Front matter (continued 3)

"My visit is unexpected," he said to himself, his heart sinking. "If that woman should be with him?" Near the railing he saw the children playing in the sand; and, without having time to observe them, he guessed they were his adulterine brothers, the sons of the concubine. He advanced; and the two children turned round, began to gaze at him with astonishment, but without intimidation. Healthy, robust, flourishing, with cheeks crimson with health, they bore the manifest imprint of their origin. The sight of them upset him; an irresistible terror assailed him; he had the idea of hiding himself, to turn back, to flee; and he raised his eyes to the window, with the fear of perceiving between the curtains the face of his father or that of the odious woman of whose perfidies, covetousness, turpitudes, he had so often been told.

"Ah, you here, sir?"

It was the voice of a domestic, who came to meet him. At the same time his father cried to him from the window:

"Is that you, George? What a surprise!"

He resummoned his courage, composed his face into a smile, and tried to assume an air of unconcern. He had felt that already, between his father and himself, had just been reëstablished those artificial relations, almost ceremonious in form, which they had used for several years towards one another in order to hide their embarrassment when they found themselves in immediate and inevitable contact. And he had felt, besides, that his will had just totally left him, and that he would never be capable to expose frankly the true motive of his unexpected visit.

"Aren't you coming up?" said his father to him, from the window.

"Yes, I am coming up."

He would have liked to make believe that he had not noticed the two children. He started to go up by the open-air stairway leading to one of the large terraces. His father came to meet him. They embraced. There always was in his father's manner a manifest ostentation of affection.

"So you finally decided to come?"

"I wanted a walk, and it landed me here. I have not seen the place for so long! It's just as it always was, it seems."

His eyes wandered over the asphalt-covered terrace; he examined the busts, one after the other, with more curiosity than was natural.

"You're almost always here now, aren't you?" he said, in order to say something, to escape the embarrassing intervals of silence which he foresaw would grow longer and more frequent.

"Yes; I come here often now, and stay here," replied his father, with a shade of sadness in his voice which surprised his son. "I believe the air does me good—since my heart began to trouble me."

"Is your heart affected?" cried George, turning towards him with sincere emotion, struck by the unexpectedness of the news. "How? Since when? I never knew anything of it—nobody has ever breathed a word of it to me."

He looked now at his father's face, in the strong light shed by the sun's oblique rays and reflected by the wall, and fancied he could detect the symptoms of the mortal malady. And it was with sympathetic compassion that he remarked the deep wrinkles, the swollen, worried-looking eyes, the white hairs that bristled on the unshaven cheeks and chin, his mustache and hair to which the dye gave an indefinite color between a greenish and a violet, the thick lips through which the respiration came like the gasping of asthma, the short neck which appeared to be colored by an extravasation of blood.

"Since when?" he repeated, without concealing his anxiety.

And he felt his repugnance to this man diminish as a rapid succession of images, clear almost as the reality might be, represented him beneath the menace of death, disfigured by the death agony.

"Does one ever know when it begins?" answered his father, who, in the presence of his son's sincere emotion, exaggerated his suffering in order to sustain and increase a pity by which he might succeed perhaps in profiting. "Can one ever tell when it begins? These kind of maladies breed for years; and then, one fine day, suddenly make their presence felt. Then there is no remedy. One must be resigned, await the end from one minute to another——"

Speaking in this strain, in a changed voice, he seemed to lose his hardness and massive brutality, to become older, more feeble, more of a physical and moral wreck. It was like a sudden dissolution of his entire person, yet with an artificiality, exaggeration, and theatricalism which did not escape George's perspicacity. And the young man thought instantly of those comedians who, on the stage, have the facility of instantly undergoing a metamorphosis, as they take off and replace a mask. He had even a sudden intuition of what was about to follow. Without doubt, his father had divined the motive of this unexpected visit; and now he sought to obtain some useful effect by the exhibition of his malady. Doubtless, too, he purposed to attain some definite object. What was that object? George felt no indignation, no internal anger; he made no preparation, either, to defend himself against the ambush which he foresaw with such certitude; on the contrary, his inertia increased in proportion to his lucidity. And he waited for the comedy to follow its course, ready to accept all that might happen, sad and resigned.

"Will you come in?" said his father.

"If you like."

"Very well. Let us go in. I have some papers I wish to show you."

The father passed in first, directing his steps towards the room the open window of which shed over the entire villa the singing of the canary-bird. George followed him, without looking around. He perceived that his father had also changed his walk, so as to simulate fatigue; and it gave him a poignant chagrin to think of the degrading impostures of which he would soon be the spectator and the victim. He felt in the house the presence of the concubine; he was sure that she was hidden in some room, that she was listening, that she was spying. He thought: "What papers is he going to show me? What does he expect to get from me? He doubtless wants money. He is taking advantage of the opportunity." And he thought he could still hear certain of his mother's invectives; he recalled certain and almost unbelievable particularities which he had learned from her. "What shall I do? What shall I say?"

The canary in its cage sang in a limpid and strong voice, varying its modulations; and the white curtains puffed out like two sails, permitting a view of the distant azure. The breeze disturbed some of the papers that littered the table; and on this table George perceived, in a crystal disk which served as a paper-weight, a licentious vignette.

"What a bad day I have had to-day," murmured his father, who, affecting to be tormented by palpitation of the heart, dropped heavily into a chair, half-closed his eyelids, and began to breathe like an asthmatic.

"Are you suffering?" said George, almost timidly, not knowing if the suffering were real or simulated, nor what face he should put upon the matter.

"Yes—but it will pass in a moment. As soon as I have the slightest excitement, the least anxiety, I feel worse. I need quiet and rest. And, on the contrary——"

He began again to speak in that mournful, complaining tone which, owing to a vague resemblance in accent, awoke in George the recollection of his aunt Joconda, the poor idiot, when she tried to excite his pity in order to get sweetmeats. The feint was now so evident, so vulgar, so ignoble, and, in spite of all, there was so much human misery in the condition of this man, reduced to such base means to satisfy his implacable vice, there was so much true suffering in the expression of his lying face, that it appeared to George that not one of the sorrows of his past life was comparable with the horrible anguish of that present moment.

"On the contrary?" he echoed, to encourage his father to continue, as if to hasten the end of his own torture.

"On the contrary, for some time everything has been going from bad to worse, and catastrophes succeed one another without cease. I have had considerable losses. Three bad consecutive years, the failure of the vines, the devastated flocks, the rents reduced by half, the taxes increased in enormous proportions— Look here. Here are the papers I wished to show you."

And he took from the table a bundle of papers, spread them out before his son's eyes, began to explain confusedly a number of very involved business matters relative to unpaid landed taxes which had accumulated during several months. It was absolutely necessary that he make a settlement at once, in order to avoid incalculable injury. Their effects had already been attached, and at any moment the bills of sale might be posted. What could be done to remove the momentary embarrassment in which he found himself without any fault of his own? The amount involved was considerable. What could be done?

George was silent, his eyes fixed on the papers which his father was turning over in his puffed-up, almost monstrous hand, with its visible pores, and white with a pallor that made a singular contrast with his sanguine face. At intervals he lost the sound of the words; but in his ear still sounded the monotony of that voice in contrast with the shrill singing of the canary and the intermittent cries which rose from the path where the two little bastards were still doubtless playing in the sand. The curtains stirred in the windows when an unusually strong breeze swelled their folds. And all these voices, all these sounds, bore an inexpressible expression of sadness for the silent visitor, who regarded with a sort of stupor these bailiffs' wits over which passed that swollen, pale hand, with its small, apparent scars left by blood-letting. An image surged through his memory, a strangely distinct remembrance of his childhood: his father was near a window, his face grave, his shirt-sleeve rolled up on one arm, which he held plunged in a basin of water; and the water was reddened by the flow of blood from the open vein; and by his side stood the surgeon, watching the flow of blood and holding the bandages ready for the ligature. One image recalled another. He saw the bright lances in the green leather case; he saw his mother carrying from the room a basin full of blood; he saw the hand held in a sling by a black ribbon which was crossed on his fleshy, soft back, sinking into it a little. Noticing his pensiveness, his father asked him:

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, I am listening."

