Front matter (continued 4)

The axes resounded in the forest; a short and savage cry accompanied every blow. Here and there, in the clearings, great piles of wood, in the form of truncated cones or of quadrangular pyramids, were smoking. Columns of smoke, thick and straight as the trunks of trees, arose in the quiet air. To me, everything was symbolical at that moment.

I turned my horse toward the neighboring charcoal-burner, where I had recognized Federico.

He had descended from his horse and was speaking to a tall old man with shaven chin.

"Ah! At last!" he cried, on seeing me. "I was afraid that you were lost."

"No, I was not far off."

"Let me introduce to you Giovanni di Scordio—a Man," he said, placing his hand on the old man's shoulder.

I looked at the being whom he so designated. A singularly sweet smile gathered around his withered mouth. I had never seen such sad eyes before under a human brow.

"Adieu, Giovanni, and keep up your courage!" added my brother in that voice which seemed, at certain moments, like certain liquors, to have the power of stimulating the vital tone. "As for us, Tullio, let us return to the Badiola. It is getting late. They will be waiting for us."

He remounted his horse. He again saluted the old man. On passing by the furnaces, he once more instructed the workmen concerning the operations of the coming night, on which the great fire was to take place. We then trotted off, side by side.

The blue sky slowly appeared over our heads. The veils of vapor floated away, dispersed, reformed, in such a manner that the azure seemed to pale progressively, as if through its limpidity a continuous milky wave was spread and extended. We were nearing the hour when, the evening before, at the Lilacs, I had contemplated with Juliana the undulating garden in its ideal light. Around us the brushwood began to be gilded. The invisible birds were warbling.

"Did you take good notice of that old man, Giovanni di Scordio?" asked Federico.

"Yes," I replied. "I do not think I shall ever forget his smile or his eyes."

"That old man is a saint," pursued Federico. "No man has worked or suffered so much as he has. He had fourteen sons, and all, one after the other, have left him, just as ripe fruit leaves the tree. His wife, a virago, is dead. He is left alone. His sons have despoiled and disowned him. He has experienced every human ingratitude. He has experienced the perversity, not of strangers, but of his own creations. Do you understand? His own blood has turned to venom in the beings for whom he had only love and affection, in the beings whom he has not ceased to love, whom he cannot curse, whom he will certainly bless at the hour of his death, even if they permit him to die in solitude. Is not such obstinacy of man in his goodness an extraordinary, an almost unbelievable thing? After so much suffering, his face still has the smile that you saw. You will do well, Tullio, not to forget that smile."

XV.

The hour of trial was drawing near, the hour dreaded yet desired at the same time.

Juliana was ready. She had firmly opposed Maria's caprice; she wished to be alone in her room to await me.

"What shall I say to her? What will she say to me? What will be my attitude towards her?" All my prejudices, all my plans, were scattered. There remained to me only an intolerable anguish. Who could foresee the result of the meeting? I neither felt master of myself, nor of my words, nor of my acts. I only felt within me a fermentation of obscure thoughts that, at the slightest shock, would surge up. Never, as at that moment, had I had the clear and hopeless consciousness of the intestine discords that rent me, the perceptions of the irreconcilable elements that warred at the depths of my being, that overthrew one another, that destroyed each other by turns in a perpetual conflict, rebellious to all restraint. To the dejection of my mind was added a particular agitation of my feelings produced by the images which, on that day, had ceaselessly tortured me. I knew that agitation well, I knew it but too well; I knew it was more certain than any other thing to stir up the muddy depths in man. I knew but too well that base concupiscence from which nothing can save us—that dreadful sexual fever which, for months, had held me chained to a despised and odious woman, Teresa Raffo. And now, the sensations of goodness, of pity, and of strength, that were necessary to me to enable me to support a meeting with Juliana and to persist in my original project, died away in me like moving mists over a swamp of mire.

It lacked but little of midnight when I left my room to go to Juliana's. Every sound had ceased. The Badiola reposed in profound silence. I listened intently, and it seemed to me I heard the calm respiration of my mother, of my brother, of my daughters, those innocent and spotless beings. I thought I saw the face of Maria again sleeping, as I had seen it the night before; I imagined I saw the other faces, with an expression of repose, of peace, of goodness on each. A sudden tenderness seized me. The feeling of happiness, experienced but for a moment the evening before, and then eclipsed, threw a great light over my mind. If nothing had happened, if I had remained under the illusion, what a night that would have been! I would have gone to Juliana as to a divine being. And what could I have wished sweeter than that silence to envelop the inquietude of my love? I traversed the room in which, the evening before, I had received from my mother's mouth the unexpected revelation. Again I heard the ticking of the clock that had marked the hour, and, I do not know why, that tick, tack, so invariably equal, increased my anguish. I do not know why, but I imagined I felt Juliana's anguish respond to mine through the space that still separated us, and that the palpitations of our hearts were accelerated in unison. I walked straight before me, without further stopping, without seeking to muffle the sound of my footfalls. I did not knock at the door; I opened it and entered. Juliana was standing, supporting herself with one hand on the corner of a table, motionless, more rigid than a Hermes.

I can still see everything. Nothing at that hour escaped me; nothing eluded my attention. The actual world had vanished. There subsisted but a fictitious world in the midst of which I panted with anguish, with oppressed heart, incapable of articulating a syllable, and yet singularly lucid, as if I had been a spectator at a theatre. On the table burned a candle, which lent a sort of visible reality to this semblance of scenic fiction, because the little, flickering flame seemed to shed about it that vague horror which the actors in a drama diffuse in the ambient air with their great gestures of despair or menace.

The strange sensation disappeared when, finally, powerless to longer support that silence and Juliana's marble-like immobility, I spoke the first words. There was nothing in my voice of the sound that I believed it would have when I would open my lips. Without wishing it, I spoke in a gentle, trembling, almost timid voice.

"Were you waiting for me?"

She kept her eyes cast down. Without raising them she answered:

"Yes."

I looked at her arm, as motionless as marble, which seemed to become more and more rigid upon the hand placed on the corner of the table. I feared that that fragile support, on which she leaned her entire weight, would yield from one moment to another, and that she would fall.

"You know why I came?" I continued, with extreme slowness, plucking the words from my heart, one by one.

She remained silent.

"Is it true?" I went on. "Is it true—what I have learned from my mother?"

She still remained silent. She seemed to be gathering all her strength. Strange! During that interval it did not seem absolutely impossible that she would answer:

"No."

She answered, and I heard less the sound of her words than I saw them outlined by her bloodless lips:

"It is true."

It was a ruder shock perhaps than that given me by my mother's words. Of course, I knew all, I had already lived twenty-four hours with my certitude; and yet this confirmation, so clear, so precise, crushed me to earth, as if it were the first time I had heard the revelation of the irreparable truth.

"It is true!" I repeated instinctively, speaking to myself, with a sensation analogous to that which I would have had, had I found myself living and conscious at the bottom of an abyss.

Then Juliana raised her eyes and fixed them on mine with a sort of spasmodic violence.

"Tullio," she said, "listen."

A choking stopped the voice in her throat.

"Listen. I know what I must do. I was prepared for anything to spare you this; but destiny willed that I live until now to suffer that most horrible thing, the thing of which I had a mad terror—ah! you understand me—a thousand times more than of death. Tullio, Tullio, your look——"

Another suffocation choked her at a moment when her voice had become so distressed in tone that it gave me the physical impression of the tearing out of the most hidden fibres. I dropped into a seat, covered my face with my hands, and waited for her to continue.

"I should have died before now, I should have died long ago! Without doubt it would have been better if I had not come to the Badiola; it would have been better if at your return from Venice you had not come to me again. I would have been dead, and you would not have known this shame; you would have regretted me, perhaps you would always have cherished my memory. Perhaps I should always have remained your great love, your unique love, as you said yesterday.... I did not fear death, you know; I do not fear it. It is the thought of our two little daughters and of our mother that has made me postpone the execution from day to day. And that has been an agony, Tullio, a cruel agony, in which I have consumed, not one, but a thousand lives. And I am still alive!"

After a pause, she added:

"How is it possible that with such poor health I have so much resistance to pain? That also is a misfortune for me. Think of it! In consenting to accompany you here, I thought: 'It is certain that I shall become ill; directly I arrive I shall have to go to my bed, and I shall rise from it no more. They will think I died a natural death. Tullio will never know anything, will never suspect anything. Everything will be ended.' On the contrary, I am still alive, and you know all, and all is lost, without hope."

She spoke in a low voice, very feebly, and yet in as heart-breaking a tone as if it were a sharp and reiterated cry. I pressed my temples and felt them throbbing so violently that I was almost afraid, as if the arteries would burst the skin and their soft and warm membrane adhere, naked, to the cranial wall.

