the sound of a footstep in the corridor determined me to resolutely enter.

Miss Edith emerged from the alcove, on tiptoe. She made me a sign to make no noise, and said, in a low voice:

"She is going to sleep."

And she went out, softly closing the door behind her.

The lamp burned with a tranquil and even light, suspended from the centre of the ceiling. Across a seat was thrown the amaranthine cloak; on another, the black satin corset, the corset that, at the Lilacs, Juliana had removed during my brief absence; across another chair, the gray gown, the same that she had worn with so much distinction in the beautiful forest of flowering lilacs. The sight of these objects upset me so that I felt a new desire to flee. But I walked toward the alcove, and drew aside the curtains. I saw the bed; I saw the dark spot on the pillow made by the hair, but not the face; I saw the form of the body huddled up beneath the covers. In my mind the brutal truth presented itself with the most ignoble reality. "She has been possessed by another." And a series of odious physical visions passed before the eyes of my soul, those eyes that I had not the power to close. And these were, not only the visions of the things accomplished, but also those that must necessarily take place. I was forced to see, with inexorable precision, what was about to happen to Juliana—my Dream! my Ideal!

Who could have imagined a more cruel punishment? And all was true, all was certain!

When the pain exceeds the strength, one instinctively seeks in doubt a momentary extenuation of the intolerable suffering; one thinks: "Perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps my misfortune is not such as it appears to be, perhaps this excess of pain is groundless?" And to prolong the respite, one's perplexed intelligence is applied to gain a more exact idea of the reality. But I, I had not a single moment of doubt, I had not a single moment of incertitude.

It is impossible for me to explain the phenomenon that developed in my consciousness, which had become extraordinarily lucid. It seemed that, spontaneously, by a secret process realized in the dark sphere of the inner being, all the unperceived symptoms that had connection with the horrible thing were coördinated to form a logical idea, complete, rational, definite, irrefutable; and now, that idea manifested itself all at once, surged up in my consciousness with the rapidity of a fragment of cork which, no longer retained at the bottom of water by hidden bonds, floats to the surface, there to remain, insubmersible. Every symptom, every proof, was there, in perfect order. No effort was needed to find them, to choose them, to group them. Insignificant and distant facts were illuminated by a new light; fragments of recent life regained their color. The unaccustomed aversion of Juliana for flowers, for odors, her strange agitations, her ill-dissimulated nauseas, her sudden pallors, that sort of continual preoccupation visible between her eyebrows, the great fatigue indicated by certain positions; and besides, the pages marked by the nail in the Russian book, the reproach of the old man to the Count Besoukhow, the supreme question of the little Princess Lisa, and that gesture with which Juliana had taken the book from my hands; and then the scenes at the Lilacs, the tears, the sobs, the ambiguous phrases, the sibylline smiles, the almost mournful ardors, the volubility of language, almost insane, the evocation of death—all these signs grouped themselves around my mother's words, were engraved in the centre of my soul.

My mother said: "It is impossible to be mistaken. Up to within two or three days ago, Juliana had denied it, or, at least, pretended that she was not certain.... Knowing how easily you are alarmed, she begged me to say nothing to you." The truth could not be more evident. Henceforth, everything was certain!

I entered the alcove and approached the bed. The curtains fell behind me; the light became feebler. Anxiety suspended my respiration, and all my blood stood still in my arteries, when I came to the bedside and bent over to see more closely Juliana's head, almost hidden by the sheet. I do not know what would have occurred, at this moment, had she raised her face and spoken.

Was she asleep? The forehead only, as far as the eyebrows, was visible.

I remained there for several minutes, standing, expectant. But was she asleep? She was motionless, lying on her side. From the mouth, hidden by the sheet, not the slightest sound of respiration could be heard. The forehead only, as far as the eyebrows, was uncovered.

What countenance would I have shown had she perceived my presence? The hour was poorly chosen to interrogate her, for explanations. If she had suspected that I knew all, to what extremities might she not have been carried during the night? I was therefore constrained to simulate tenderness, I was compelled to affect perfect ignorance, to persist in the expression of sentiments that, a few hours ago, at the Lilacs, had been spoken in the most gentle words. "This evening, to-night, in your bed—you will see how kind I will be. I will put you to sleep. All night long you will sleep on my heart."

On looking around me distractedly, I discovered on the carpet the slender and polished shoes, on the back of a chair the long, ash-colored silken hose, the satin garters, another object of secret elegance, all things that my lover's eyes had already delighted in. And the jealousy of my senses gnawed me so furiously that it was a miracle that I restrained myself from throwing myself on Juliana, from awakening her, from reviling her with the absurd and coarse words which this sudden rage inspired in me.

I withdrew, tottering, and left the alcove. I thought, with blind fright: "How will it end?"

I was inclined to go away. "I will go down—I will tell my mother that Juliana is asleep, that her slumber is very calm; I will tell her that I need rest. I will take refuge in my room. And to-morrow morning..." But I remained where I was, perplexed, incapable of crossing the threshold, assailed by a thousand fears. I turned again toward the alcove by an abrupt movement, as if I had felt a look fixed on me. It seemed to me that the curtains were waving; but I was mistaken. And yet, through the curtains, something like a magnetic shadow came and penetrated me, something against which I was without resistance. I reëntered the alcove with a shudder.

Juliana still lay in the same attitude. Was she asleep? The forehead alone, as far as the eyebrows, was uncovered.

I sat down near the bedside, and waited. I looked at that forehead, white as the sheet, delicate and pure as a host, that sister's forehead, which I had so many times religiously kissed, which my mother's lips had so many times touched. Not the slightest stain could be perceived on it. It seemed the same as it ever was. Yet, henceforth, nothing in the world could remove the stain which my soul's eyes saw on that white brow!