At that moment, the father perhaps expected a spontaneous offer. Disappointed, he made a slight pause; then, surmounting his embarrassment, said:

"Bartolomeo could save me if he gave me the amount."

He hesitated, and his physiognomy took on an indefinable expression in which the son believed he recognized the last symptom of a modesty vanquished by the almost desperate necessity of attaining his object.

"He would give me this sum for a note, but—I believe he would require your signature."

At last the trap was sprung.

"Ah! my signature," stammered George, embarrassed, not at the demand, but at the odious name of this brother-in-law, whom the maternal accusations had already presented to him as a bird of ill omen, eager to prey upon the remains of the house of the Aurispas.

And as he remained perplexed and gloomy, without saying anything, the father, fearing a refusal, laid aside all reserve, and had recourse to supplications.

That was the only way now to avoid a disastrous judicial sale which would certainly determine all his other creditors to swoop down on him. Disaster would be inevitable. Did his son wish to be a witness of his ruin? Or, did he not understand that, by interposing in this instance, he would act for his own interest and protect a heritage which was soon to come to his brother and himself?

"Oh! It won't be so long; it will come from one day to the other, perhaps to-morrow!"

And he began again to speak of his incurable malady, of the continual peril that threatened him, of his worries and troubles that were hastening the hour of his death.

At the end of his strength, unable to stand longer that voice and this scene, yet restrained nevertheless by the thought of his other executioners—those who had forced him to this place and who now awaited him to demand an account of his mission—George stammered:

"But will you really use this money for the purpose you have stated?"

"So! you too, you too!" cried his father, who, beneath an apparent explosion of sorrow, repressed clumsily one of his violent fits. "So they have been telling you, too, what is always being gossiped about everywhere—that I am a monster, that I have committed every crime, that I am capable of every infamy. And you have believed it, too! Why, why do they hate me to this extent, in that house yonder? Why do they desire my death? Oh! you don't know how much your mother hates me! If you went back to her now and told her that you had left me in my death agony, she would kiss you and say, 'God be praised!' Oh! you don't know."

In the brutality of his tone, in the peculiar expression of his mouth, which added bitterness to his words, in the vehement respiration which dilated his nostrils, in the irritated redness of his eyes, the real man was exposed in spite of himself; and against this man the son felt a new impulse of his primitive aversion, an impulse so sudden and so impetuous that, without reflecting, by a desire to appease his father and to be freed from him, he interrupted him, saying in a convulsed voice:

"No, no; I know nothing. Tell me, what must I do? Where must I sign?"

And he arose dismayed, approached the window, returned to his father. He saw him seek something in a drawer, with a species of nervous impatience; he saw him lay on the table a promissory note not yet made out.

"Here. Place your signature here; that will do——"

And with his enormous index, whose flat nail sank into the folds of flesh, he pointed to the place for the signature.

Without sitting down, without having a clear consciousness of what he was doing, George took a pen and signed rapidly. He would have liked to be already free and away from that room, to run in the open air, to go far away, to be alone. But when he saw his father take the note examine the signature, dry it by sprinkling it with a pinch of sand, then replace it and lock the drawer; when he remarked in everyone of these acts the ignoble joy, badly dissimulated, of a man who had succeeded in an evil purpose; when, in his soul, he felt the certitude that he had permitted himself to be duped into a shameful fraud, when he thought of the interrogations that awaited him in the other house-then the useless regret for his act upset him so, that he was on the point of giving play to his extreme indication, and to finally revolt with all his power against the scoundrel, in defence of himself, his family, and of the violated rights of his mother and sister. "Ah! it was true, then—all that his mother had told him was true! This man had not a shadow of shame, not a trace of self-respect. He recoiled from nothing and before nobody when it was a question of getting money." And he felt once more the presence of the concubine, of the rapacious, insatiable woman who was certainly hidden in an adjoining room, eavesdropping, spying, waiting for her share of the plunder.

Without succeeding in repressing the tremor that shook him, he said:

"You promise that this money will not be used—for any other purpose?"

"Why, yes; of course," replied his father, allowing his son to see now how much this insistance annoyed him, and who had manifestly changed countenance since it was no longer necessary for him to beg and feign in order to obtain.

"Take care! I shall know," added George, who had become very pale, and in a choking voice betraying an effort to restrain the outburst of indignation which increased in proportion as the man appeared more truly in his odious aspect, in proportion as the consequences of the precipitate step that he had taken became more clearly defined. "Take care! I do not wish to become your accomplice against my mother."

Affecting to be hurt by this suspicion, suddenly raising his voice as if to intimidate his son, who was undergoing torture while compelling himself to look him in the face, the father roared:

"What do you mean to insinuate? When will that viper of a mother of yours cease spitting her venom? When will she finish? Does she want me to close her mouth forever? Very well! I'll do it one of these days. Ah! what a woman! For fifteen years, yes, fifteen years, she has not given me one minute's peace. She has poisoned my life, she is killing me by slow fire. If I am ruined, it is her fault. Do you understand? It is her fault!"

"Be silent!" cried George, beside himself, unrecognizable, pale as death, trembling in all his limbs, seized by a fury like that which he had already felt against Diego. "Be silent! Do not speak her name! You are not worthy to kiss her feet. I came here to speak to you of her. I allowed myself to be played upon by your comedy. I permitted myself to be caught in a trap. What you wanted was a present for your ribald companion, and you succeeded. Oh! what shame! And you have the heart to insult my mother!"

His voice failed him; he choked; a veil covered his eyes; his knees shook beneath him as if all his strength was about to abandon him.

"Now, good-by! I am going. Act as you like. I am your son no longer. I never want to see you or know anything of you. I will take my mother away; I will take her away with me to some distant place. Farewell!"

He went out tottering, a shadow before his eyes. As he passed through the rooms to reach the terrace, he heard the frou-frou of skirts, and a door which closed, as if behind someone retiring in haste, in order not to be surprised.

As soon as he was in the open air, outside the railings, he felt a mad desire to weep, to cry, to run across the fields, to knock his head against a rock, to seek a precipice where all would end. His nerves trembled painfully in his head, and caused him cruel twinges as if they were being broken one after the other. And he thought, with a terror that the dying day rendered more atrocious: "Where shall I go? Shall I go back there this evening?" The house seemed to him to be moved back an infinite distance; the length of the road appeared impossible to traverse; all that was not immediate and absolute cessation of his frightful torture seemed to him inadmissible.

CHAPTER VIII.

The following morning, when he opened his eyes after a very restless night, the events of the previous evening seemed but a confused memory. The tragic deepening of the twilight on the silent country; the grave sound of the Angelus, which, prolonged in his ears by a hallucination of hearing, had seemed endless; the anguish which had come over him on approaching the house, at the sight of the lighted windows crossed at intervals by shadows; the feverish excitement which had seized him when, pressed with questions by his mother and sister, he had related the interview, exaggerating the violence of the invectives and the atrocity of the altercation; the almost delirious desire to keep on speaking, to add to the recital of the real facts the incoherence of his imagination; the ejaculations of contempt or of tenderness with which his mother had interrupted him, as he went on describing the brute's attitude and his own energy in reproaching him; then the sudden hoarseness, the rapid exasperation of the pain which hammered his temples, the spasmodic efforts at a bitter and non-coercible vomiting, the severe cold which had chilled him in bed, the horrible dreams which had caused him to start while in the first torpor of his enfeebled nerves—all this came back confusedly to his memory, augmented his painful physical stupor, from which, however, he would not have been willing to emerge but to enter into a state of complete extinction, into the insensibility of a corpse.