"My only preoccupation was to hide the truth from you, not for myself, but for you, for your good. You will never know what terrors have frozen me, what anguish has choked my throat. Since the day we arrived here, up to yesterday, you have hoped, you have dreamed, you have been almost happy. But my life, to me, in this blessed house, in contact with your mother, with my secret, can you imagine it? Yesterday, at the Lilacs, while we were at table, during that sweet chat which tortured me, you said to me: 'You knew nothing, you perceived nothing.' Oh! no, that is false; I knew all, I divined all; and, when I detected the affectionate look in your eyes, I felt my soul grow faint. Listen, Tullio. What I am going to say is the truth, the real truth. I am before you here as on my death-bed. It would be impossible for me to lie. Believe what I tell you. I do not care to exculpate myself, I do not dream of defending myself. Henceforth all is at an end. But I wish to tell you one thing, because it is true. You know what love I have had for you, since the day we first met. For years, for years, I was blindly devoted, and not only during the years of happiness, but also during the years of misery, when your love grew weary. You know it, Tullio. You could always do with me as you wished. You have always found in me the friend, the sister, the wife, the mistress, ready to make no matter what sacrifice to please you. Do not believe, Tullio, do not believe that I recall my long devotion in order to accuse you. No, no. There is not in my soul a single drop of bitterness against you, do you hear? Not a single drop! But let me now remind you of a devotion and a tenderness that have lasted for so many years, let me speak to you of love, of the uninterruptedness of my love, without any intermission, do you understand me?—without one intermission. I believe that my passion for you has never been as ardent as during the last few weeks. Yesterday you told me many things. Ah! what could not I, too, tell of my life during these last few days! I knew all, I divined all; and I was compelled to avoid you. How many times have I been on the point of falling in your arms, of closing my eyes, and yielding myself entirely to you, in my moments of feebleness and extreme lassitude! The other morning, Saturday morning, when you came in with the flowers, it seemed to me as I looked at you that I saw the lover of the old days, because of the ardor that animated you, and your smile, and your amiability, and the light that shone in your eyes. And you showed me the scratches on your hands! Then I felt a sudden impulse to take those hands, to kiss them. Where did I get the strength to restrain myself? I did not feel myself worthy. And I saw in a flash all the happiness that you offered me with the flowering thorns, all the happiness that I must renounce forever. Ah! Tullio, my heart is proof against all trials, since it can be so crushed without breaking. I die hard."

She pronounced this last phrase in a deeper tone, with an indefinable accent of irony mingled with anger. I dared not raise my face to look at her. Her words caused me atrocious suffering, and yet I trembled every time she stopped. I feared that her strength would suddenly abandon her, that it would be impossible for her to continue. And I awaited from her mouth other confessions, other fragments of soul.

"It was a great, great mistake," she continued, "not to have died before you returned from Venice. But poor Maria, poor Natalia, could I abandon them?"

She hesitated an instant:

"Nor you either; I could not leave you in such a manner. I might have caused you remorse. You would have been the object of everybody's accusations. We could not have dissimulated with our mother. She would have asked you: 'Why should Juliana have wished to die?' She would have come to know the truth, which we have kept from her till now—poor saintly woman."

Emotion choked her utterance, her voice became hoarse, began to tremble, tearfully. I felt a lump rise in my throat, too.

"I thought of all that; and, when you wished to bring me here, I thought, too, that I was no longer worthy of her, that I was no longer worthy to receive her kisses on my forehead and be called her daughter. But you know how weak we are, how easily we give way to the force of circumstances. I had no more hope; I knew that, outside of death, there remained no other refuge for me; I knew that, every day, the circle was closing in more. And yet I permitted the days to pass, one by one, without taking any resolution. Yet I had a sure means of death."

She stopped. Obeying a sudden impulse, I raised my eyes, and looked at her fixedly. She shuddered violently; and the pain which my look caused her was so apparent that I lowered my forehead, and resumed my first attitude.

Up to now she had been standing. She sat down. An interval of silence followed.

"Do you believe," she asked me, with a timid and unhappy air, "do you believe that the sin is great when the soul did not consent?"

That allusion to the sin sufficed to stir up in me instantly the dregs that had settled, and a sort of bitter acridity rose to my mouth. An involuntary sarcasm left my lips. I said, affecting a smile:

"Poor soul!"

That expression caused a look of such intense pain to appear on Juliana's face that I felt immediately the acute sting of repentance. I understood that it were impossible for me to have inflicted a more cruel blow, and that, at that moment, and against such a poor, submissive creature, irony was the worst of cowardices.

"Forgive me," she said.

She had the appearance of a woman smitten by death. And it seemed to me that her look had precisely the sad gentleness, almost infantile, that I had already seen on the wounded when they are placed on their biers.

"Forgive me. Yesterday, you, too, spoke of the soul. You think now: 'Women say those things to obtain forgiveness.' But I do not seek to exculpate myself. I know that pardon is impossible, and that it is impossible to forget. I know there is no hope. You understand me? I only seek to excuse myself for having received your mother's kisses."

She still spoke in a low tone, very weak and yet heart-breaking, like a sharp and reiterated cry.

"I felt on my brow so heavy a weight of sorrows that, not for myself, Tullio, but for my pain, only for my pain, I let your mother kiss me then. I was unworthy of them; but my pain deserved them. You can forgive me."

I felt an impulse of kindness, of pity; but I did not yield to it. My eyes avoided hers, and I made enormous efforts not to writhe in convulsive spasms, not to yield to extravagant actions.

"Certain days, I deferred from hour to hour the execution of my project; the thought of this house, of what would afterwards happen in this house, took away my courage. See how I have ended by losing even the hope of being able to hide the truth from you, of being able to spare you; for, from the first days, your mother guessed my condition. Do you remember the day when I was at the window and when the odor of the violets nauseated me? It was then that your mother noticed it. Imagine my terror! I thought: If I kill myself, he will learn the secret from his mother. And who knows how far the consequences of the sin I have committed will reach? Night and day I racked my soul to find a means of sparing you. On Sunday, when you asked me: 'Shall we go to the Lilacs on Tuesday?' I consented without reflecting, I abandoned myself to destiny, I trusted to chance. I was certain that that day would be my last, and this certitude exalted me, inspired me with a sort of dementia. But, Tullio, remember your words of yesterday, and tell me if, now, you appreciate my martyrdom. Do you appreciate it?"

She bent toward me as if to project her painful question into my soul, and she entwined her fingers convulsively.

"You had never spoken to me like that before, you had never spoken in such a voice. When, on the bench, you asked me: 'It is too late, perhaps?' I looked at you, and your face frightened me. Could I reply: 'Yes, it is too late?' Could I have broken your heart at one blow? What would have become of us? Then I determined to yield to one last intoxication, and I saw nothing more but my death and my passion."

Her voice had become strangely hoarse. I looked at her, and it seemed to me that I no longer recognized her, so transfigured was she. A convulsion contracted every line of her face; her lower lip trembled violently; her eyes burned with febrile ardor.

"Do you blame me?" she asked in a hoarse, distressed tone. "Do you despise me for what I did yesterday?"

She covered her face with her hands. Then, after a pause, she shook off her weakness with a resolute gesture. Her voice became stronger.

"Destiny has willed that I should live until now. Destiny has willed that you should learn the truth from your mother. From your mother! Yesterday evening, when you came into this room, you knew all and you said nothing, and, before your mother, you kissed the cheek I offered you. Before I die, permit me to kiss your hands. It is the only favor I implore of you. Now, I await your commands. I am ready for anything. Speak."

I said:

"It is necessary that you should live."

"Impossible, Tullio," she cried. "Impossible! Have you thought of what will happen if I live?"

"I have thought of it. It is necessary that you should live."

"What horror!"

And she started violently—an instinctive gesture of fright.

"Listen, Tullio. Henceforth you know everything; henceforth suicide can no longer serve me to hide my shame from you, nor keep me from appearing before you. You know all, and here we are together, and we can still look at one another, we can still speak to one another! The question is an entirely different one. I no longer seek to elude your vigilance in order to kill myself. On the contrary, I wish you to help me in disappearing in the most natural way possible; without awakening any suspicion around us. I have two poisons—morphine and corrosive sublimate. But perhaps poisons are useless; it is difficult to conceal poisoning. And it is necessary that my death should seem to be involuntary, caused by accident, by a mishap. You understand? It is the only way out of it. The secret will remain between us two."

She began to speak rapidly, firmly and deliberately, as if she argued in order to persuade me to consent to some desirable compact and not to a compact of complicity in the execution of an extravagant project. I let her go on. A sort of singular fascination rooted me to the spot—constrained me to look at and listen to the fragile and pale creature, possessed by such impetuous waves of moral energy.

"Listen, Tullio. I have an idea. Federico told me of your insane ride, of the danger that you incurred on the bank of the Assoro. He told me everything. I thought, trembling: 'Who knows what mental torture made him incur such peril?' Then, as I thought of it, it seemed to me that I understood. It was like a prophetic revelation. My soul seemed to see a vision of all the pain that awaited you, pain against which nothing could guard you, pain that would grow day by day, inconsolable, intolerable. Ah! Tullio, it is certain that you have already felt this pain, and that you also foresee your powerlessness to bear it. There is but one means of salvation for you, for me, for our souls, for our love. Yes, let me say it—our love; let me still believe in your words of yesterday; let me repeat that I love you now as I have never loved you before. And it is precisely for that, precisely because we love each other, that I must disappear from the world, that you must no longer see me."