Certain words which I had spoken in the exaltation of intoxication recurred to my memory: "I will watch over you, I will read on your face the dreams that you will dream." I thought also: "She repeated at every moment: 'Yes, yes.'" I wondered: "What life does she lead internally? What are her projects? What resolutions has she made?" And I looked at her forehead. And, ceasing to consider my own pain, I applied all my powers to picture to myself her pain, to understand her pain.

Truly, her own despair must be frightful, ceaseless, limitless. My punishment was also her punishment, and perhaps more fearful punishment still for her than for me. Over there at the Lilacs, in the alley, on the bench, in the house, she had certainly felt the sincerity of my words, she had certainly read my sincerity in my face, she had believed in the greatness of my love.

"You were in the house, while I sought you afar off! Oh! tell me, is not this confession worth all your tears? Do you not wish you had shed even more, many more, so as to purchase this certitude?"

"Yes, many more."

That is what she had replied, with a sigh that, really, had appeared to me divine.

"Yes, many more!"

She would have liked to shed other tears, she would have liked to suffer another martyrdom as the price of this avowal! And, when she saw at her feet, more passionate than ever, the man so long lost and wept for, when she saw opening before her an unknown paradise, she had felt herself to be impure, she had the physical sensation of her impurity, she had held my head on her breast. Ah! it is truly incomprehensible why her tears have not burned my face, that I have been able to drink them without being poisoned.

I relived our entire day in an instant; I saw again all the changing expressions, even the most furtive, that had appeared on Juliana's face since our arrival at the Lilacs; I understood them all. A great light illuminated me. Oh! when I spoke to her of the morrow, when I spoke to her of the future—what terrors that word to-morrow, coming from my lips, must have had! And to my memory recurred the short dialogue that we had had on the threshold of the balcony, facing the cypress. She had repeated in a very low voice, with a feeble sigh: "Die!" She had spoken of approaching death. She had asked: "What would you do if I died suddenly? If, for instance, I died to-morrow?" Later on, in our room, she had cried, pressing me close: "No, no, Tullio; we must not speak of the future. Think of to-day, of the passing hour!" By such actions, by such words, did she not betray a resolution of death, a tragic design? It was evident that she had resolved to kill herself, that she would kill herself, perhaps this very night even, before the inevitable to-morrow, since there was no other resource for her.

When the fright that the thought of this imminent peril caused me had subsided, I reflected: "What would have the gravest consequences, Juliana's death, or her preservation? Since the ruin is irremediable, and the abyss bottomless, an immediate catastrophe would, perhaps, be better than an indefinite continuation of the frightful drama." And, in imagination, I accompanied the phases of that new maternity, saw the new being procreated, the intruder who bore my name, who would be my heir, who would usurp my mother's caresses and those of my daughters, of my brother. "Assuredly, death only can interrupt the fatal course of these events. But would the suicide remain secret? By what means would Juliana take her life? If it were proved that death were voluntary, what would my mother and brother think? What a blow that would be to my mother! And Maria? And Natalia? And what would I do, myself?"

The truth is that I could not bring myself to conceive of my own existence without Juliana. I loved the poor creature even in her impurity. Excepting that sudden attack of anger which carnal jealousy had provoked in me, I had never yet felt against her any emotion whatever of hate, or of rancor, or of contempt. No thought of vengeance had crossed my soul. On the contrary, I felt a profound compassion for her. I accepted, since the beginning, all the responsibility of her fall. A proud and generous sentiment sustained me, exalted me: "She bent her head beneath my blows, she kept silent, she set me an example of virile courage, of heroic abnegation. Now, it is my turn. I must render her the same. I must save her, at any price." And this nobility of soul, this good impulse, came to me from her.

I drew closer to look at her. She still remained motionless in the same attitude, with her forehead uncovered. I thought: "Is she asleep?" And if, on the contrary, she were pretending to be asleep, to remove every suspicion, to make believe that she is quiet, that she may be left alone? Assuredly, if it is her project not to live until the morrow, she is seeking by every means to favor its execution. She simulates slumber.

"If her sleep were real, she would not be so quiet, so calm, with such superexcited nerves as she has. I must shake her." But I hesitated. "If she were really asleep? Sometimes, after a great output of nerve force, even in the midst of the rudest moral anxieties, one sleeps a leaden slumber, like a syncope. Oh! that she may slumber until to-morrow! And to-morrow, that she may arise recovered, be strong enough to support the explanation that has become inevitable between us!" I looked fixedly at that brow, white as the sheet, and, on bending over a little more, I remarked that it was dotted with perspiration. A bead of perspiration glistened on the eyebrow. And that bead suggested to me the idea of the cold sweat that indicates the action of narcotic poisons. A sudden flash of suspicion came upon me. "Morphine!" Instinctively, my glance turned to the night table, on the other side of the bed, to look for the small bottle marked with the skull and cross-bones, familiar symbols of death.