The necessity of death was still suspended over him with the same imminence; but it was unendurable for him to think that, in order to put his design into execution, he would have to shake off his inertia, accomplish a series of fatiguing acts, conquer the physical repugnance which discouraged him from all effort. Where could he kill himself? How? At the house? That same day? With a firearm? With poison? His mind had not yet conceived the precise and definite idea. Even the torpor that paralyzed him, and the bitterness of his mouth, suggested to him the idea of a narcotic. And, vaguely, without stopping to seek a practical means by which he could procure an efficacious dose, he imagined its effect. Little by little the images multiplied, became particularized, became more distinct; and their association formed a visible scene. What he tried to imagine was, not so much the sensations of his slow death-agony, as the circumstances which would lead to his mother, sister, and brother learning of the catastrophe. He tried to imagine the manifestations of their sorrow, their attitudes, their words, their gestures. Still following the same idea, his curious attention extended to all the survivors, not only his immediate relatives but to the entire family, to his friends, to Hippolyte, the far-distant Hippolyte, so distant that she had almost become as a stranger to him.

"George!"

It was the voice of his mother, who was knocking at the door.

"Is it you, mother? Come in."

She entered, approached the bed with affectionate eagerness, leaned over him, placed a hand on his forehead, and asked:

"How do you feel? Any better?"

"A little. I'm still dizzy—I have a bitter taste in my mouth. I should like a drink."

"Camille is going to bring you up a cup of milk. Shall I open the windows more?"

"Just as you like, mother."

His voice was changed. His mother's presence aroused in him that sentiment of pity for himself which had given birth to the imaginary picture of funereal regrets, the time for which he believed was close at hand. In his mind, the actuality of his mother opening the windows became identified with the imaginary action which would bring about the terrible discovery; and his eyes grew moist with commiseration for himself and for the poor woman whom he destined to receive such a cruel blow; and the tragic scene appeared before him with all the distinctness of a thing actually seen: his mother, a little frightened, turns round in the light, calls him again by name; trembling, she approaches the bed, touches him, shakes him, finds his body inert, cold, rigid; and then she falls, fainting, prostrate over his corpse. "Perhaps dead. Such a shock might kill her." And his anxiety increased; and the moment seemed solemn to him, like all that is final; and his mother's appearance, actions, and words assumed in his eyes such an unusual signification and value that he followed them with almost anxious attention. Drawn suddenly from his spiritual torpor, he had just recovered an extraordinarily active consciousness of life. There reappeared in him a well-known phenomenon, the singularity of which had often attracted his attention. It was an instantaneous passage from one state of consciousness to another; between the new state and the anterior state there was the same difference as exists between waking and slumber, and that recalled to his mind the sudden change produced in the theatre when the footlights are unexpectedly turned up and project their strongest light.

So, as on the day of the funeral, the son gazed on his mother with eyes that were no longer the same, and saw her as he had seen her then, with strange lucidity. He felt that this woman's life was brought closer to, became connected with as if adherent to, his own life; he felt the mysterious relation of the blood, and the affliction of the fate which menaced them both. And when his mother came close to him again and sat down by his bedside, he raised himself a little on his pillow, took one of her hands, tried to dissimulate his agitation by a smile. Under the pretext of looking at the cameo of a ring, he examined the long and thin hand, to which each particularity imparted an extraordinary expression of life and whose contact caused him a sensation resembling no other. His soul still enveloped in the gloomy images recently evoked, he thought: "When I am dead, when she touches me, when she feels the icy—" And he shuddered as he remembered his own aversion to touching a corpse.

"What's the matter?" asked his mother.

"Nothing—a little nervous, that's all."

"Oh! you are not well," she went on, shaking her head. "Where do you feel ill?"

"Nowhere, mother. I am naturally a little upset."

But the unnatural and convulsive look in her son's face did not escape the maternal eye.

"How sorry I am that I sent you there! How wrong it was of me to send you."

"No, mother. Why? It was necessary, sooner or later."

And all at once, without the slightest confusion henceforth, he relived the frightful hour; he saw once more his father's gestures, heard once more his voice; he heard again his own voice, that voice so changed, which, contrary to all expectation, had uttered such grave words. It seemed to him he was a stranger to that action and these uttered words; and nevertheless, at the bottom of his soul, he felt a sort of obscure remorse; he felt something akin to an instinctive consciousness of having passed beyond bounds, of having committed an irreparable transgression, of having trampled under foot something human and sacred. Why had he departed with such violence from the great, calm resignation with which the funereal image of Demetrius had inspired him, when it had appeared to him in the midst of the silent country? Why had he not persisted in considering with the same painful and clairvoyant pity the baseness and ignominy of that man upon whom, as upon all other men, weighed an invincible destiny? And he himself, he who carried that blood in his veins, did he not also bear, perhaps, at the bottom of his substance, all the latent germs of those abominable vices? If he continued to live, did not he, too, risk falling into a similar abjection? And then, all the cholers, all the hates, all the violences, all the punishments, appeared to him to be unjust and useless. Life was a heavy fermentation of impure matters. He believed he felt that in his substance he had a thousand forces, occult, unrecognizable, and indestructible, whose progressive and fatal evolution had made up his existence up to then, and would make up his future existence, if it had not happened precisely that his will had to obey one of these forces that now imposed on him the supreme action. "In short, why regret what I did yesterday? Could I have prevented myself from doing it?"

"It was necessary," he repeated, with a new signification, as if speaking to himself.

And he sat a spectator, lucid and attentive, at the unrolling of the little of the life that remained for him to live.

CHAPTER IX.

When his mother and sister had left him alone, he stayed in bed a few moments longer, through a physical repugnance to do anything whatever. It seemed to him that, to rise, he would have to make an enormous effort. It seemed to him too fatiguing to leave that horizontal position in which, in one hour perhaps, he was going to find eternal repose. And, once more, he thought of a narcotic. "Close the eyes and wait for sleep!" The virginal light of that May morning, the azure reflected in the window-panes, the beam of sunlight that streamed on the floor, the voices and murmurs that arose from the street, all those living signs that seemed to rise above the balcony and reach as far as him and reconquer him, all inspired him with a kind of fright mixed with rancor. And he saw again, in his mind, the image of his mother going through the gesture of opening the window. He saw Camille once more at the foot of the bed; he reheard the words of both, always relating to the same man. What he most clearly remembered was a cruel exclamation, uttered by his mother, with lips overflowing with bitterness; and with it he associated the vision of the paternal features, those features on which he believed he had discovered, over there, on the terrace, in the strong light reflected by the whiteness of the wall, the symptoms of a mortal malady. In front of Camille and himself, his mother had said passionately: "If that were only true! Heaven grant it is true!" So that, then, was the last impression left in his heart, on the eve of his departure from the world, by the creature who was formerly in his house the source of every tenderness!

An energetic impulse suddenly came over him; he threw himself from his bed, definitely resolved to act. "It will be done before evening. Where shall I do it?" He thought of Demetrius's closed rooms. He had not yet a definite plan; but he felt morally certain that, during the hours that still remained to run, the means would be spontaneously offered, by a sudden suggestion which he would be forced to obey.

While he proceeded to make his toilet, the preoccupation haunted him to prepare his body for the tomb. He, too, had that species of funereal vanity that has been remarked in certain criminals condemned to death, and in suicides. He rendered this sentiment more intense on observing it in himself. And a regret came over him at having to die in this little, obscure town, at the bottom of that wild province, far from his friends, who for a long time, perhaps, would be ignorant of his death. If, on the contrary, the act were done in Rome, in the great city where he was well known, his friends would have grieved for him; they would, doubtless, have given to the tragic mystery the adornment of poetry. And, once more, he tried to picture what would follow his death—his attitude on the bed, in the chamber of his amours; the profound emotion of the youthful souls, the fraternal souls, at the sight of the corpse reposing in austere peace; the dialogues at the funereal vigil, by the light of the candles; the coffin covered with wreaths, followed by a crowd of young and silent men; the words of farewell pronounced by a poet, Stefano Gondi: "He died because he could not make his life correspond to his dreams." And then Hippolyte's sorrow, despair, and loss of reason.