An extraordinary moral elevation heightened her voice and entire person. A great thrill passed through me; a fugitive illusion seized upon my mind. For a moment, I really believed that my love and that of this woman were on an equal plane, of the same ideal, measureless height, freed from human misery, freed from all sin, irreproachable. I felt, for several moments, the same sensation that I had felt at the beginning, when the actual world had seemed to me to have completely vanished. Then, as always, the inevitable phenomena occurred: this state of consciousness ceased to be mine, it became objective, became a stranger to me.

"Listen," she went on, lowering her voice, as if she feared to be overheard. "I have told Federico that I have a great desire to revisit the woods, the charcoal-burners, the entire country. To-morrow morning, Federico will not have the leisure to accompany us because he must return to Casal Caldore. We two will go, alone. Federico has told me that I can ride Favilla. When we are on the cliff—I will do what you did this morning. An accident will happen. Federico told me it is impossible to be rescued from the Assoro. Will you?"

Although her speech was connected, she seemed a prey to a kind of delirium. An unaccustomed flush tinged her cheeks; her eyes had an extraordinary lustre.

The vision of the sinister river flashed rapidly through my mind.

She repeated, bending toward me:

"Will you?"

I arose, and took her hands. I wished to calm her fever. Immense pity oppressed me. My voice was gentle, grew kind, trembled with affectionate emotion.

"Poor Juliana! Do not torment yourself thus. You are suffering too much; your grief has deprived you of your reason, poor soul. You must be brave; you must not think of the things you have just said. Think of Maria, of Natalia. As for me, I have accepted the punishment. It is a punishment that I have well deserved for all the wrongs that I have done you. I accept it; I will bear it. But you must live. Promise me, Juliana, in the name of Maria, in the name of Natalia, in the name of the tenderness that you bear for my mother, in the name of all that I told you at the Lilacs, promise me that you will in no way seek to kill yourself."

She kept her head down. Then, all at once, freeing her hands, she seized mine, and began to kiss them furiously; and I felt on my skin the warmth of her mouth, the warmth of her tears. And, as I attempted to disengage myself, she fell from her seat on her knees, without freeing my hands, sobbing, showing me an agonized face over which the tears rolled in streams, in which the contraction of the mouth revealed the inexpressible spasm that convulsed her entire being.

And I, incapable of raising her, incapable of uttering a word, suffocated by a cruel attack of anguish, overcome by the violence of the spasm that contracted that poor, pallid mouth, forgetful of all rancor, of every pride, without any other sensation than that of the blind terror of life, without seeing in myself and in this crushed woman anything else than human suffering, the eternal human suffering, the disaster of inevitable infractions, the weight of brute flesh, the horror of pitiless fatalities that attach themselves to the very roots of our being and the infinite physical sorrow of our love, I fell also on my knees before her, by an instinctive desire to prostrate myself, to take the same humble attitude as this creature who suffered and who made me suffer. And I burst into sobs; and, once more, after so long a time, our tears mingled, burning tears, alas! but powerless to change our destiny.

XVI.

Who will ever be able to describe in words the sensation of stupor and of desolate aridity which, in man, succeeds tears uselessly shed, paroxysms of useless hopelessness? Tears are a temporary phenomenon; each crisis ends in calm, every attack is brief; and, afterwards, man finds himself exhausted, his heart arid, more than ever convinced of his own impotence, corporeally stupid and sad, with the impassable reality before him.

I was the first to cease weeping; I was the first to open my eyes to the light; I was the first to notice my posture and Juliana's, and of the surrounding objects. We were still on our knees, one facing the other, on the carpet. A few sobs still shook her. The candle was burning on the table, and every now and then its tiny flame flickered and bent as if under the breath of a breeze. In the silence my ear perceived the slight sound of a watch which was somewhere in the room. Life rolled on; time passed. My soul was empty and solitary.

After the violence of the emotion had subsided, after the intoxication of the pain had become dissipated, our attitudes signified nothing any more, had no longer a raison d'être. I must rise, raise up Juliana, say something, definitely close this scene; but I felt for all this a strange repugnance. It seemed to me that I had become incapable of the slightest physical or moral effort. I was vexed at being there, at having to submit to these necessities, at meeting with these difficulties, at not having the strength to leave my position. And a sort of deep rancor against Juliana began to stir confusedly in the depths of my being.

I arose. I assisted her to arise. Each of the sobs that, from time to time, still shook her, increased in me this inexplicable rancor.

It is then quite true that certain germs of hate are dissimulated at the bottom of every sentiment which unites two human creatures; that is to say, which connects two egoisms? It is then quite true that these germs of inevitable hate disturb our most affectionate moments, our best impulses? All there is beautiful in the soul bears in itself a latent germ of corruption, is condemned to become corrupted.

I said (and I feared that involuntarily the tone of my voice was not sufficiently gentle):

"Be calm, Juliana. The moment has come to be courageous. Come, sit down. Be calm. Will you have a drink of water? Will you smell some salts? Answer!"

"Yes, give me a little water. You will find it in the alcove on the night table."

Her voice was still tearful; and she dried her face with a handkerchief, seated on a low divan, facing the large mirror of a closet. She had not ceased sobbing convulsively.

I entered the alcove to get the glass. I perceived the bed in the shadow. It was already made; a corner of the covers was raised and thrown back, a long white night-dress was laid close to the pillow. Immediately my subtle and keen sense of smell detected the slight perfume of the batiste, a faint odor of orris and violet, so familiar to me. The sight of the bed, the odor of the familiar perfume, disturbed me deeply. I hastened to pour out the water, and I left the alcove to take the glass to Juliana, who was waiting.

She swallowed a few mouthfuls, a little at a time, while I, standing before her, attentively observed the movement of her mouth.

"Thank you, Tullio," she said.

She gave me back the glass, still half full. As I was thirsty, I drank the water which remained. That mechanical action sufficed to increase my agitation. I sat down, in my turn, on the divan. And we remained silent, both absorbed in our reflections, separated only by a short distance.

The divan with our figures was reflected in the mirror of the closet. We could see each other's faces without looking at one another, but rather confusedly, because the light was feeble and vacillating. On the vague surface of the glass I intently examined Juliana's silhouette, which, in its immobility, gradually acquired a mysterious aspect, the disquieting fascination of certain women's portraits obscured by time, the intensity of fictitious life possessed by beings born of a hallucination. And, gradually, this distant image seemed to me more living than the real person. Gradually I saw in that image the caressing wife, the voluptuous woman, the mistress, the unfaithful one.

I closed my eyes. The Other rose up before me. One of my usual visions appeared.

I thought: "Up to now, she has made no direct allusion to her fall, to the circumstances of her fall. She has uttered only one significant phrase: 'Do you think the sin is grave when the soul has not consented?' And what did that mean? It was only one of those subtle distinctions to which one has usually recourse to excuse and extenuate one's treason and infamy. I suffered a nameless torture. The furious desire to know all racked my soul; the material visions exasperated me. The Other, since the instant in which he had risen in my thoughts, had not ceased for a moment to beset my mind. Was it Filippo Arborio? Had I guessed correctly?"

Suddenly I turned toward Juliana. She looked at me. But the question choked in my throat. I lowered my eyes, bent my head, and with the same spasmodic resistance that I should have felt on plucking a fragment of my flesh from some part of my body, I dared to ask her:

"The name of that man?"

My voice, trembling and hoarse, frightened even myself.

At this unexpected demand, Juliana started, but remained silent.

"You do not answer?" I insisted, forcing myself to repress the anger that was on the point of invading me, that blind anger which, on the previous night, already had passed over my mind like a whirlwind.

"Ah! My God!" she moaned, despairingly; and she sank down in a heap on the divan, burying her face in the cushion. "My God! My God!"

But I wished to know; I wished, at any cost, to tear the avowal from her.

"Do you remember," I went on, "do you remember that morning when I entered your room unexpectedly, early in November? Do you remember? I entered without knowing why, perhaps because I heard you singing. You were singing the air from 'Orphée'; you were preparing to go out. Do you remember? I saw a book on your dressing-table, I opened it, I read on the fly-leaf a dedication. It was a novel, The Secret. Do you remember?"

She remained with her face buried in the cushion, and made no reply. I stooped over her. I trembled with a chill like that which precedes a fever. I added:

"It is perhaps he?"

She did not answer, but she raised her head with a motion of despair. She seemed distracted. She made a gesture as if about to throw herself on me, then stopped, crying:

"Have pity! Have pity! Let me die! What you are making me suffer is worse than a thousand deaths. I have borne everything, I am capable of bearing everything; but not that, no, I cannot, I cannot. If I live it will mean for us both a constant martyrdom—a martyrdom that will daily become more terrible. And you will begin to hate me, all your hate will be vented on me. I am sure of it, sure. I have already felt the hate in your voice. Have pity! Let me die!"

She seemed distracted. She had a furious desire to seize hold of me; but not daring she twisted her hands in an effort to control herself, her whole body convulsed. I seized her by the arms, and drew her toward me.

"So I am to know nothing?" I said to her, speaking almost on her mouth, now distracted myself, carried away by a cruel instinct that made my hands rough.

"I love you, I have always loved you, I have always been yours. I expiate by this hell a moment's weakness—do you understand? One moment's weakness! That is the truth. Cannot you feel that it is the truth?"