There, on the table, were a water bottle, a glass, a candlestick, a handkerchief, several glistening pins; that was all. I made a rapid and complete examination of the alcove. Anguish choked my throat. "Juliana has morphine; she always has on hand a certain quantity of it in a liquid state for her injections. I am sure that she has had the idea of poisoning herself. Where has she hidden the little bottle?" Engraved in my mind I had the image of the small glass vial that I had seen in Juliana's hands, ornamented with the sinister label that pharmacists use, in order to indicate a toxic. My excited imagination suggested to me: "And if she has already drunk it? That sweat..." I trembled on my seat, and I felt the agitation of a rapid debate. "But when? How? She has not been left alone. It requires only an instant to empty a bottle. Yet, without doubt, she would have vomited.... And that attack of convulsive vomiting, just now, when she arrived at the house? Premeditating suicide, she had doubtless carried the morphine with her. Was it not possible that she had drunk it before arriving at the Badiola, in the carriage, in the dark? In fact, she had prevented Federico from going for the doctor." I understood but imperfectly the symptoms of morphine poisoning. In my ignorance, that white and moist brow, that perfect immobility, overwhelmed me. I was on the point of arousing her. "But if I am mistaken? She will awake, and what will I have to say to her?" It seemed to me that the first word, that the first look exchanged between us, must produce on me an extraordinary effect, of an unforeseen, unimaginable violence. It seemed to me that I would not have the power to control myself, to dissimulate, and that on looking at me she would divine immediately that I knew all. And then?

I strained my ear, hoping and fearing my mother's coming. And then (I would not have trembled so strongly on raising the edge of a shroud to see the face of a dead person), I slowly uncovered Juliana's face.

She opened her eyes.

"Ah! Is it you, Tullio?"

Her voice was natural. And I most unexpectedly could speak.

"Were you asleep?" I said, avoiding her eyes.

"Yes, I dozed off."

"Then I awoke you.... Forgive me. I wished to uncover your mouth. I feared that your breathing might be impeded—that the coverlid would suffocate you."

"Yes, that is true. I am warm now, too warm. Remove one of the coverings, please."

I rose to remove one of the covers. It is impossible for me to define the state of consciousness in which I accomplished these acts, in which I pronounced and heard these words, while present during these incidents, and which happened as naturally as if there had been no change, as if around us there had been no adultery, no disenchantment, remorse, jealousy, fear, death, every human atrocity.

"Is it very late?" she asked me.

"No; it is not yet midnight."

"Is mother in bed?"

"No, not yet."

After a pause:

"And you—are you not going to bed? You must be tired."

I knew not what to answer. Should I reply that I would remain? Ask her permission to stay? Repeat to her the tender words that I had spoken in the armchair, in our room, at the Lilacs? But, if I remained, how would I pass the night? There, on the chair, watching her, or else in the bed, near her? What attitude should I take? Should I be able to dissimulate to the end?

She went on:

"You had better go, Tullio—to-night.... I need nothing. All I want is rest. If you remain, it would not do me any good. You had better go, Tullio, to-night."

"But you might want something."

"No. And, besides, Cristina stays with me."

"I will lie on the sofa."

"Why should you upset yourself? You are very tired: that can be seen in your face. And, besides, if I knew you were there I could not sleep. Be good, Tullio! To-morrow morning, early, you may come and see me. We both need rest, now, complete rest."

Her voice was low and caressing, without any unusual intonation. Excepting her persistence in persuading me to retire, she exhibited no other indication of the fatal preoccupation. She seemed crushed, but calm. From time to time she closed her eyes, as if slumber weighted down her eyelids. What should I do? Leave her? But it was precisely her calm that frightened me. Such a calm could only come to her from the fixity of her resolution. What to do? Everything considered, my very presence during the night would have been useless if she had prepared for suicide and provided herself with the means. She could, without any difficulty, have put her project into execution. Was that means really morphine? And where had she hidden that little vial? Beneath her pillow? In the drawer of the night table? How could I look for it? I should have to speak, to say unexpectedly: "I know that you want to kill yourself." But what a scene would follow! I could not have kept silent about the rest. And what a night that would have been!

So many perplexities exhausted my energy, dissolved it.

My nerves were unstrung. The physical fatigue rapidly increased. My entire organism arrived at that condition of extreme weakness in which the functions of the will are on the point of being suspended, in which the actions and reactions cease to correspond, or cease to accomplish their end. I felt myself incapable of resisting any longer, of combating, of accomplishing no matter what necessary act. The sensation of my weakness, the sensation of the fatality of what had happened and what was about to happen, still paralyzed me; my being seemed to be struck by a sudden torpor. I felt a blind desire to hide myself again from the last and obscure consciousness of my being. In short, my anguish led to this desperate thought: "Come what will, I, too, have the resource of death."

"Yes, Juliana," I said, "I will leave you in peace. Sleep. We will see one another to-morrow."

"You can scarcely keep your eyes open."

"No, it is true, I am very tired. Good-by; goodnight."

"Will you not give me a kiss, Tullio?"

A shudder of instinctive repugnance passed through my body. I hesitated.

At that moment my mother entered.

"What! you are awake?" she cried.

"Yes, but I'm going to sleep again immediately."

"I have been to see the children. Natalia is not asleep. She said: 'Has mamma come back?' She wanted to come..."

"Why did you not tell Edith to bring her to me? Is Edith already in bed?"

"No."

"Good night, Juliana," I interrupted.

I approached her, and bent over to kiss the cheek that she offered me, raising herself a little on her elbow.

"Good night, mother, I am going to bed. My eyes are closing with sleep."

"Won't you take something? Federico is still waiting for you down-stairs."

"No, mother; I do not care for anything. Good night."

I also kissed my mother's cheek, and I left hastily, without glancing at Juliana; I collected the little strength left me, and scarcely had I crossed the threshold than I began to run to my room, fearing to fall before I reached the door.

I threw myself on my bed face down. I was seized by that spasm which precedes great paroxysms of tears, when the suffocation of anguish is about to burst out, when the tension is about to be relaxed. But the spasm was protracted, and the tears did not come. It was horrible suffering. An enormous weight bore my members down, a weight that I felt, not at the surface, but within, as if my bones and muscles had become masses of lead. And my brain still thought on! And my consciousness still remained vigilant!