Hippolyte! Where was she? What were her thoughts? What was she doing?

"No," he thought, "my presentiment does not deceive me." And he saw again, in imagination, his mistress's gesture as she lowered her black veil after the last kiss; and he went over in his mind the little final points. Yet there was one thing he could not explain, and that was the almost absolute acquiescence of his soul at the necessary and definite renunciation which dispossessed him of this woman, only lately the object of so many dreams and of so much adoration. Why, after the fever and anguish of the first days, had hope abandoned him little by little? Why had he fallen into the melancholy certainty that all effort would be useless to resuscitate that dead and incredibly distant thing, their love? Why had all that past been so entirely separated from him that during these last days, beneath the shock of recent tortures, he had barely felt a few vibrations reverberate clearly in his conscience?

Hippolyte! Where was she? What were her feelings? What was she doing? On what sights were her eyes resting? From what words, from what contacts, did she suffer uneasiness? What could have happened, that, for two weeks, she had not found the means to send him news less vague and brief than four or five telegrams sent from always different places?

"Perhaps she is already giving way to desire for another man. That brother-in-law of whom she was continually speaking—" And the frightful thought aroused by the old habit of suspicion and accusation suddenly mastered him, overwhelmed him as in the gloomiest hours of his past life. A tumult of bitter recollections arose in him. Leaning on the same balcony where, the first evening, amidst the perfume of the bergamots, in the anguish of first regrets, he had invoked the name of the loved one, he relived in one second the miseries of two years. And it seemed to him that, in the splendor of this May morning, it was the recent happiness of the unknown rival that blossomed, and was diffused as far as where he stood.

CHAPTER X.

As if to initiate himself in the profound mystery into which he was about to enter, George desired to see once more the deserted apartment where Demetrius had passed the last days of his life.

In willing all his fortune to his nephew, Demetrius had also willed him this apartment. George had kept the rooms intact, with pious care, as one guards a reliquary. The rooms were situated on the upper floor, and looked south over the garden.

He took the key and went upstairs, treading cautiously, to avoid being questioned. But, as he traversed the corridor, he was necessarily obliged to pass by his Aunt Joconda's door. Hoping to pass unnoticed, he walked softly, on tip-toe, holding his breath. He heard the old woman cough; he made a few quicker strides, believing that the noise of the cough would cover the sounds of his footsteps.

"Who's there?" demanded a hoarse voice from within.

"It is I, Aunt Joconda."

"Ah! It's you, George? Come in, come in——"

She appeared upon the threshold, with her ugly, yellowish face, which, in the shadow, was almost cadaveric; and she glanced at her nephew's hands before looking at his face, as if to see first if his hands had brought something.

"I am going in the next apartment," said George, repelled by the ignoble bodily odor, which filled him with disgust. "I must air the rooms a little."

And he resumed his steps in the corridor, until he came to the other door. But, as he turned the key, he heard behind him the limping of the old woman.

George felt his heart sink, as he thought that perhaps he would not find a way to disembarrass himself of her, that perhaps he would be obliged to listen to her stammering voice amid the almost religious silence of these rooms, with their beloved yet terrible souvenirs. Without saying anything, without turning round, he opened the door and entered.

The first room was dark, the air somewhat warm and suffocating, impregnated with that singular odor peculiar to old libraries. A streak of faint light showed where the window was. Before opening the shutters, George hesitated; he strained his ear to hear the gnawing of the wood-ticks. Aunt Joconda began to cough, invisible in the darkness. Then, feeling on the window to find the iron catch, he felt a slight thrill, a fugitive fear. He opened it, and turned round; he saw the vague shapes of the furniture in the greenish penumbra produced by the shutters; he saw the old woman in the middle of the room, one side distorted, swaying her flaccid body to and fro, chewing something. He pushed back the shutters, which creaked on their hinges. A flood of sunlight inundated the interior. The discolored curtains fluttered.

At first he was undecided: the presence of the old woman prevented him from abandoning himself to his feelings. His irritation increased to such a degree that he did not speak a single word to her, fearing that his voice would only be cross and angry. He passed into the adjoining room and opened the window. The light spread everywhere, and the curtains fluttered. He passed into the third room and opened the window. The light spread everywhere, and the curtains fluttered. He went no farther. The next room, in the angle, was the bedroom. He wished to enter it alone. He heard, with nausea, the limping gait of the unfortunate old woman rejoining him. He took a chair and relapsed into an obstinate silence, waiting.

The old woman crossed the threshold slowly. Seeing George seated, and not speaking, she was perplexed. She did not know what to say. The fresh air that blew in from the window unquestionably irritated her catarrh; and she began to cough again, standing in the middle of the room. At every spell her body seemed to swell and then to subside, like the bag of a bagpipe beneath an intermittent breath. She held her hands on her breast—fat hands, like tallow, with nails bordered with black. And in her mouth, between the toothless gums, her whitish tongue quivered.

As soon as her fit of coughing was over, she drew from her pocket a dirty paper bag, and took out a pastille. Still standing, she chewed, staring at George in a stupid manner.

Her gaze wandered from George towards the closed door of the fourth room. And the old woman made the sign of the cross, then went and sat down on the seat nearest to George. Her hands on her abdomen, and the eyelids lowered, she recited a Requiem.

"She is praying for her brother," thought George; "for the soul of the damned." It seemed inconceivable to him that this woman should be the sister of Demetrius Aurispa! How could the proud and generous blood which had soaked the bed in the adjoining room, the blood sprung from a brain already corroded by the highest cares of the intelligence, have come from the same source as that which coursed, so impoverished, in the veins of this peevish and disgusting old woman? "With her, it is greediness—the greediness which regrets the liberality of the donor. How strange, this prayer of gratitude from an old, dilapidated stomach towards the most noble of suicides! How odd life is!"

All at once, Aunt Joconda began to cough again.

"You had better go from here, aunt; it isn't good for you," said George, who no longer had the strength to master his impatience. "The air here is bad for your cough. You had better go, really. Come, I will see you back to your room."

Aunt Joconda looked at him, surprised at his abrupt speech and unusual tone. She rose, and went limping through the rooms. When she reached the corridor, she again made the sign of the cross, as if muttering an exorcism. When she had gone, George closed the door, and gave the key a double turn. At last, he was alone and free, with an invisible companion.

He remained motionless for a few moments, as if under magnetic influence. And he felt his whole being invaded by the supernatural fascination which that man, existing without life, exercised over him from the bottom of the tomb.

And he reappeared to his mind, a mild, meditative man, with a face full of a virile melancholy, and with a single white curl in the centre of his forehead, among the black hair, giving him an odd appearance.

"For me," thought George, "he exists. Since the day of his corporeal death I have felt his presence every minute. Never so much as since his death have I felt our consanguinity. Never so much as since his death have I had the perception of the intensity of his being. All that he consumed in contact with his fellow-creatures; every action, every gesture, every word that he has sown in the course of time; every diverse manifestation which determined the special character of his being in relation with other beings; every characteristic, fixed or variable, which distinguished his personality from other personalities and made of him a man apart in the human multitude; in short, all that which differentiated his own life from other lives—all now seems to me to be collected, concentrated, circumscribed in the unique and ideal tie that binds him to me. He does not exist for anyone but me alone; he is freed from all other contact, he is in communication with me alone. He exists, purer and more intense than ever."