Once more, overwhelmed by the weight of our misfortune, I clasped the poor trembling creature to my heart and silently kissed away her scalding tears.

XVII.

The external indications of Juliana's condition were not yet visible. The tie that bound the infant to the mother must be very frail. How was it that the violent emotions of the day at the Lilacs and of the following night had not sufficed to provoke a liberating crisis? Everything was against me, everything conspired against me. And my hate became more savage. To prevent the birth of the child, such was my secret design.

And I considered the future with a sort of divining clear-sightedness. Juliana would give birth to a boy, sole heir of our ancient name. The son who was not mine would grow up without accident; he would usurp the love of my mother and my brother; he would be caressed, adored; he would be preferred to Maria and to Natalia, my own creations. The force of habit would dull Juliana's remorse; she would abandon herself without restraint to her maternal feeling. And the son who was not mine would grow up under her protection, surrounded by her assiduous cares; he would become robust and handsome; he would become capricious like a little despot; he would reign in my house. By degrees these visions became particularized. Such or such an imaginary spectacle took the shape and motion of an actual scene; such or such a trait of that imaginary life was impressed so strongly in my consciousness that it retained there for some time the characteristics of an effective reality. The child's traits were modified to infinity; his acts, his gestures, were diversified without cease. At times I represented him to myself as being thin, pale, taciturn, with a large, heavy head bent on his chest; at other times I saw him all rosy, plump, gay, chattering, graceful and coaxing, particularly affectionate toward me, very good; at other times, on the contrary, he was nervous, bilious, a little spiteful, full of intelligence and evil instincts, rough with his sisters, cruel to animals, incapable of tenderness, undisciplinable. This last image ended by dominating all the others, eliminated them by becoming more lasting, fixed itself into a precise type, became animated with an intense chimerical life, ended by taking a name: the name that I had long since chosen for the male heir, my father's name, Raymond.

That little perverse phantom was a direct emanation of my hate, and he bore against me a hostility equal to that I had for him. He was an enemy, an adversary, with whom I was about to begin a struggle. He was my victim, and I was his. I could not escape from him; he could not escape from me. We were both shut in as it were in a circle of iron.

He had gray eyes like Filippo Arborio. Among the various expressions of his face one struck me above all, in an imaginary scene that often arose before me. This scene is as follows: I entered a room filled with darkness, with strange silence. I thought I was alone there. All at once, on turning round, I perceived Raymond looking at me fixedly with his gray and wicked eyes. Suddenly the temptation to commit the crime assailed me so strongly that, so as not to throw myself on the malefic being, I took to flight.

XVIII.

Between Juliana and me the compact appeared concluded. She lived. We both continued to live, simulating and dissimulating. Like dipsomaniacs, we had two alternate lives: the one tranquil, made up entirely of gentle appearances, of filial tendernesses, pure affection, reciprocal complaisances; the other agitated, feverish, troubled, uncertain, hopeless, a prey to a fixed idea, forever pursued by a menace, precipitated toward an unknown catastrophe. There were rare moments when my soul, seeking to avoid so much misery, to free itself from the curse that enveloped it like a thousand tentacles, burst forth with an aspiration toward the highest ideal of goodness, a glimpse of which I had more than once had. My memory recalled to me the singular words of my brother at the entrance to Assoro forest on the subject of Giovanni di Scordio: "You will do well, Tullio, not to forget that smile." And that smile on the old man's withered mouth acquired a profound significance, became extraordinarily luminous, exalted me like the revelation of a supreme verity.

Almost always, during these rare moments, I also saw another smile, that of Juliana lying ill on her pillows, that unexpected smile, which decreased, decreased, without disappearing. And the remembrance of the distant peaceful afternoon when I had intoxicated the poor invalid with deceptive transports, the recollection of the morning when she rose for the first time and when, in the middle of the room, she had fallen into my arms, laughing and panting, the recollection of the truly divine gesture with which she had offered me love, indulgence, peace, dreams, forgetfulness, all that there is beautiful and all that there is good, caused me hopeless regrets and infinite remorse. The sweet and terrible question that André Bolkonsky had read on the dead face of the Princess Lisa, I read unceasingly on the still living face of Juliana. "What have you done to me?" No reproach had issued from her lips; she had not attempted to lessen the gravity of her sin, to interpose any one of my own infamies; she had been humble before her executioner; not a drop of bitterness had tinged her words. And yet her eyes repeated to me, "What have you done to me?"

A strange sacrificial ardor suddenly fired me, impelled me to take up my cross. The grandeur of the expiation seemed worthy of my courage. I felt in myself a superabundance of strength, a heroic soul, an inspired intelligence. On going toward the sorrowful sister, I thought: "I will find the kind words that will console her, I will find the fraternal tones that will alleviate her pain, that will clear her brow." But directly I entered her presence, I could no longer speak; my lips seemed sealed with an infrangible seal, all my being seemed stricken by a malefice. The internal light suddenly died out, as if extinguished by an icy wind of unknown origin. And in the shadows began to move vaguely that dull rancor which I had so often felt and which I was powerless to repress.

It was the symptom of an attack. I stammered a few incoherent words. I avoided Juliana's eyes, and I fled from the room.

XIX.

It is unbelievable how much energy she displayed in dissimulating before those who were ignorant of the facts. She still succeeded in smiling! My known anxiety for her health furnished me with a pretext that justified a certain sadness that I could not succeed in disguising. This anxiety, shared by my mother and by my brother, resulted in the coming event not being looked upon as cause for rejoicing, as the previous births had been, and everyone avoided making the usual allusions or predictions. I was grateful for that.

Finally, Dr. Vebesti arrived at the Badiola.

His visit reassured us. He said Juliana was very much run down; he noticed in her a slight nervous irritability, an impoverishment of the blood, a general disturbance of the nutritive functions; but he affirmed that the progress of the gestation presented no notable anomaly, and that, when the general condition was improved, delivery could take place under normal conditions. Besides, he gave us to understand that he placed considerable confidence in Juliana's exceptional temperament, whose extraordinary power of resistance he had had occasion to test in the past. He prescribed careful hygiene and a reconstructive diet, approved of the stay at the Badiola, recommended regularity, moderate exercise, and tranquillity of mind.

"I count particularly on you," he said to me, seriously.

It was a disappointment to me. I had placed in him a hope of salvation, and, lo, I had lost it. Before his arrival, I nourished this hope: "If he would only declare it necessary, in order to preserve the mother, to sacrifice the still formless child! If he would only declare it necessary, in order to avoid a certain catastrophe at the completion of the term, to have recourse to extreme measures and suppress the child! Juliana would be saved, she would get well; and I too would be saved, I should feel as if reborn. It would be possible, I believe, to almost forget, or at least to be resigned. Time heals so many wounds, and work consoles so many sorrows! I could, I believe, gradually recover my peace, and turn over a new leaf, follow my brother's example, become better, become a man, live for others, embrace the new religion. I believe that my very sorrow could help me in regaining my dignity. The man to whom it is given to suffer more than others is also worthy of suffering more than others. Is not that a verse from my brother's evangel? There is, then, an election for pain. Giovanni di Scordio, for instance, is one of the elect. To possess such a smile is to possess a divine gift. I could, I believe, merit that gift." Such had been my hope. By a curious contradiction, I had hoped by my expiatory fervor to obtain a diminution of my punishment!

In fact, though I wished to be regenerated by my suffering, I was afraid to suffer, I had an atrocious fear of facing actual pain. My soul was already exhausted; although it had caught a glimpse of the true road and had been agitated by Christian aspirations, it stole away by an oblique path that led straight to the inevitable abyss.

While speaking with the doctor, when showing a slight incredulity at his reassuring predictions, by manifesting anxiety, I found the means of conveying my thoughts to him. I made him understand that I desired him, at any cost, to free Juliana from all danger, and that, if it were necessary, I would renounce this new offspring without regret. I begged him to speak to me frankly.

He reassured me a second time. He declared to me that, even in a hopeless case, he would not have recourse to extremes because, in the state that Juliana was in, a hemorrhage would be very dangerous. He repeated again that, above all, we must aid and stimulate the regeneration of the blood, reconstitute the debilitated organism, contrive, by every means in our power, that the mother should arrive at the natural term of gestation with her strength restored, with a confident and tranquil mind. He concluded:

"I believe that your wife requires moral consolation more than anything else. I am an old friend. I know that she has suffered much. It depends on you to pacify her mind."

XX.

My mother redoubled her tenderness for Juliana. She let her know her cherished dream and her presentiment. It was a grandson whom she awaited, a little Raymond. She was sure, this time.

My brother, too, expected Raymond.

Maria and Natalia often asked their mother, and grandmother, and me, artless questions concerning their future companion.

Thus the domestic love, expressed by presages, wishes, and hopes, began to surround the invisible fruit, the being that was yet without form.

One day we were seated, Juliana and I, beneath the elms. My mother had just left us. During her affectionate chat, she had named Raymond; she had even brought again into use a pet name that called up distant memories of my dead father. Juliana and I answered her by a smile. She believed that we shared her dream, and she had left in order that we might go on dreaming undisturbed.