"No, I must not leave her. No, I must not agree to let her leave me thus. When my mother retires, she will kill herself—that is sure. Oh, the sound of her voice, when she expressed the desire to see Natalia!" A hallucination suddenly seized upon me. My mother left the chamber. Juliana sat up in bed, and listened intently. Then, certain at last of being alone, she took the bottle of morphine from the night table. She did not hesitate a second, but with a determined gesture emptied it at one gulp, covered herself again with the bedclothes, and lay on her back to await the end.... The imaginary vision of the cadaver acquired such an intensity that, like one demented, I arose. I made three or four turns in the room, hurt myself against the furniture, stumbled over the carpet, with terrified gestures. I opened a window.

The night was calm, filled with the monotonous and continuous croaking of frogs. The stars were twinkling. The Great Bear scintillated before me, very brightly. Time passed.

I remained for several minutes at the balcony, in contemplation, my eyes fixed on the great constellation that, to my troubled sight, seemed to come nearer. I did not really know what I expected. My mind wandered. I had a singular sensation of the space of that immense sky. Suddenly, during a sort of irresolute suspension, as if, in the depth of unconsciousness, some obscure effluvium had acted on my being, there spontaneously surged up in me the question that I had not as yet understood: "What have you done to me?" And the vision of the cadaver, for an instant forgotten, reappeared before my eyes.

My horror was such that, without knowing what I wished to do, I turned about, left the room precipitately, and directed my steps towards Juliana's room.

I met Miss Edith in the corridor.

"Where did you come from, Edith?" I asked.

I saw that my appearance stupefied her.

"I took Natalia to Signora, who wished to see her; but I had to leave her there. It was impossible to make her go back to her own bed. She cried so hard that Signora consented to keep her with her. Let us hope that Maria will not waken up."

"Ah! so then..."

My heart beat so violently that I could not speak connectedly.

"Then Natalia is sleeping with her mother."

"Yes, signor."

"And Maria—let us go and see Maria."

Emotion choked me. That night, at least, Juliana was safe. It was impossible that she should think of dying, with her little girl by her side. By a miracle, the affectionate caprice of the child had saved the mother. "May God bless her!" Before looking at Maria, who was sleeping, I looked at the empty bed, that still retained the impress of the child's figure. I felt strange desires to kiss the pillow, to feel if the depression were still warm. Edith's presence embarrassed me. I turned toward Maria. I bent over her, holding my breath; I looked at her for a long time, I sought one by one the known resemblances she bore toward me, I almost counted the delicate veins that could be seen on her temple, cheek, and neck. She was sleeping on one side, her head thrown back, so as to display the whole of the neck beneath the raised chin. The teeth, fine as grains of pure rice, disclosed their whiteness through the half-closed mouth. The eyelashes, long like those of her mother, shed a shadow over the hollows of the eyes, that extended even to the cheek bones. The delicacy of a precious flower, an extreme finesse, distinguished these infantile traits, in which I felt my blood, refined, flow.

Had I ever, since the birth of these two creatures, felt for them a sensation so deep, so sweet, so sad?

I could scarcely tear myself away from there. I would have liked to sit down between the two little beds, and rest my head on the edge of the empty one, to await thus the morrow.

"Good night, Edith," I said, as I left.

My voice trembled, but it no longer trembled in the same manner.

As soon as I reached my room, I threw myself again face down on the bed. And, at last, I burst into distracted sobs.

XII.

When I awoke from the heavy and, so to speak, brute slumber that, at some moment during the night, had suddenly overwhelmed me, I could scarcely regain an exact idea of the reality.

But soon my mind, freed from the nocturnal exaltations, stood face to face with the cold, naked, implacable reality. What were my recent anguishes in comparison with the fright that invaded me then? One must live! And that had the same effect on me as if someone had presented me with a deep cup, saying: "If you wish to drink, if you wish to live to-day, you must drain into this cup, even to the last drop, the blood of your heart." A repugnance, a disgust, an indefinable repulsion, assailed the inmost part of my being. And yet I must live; I must, to-day too, accept life. But, above all, I must act.

The comparison that I made, to myself, between this actual awakening and that which I had dreamed and hoped for, the evening before at the Lilacs, contributed also to revolt me. "It is impossible," I thought, "that I can accept such a situation; it is impossible that I should rise, dress myself, leave this room, see Juliana again, speak to her, continue to dissimulate before my mother; that I should wait for a suitable moment for a definite understanding between us, that in this interview I should establish the conditions of our future relations. That is impossible. But what then? Destroy with one blow, and radically, all that was suffering in me. Deliver myself—free myself. There is nothing else to be done." And, on considering the facility of the act, on imagining the rapidity of its execution, the explosion of the firearm, the immediate effect of the ball, the darkness that would follow, I felt through my entire body a singular, agonized thrill, mingled, however, with a sensation of solace, almost of sweetness. "There is nothing else to be done." And, in spite of the torment that the anxiety of knowing gave me, I thought with relief that I should have nothing to know, that that anxiety even would instantaneously cease—that, in short, all would be at an end.

I heard a knock at the door, and my brother's voice cried:

"Are you not up yet, Tullio? May I come in?"

"Come in, Federico."

He entered.

"Do you know it is after nine o'clock?"

"I fell asleep very late, and I was very tired."

"How do you feel?"

"So, so."

"Mother is up. She told me that Juliana is feeling quite well. Shall I open your window? It is a wonderful day."

He opened the window. A wave of fresh air filled the room; the curtains swelled like two sails; outside could be seen the azure of the sky.

"Do you see?"

The bright light doubtless disclosed the signs of my distress on my face; for he added:

"Were you ill, too, last night?"

"I think I was a little feverish."