He took a few steps, slowly. The heavy silence was disturbed at moments by little, mysterious noises, scarcely perceptible. The fresh air, the warmth of the day, contracted the fibres of the benumbed furniture, accustomed to the obscurity of the closed windows. The breath of heaven penetrated the pores of the wood, shook the particles of dust, swelled the folds of the hangings. In a ray of sunlight, myriads of atoms whirled about. The odor of the books was overcome gradually by the perfume of the flowers.

The things suggested to the survivor a crowd of recollections. From these things arose a light and murmuring chorus which enveloped him. From every side arose the emanations of the past. One would have said that the things emitted the odors of a spiritual substance which had impregnated them. "Do I exalt myself?" he asked himself, at the aspect of the images that succeeded one another in his mind with prodigious rapidity, clear as visions, not obscured by a funereal shadow, but living a superior life. And he remained perplexed, fascinated by the mystery, seized by a terrible anguish at the moment of venturing on the confines of that unknown world.

The curtains, which a rhythmic breath seemed to swell, undulated softly, giving glimpses of a noble and calm landscape. The slight noises made by the wainscoting, the papers, and the partitions continued. In the third room, severe and simple, the recollections were musical, and came from mute instruments. On a long, violet-wood piano, whose varnished surface reflected things like a mirror, a violin reposed in its box. On a chair a page of music rose and fell at the pleasure of the breeze, and almost in time with the curtains.

George picked it up. It was a page from a Mendelssohn motet: DOMENICA II POST PASCHA: Andante quasi allegretto. Surrexit pastor bonus— Farther on, on a table, there was a heap of parts for the violin and piano, Leipzig editions: Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Rode, Tartini, Viotti. George opened the case, examined the fragile instrument that slept on olive-colored velvet, with its four strings still intact. A curiosity seized him to awaken them. He touched the treble string, which gave a plaintive moan that vibrated through the entire body. It was a violin made by Andrea Guarneri, dated 1680.

Demetrius reappeared, tall and slender, a little bent, his neck long and pale, his hair brushed back, and with the single white lock in the centre of his forehead. He held the violin. He passed one hand through his hair on the temple, near the ear, with his usual gesture. He tuned the instrument, rosined the bow, then attacked the sonata. His left hand, shrivelled and proud, ran up and down the neck; the tips of his thin fingers pressed the strings, and, beneath the skin, the play of his muscles was so visible as to be painful; his right hand, when drawing the bow, moved with a long, faultless motion. Sometimes he held the instrument tighter with his chin, his head inclined, his eyes half-closed, enjoying keenly his inner voluptuousness.

Sometimes he drew himself erect, looked fixedly before him, his eyes strangely brilliant; smiled a fugitive smile; and from his brow beamed an extraordinary purity.

Thus the violinist reappeared to the survivor. And George lived again the hours of life already lived; he lived them again, not in pictures only, but in actual and profound sensations. He lived again the long hours of close intimacy and forgetfulness, the time when Demetrius and himself, alone, in the warm room to which no noise could penetrate, executed the music of their favorite masters. How they used to forget their very existence! In what strange raptures this music, executed by their own hands, soon threw them! Often the fascination of a single melody held them prisoners an entire afternoon, without their being able to leave the magic circle in which they were enclosed. How often they had rehearsed that Song without Words of Mendelssohn, which had revealed to them both, at the bottom of their hearts, a sort of inconsolable hopelessness! How often they had rehearsed a Beethoven sonata which seemed to grasp their souls, to carry them away with a vertiginous rapidity across the infinity of space, and hover with them, during the flight, over every abyss!

The survivor went back in his recollections as far as the autumn of 188-, to that unforgetful autumn of melancholy and poetry, when Demetrius had scarcely emerged from convalescence. That was to be the last autumn! After a long period of enforced silence, Demetrius took up his violin again with strange disquietude, as if he feared having lost all his aptitude and all his mastery, all his knowledge of the instrument. Oh, what trembling of the enfeebled fingers on the strings and the incertitude of the bowing when he essayed the first tones! And those two tears that formed slowly in the cavity of his eyes, rolled down his cheeks, and were arrested in the threads of his beard, rather long and still untrimmed.

The survivor again saw the violinist about to improvise, while he himself accompanied him on the piano with an almost insupportable anguish, attentive in following him, in anticipating him, always fearing to break the measure, strike a false note, make a discord, or miss a note.

In his improvisations, Demetrius Aurispa was almost always inspired with poetry. George remembered the marvellous improvisation that, on a certain October day, the violinist had composed on a lyric poem by Alfred Tennyson, in The Princess. George himself had translated the verse so that Demetrius could understand it, and he had proposed it to him as a theme. Where was that page?

The curiosity of a sad sensation prompted George to search for it in an album placed among the pieces of music. He was sure he could find it; he remembered it very clearly. And, in fact, he found it.

It was a single sheet, written in violet ink. The characters had paled and the sheet had become rumpled, yellowish, without consistency, soft as a spider's web. It bore the sadness of pages traced a long time ago by a dear hand, gone henceforth forever.

George, who scarcely recognized the characters, said to himself: "It is I who wrote this page! This writing is mine!" It was a rather timid hand, unequal, almost feminine, recalling a schoolboy's writing, preserving the ambiguity of the recent adolescence, the hesitating delicacy of a soul that dares not yet know all. "What a change in that, too!" And he read again the poet's verse:

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

That brings our friends up from the underworld.

Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

On lips that are for others; deep as love,

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Demetrius improvised standing, beside the piano, a trifle paler, a trifle more bent; but from time to time he drew himself erect beneath the breath of inspiration, as a bent reed straightens beneath the breath of the wind. He kept his eyes fixed in the direction of the window, where, as if in a frame, appeared an autumn landscape, reddish and misty. According to the vicissitudes of the heavens without, a changeable light flooded at intervals his person, flashed in the humidity of his eyes, gilded his extraordinarily pure brow. And the violin said: "Sad as the last which reddens over one that sinks with all we love below the verge; so sad, so fresh, the days that are no more." And the violin repeated, with sobs: "O Death in Life, the days that are no more."

At the reminiscence, at the vision conjured up, a supreme anguish assailed the survivor. When the images had passed, the silence seemed to him still heavier. The delicate instrument through which Demetrius's soul had sung its loftiest songs had again sunk to sleep, with its four strings still intact, in the velvet-lined case.

George lowered the lid, as on a corpse. Around him the silence was lugubrious. But he still retained, at the bottom of his heart, like a refrain indefinitely prolonged, this sigh: "O Death in Life, the days that are no more."

He remained a few moments before the door which shut off the tragic chamber. He felt that henceforth he was no longer master of himself. His nerves dominated him, imposed on him the disorder and excess of their sensations. He felt about his head a band that contracted and enlarged according to the palpitations of his arteries, as if it were an elastic and cold substance. The same cold chill ran down his spinal column.

With sudden energy, in a sort of rage, he turned the knob and entered. Without looking about him, walking in the ray of light which, projected through the open door, was shed across the floor, he went straight towards one of the balconies, opened the two shutters. He also opened the shutters of the other balcony. After this rapid action, accomplished under the impulse of a sort of horror, turned, agitated, gasping. He felt his flesh creep.

What he saw before anything else was the bed stationed in front of him, with its green counterpane, all of walnut, but simple in form, without carving, without ornaments without curtains. For several moments he saw nothing but the bed, like on that terrible day when, crossing the threshold of the room, he had stopped petrified at the sight of the corpse.

Evoked by the survivor's imagination, the corpse, with its head enveloped in a black veil and its arms stretched alongside the body, retook its place on the mortuary couch. The strong light which entered from the wide-open balconies did not succeed in dissipating the phantom. It was a vision, not continuous but intermittent, seen now and then, as if by a rapid closure of the eyelids, although the witness's eyelids remained immovable.

In the silence of the room, and in the silence of his soul, George heard, very distinctly, the scratching of the wood-tick. And this trifling fact sufficed to dissipate momentarily in him the extreme violence of the nervous tension, as the prick of a needle suffices to empty a swollen blister.