It was the calm and limpid hour that follows the sunset. Above our heads, the foliage was motionless. From time to time a flock of swallows rapidly cleft the air with a sound of beating wings, with piercing cries, as at the Lilacs.

Our eyes followed the sainted woman as long as she was visible; then we looked at one another, silently, in consternation. We remained for several minutes without breaking the silence, crushed by the immensity of our sorrow. And then, with a terrible effort of my entire being, making an abstraction of Juliana, I felt the little creature living alone at my side, as if, at that moment, no other creature existed near me, had existed around me. And it was not an illusory sensation, but a real and profound sensation. A thrill of horror ran through all my fibres; I started violently and fixed my eyes on my companion's face in order to dissipate the sensation. We looked at one another, without knowing what to say or do to combat the excess of our anguish. I saw in her face the reflection of my distress, I divined my own physiognomy. My eyes turned instinctively toward her body; and I perceived on her face the same expression of terror exhibited by invalids afflicted by a monstrous infirmity, when one looks at the member deformed by an incurable malady.

After a pause, during which we both tried in vain to measure our suffering, she said, in a low voice:

"Have you thought that this may endure as long as we live?"

My lips remained closed; it was only within myself that was heard the determined answer:

"No, it will not last."

She went on:

"Remember that, with a single word, you can solve the difficulty and free yourself. I am ready. Remember."

I still remained silent, but I thought: "No, it is not you who must die."

She went on, in a voice that tearful tenderness rendered trembling:

"I cannot console you; there is consolation neither for you nor for me; there will never be any. Have you thought that someone will always be between us? If your mother's wish is granted— Think! Think!"

But my soul shuddered beneath the sinister light of a single idea. I said: "They all love him already."

I hesitated. I gave Juliana a rapid look. Then, suddenly, lowering my eyes, bending my head, I asked, in a voice that died away on my lips:

"And you, do you love him?"

"Oh! what a question!"

I could not restrain myself from persisting, although I suffered physically as if an open wound were being torn by nails.

"Do you love him?"

"No, no! I have a horror of him."

I felt an instinctive joy, as if I had obtained, by this confession, an assent to my secret idea, and a sort of complicity. But had Juliana answered me sincerely? Or had she told a falsehood out of pity for me?

I was assailed by a cruel and furious desire to persist, to make her confess fully, to penetrate to the very depths of her soul. But her appearance stopped me. I abstained. I now felt no bitterness toward her. I was now drawn toward her by an emotion of gratitude. It seemed to me that the horror she had shudderingly confessed separated her from the creature whom she was nourishing, and brought her closer to me. I felt a desire to make her understand these things, and increase her aversion to the infant to be born, as if against an irreconcilable enemy of us both.

I took her hand; I said to her:

"You have comforted me a little. I thank you. You understand——"

And I added, masking my homicidal intention by a Christian hope:

"There is a Providence. Who knows? The day of deliverance will come, perhaps. You understand me. Who knows? Pray to God."

It was a presage of death for the infant to be born; it was a wish. And, by inducing Juliana to pray that it should come to pass, I was preparing her for the funereal event, I obtained from her a sort of moral complicity. I ended by thinking:

"If, as a result of my words, the suggestion of crime should come to her, and, gradually, become strong enough to actuate her? Certainly it is possible that she may convince herself of the dreadful necessity, that she may elevate herself to the thought of my deliverance, that she may experience a burst of savage energy, that she may accomplish the supreme sacrifice. Did she not repeat just now that she was still ready to die? But her death includes that of her child. Therefore, she is not restrained by any religious prejudice, by the fear of sinning; since she is ready to die, she is ready to commit a double crime, against herself and against maternity. On the other hand, she is convinced that her existence on earth is useful, even indispensable to the persons who love her and whom she loves; and she is also convinced that the existence of the son who is not mine will make an intolerable torture of our lives. She knows, too, that we could draw closer together, that we could, perhaps, in forgiveness and forgetfulness, regain some happiness, that we could hope from time the cure of the wound, if between her and me no intruder interposed. It suffices, then, that she should reflect on all that to rapidly convert a useless desire and an inefficacious prayer into a resolution and an act." I meditated; she also meditated silently, her head lowered, without removing her hand from mine, while deep in the shadows of the great motionless elms.

What were her thoughts? Her brow still retained the pallor of death. With the fall of evening, was another shadow descending upon her, too?

I seemed to see Raymond. But no longer in the form of a perverse and treacherous gray-eyed child; but with the form of a miserable little body, soft and reddish, scarcely breathing, and which the slightest pressure would kill.

The bell at the Badiola sounded the first strokes of the Angelus. Juliana withdrew her hand from mine and made the sign of the cross.

XXI.

The fourth and fifth months passed and the gestation began to develop rapidly. Juliana's person, slender, supple, and flexible, enlarged and naturally conformed to her condition. She felt herself humiliated before me as by a disgraceful infirmity. A poignant suffering appeared on her face when she caught my eyes fixed on her heavy figure.

I felt overwhelmed, incapable of bearing any longer the weight of this miserable existence. Every morning, when I opened my eyes after an agitated slumber, I felt as if someone had given me a deep cup, saying: "If you wish to drink, if you wish to live to-day, you must shed into this cup the last drop of your heart's blood." At each awakening a repugnance, a disgust, an indefinable repulsion assailed me in the most secret recesses of my being. And yet I must live.

The days were cruelly long. Time scarcely passed: it fell drop by drop, lazily and heavily. And I still had the summer before me, part of the autumn, an eternity. I tried to imitate my brother, to aid him in the extensive agricultural labors that he had undertaken, to become enthusiastic with the fire of his faith. I remained on horseback for whole days, like a buttero; I tired myself out with manual labor, at some easy and monotonous employment; I sought to dull the point of my conscience by a prolonged contact with the men of the soil, simple and upright souls, those whom the moral precepts received from their ancestors prompted to perform their functions just as naturally as the corporeal organs performed theirs. Several times I went to visit Giovanni di Scordio, the hermit saint; I wished to hear his voice, I wished to interrogate him concerning his misfortunes, I wished to see once more his sad eyes and his sweet smile. But he hardly spoke; he was a little timid with me; he barely answered me by a few vague words; he did not love to speak of himself, he did not care to complain, he did not stop at the labor at which he was occupied. His hands, bony, dried, and sunburnt, that seemed as if cast in living bronze, were never idle, perhaps did not know fatigue. One day, I exclaimed:

"When will your hands ever rest?"

The good man looked down at his hands with a smile; he looked at the backs and then at the palms, turned them over and over in the sunlight. That look, that smile, that sunlight, that gesture, conferred on those great calloused hands a sovereign nobility. Hardened by the agricultural instruments, sanctified by the good they had shed, by the immense labor they had performed, those hands were now worthy of bearing the palm.

The old man crossed them on his breast, according to the Christian mortuary rites, and answered, without ceasing to smile:

"Very soon, signor, if it please God. When I am laid, in this fashion, in the coffin. Amen!"

XXII.

Every remedy was tried in vain. Labor did not solace me, did not console me, because it was excessive, unequal, irregular, feverish, frequently interrupted by periods of unconquerable inertia and depression.

My brother warned me:

"You are not following the proper rule. You spend in one week six months' energy; then you let yourself fall back into indolence; then, without moderation, you recommence to exhaust yourself with fatigue. That is not what health demands. To be effective, your work must be calm, concordant, harmonic. Do you understand? We must prescribe a method for you. But you have the fault of all novices—excessive ardor. Later on you will be calmer."

My brother said:

"You have not yet found your equilibrium. You do not yet feel terra firma beneath your feet. But have no fear. Sooner or later, you will succeed in grasping the law. That will come to you unexpectedly, when you least expect it."

He said also:

"This time, Juliana will surely give you an heir—Raymond. I have already thought of the godfather. Giovanni di Scordio will hold your son at the baptismal font. He is the worthiest godfather you could possibly find for him. Giovanni will inspire him with goodness and strength. When Raymond is old enough to understand, we will speak to him of this noble old man. And your son will be what we could not have been, what we have not been able to be."

He often returned to this subject, he often pronounced the name of Raymond, he prayed for the child to be born his incarnate ideal of the human type—the Model. He did not know that every one of his words was for me like the thrust of a poniard which exasperated my hate, and rendered my despair more violent.

Everyone conspired against me unknowingly, everyone was constantly distressing me. When I approached one of my family, I felt anxious and fearful, as if I were compelled to remain near a person who, holding some terrible weapon, knew neither how to use it nor its danger. I was in continual expectation of being wounded. To enjoy a short truce, I was compelled to seek solitude and flee far from my own; but in solitude I found myself face to face with my worst enemy, myself.

I felt that I was secretly going into a decline; it seemed to me that my life was ebbing away through every pore. At times there were reproduced in me conditions of soul that had belonged to the most obscure period of my past, henceforth so distant. At times I preserved only the intimate feeling of my own isolation amidst the inert phantoms of all things. For long hours, I had no other sensation but that of the continuous and crushing weight of life and of that of the slight throbbing of an artery in my head.