Federico looked at me with his clear blue eyes; and, at that moment, it seemed to me that I bore on my soul the entire burden of future lies and dissimulations. Oh! if he had known!

But, as usual, his presence put to flight the cowardice that commenced to crush me down. A false energy, like that communicated by a drop of cordial, restored my self-command to me. I thought: "How would he have acted in my place?" My past, my education, the very essence of my nature, contradicted every probability of a similar occurrence; but, at least, this much was certain: in case of a misfortune, similar or dissimilar, he would have displayed the conduct of a strong and forgiving man, he would have heroically faced the pain, he would have preferred to sacrifice himself rather than to sacrifice the other.

"Let me feel," said he, approaching.

He touched my forehead with his open palm, and felt my pulse.

"It has left you, it seems to me. But how unsteady your pulse is!"

"Let me get up, Federico; it is late."

"To-day, after noon, I am going to the Assoro woods. If you wish to come, I will have Orlando saddled for you. Do you remember the woods? How unfortunate that Juliana is not well! Otherwise we would have taken her with us. She could see the ricks on fire."

When he mentioned Juliana it seemed as if his voice became more affectionate, softer, and, so to speak, more fraternal. Oh! if he had known!

"Good-by, Tullio. I am going to work. When will you begin to help me?"

"This very day, to-morrow, whenever you wish."

He began to laugh.

"What enthusiasm! But that's enough; I will see you at work. Good-by, Tullio."

He went out with his light and free step, for he was always stimulated by the precept inscribed on the sun-dial: Hora est benefaciendi.

XIII.

It was ten o'clock when I left my room. On that April morning, the bright light that inundated the Badiola by the open windows and balconies made me timid. How could I wear my mask in such a light?

Before entering Juliana's apartment, I wished to see my mother.

"You rose late," she said, on seeing me. "How are you?"

"Very well."

"You are pale."

"I think I had a little fever in the night. But it is gone now."

"Have you seen Juliana?"

"Not yet."

"She wished to get up, the dear girl! She said that she no longer feels ill; but her face..."

"I am going to her."

"You must not neglect to write to the doctor. Do not listen to Juliana. Write this very day."

"Did you tell her ... that I know?"

"Yes, I told her that you know."

"I am going, mother."

I left her in front of her great walnut-wood closets perfumed with orris, in which two women were piling the beautiful washed linen, the pride of the Hermils. Maria, in the piano-room, was taking her lesson from Miss Edith, and the chromatic scales, rapid and even, succeeded one another. Pietro passed, the most faithful of the servants, white-haired, somewhat bent, bearing a tray of glasses that resounded because his arms trembled with age. The entire Badiola, bathed in air and light, had an aspect of tranquil joy. There was an atmosphere of goodness shed throughout—like the subtle and inextinguishable smile of the gods Lares.

Never before had that sensation, that smile, penetrated to my soul so deeply. And that great peace, that great goodness, enveloped the ignoble secret which Juliana and I were condemned to keep without dying of it!

"And now?" I thought, at the height of my anguish, wandering in the corridor as a lost stranger might have done, incapable of directing my steps toward the dreaded place, as if my body refused obedience to the impulsions imposed upon it by my will. "And now? She knows that I know the truth. Between us, henceforth, all dissimulation is useless. Necessity imposes upon us to face one another, to speak of the frightful thing. But it is impossible that this meeting should take place this morning. The consequences of it cannot be foreseen; and now, more than ever, it is necessary, absolutely necessary, that not one of our actions should seem singular or inexplicable, neither to my mother nor to my brother, nor to anyone else in this house. My agitation of last evening, my uneasiness, my grief, can be explained by the preoccupation of the peril of Juliana's condition; but logically, in others' eyes, such preoccupation should make me more tender toward her, more zealous, more eager than ever. To-day, my prudence must be extreme. To-day, I must avoid a scene with Juliana, cost what it may. To-day, I must avoid any occasion of remaining with her en tête-à-tête. But I must also find, without delay, means to make her understand the feeling that determined my attitude in regard to her, the intention that directs my conduct. And if she persists in the will to kill herself? If she had only deferred its execution a few hours? If she were already watching for an opportune moment?"

That fear cut short my loitering, and forced me to action. I resembled one of those Oriental soldiers who are forced into battle by blows of a cudgel.

I directed my steps toward the piano-room. On seeing me, Maria interrupted her scales and ran toward me, light and joyous, as toward a liberator. She had the grace, the agility, the lightness, of winged creatures. I raised her in my arms to kiss her.

"Will you take me out?" she asked. "I am tired. Miss Edith has kept me here for an hour. I cannot stand any more. Take me out with you. Let us go for a walk before breakfast."

"Where?"

"Wherever you like."

"Let us go, then, and see mamma first."

"Yes; yesterday you were at the Lilacs, and we had to stay at the Badiola. It was you, you alone, who would not consent. Mamma was quite willing. Naughty papa! We should like to go there. Tell me how you amused yourselves."

The child prattled on like a bird, delightfully. The ceaseless chatter kept company with my anguish, while we were going toward Juliana's apartment. I hesitated; but Maria knocked at the door, crying:

"Mamma!"

Without suspecting my presence, Juliana came to open the door herself. She saw me. She started violently, as if she had seen a phantom, a spectre, some terrifying thing.

"Is it you?" she stammered, in a voice so low that I scarcely heard her.

And, while she spoke, her lips blanched. After the start, she became suddenly more rigid than a Hermes.

And there, on the threshold, we looked at each other, read each other's faces; for an instant, even our souls were fixed upon each other. All about us disappeared; between us, all was said, all was understood, everything was decided, in the space of one second.