Every particular of the terrible day came back to his memory: the unexpected news brought to Torricelle di Sarsa, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, by a breathless messenger who stammered and wept; the exhausting journey on horseback, in the heat of the dog-days, across the scorched hills, and, during the journey, the sudden fainting spells which made him reel in his saddle; then the house filled with sobs, filled with noises of doors banged by the gale, filled with the buzzing he had in the arteries; and, finally, the impetuous entry into the room, the sight of the corpse, the curtains swelling and swishing, the tinkling of the holy-water basin suspended on the wall.

The deed had been done on the morning of the fourth of August, without any suspicious preparations. The suicide had left no letter, not even for his nephew. The will by which he constituted George his sole legatee was already of old date. Demetrius had taken evident precautions to conceal the causes of his resolution, and even to avoid every pretext for hypotheses; he had taken care to destroy even the least traces of the acts which had preceded the supreme act. In the apartment, everything was found in order, in an order almost excessive; not a paper remained on the desk, not a book was missing from the shelves of the bookcase. On the little table, near the bed, was the pistol-case, open; nothing more.

For the thousandth time, a question arose in the mind of the survivor: "Why did he kill himself? Had he a secret which gnawed at his heart? Or else, was it the cruel sagacity of his intelligence which rendered life insupportable? He bore his destiny within himself, as I bear mine in myself."

He looked at the little silver emblem still suspended on the wall at the head of the bed, a symbol of religion, a maternal pious souvenir. It was a fine piece of workmanship by an old master goldsmith of Guardiagrele, Andrea Gallucci—a sort of hereditary jewel. "He loved religious emblems, sacred music, the odor of incense, crucifixes, the hymns of the Latin Church. He was a mystic, an ascetic, the most passionate contemplator of the inner life; but he did not believe in God."

He looked at the pistol-case; and a thought, latent in the deepest recesses of his brain, was revealed to him as by a lightning flash. "I, too, will kill myself with one of these pistols—with the same, on the same bed." After a short appeasement, his exaltation took hold of him again; again he felt his flesh creep. Once more he felt the actual and profound sensation of the shudder already experienced on the tragic day, when he had wished to raise, with his own hands, the black veil spread over the dead man's face, and when, through the linen wrappings, he believed he could see the ravages of the wound, the horrible ravage made by the explosion of the firearm, by the impact of the ball against the bone of the skull, against that brow so delicate and so pure. In reality, he had seen only a portion of the nose, the mouth, and the chin. The rest was hidden by the bandages several times folded, perhaps because the eyes had started from their sockets. But the mouth, intact, permitted a view of the beard, silky and thin—the mouth, pale and withered, which, living, opened so softly for the unexpected smile—the mouth had received from the seal of death an expression of superhuman calmness, rendered more extraordinary by the bloody havoc hidden by the bandages.

This image, fixed in an ineffaceable imprint, was graven in the soul of the inheritor, in the centre of his soul; and after five years it still preserved the same evidence, preserved by a fatal power.

In thinking that he also would stretch himself on the same bed, and that he would kill himself with the same weapon, George did not feel that tumultuous and vibrant emotion which sudden resolutions impart; it was rather an indefinable feeling, as if it concerned a project formed a long time ago, and approved in a rather indefinite fashion, and that the time had come to decide about it and to accomplish it. He opened the case, examined the pistols.

They were fine weapons, rifled duelling pistols, of old English make, with a stock perfectly fitted to the hand. They reposed on a light-green velvet, a little frayed at the edges of the compartments which contained everything necessary for loading them. As the barrels were of large calibre, the balls were large; those which, when they touch their object, always produce a decisive effect.

George took one and weighed it in the palm of his hand. "In less than five minutes I could be dead. Demetrius has left on this bed the hollow where I shall lie." And by an imaginary transposition it was himself whom he saw stretched on the couch. But that wood-tick! That wood-tick! He had a perception of being gnawed by the insects, as distinctly and as frightfully as if the animals were in his brain. This implacable gnawing came from the bed, and he perceived it. Then he understood the sadness of the man who, before dying, hears beneath him the gnawing of the wood-tick. When he pictured himself in the act of pressing the trigger, he felt an agonized and repulsive contraction of all his nerves. When he came to the conclusion that nothing forced him to kill himself, and that he could wait, he felt at the deepest recesses of his substance the spontaneous expansion of intense relief. A thousand invisible ties still bound him to life. "Hippolyte!"

He went towards the balcony, towards the light, with a sort of impetuosity. A background of an immense landscape, bluish and mysterious, melted in the languor of the day. The sun was slowly setting on the mountain, which it flooded with gold, like the couch of a mistress who awaited. The Majella, enormous and white, all bathed in this liquid gold, reared its huge mass in the sky.

III.

THE HERMITAGE.

CHAPTER I.

In her letter of May 10th, Hippolyte had said: "I can at last dispose of a free hour to write you a long letter. My brother-in-law has now been dragging his pain from hotel to hotel around the lake for the last ten days; and we both follow him like troubled souls. You could never imagine the melancholy of this pilgrimage. I myself am utterly exhausted; I await the first favorable opportunity to leave them. Have you already found the Hermitage?" She had said: "Your letters increase my torment inexpressibly. I know well your malady; and I divine that words fail you to express your suffering. I would give half of my blood to succeed in convincing you, once for all, that I am yours, absolutely yours, forever, until death. I think of you, of you only, uninterruptedly, every instant of my life. Away from you, I cannot enjoy one moment's calm and happiness. Everything disgusts and irritates me. Oh, when will it be given me to be with you entire days, to live your life! You will see; I shall no longer be the same woman. I shall be amiable, tender, gentle. I shall take care to be always the same, always discreet. I shall tell you all my thoughts, and you will tell me all yours. I shall be your mistress, your friend, your sister; and, if you believe me worthy, I will be also your counsellor. I have a lucid intuition of things, and a hundred times I have experienced this lucidity, which has never led me into error. My sole care will be to please you always, never to be a burden in your life. In me you should find only sweetness and repose.... I have many faults, my friend; but you will aid me to conquer them. You will make me perfect, for yourself. I await from you the first encouragement. Later, when I am sure of myself, I will say to you: Now I am worthy; now I have the consciousness of being what you desire. And you, too, will be proud to think that I owe you all, that I am your creature in everything; and then it will seem to you that I am more intimately yours, and you will love me always more, always more. It will be a life of love such as has never before been seen."

In a postscript: "I send you a rhododendron gathered in the park of Isola Madre.... Yesterday, in the pocket of that gray dress which you know, I found the note from Albano which I had asked you for as a souvenir. It is dated April 9th. It has been marked with several baskets of wood. Do you recall our great fires of love? Courage, courage! The renewal of happiness is approaching. In one week, in ten days at the most, I shall be wherever it pleases you. With you, no matter where."

CHAPTER II.

And George, who at heart hardly believed in success, but who was suddenly seized by an insensate ardor, attempted the supreme test.

He left Guardiagrele for the littoral, in quest of the Hermitage. The country, the sea, the motion, the physical activity, the variety of the incidents strewn along the course of this exploration, the singularity of his own condition—all these new things stirred him, restored his equilibrium, gave him an illusory confidence. It seemed to him that he had just escaped by a miracle from the assault of a mortal malady in which he had been face to face with death. For the first few days, life had for him that sweetness and depth which it only has for convalescents. Hippolyte's romantic dream floated about his heart.

"If she should succeed in curing me! To cure me would require a healthy and strong love." He avoided looking into the very bottom of his conscience; he fought shy of the interior sarcasm that those two adjectives provoked. "On earth, there is but one durable intoxication: security in the possession of another creature, absolute and unshakable security. This intoxication I am seeking. I would like to be able to say: My loved one, present or absent, lives entirely in me; my will is her only law; if I ceased to love her she would die; in dying, she will regret only my love." Instead of resigning himself to enjoy love in the form of suffering, he persisted in following it in the form of pleasure. He felt that his mind was corroded irreparably. Once more he felt he had degraded his manhood. He discovered the Hermitage at San Vito, in the land of the furze, on the borders of the Adriatic. It was the ideal Hermitage—a house built on a plateau, half-way up on the cliffs, in a grove of orange and olive trees, facing a little bay closed in by two promontories.