Then survened ironies, sarcasms against myself, sudden furious desires to rend and destroy, pitiless derisions, ferocious wickedness, an acute fermentation of the most abject dregs. It seemed to me that I no longer knew what indulgence, pity, tenderness, goodness meant. Every inner source of good was obstructed, dried up like fountains stricken by a malediction. And then I no longer saw in Juliana anything but the brutal fact, the pregnancy; I no longer saw in myself anything but the ridiculed person, the satirized husband, the stupid hero of the classic farce. The inner sarcasm spared none of my actions, none of Juliana's actions. The drama became metamorphosed for me into a bitter and farcical comedy. Nothing restrained me longer; every bond broke; a violent rupture took place. And I said to myself: "Why should I rest here and play this odious rôle? I will go away, go back into society, back to my early life, back to libertinism. I will close my eyes to everything. I will lose myself. What does it matter? I do not wish to be what I am, mire within mire. Phew!"

XXIII.

During one of these attacks I resolved to leave the Badiola, to depart for Rome, to go I knew not where.

I had a pretext ready. As we had not anticipated so long an absence, we had left the town house temporarily. It was urgent to regulate various affairs and take measures that our absence might be prolonged indefinitely.

I announced my departure. I persuaded my mother, brother, and Juliana that it was necessary; I promised to hurry and return in a few days. I made my preparations.

The evening before I left, late in the night, while I was strapping a valise, I heard a knock at my door. I said:

"Come in!"

I was surprised to see Juliana.

"Ah! Is it you?"

I went forward to meet her. She was panting a little, fatigued perhaps by the stairs. I made her sit down. I offered her a cup of cold tea with a thin slice of lemon, a beverage that used to please her and that had been prepared for me. She scarcely wet her lips, and handed it back. Her eyes revealed her anxiety.

Finally she said timidly:

"So you are going?"

"Yes," I replied. "To-morrow morning, as you know."

Then followed a long interval of silence. Through the open windows entered a delicious coolness; the rays of the full moon lit up the house and garden; the choir of chirping crickets could be heard, like the sharp and indefinitely distant sound of a flute.

She asked me in a changed voice:

"When will you return? Tell me frankly."

"I do not know," I answered.

There was a new pause. A light breeze came in from time to time, and the curtains swelled; every breath carried into the room as far as us the voluptuousness of that summer night.

"Are you deserting me?"

There was such profound distress in her voice that my studied coolness suddenly gave way to regret and pity.

"No," I answered. "Don't be alarmed, Juliana. I need a little rest. I can stand it no longer. I must have breathing room."

"You are right," she answered.

"I think I shall soon come back, as I promised. I will write to you. You, too, will perhaps feel relief at not seeing me suffer."

"Relief," she said. "No, never."

A choking sob quivered in her voice. She added, immediately, in a tone of heart-breaking anguish:

"Tullio, Tullio, tell me the truth! Do you hate me? Tell me the truth!"

Her eyes interrogated me, more agonized even than her words. For an instant her very soul seemed fixed on me. And those poor eyes, wide open, that pure-looking brow, that contracted mouth, that emaciated chin, all that frail, unhappy face which contrasted with the lower ignominious deformity, and those hands, those frail, sorrowful hands that stretched toward me with such a supplicating gesture, pained me more than ever, moved me to pity and sympathy.

"Believe me, Juliana; believe me once for all. I feel no resentment toward you, and I never shall. I do not forget that I am your debtor; I forget nothing. Have I not already proved it? Be reassured. Think now of your deliverance. And, besides, who knows? But, in any case, Juliana, I will not disappoint you. Let me go for the time being. Perhaps a few days' absence will do me good. I shall be calmer when I return. Calmness is very necessary for what is to follow. You will need all my assistance."

She said:

"Thank you. Do with me what you will."

A human chant now came to us through the darkness, covering the shrill sound of the rural concert—perhaps a choir of reapers in the moonlight on some distant field.

"Do you hear?" I said.

We listened. We felt the breath of the breeze. All the voluptuousness of the summer night filled my heart.

"Shall we go and sit down on the terrace?" I asked Juliana, gently.

She consented, and rose. We passed through an adjoining room, where there was no other light than that of the full moon. A great white wave, resembling immaterial milk, inundated the floor. As she preceded me to go out on the terrace, I could see her deformed shadow outlined in black in the light.

Ah! where was the slender and supple creature whom I had taken in my arms? Where was the lover I had found once more beneath the flowering lilacs, that April noon? In a second, my heart was invaded with every regret, with every desire, with every despair.

Juliana sat down and leaned her head on the iron of the balustrade. Her face, fully illuminated, was whiter than all its surroundings, whiter than the wall. Her eyes were half-closed. The eyelids cast a shadow on her cheek-bones that agitated me more than a look would have done.

How could I utter a word?

I turned toward the valley, and leaned on the balustrade, grasping the cold iron with my fingers. I saw beneath me an enormous heap of confused appearances, in which I noticed only the reflection of the Assoro. The chant came to us or was interrupted, as the breeze rose or fell, and, during the pauses, was again heard the shrill flute-sound, indefinitely distant. Never had a night appeared to me so full of sweetness and sorrow. From the extreme depth of my soul arose a cry, piercing and yet not audible, towards the lost felicity.

XXIV.

Scarcely had I arrived in Rome, when I was sorry I had come. I found the city burning hot, on fire, almost deserted; and that frightened me. The house was silent as the tomb, and the familiar objects I knew so well presented an unusual and strange aspect; and that also frightened me. I felt a sensation of solitude, frightful solitude; and yet I did not go in search of friends, I did not wish to remember or meet anyone. But I began a search for the man whom I detested with an implacable hate, the search for Filippo Arborio.

I hoped to meet him in some public place. I went to the restaurant which I knew he frequented. I waited for him an entire evening, premeditating the way in which I would provoke him. Each time I heard a step of a new arrival, my heart gave a bound. But he did not come. I questioned the waiters. They had not seen him for a long time.

I went to the salle d'armes. The rooms were empty, bathed in the greenish shadow made by the closed blinds, filled with that peculiar odor which rises from wooden floors when they are sprinkled. The maestro, deserted by his pupils, greeted me with the greatest demonstrations of amiability. I listened attentively to the minute details of the last assault; then I asked him for news of several of my friends who frequented the salle; finally I asked him about Filippo Arborio.

"He has not been in Rome for four or five months," replied the maestro. "I have heard that he has a very serious and almost incurable nervous malady. I heard it from Galiffa. But that's all I know about it."

He added:

"In fact, he was very, very weak. He only took a few lessons from me. He was afraid to fence; he could not bear to see the point of a sword before his eyes."

"Is Galiffa still in Rome?"

"No, he is at Rimini."

Shortly after I went away.

This unexpected news startled me. "If it were only true," I thought. And I took pleasure in imagining that it was one of those terrible maladies of the spinal cord or of the cerebral substance that reduce a man to the lowest degradations, to idiocy, to the most pitiful forms of madness, and finally to death. The knowledge I had gained from scientific books, the recollections of a visit I had paid to an insane asylum, the images, still more precise, that I retained of a special case of one of my friends, Spinelli, repassed through my memory in a crowd. And once more I saw poor Spinelli seated in his big red-leather arm-chair, the color of clay, every line of his face paralyzed, his mouth drawn and gaping, full of saliva and stammering incomprehensibly; again I saw the gesture he made every little while to receive in his handkerchief that inexhaustible saliva that ran down the corners of his mouth; again I saw the blond, thin, and sorrowful face of the sister adjusting a napkin beneath the invalid's chin as on a baby, and introducing into his stomach, with the pharyngeal sound, the nourishment he was no longer capable of swallowing.

"So much the better," I thought. "If I had fought a duel with so celebrated an adversary, if I had wounded him seriously, if I had killed him, the fact would certainly not pass unnoticed; it would be in every mouth, it would get into the papers, and perhaps the true cause of the duel would also be found out. This providential malady, on the contrary, spares me all danger, all annoyance, all gossip. I may well renounce a sanguinary joy, a punishment inflicted by my own hand (and, besides, am I sure of the result?), since I know that disease paralyzes and saps the power of the man I detest. But is the news true? Perhaps it is only a temporary illness?" A happy idea struck me. I jumped into a cab and drove to the office of his publisher. During the drive I mentally pictured to myself—with a sincere wish that he might be stricken by them—the two cerebral diseases most terrible for a man of letters, for an artist in language, for a stylist, aphasia and agraphia. And an imaginary vision presented their symptoms to me.

I entered the office. At first I could distinguish nothing, my eyes still blinded by the outer light. But I heard a nasal voice questioning me in a strange tone:

"What can I do for signor?"

I perceived behind the desk a person of uncertain age, a dry, pallid, fair man, a sort of an albino. I turned toward him, mentioned the titles of several works. I bought a few, then I inquired for the last novel by Filippo Arborio. The albino handed me The Secret. I feigned to be a fanatical admirer of the novelist.

"Is this really his last?"

"Yes, signor. A month or two ago, we announced a new novel by him: Turris Eburnea."

"Turris Eburnea!"

My heart throbbed.

"But I do not think we can publish it."

"Why not?"

"The author is very ill."

"Ill? What's the matter?"