What happened next? I do not know, I cannot remember. I remember that, for some time, I had an intermittent consciousness, so to speak, of what happened, with a succession of short eclipses. It was, it seemed to me, a phenomenon analogous to that which results from the enfeeblement of the voluntary attention in the case of certain patients. I lost the faculty of being attentive; I no longer saw, I no longer seized the sense of words, I no longer understood. Then, a moment later, I recovered that faculty, examined the things and persons about me, I became attentive and conscious.

Juliana was seated, and held Natalia on her knees. I, too, had taken a seat. And Maria ran from her to me, from me to her, incessantly, with endless prattle, provoking her sister, asking us a number of questions which we only answered by a nod of the head. That lively chatter broke our silence. In one of the fragments of the phrases that I noticed, Maria said to her sister:

"Ah! is it true that you slept with mamma last night?"

"Yes, because I am little."

"Oh! well, to-night it's my turn. Is it not, mamma? Take me in your bed to-night, mamma."

Juliana did not smile. She remained silent, and seemed absorbed. She had on her knees Natalia, whose shoulders were turned toward her, and whose arms were around her waist; her joined hands rested in the little girl's lap, whiter than the little white dress on which they reposed, taper, painful, so painful that they themselves revealed to me an immensity of sorrow. Juliana remained bent, and, as Natalia's head brushed her mouth, she seemed to press her lips to the child's curls; in such a manner that, when I glanced at her, I could not see the expression of her eyes, but saw only her lowered eyelids, somewhat reddened, and I was constantly agitated internally by this, as if through them I could distinguish the fixity of the pupils that they covered.

Was she waiting for me to say something? Were inexpressible words rising to those hidden lips?

When finally, by an effort, I conquered the condition of inertia in which extraordinary alternations of lucidity and darkness had succeeded each other, I said, in a tone of voice that I would have used, I believe, in continuing a conversation already begun, by adding new words to words already spoken—I said slowly:

"Mother wants me to send for Doctor Vebesti. I have promised to write. I will write."

She did not raise her eyelids; she remained mute. Maria, in her innocence, looked at her with surprise; then she looked at me, too.

I rose to go out.

"To-day, after lunch, I will go with Federico to the Assoro woods. Shall we see one another this evening on my return?"

She made no movement to answer. Then I repeated, in a voice that conveyed a thousand things understood:

"Shall we see one another this evening on my return?" From between her lips, hidden among Natalia's curls, came like a sigh:

"Yes."

XIV.

In the violence of my multiple and contrary agitations, in the first tumult of pain, beneath the menace of imminent perils, I had not yet had the leisure to think of the Other. Moreover, from the very first, I had not conceived even the shadow of a doubt of my former suspicion. In my mind, the Other had immediately taken the form of Filippo Arborio, and from the first outburst of carnal jealousy that had seized me in the alcove, it was his abominable image which was coupled with that of Juliana in a series of horrible visions.

Even now, while Federico and I trotted toward the forest, along the banks of the tortuous river, contemplated so painfully on the afternoon of Holy Saturday, the Other trotted beside us. Between my brother and me interposed the image of Filippo Arborio, revived by my hate, animated by my hate with life so intense that, on regarding it with a sensation of reality, I felt a physical spasm, something similar to the savage quivering that I had more than once felt on the duelling field, at the signal of attack, when face to face with an adversary.

My brother's presence extraordinarily increased my uneasiness. Compared with Federico, that man's face, so thin, so nervous, so feminine, grew smaller, became impoverished, seemed contemptible and ignoble to me. Beneath the influence of the new ideal of virile strength and simplicity that my brother's example inspired in me, I not only hated, but I despised that complicated and equivocal being, who yet belonged to my own race, and who had several particularities in his cerebral constitution in common with me, to which his works of art bore witness. I pictured to myself a type of one of those literary men, affected by the saddest maladies of the mind, a libertine, cruelly curious, hardened by the habit of cold analysis of the warmest and most spontaneous passions of the soul, accustomed to consider every human creature as a subject of pure psychological speculation, incapable of love, incapable of a generous action, of an abnegation, of a sacrifice, hardened in falsehood, enervated by disgust, lascivious, cynical, cowardly.

Such was the man who had seduced Juliana, but who had certainly not loved her. Did not the very manner appear in the dedication written on the fly-leaf of The Secret, in that emphatic dedication, the only document known to me that bore on the relations between the romancer and my wife? To take by assault the "Ivory Tower," to corrupt a character whom public opinion declared to be incorruptible, to experiment with a method of seduction on so rare a subject, that was an enterprise, difficult but full of attraction, entirely worthy of the refined artist, the abstractor of physiological quintessence who had written The True Catholic and Angelica Doni.

The more I thought of it, the more the facts appeared to me in their ugliest crudity. Filippo Arborio had certainly made Juliana's acquaintance during one of those crises when the woman of whom people say, "She has a soul," after a long period of loneliness, feels herself overcome by poetical aspirations, by indefinable desires, vague languors—all those phenomena which are only the masks that disguise passion. Filippo Arborio, with his experience, had divined the special physical state of the woman whom he coveted, and had made use of the most appropriate and the surest method; that is to say, he had spoken of the ideal, of superior regions, of mystical alliance, while his thoughts were turned in more material channels. And Juliana, the "Ivory Tower," the great silent creature made of ductile gold and steel, the unique, had been captured by the old trick, had allowed herself to be taken in the old snare, had, she also, obeyed the old law as to the frailty of woman.

A horrible irony tortured my soul. I seemed to have, not in the mouth but in the heart, the convulsion caused by the herb that produces death by making one hysterical with laughter.

I spurred my horse and put him to a gallop on the steep bank of the river.