Very primitive, the architecture of the house. An outer stairway led up to a loggia on which opened the four doors of four rooms. Each room had its door, and vis-à-vis, in the wall opposite, a window looking out on the olive-grove. To the upper loggia there was a corresponding lower loggia; but the rooms on the ground floor, with the exception of one, were uninhabitable.

On one side, the house was contiguous to an old ruin inhabited by the peasants who owned it. Two enormous oaks, that the persevering breath of the northerly winds had bent towards the hill, shaded the court and protected the stone tables, useful for dining in summer time. This court was surrounded by a stone parapet, and, rising above the parapet, acacia-trees, loaded with odorous bloom, delineated against the background of the sea the delicate elegance of their foliage.

This house was used only for lodging strangers who rented it for the bathing season, according to the industry practised by all the villagers of the coast in the region of San Vito. It was about two miles distant from the borough, on the border of a territory called Portelles, in quiet and mild solitude. Each of the two promontories was pierced by a tunnel, the two openings of which were visible from the house. The railroad ran from one to the other in a straight line, along the shore, a distance of from five to six hundred yards. At the extreme point of the right-hand promontory, on a bank of rocks the Trabocco stretched, a strange fishing machine, constructed entirely of beams and planks, like a colossal spider-web.

The tenant, out of season, was greeted like an unhoped for and extraordinary piece of good fortune.

The head of the family, an old man, said:

"The house is yours."

He refused to name a price, and said: "If you are satisfied with it, you will give me what you wish and when you please."

While uttering these cordial words, he examined the stranger with an eye so scrutinizing that the latter was embarrassed and surprised by this too piercing look. The old man was blind with one eye, bald on the top of his head, with two little tufts of white hair on the temples; his chin was shaven, and he carried his entire body before him, sustained by two bow legs. His limbs were deformed by hard work: by the labor at the plough, which advances the right shoulder and twists the body; by the labor of mowing, which forces the knees apart; by the labor of thinning the vines, which bends the body in two; by all the slow and patient labors of agriculture.

"You'll give what you wish."

He had already scented in this affable young man, with his somewhat distracted and almost wandering air, the generous milord, inexperienced, careless of money. He knew that the generosity of his guest would be much more profitable for him than if he made his own terms.

George asked:

"Is the place quiet, without visitors, without noise?"

The old man pointed to the sea and smiled:

"Look; you will hear nothing but that."

He added:

"Sometimes the sound of the loom, too. But now Candia hardly weaves at all."

And he smiled, pointing to the threshold where stood his daughter-in-law, blushing.

She was enceinte, already very large at the waist, blond, a clear carnation, her face sown with freckles. She had big gray eyes, the iris veined like agates. She wore in her ears two heavy gold rings, and on her bosom the presenfoso, a large star of filigree work, with two hearts in the centre. On the threshold beside her was a little girl of ten, a blonde also, with a sweet expression.

"One could drink down that little madcap in a glass," said the old man. "That's all! There are only us and Albadora."

He turned toward the olive-grove and began to call:

"Albadora! Albadò!"

Then, addressing his granddaughter:

"Helen, go and call her," he said.

Helen disappeared.

"Twenty-two children!" cried the old man. "Albadora gave me twenty-two children—six boys and sixteen girls. I have lost three boys and seven girls. The other nine girls are married. One of my boys went to America; another has made his home in Tocco, and works in the petroleum mines; the youngest, the one whom Candia married, is employed on the railway, and only visits us every two weeks. We are left all alone. Ah! signor, it is well said that one father supports a hundred children, and that a hundred children do not support one father."

The septuagenarian Sibyl appeared, bearing in her apron a heap of large earth-snails, a slimy and flaccid heap, from which protruded long tentacles. She was a woman of tall stature, but bent, emaciated, broken by fatigue and by frequent pregnancies, weakened by childbirths, with a small head, wrinkled like a withered apple, on a neck full of hollows and tendons. In her apron the snails stuck together, twisted about one another, glued to one another, greenish, yellowish, whitish, frothy, with colorations of pale iridescent reflections. One of them had crawled up on her hand.

The old man exclaimed:

"This gentleman wishes to rent the house from to-day on."

"God bless you!" she cried.

And, with a rather silly yet kind air, she drew closer to George, leering at him with eyes sunk deep in their orbits, almost sightless.

She added:

"It's Jesus come back to earth. God bless you! May you live as long as there's bread and wine. May you become as great as the sun!"

And, with a joyous step, she passed on into the house, through the same door which all her twenty-two children had passed through on their way to baptism.

The old man said to George:

"My name is Colas di Cinzio; but, as my father's surname was Sciampagne, everybody calls me Colas di Sciampagne. Come and see the garden."

George followed the peasant.

"The crops are very promising this year."

The old man, walking in front, praised the plantations, and, as is common with persons who have grown old in the midst of nature, he made prognostications. The garden was luxuriant, and seemed to enclose in its circle all the gifts of abundance. The orange-trees shed such waves of perfume that, at moments, the atmosphere acquired a sweet and powerful savor, like that of a generous wine. The other fruit-trees were no longer in flower, but their innumerable fruits hung from nourishing branches, rocked by the breath of heaven.

George thought: "This, perhaps, is what the superior life would be: a limitless liberty; a noble and fruitful solitude which would envelop me with its warmest emanations; to journey on amidst the vegetal creation as one would amongst a multitude of intelligences; to wrest from it the occult thought and to divine the mute sentiment which reigns beneath the externals; to successively render my being comfortable with each of these beings, and to successively substitute for my weakened and oblique soul each of these simple and strong souls; to contemplate nature with such a continuity of attention that I should succeed in reproducing, in my own person, the harmonious palpitation of all creatures; finally, by a laborious and ideal metamorphosis, identify myself with the robust tree whose roots absorb the invisible subterranean ferments, and whose summit imitates, by its agitation, the voice of the sea. Would not that be truly a superior life?" At the sight of the spring-time exuberance that transfigured the surrounding places, he permitted himself to be dominated by a sort of drunken panic. But the fatal habit of contradiction cut short this transport, brought him back to his old ideas, opposed reality to dreams. "We have no contact whatever with nature. We have only the imperfect perception of exterior forms. It is impossible for man to enter into communion with things. Man has certainly the power to inject into things all his own substance; but he never receives anything in return. The sea will never speak to him in an intelligible language, the earth will never reveal to him its secret. Man may feel all his blood circulate in the fibres of the tree, but the tree will never give him one drop of its vital sap."

Pointing out with his finger such or such a marvel of luxuriance, the one-eyed old peasant said:

"A stableful of dung performs more miracles than a churchful of saints."

Pointing with his finger to a field of flowering beans at the end of the garden, he said:

"The bean is the spy of the year."

The field undulated almost imperceptibly. The small leaves, of a grayish green, agitated their thin points beneath the white or azure flowering. Every flower resembled a half-closed mouth, and bore two spots, black as eyes. Among those that were not yet faded, the superior petals slightly covered the spots, like pale eyelids on pupils which regard sidewise. The quivering of all those lipped and eyed flowers had a strange animal expression, attractive and indescribable.