"A progressive paralysis of the medulla oblongata," replied the albino, separating the terrible words, with a certain scientific affectation.

"Oh! The same illness that Spinelli had! So it is serious?"

"Very serious," said the albino sententiously. "Signor knows that there is no cure for that form of paralysis."

"But it is still only in its earliest stage?"

"Yes; but there is no doubt as to its nature. The last time he came here I could already detect that he had difficulty in articulating certain words."

"Ah! you heard him?"

"Yes, signor. His pronunciation was already indefinite, and vacillating."

I encouraged the albino by the extreme and, so to speak, admiring attention that I paid to him. I believe that he would voluntarily have acquainted me with the words that had been pronounced with such difficulty by the illustrious novelist.

"And where is he now?"

"He is at Naples. The doctors are treating him with electricity."

"Electric treatment!" I repeated with artless stupor, an affectation of ignorance, so as to please the albino's vanity and thus prolong the conversation.

It is true that in the shop, narrow and long like a corridor, there flowed a draught of cool air that favored chatting. The place was shaded. A clerk slept peacefully in a chair, his chin on his bosom, in the shadow of a terrestrial globe. Nobody entered.

There was something ridiculous about the bookseller. His sallow face, his shrivelled mouth, and nasal twang amused me, and in the quiet of the bookshop it was very agreeable to hear the confirmation of the incurable malady of a man abhorred.

"Have the doctors no hope of curing him?" I said, to stimulate the albino.

"Impossible."

"Let us hope it is possible, for the sake of literature."

"Impossible."

"But it seems to me that, in progressive paralysis, there are cases that have been cured."

"No, signor, no. He may live two, three, four years yet, but he cannot be cured."

"It seems to me, however——"

I do not know from whence came this lightness of heart that made me make sport of the narrator of this news, this curious complaisance to relish the cruelty of my sentiment. But I certainly found pleasure in it. And the albino, piqued by my contradictions, climbed, without further argument, up a small wooden ladder leaning against the high shelves. Thin as he was, he resembled one of those vagabond cats, fleshless and hairless, that crouch on the edge of a roof. As he reached the top, his head brushed against a cord stretched from one corner of the shop to the other, and which served as a resting place for flies. A cloud of the insects swarmed around his head with a furious buzzing. He came down, holding a book in his hand—the authority which declared in favor of death. The implacable flies descended with him.

He showed me the title. It was a special work on pathology.

"Signor will see."

He turned over the leaves. As the book was not cut, he separated the leaves with his finger, and, lowering his whitish eyes, read inside: "The prognosis of progressive bulbar paralysis is unfavorable." He added:

"Is signor convinced now?"

"Yes, but what a misfortune! Such a talented man!"

The flies could not be quieted. They were buzzing in a provoking manner. They attacked the albino, me, and the assistant who was sleeping under the terrestrial globe.

"How old was he?" I asked, involuntarily erring about the tense of the verb, as if I referred to a dead man.

"Who, signor?"

"Filippo Arborio."

"Thirty-five, I believe."

"So young!"

I felt a strange desire to laugh, a puerile desire to laugh in the albino's face, and to leave him. It was a very singular excitation, rather convulsive, never before felt, indefinable. My mind was shaken by something similar to the strange and uncontrollable hilarity that seizes one at times in the surprising incoherences of a dream. The book was still open and lay on the bench, and I bent over it to examine a vignette that represented a human face contorted by a grimace, atrocious and grotesque: "Hemiatrophy of the left face." The implacable flies still buzzed ceaselessly.

"Have you not received the manuscript of Turris Eburnea yet?" I asked.

"No, signor. We have announced the book; but the title is all that exists."

"Only the title?"

"Yes, signor. And, in fact, we have stopped announcing the book."

"Thank you. Please send these books to my house sometime to-day."

I gave my address and left.

On the pavement, I felt a strange sensation of bewilderment. It seemed to me as if I had left behind me a fragment of an artificial, false, factitious life. What I had done, what I had said, what I had felt, and the albino's face, his voice, his gestures, all seemed unreal, took on the appearance of a dream, the character of an impression, received, not from contact with the reality, but from a book recently read. I entered the cab again and returned home. The vague sensation faded away. I began to calmly reflect. I assured myself that all was real, indisputable. Spontaneously visions of the sick man formed before me, copied on those furnished me by my recollections of poor Spinelli. And I was seized by new curiosity. "Suppose I go to Naples to see him?" I pictured to myself the pitiful spectacle of that intellectual man, degraded by disease, stammering like an idiot. I no longer felt any joy; all the exaltation of my hate had fallen; a profound sadness overwhelmed me. In fact, the ruin of this man had no influence on my own position, did not repair my own ruin. There was nothing changed, neither in me, nor in my actual situation, nor in my previsions of the future.

And I thought of the title of the book announced by Filippo Arborio: Turris Eburnea. Doubts pressed in a crowd in my mind. Did that dedication refer to an accidental encounter? Or rather, on the contrary, had the writer had the intention of creating a literary type after the image of Juliana Hermil, of relating his recent and personal adventure? The torturing problem presented itself anew. What had been the progressive incidents of this adventure, from the beginning to its close?

And I thought I could hear the words uttered by Juliana that unforgettable night: "I love you, I have always loved you, I have always been yours; I expiate by this hell one moment's weakness, you understand? One moment's weakness. It is the truth. Do you not feel that it is the truth?"

Alas! how often we believe we feel the truth in a voice that lies. Nothing can guard us from being thus duped. But if what I had felt in Juliana's voice was the pure truth, then, had she really been taken during a physical languor, in my very house? Had she submitted with a sort of unconsciousness? And, on awakening, had she felt only horror and disgust at the irreparable act, and had she banished that man, had she never seen him again?

This supposition, in fact, was in nowise contradicted by appearances; and appearances even supported the supposition that, for a long time, the rupture between Juliana and him was complete and definite.

"In my own house!" I repeated. And, in this house, silent as a tomb, in these deserted and close rooms, I was followed by the obsession of the vision.

XXV.

What should I do? Stay longer in Rome until madness seized my brain, in the midst of this furnace, during the heat of the dog-days? Go to the seaside, to the mountains, seek oblivion in society, at the fashionable summer resorts? Reawaken in myself the old-time voluptuousness, go in quest of another Teresa Raffo, any sort of frivolity?

Two or three times I dwelt on the remembrance of the Biondissima, although she had entirely passed from my heart, and even, for a long time, from my memory. "Where could she be? Is she still with Eugenio Egano? What would be my sensations on seeing her again?" It was only vain curiosity. I perceived that my sole, profound, unconquerable desire was to go back there, to my house of sorrow, to my torture.

I took the necessary measures with the greatest care. I paid a visit to Dr. Vebesti, and wired to the Badiola that I was on the way home.

Impatience devoured me; acute anxiety urged me on, as if I were to encounter new and extraordinary things. The journey appeared interminable. Stretched on the cushions, oppressed by the heat, suffocated by the dust that penetrated through the interstices of the railway carriage, I thought of the approaching events, I considered the future possibilities, I essayed to read the great darkness. The father was mortally tainted. What could be expected of the son?

XXVI.

There was nothing new at the Badiola. My absence had been very short. They celebrated my return. Juliana's first look expressed infinite gratitude.

"You have done well to return so quickly," said my mother with a smile. "Juliana could not get any rest. Now, we hope you will not leave us again. Apropos, did you think of that lace? No? What a memory you have!"

As soon as I was alone with Juliana, she said:

"I did not dare hope you would return so quickly. How grateful I am!"

In her attitude, in her voice, there were timidity, humility, tenderness. Never had I been so struck by the contrast between her face and the rest of her person. On that face there was, continually visible to me, a special expression of sorrow that expressed the constant revolt of this woman against the shame that had fallen upon her. That expression never left her under any circumstance; it could be visibly seen through the diversity of other fugitive expressions which, no matter how strong, could not efface it; it was fixed and adherent, and it moved me to pity, and took from me my anger.

"What did you do while I was away?" I asked her.

"Waited for you. And you?"

"Nothing. I wanted to return."

"To see me?" she asked, timid and humble.

"Yes, for your sake."

She half-closed her eyes, and the light of a smile trembled on her face. I felt that I had never been loved as at that instant.

After a pause, she said, regarding me with humid eyes:

"Thank you."

The tone, the sentiment expressed, recalled to me another "thank you," that she had said at another time, the morning of her convalescence, the morning of my first crime.

XXVII.

Thus I recommenced at the Badiola my invariably sad life, unrelieved by any notable incident, the hours dragging along on the sun-dial, and the feeling of desolation aggravated by the heavy monotony of the chirp of the crickets in the elms. Hora est benefaciendi!

And, in my mind, there alternated the usual effervescences, the usual inertias, sarcasms, the usual vain aspirations, contradictory crises, abundance and dryness. And, more than once, reflecting on that gray, neutral, ordinary fluid, and omnipotent thing called life, I thought: "Who knows? Man is, above all, an animal who adapts himself. There is neither turpitude nor pain to which, in the end, he does not accustom himself. Perhaps in the long run I shall also become used to it. Who knows?"