The bank was dangerous, with very precipitous bends, and made more menacing in some places by deep holes, obstructed in others by the branches of great gnarled trees, in still others traversed by enormous roots close to the ground. I was perfectly conscious of the peril to which I exposed myself; yet, instead of tightening the rein, I still urged the beast forward, not with the intention of facing death, but because I sought in danger a respite from my intolerable torture. I already knew the efficacy of such madness. Ten years before, when still very young and while an attaché of the embassy at Constantinople, in order to overcome an attack of grief caused by the recollection of a recent passion, I entered on horseback, one moonlight night, one of the Mussulman cemeteries crowded with tombs, and I rode on the incline of polished stones exposing myself a thousand times to the risk of a fatal fall. Death, mounted with me on the crupper, overshadowed every other care.

"Tullio! Tullio!" cried Federico after me. "Stop! Stop!"

I paid no attention to him. It is marvellous that a dozen times I escaped crushing in my forehead against the horizontal branches. It is marvellous that a dozen times I prevented my horse from stumbling against the trunk of a tree. A dozen times, at difficult passages, I saw a certain fall into the river that glistened beneath my feet. But when I heard another gallop behind me, when I perceived Federico was following me with loosened rein, I became frightened for him, and I tightened the bit suddenly. The poor animal reared up, remained an instant upright as if to make a plunge into the river, and then came to a standstill, trembling.

"Are you mad?" cried Federico to me when he came up to me, very pale.

"Did I frighten you? Forgive me, I did not think there was any danger. It was to try the horse; and then I could not control him—he is a little hard in the mouth."

"Orlando hard in the mouth!"

"Don't you find him so?"

He looked at me fixedly, with an uneasy expression. I attempted a smile. His unusual pallor pained me and aroused my sympathy.

"I do not understand how you escaped breaking your head against a tree; I cannot imagine how it is you were not thrown."

"And you?"

To follow me, he had exposed himself to the same peril, perhaps to a still greater one; because his horse was heavier, and he had had to put him at his full speed for fear of not joining me in time. We both looked back at the distance just covered.

"It is a veritable miracle," he said. "To get out of the Assoro is almost impossible. Just look!"

We looked down at the deadly river that rolled beneath our feet. Deep, shining, rapid, full of whirlpools and gulfs, the Assoro ran between two chalky cliffs, with a silence that rendered it still more sinister. The country harmonized with that treacherous and menacing aspect. The sky, which early in the afternoon was covered with vapors, was now overcast with diffused reflections of the tangle of reddish brushwood that still survived to the spring. The dead leaves mingled with the growth of new leaves, the dried brambles with the green shoots, the dead with the newly born vegetation, in an inextricable, symbolic confusion. Above the agitated surface of the river, above that incongruous thicket, the sky blanched, faded away, seemed to dissolve.

"An unexpected fall, and I should have ceased to think, I should have ceased to suffer, I should have ceased to support the weight of my miserable flesh. But perhaps I should have dragged my brother with me down the precipice; and my brother's life is a model of nobleness, my brother is a Man. I escaped by a miracle, as he escaped by a miracle. My madness has made him run a supreme risk. With him would have disappeared a world of beauty and of goodness. What is this fatality that condemns me to be harmful to those who love me?"

I looked at Federico. He had become thoughtful and grave. I did not dare question him, but I felt a poignant remorse at having grieved him. Of what was he thinking? On what reflections did his agitation feed? Perhaps he had divined that I was dissimulating suffering and that the sole cause which had driven me to my perilous race was the spur of some fixed idea.

We followed the path, one behind the other, step by step. Then we turned into a side-path that led through the bush, and, as it was wide enough, we trotted side by side, while our horses whinnied, bringing their nostrils together as if to exchange confidences, and mingling the froth from their bridles.

From time to time I glanced at Federico, and, seeing that he was still pensive, I thought: "Assuredly, if I were to reveal the truth to him, he would not believe me. He could not believe in Juliana's sin, in the sister's stain. Between his affection and that of my mother for Juliana, I really could not decide whose is the more profound. Had he not always kept on his table the two portraits of Juliana and our poor Constance, united as in a diptych for the same adoration? This morning even, how gentle his voice became in naming her!" Suddenly, by contrast, the infamous image reappeared, more hideous. The bared chest I caught a glimpse of in the dressing-room of the fencing-salon flitted now before my imagination. And on that face my hate worked just like nitric acid on the engraver's copper plate: the bitten characters became sharper and sharper.

Then, while I still felt in my blood the excitement produced by the ride, by the effect of that exuberance of physical courage, of that instinct of hereditary combativeness that, so often, surged up in me at the contact with other men, I felt that I would not have the strength to resist challenging Filippo Arborio. "I will go to Rome, I will find out all about him; I will incense him, no matter how; I will force him to fight. I will do everything to kill him or cripple him." I imagined the poltroon to myself.

There recurred to my memory a rather ridiculous retreat which he had not been able to prevent at the salle d'armes, when he received a thrust in the breast from the fencing-master. I also remembered his questioning me regarding my duel, that puerile curiosity of those who have never been on the field of honor. I recalled that, during my assault, he had kept his eyes fixed on me ceaselessly. The consciousness of my superiority, the certainty of vanquishing him, excited me. In my imagination, a thread of red blood furrowed that pale and disgusting flesh. And I saw him bleeding and inert on a mattress, with two doctors leaning over him.