I sterilized myself by dint of irony. "Who knows if Filippo Arborio's son will not be, so to say, my very picture. Then the arrangement would only be easier." I thought of the cynical laugh that had been provoked in me one day when, in the presence of a married couple, I had heard them refer to a baby who, I knew for a certainty, was the fruit of adultery, as, "It's just like his father!" And in reality the resemblance was striking, from the influence of that mysterious law known to physiologists' as "heredity by influence." Often a woman married a second time, brings into the world, some years after the death of her first husband, sons who have every feature of the dead husband, and who do not resemble at all their real father.

"It is possible, therefore, that Raymond resemble me, and appear to be a veritable Hermil," I thought. "It might happen that I am warmly congratulated upon having so vigorously impressed upon the heir the seal of my race! And suppose my mother's and brother's expectations are not fulfilled? Suppose Juliana gives birth to a third daughter?"

That probability calmed me. It seemed to me I should feel less repulsion for a new daughter, and that, perhaps, I might even succeed in tolerating her. With time she would leave my house, take another name, enter another family.

Meantime, the nearer the term approached, the more my irritation increased. I was weary of constantly debating with myself in the same fruitless agitation, amidst the same fears and perplexities. I should have liked events to be precipitated, a catastrophe of some sort to occur. No matter what catastrophe was preferable to this agony.

One day my brother asked Juliana:

"How long will it be yet?"

She answered:

"Another month."

We were in September. Summer was drawing to a close. We were approaching the autumnal equinox, the most charming period of the year, the season that bears in itself a sort of aerial intoxication emanating from the ripe grapes. The enchantment gradually penetrated me, soothed my soul, at times inspired in me a desire for furious tendernesses or delicate expansions. Maria and Natalia passed long hours with me, alone with me, either in my apartment or out in the surrounding country. I had never loved them before with a love so deep, so anxious. From their eyes, softly impregnated with scarcely conscious thoughts, there at times descended on my soul a ray of peace.

XXVIII.

One day I was seeking Juliana throughout the Badiola. It was in the early afternoon. As I found her neither in her room nor anywhere else, I entered my mother's room. The doors were open; neither sound nor voice was heard; the light curtains waved at the windows; through the open bay-windows were glimpses of the verdure of the elms. Between the brightly colored walls all breathed of peace and repose.

I advanced cautiously toward the sanctuary. I walked softly, in order not to disturb my mother, in case she were dozing. I parted the curtains, and, without crossing the threshold, I leaned forward and looked in. I heard, in fact, the breathing of a person sleeping; I saw my mother, who was sleeping in an arm-chair in a corner of the window; I saw Juliana's hair above the back of another arm-chair. I entered.

They were seated facing each other, and between them was a low table bearing a basket full of miniature bonnets. My mother still held between her fingers one of these caps in which glittered a needle. Slumber had overtaken her during the activity of her work. She was sleeping, her chin on her bosom; perhaps she was dreaming. The needle was only half-full of white cotton; but, in her dream, perhaps she was sewing with a more precious thread.

Juliana was sleeping also; but her head had fallen back on the chair, and her arms were stretched out on the supports. In the gentleness of her slumber her features were relaxed; but her mouth retained a line of distress, a shadow of affliction; half closed, it permitted a glimpse of her bloodless gums; but at the beginning of the nose, between the eyebrows, there was a small furrow, deepened by great sorrow. And her forehead was moist; a drop of perspiration slowly rolled down her temple. And her hands, whiter than the muslin from under which they extended, seemed, by their position alone, to indicate an immense lassitude. What struck me most was less her moral expression than the appearance of her person. I meditated without considering this expression, and even Juliana herself had no part in my thoughts; and, anew, I felt only the little creature living beside me, as if, at that moment, no other creature existed around me. And, again, this was not an illusory sensation, but a real and profound one. Fear ran through every fibre of my being.

I averted my eyes; and I again saw between her fingers the bonnet in which glittered the needle, I again saw all those light laces in the basket, all those rose-colored and blue ribbons that trembled at the breath of the breeze. My heart was so strongly oppressed that I thought I should faint. What tendernesses the hands of my mother, lost in her dream, revealed, those hands placed on the pretty, white thing destined to cover the head of the child who was not my own!

I remained there several minutes. This place was the true sanctuary of the house, the Holy of Holies. On one wall hung my father's portrait, whom Federico greatly resembled; on another that of Constance, who resembled Maria a little. The two faces, living in that superior existence in which the recollections of those who have loved them have placed them, had magnetic eyes, eyes that seemed to see everywhere. Other relics of the two dead loved ones sanctified this retreat. In one corner, on a pedestal, closed in between plates of glass and covered with black crape, there was the death mask moulded on the corpse of the man whom my mother had loved with a passion stronger than death. And yet this room had nothing lugubrious about it. There reigned in it a sovereign peace, that, from thence, seemed to propagate through the entire house, as life propagates from the heart, by a rhythmic expansion.

XXIX.

I recall the walk I made to the Lilacs, with Maria, Natalia, and Miss Edith, on a rather misty morning. And the recollection of it is also rather misty, veiled, indistinct like that of a long dream, torturing yet sweet.

The garden no longer had its myriad of bluish grapes nor its exquisite forest of flowers, nor its triple perfume, harmonious as music, nor its gayety, nor the continuous cries of its swallows. It was enlivened only by the voices and gambols of the two innocent girls. Already many of the swallows had departed, and the rest were about to go. We had arrived in time to see the last flock.

All the nests were abandoned, deserted, lifeless. Many were broken, and on the clayey debris trembled poor little feathers. The last flock, gathered on the roof, in the gutters, were still waiting for a few dispersed companions. The emigrants stood on a row on the edge of the eaves-board, some presenting the beak and others the back, so that the little forked tails and the white breasts alternated. And while waiting, they filled the silent air with their calls. And, from minute to minute, by twos, by threes, the laggards arrived. The hour of departure was at hand. The calls ceased. The fading sunlight fell on the closed house, on the empty nests. Nothing could be sadder than those poor little dead feathers which, here and there, fluttered, held prisoners in the clay.

As if raised up by a sudden gust of wind, by a storm the flock rose up with a great fluttering of wings, ascended into the air like a water-spout, remained for a moment directly above the house; then, without hesitation, as if they had before them a clearly traced path, they took their way in a compact mass, flew off, melted away in the sky, and finally disappeared.

Maria and Natalia, mounted on a bench, stood up on tiptoe to watch the fugitives as long as possible, and, stretching out their arms, they cried:

"Good-by, good-by, good-by, little swallows!"

Of all the rest I retain only an indistinct recollection, like that of a dream.

Maria wished to enter the house. I opened the door myself. It was here, on these three steps, that Juliana had followed me, furtively, light as a shadow, and had embraced me, and had whispered: "Go in, go in!" In the vestibule, the nest still hung among the grotesques of the ceiling. "Now I am yours, altogether, entirely!" she had murmured, without releasing my neck; and by a sinuous movement she had thrown herself on my breast and had met my mouth. The vestibule was silent—the staircases were silent; silence reigned throughout the house. It was here that I had heard the low and distant hum, like that retained by certain shells in the depths of their folds. But now, the silence resembled that of a tomb. And this place was the sepulchre of my happiness.

Maria and Natalia prattled on without cease, did not stop asking me questions, showed themselves curious about everything, went and opened the drawers of the dressing-table, the closets. Miss Edith followed them, watchful.

"Look, see what I have found," cried Maria, running toward me.

At the bottom of a drawer she had found a bouquet of lavender and a glove. It was one of Juliana's gloves, spotted with black at the finger-tips; on the inside, near the hem, it bore the following still visible inscription: "The Mulberries, January 27, 1880. Souvenir!" Like a flash, my memory represented clearly to me the episode of the mulberries, one of the happiest episodes of our first felicity, a fragment of the idyll.

"Is it one of mamma's gloves?" asked Maria. "Give it to me, give it to me. I want to take it to her myself."

Of all the rest I have but an indistinct recollection, like a dream.

Calisto, the old care-taker, came to speak to me. He told me a thousand things, and I understood almost nothing of what he said. Several times he repeated the wish:

"A boy, a fine boy, and may God bless him! A fine boy!"

When we were outside, Calisto closed the doors.

"And those nests, those happy nests?" he said, shaking his handsome white head.

"They must not be touched, Calisto."

Every nest was deserted, empty, lifeless. Their last habitants had left them. A languorous kiss from the setting sun touched the closed house, the solitary nests, and there could be nothing sadder than those poor little dead feathers that, here and there, trembled, prisoners in the clay.

XXX.

The term approached. The first half of October had passed. Doctor Vebesti had been notified.

My anxiety increased hourly, became intolerable. I was frequently assailed by attacks of madness similar to that which had seized me on the banks of the Assoro. I fled far from the Badiola, remained long hours on horseback, I compelled Orlando to jump hedges and trenches, I forced him into perilous paths at a gallop. Then the poor animal and I returned, streaming, tired, but always safely.

Doctor Vebesti arrived. Everybody at the Badiola breathed a sigh of relief. Confidence and hope reappeared. Juliana alone was unnerved, and more than once I detected in her eyes the passage of a sinister thought, the sombre light of a fixed idea, the horror of a lugubrious presentiment.