How often I, the ideologist, the analyst, the sophist of an epoch of decadence, had prided myself on being the descendant of that Raymond Hermil of Panedo who, at the Goulette, had accomplished prodigies of valor and of ferocity beneath the eyes of Charles the Fifth! The excessive development of my intelligence and of my many-souled state had not been able to modify the depths of my substance, in the deepest stratifications of which were preserved the imprint of every hereditary characteristic of my race. In my brother, whose organization was well balanced, thought was always associated with labor; in me thought predominated. I was, in short, a violent and a passionate person conscious of himself, in whom the hypertrophy of certain cerebral centres rendered impossible the coördination necessary to the normal state of the mind. I was able to contemplate my actions with perfect clear-sightedness, and yet I had every undisciplinable impulse of primitive natures. More than once had I been possessed by sudden criminal ideas; more than once I had been surprised by feeling the surging up of a cruel instinct within me.

"There are the charcoal-burners." said my brother to me, putting his horse at a trot.

The blows of the axe could be heard in the forest and the spirals of smoke could be seen rising between the trees. Federico interrogated the workmen as to the progress made in their labor, gave them advice, while examining their work with an experienced eye. Every one of them assumed a respectful attitude, and listened attentively. Around about, the labor seemed to become more eager, easier, lighter, and even the crackling of the fire more efficacious. Men ran right and left, throwing earth here and there wherever the smoke poured out in too great abundance, to stop up with clods the holes caused by the explosions; they ran, they shouted. With these rude voices mingled the guttural sounds of the wood-cutters. The surroundings resounded with the crash of some falling tree. During the few moments of our halt could be heard the whistling of blackbirds. And the great, motionless forest contemplated the wood-cutters, to whom its life served as food.

While my brother proceeded in his examination of the work, I withdrew, leaving to my horse the choice of the unfamiliar paths that led into the bush. Behind me the sounds decreased, the echoes died away. A heavy silence fell from the tree-tops. I thought: "What shall I do to regain courage? What will my life henceforth be? Can I continue to live in my mother's house with my secret? Can I associate my life with that of Federico? What man in all this world, what event could ever resuscitate in my soul a spark of faith?" The sounds of the workers away behind me; the solitude became complete, "To work, to accomplish good, to live for others! ... I henceforth recover in these things the true sense of life? And are there really only these things which, to the exclusion of individual happiness, permit of finding the true sense of life? The other day, while my brother was speaking, I believed I understood his remarks; I believed that the doctrine of truth was revealed to me by his mouth. The doctrine of truth, according to my brother, is not in laws, not in precepts, but simply and solely in the interpretation that man gives to life. It seemed to me I had understood it fully. But, all at once, I now found myself fallen back among the shadows; I had become blind again. I no longer understood. What man in all the world, what event, could console me for all the good I had lost?" And the future seemed frightful and hopeless to me. The undefined image of the infant to be born grew, enlarged, like horrible and formless things one sees sometimes in a nightmare, and ended by enveloping everything. It was no longer a question of regret, of remorse, of an indestructible recollection, of no matter what inner bitterness; it now concerned a living being. My future was fettered to a being whose life was tenacious and malefic; it was shackled to a stranger, to an intruder, to an abominable creature, against whom not only my mind, but also my flesh, all my blood and every fibre, rose with a brutal, ferocious, implacable aversion, until death, beyond death. I thought: "Who could have imagined a worse torture for torturing the soul and the flesh at the same time?"

And it was just at the time that the nausea set in that I—who fed on dreams, who drank of the ideal—found the ingenuities of my adolescence, thought of nothing but of gathering flowers. Oh! those flowers, those heart-breaking flowers that I so timidly offered her. And, after a great intoxication, half-sentimental, half-sensual, I received the delightful news, from whom? from my mother! And after the news, I experience a feeling of generous exaltation, I accept in good faith a noble rôle, I sacrifice myself in silence, like one of Octave Feuillet's heroes! What heroism! The irony tortured my soul, bruised every fibre.... Then, for the second time, I conceived the mad idea of escaping from my fate.

I looked before me. Close at hand, between the tree-trunks, unreal like the illusion of a hallucination, shone the glistening Assoro. "Strange!" I thought, with a curious shudder. Up to this time I had not noticed that my horse, left to himself, had entered a path that led to the river. The Assoro seemed to have a fatal fascination for me.

I hesitated a moment between two things—to go on as far as the cliff, or return. Finally, I stopped, fascinated by the water and the guilty thought. I made my horse curvet.

A heavy oppressiveness succeeded the internal convulsion. It seemed to me that, all at once, my soul had become a poor, faded thing, a bruised, diminished, miserable thing. I became softened; I felt pity for myself, I felt pity for Juliana, I felt pity for every creature upon whom suffering had set its seal, that trembled under the embrace of life as some vanquished enemy in the power of some pitiless conqueror. "What are we? What do we know? What do we wish for? No one has ever obtained what he would like; no one will ever obtain what he would like. We seek goodness, virtue, enthusiasm, the passion that will fill our soul, the faith that will calm our inquietudes, the inspiration that will give us courage, the work to which we consecrate ourselves, the cause for which we will joyfully die. And the result of so many efforts is an empty lassitude, the sensation of strength spent in pure loss, and of the flight of time." At that moment, life appeared to me like a distant vision, confused, strange, monstrous. Madness, imbecillity, poverty, blindness, every malady, every misfortune, the obscure and continuous agitation of unconscious atavic, bestial powers in the depths of our substance, the highest manifestations of the ever-unstable, fugitive mind necessarily subordinated to a physical condition, connected with the functions of an organ, instantaneous metamorphoses produced by an imperceptible cause, by a mere nothing, the infallible amount of egotism in the noblest actions, the inutility of so much moral energy directed toward an uncertain object, the futility of amours that we believe to be eternal, the frailty of virtue that we believe unshakable, the feebleness of the most robust wills, every shame, every misery, appeared before me in that instant. "How is it possible to live? How is it possible to love?"