George thought: "How happy Hippolyte will be here! She has a delicate and passionate taste for all the humble beauties of the earth. I remember her little cries of admiration and pleasure on discovering some plant of unknown form, a new flower, a leaf, a bay, a bizarre insect, a shadow, a reflection." He pictured her to himself, slim and agile, in graceful attitudes, among the verdure. And an anguish suddenly overwhelmed him: the anguish of taking her again, of reconquering her entirely, of making himself loved immensely by her; of giving her a new joy every second. "Her eyes will be always filled with me. All her senses will remain closed to all sensations but those that will come to her from me. My words will seem to her more delicious than any other sound." Suddenly the power of love appeared to him to be unlimited. His inner life acquired a vertiginous acceleration.

When he mounted the stairway of the Hermitage, he believed that his heart would break under the pressure of his increasing anxiety. Arrived at the loggia, he took in the landscape with an intoxicated look. In his profound agitation, he believed he felt that at that minute the sun beamed truly on the bottom of his heart.

The sea, stirred by an equal and continuous thrill, reflecting the happiness scattered in the sky, seemed to refract this happiness in myriads of inextinguishable smiles. Through the crystal air, all the distant vistas were clearly defined—the Vasto Point, Mount Gargano, the Tremiti Islands, on the right; Cape Moro, the Nicchiola, Cape Ortona, on the left. The white Ortona resembled a glittering Asiatic city on a hill in Palestine, standing boldly against the azure, all in parallel lines, without minarets. That chain of promontories and gulfs, in the shape of a half-moon, suggested the image of a row of offerings, because each handle bore a cereal treasure. The furze spread its mantle of gold over the entire coast. From every bush arose a dense cloud of effluvia, as from a censer. The air respired was just as delicious as a sip of elixir.

CHAPTER III.

The first few days, George gave all his care to the little house which was to receive the New Life within its great peace; and to help him in the preparations he had Colas di Sciampagne, who seemed expert at all trades. On a band of fresh plastering he had written with the point of a reed this old device, suggested by the illusion: Parva domus, magna quies. And he saw a favorable presage even in the three blades of bay sown by the wind between the interstices of the raised edge of the window.

But, when all was ready and this false energy had gone, he found again in his inmost self the inquietude, the discontent, and that implacable anguish the true cause of which he did not know; he felt confusedly that his destiny had once more pushed him into an oblique and perilous pass. It seemed to him that, from another house and from other lips, there came to him now a voice of recall and reproach. In his soul there revived the heartbreaking farewells, tearless and yet so cruel, in which he had lied from shame on reading in his deceived mother's tired eyes the question, too sad: "For whom are you abandoning me?"

Was it not this mute question, the recollection of that blush and that lie, which inspired him with the inquietude, the discontent, and the anguish, at the moment that he was about to enter the New Life? And how could he silence that voice? By what intoxication?

He did not dare reply. In spite of his deep trouble, he wished still to believe in the promise of her who was going to come; he hoped to be able still to attribute to his love a high moral signification. Had he not an ardent desire to live, to give to all the forces of his nature a rhythmic development, to feel himself complete and harmonious? Love would finally effect this prodigy; he would finally find in love the plenitude of his humanity, deformed and diminished by so many miseries.

With these hopes and these vague tendencies, he sought to cheat his remorse; but what dominated him in presence of this woman's image was always desire. In despite of all his platonic aspirations, he could not succeed in seeing in love anything else but the work of the flesh, could not imagine the days to come but as a succession of already familiar sensual pleasures. In that benign solitude, in the company of that passionate woman, what life could he live, if not a life of idleness and voluptuousness?

And all the past sorrows came back to his mind, with all the painful pictures: his mother's haggard face and swollen red eyes, scorched by tears; Christine's sweet and heart-broken smile; the large head of the sickly child, always leaning on a bosom barren of all but sighs; the cadaveric mask of the poor idiotic gormand.

And his mother's tired eyes asked: "For whom are you abandoning me?"

CHAPTER IV.

It was the afternoon. George explored the tortuous path which, by a succession of ups and downs, led towards the Vasto Point on the edge of the sea. He gazed before and around him with a curiosity always awake, almost betraying an effort to be attentive, as if he wished to surprise some obscure thought translated by these simple semblances, or to render himself master of some unseizable secret.

In a fold of the hill which followed the sea line, the water of a stream derived from a sort of small aqueduct, made from hollowed trunks and sustained by dead trees, traversed the dale from one shore to the other. There were also trenches carried in hollow tiles, as far as the fertile field where the crops were prospering; and here and there on the reflecting and murmuring trenches, beautiful violet flowers bent with airy grace. All these humble things appeared to have a profound life.

And the excess of water ran and spread on the slope towards the sandy beach, passing beneath a small bridge. In the shade of the arch, several women were washing linen, and their gestures were reflected in the water as in a mobile mirror. On the beach, the linen spread out in the sun was of dazzling whiteness. A man was walking along the railroad tracks, his feet naked, carrying his shoes hanging in his hand. A woman came out of the toll-house and, with a rapid gesture, threw some débris from out of a basket. Two little girls, loaded with linen, were running, each trying to outdo the other, laughing. An old woman was hanging blue-colored skeins from a pole.

Beyond, on the slope of the earth wall that bordered the path, small shells made white spots, fragile roots fluttered in the wind. The traces of the pickaxe that had cut into the fawn-colored earth were still distinguishable. From the top of a heap of earth hung a tuft of dead roots, as light as the scales of a serpent.

Farther on was a large farmhouse, with a porcelain flower at the summit of its tiled roof. An outer stairway led up to a covered gallery. At the head of the stairway two women were spinning, and, beneath the sun, their distaffs had the resplendency of gold. One could hear the clicking of a weaving machine. Through the window could be seen a weaver, and her rhythmic gesture as she plied the shuttle. Lying down in a neighboring field was a gray ox, a beast of enormous size, shaking ears and tail, peacefully and unceasingly, in order to chase away the flies. Around him, chickens were scratching.

A little farther, a second stream traversed the path—laughing, rippling, gay, frisking, limpid.

A little farther on still, near another house, there was a silent garden, full of bushy laurels, closed all round. The stems, slender and straight, rose up motionless, with their crown of shining foliage. And one of these laurels, the most robust, was entirely enveloped by a large, amorous bryonia which triumphed over the austere foliage by the delicacy of its snowlike flowers, and by the freshness of its nuptial perfume. Below, the earth seemed to have been newly turned over. In a corner a black cross shed over the mute enclosure that sort of resigned sadness which reigns in cemeteries. At the end of the path could be seen a stairway, half in the sun and half in the shadow, by which one mounted to a half-open door, which protected two branches of a blessed olive-tree, suspended at the rustic architrave. Below, on the last step, an old man was seated, asleep, his head bare, his chin on his breast, his hands resting on his knees; and the sun was about to touch his venerable brow. From above, through the half-open door, as if to favor the senile slumber, descended the equal sound of a cradle rocking and the equal cadence of a hummed ballad.

All these humble things seemed to have a profound life.

CHAPTER V.

Hippolyte announced that, according to her promise, she would arrive at San Vito, Tuesday, May 20th, by train direct, about one o'clock in the afternoon.

That would be in two days. George wrote to her:

"Come, come! I await you, and never was waiting more tantalizing. Every minute that passes is irremediably lost to happiness. Come. Everything is ready. Or rather, no, nothing is ready, save my desire. It is necessary, my friend, that you provide yourself with an inextinguishable fund of patience and indulgence; because, in this savage and impracticable solitude, every commodity of life is lacking. Oh, how impracticable! Picture to yourself, my friend, that from the station of San Vito to the Hermitage takes three-quarters of an hour by road; and to cover this distance, the only means is to follow on foot the path cut through the granite, rising perpendicularly from the sea. You must be careful to come provided with heavy shoes, and gigantic parasols. As to dresses, it is useless to bring many; a few gay and durable costumes for our morning walks will suffice. Do not forget your bathing suit....

"This letter is the last I shall write you. You will get it a few hours before you start. I am writing you in the library, a room in which there are heaps of books which we are hardly likely to read. The afternoon is grayish, and the sea stretches out in endless monotony. The hour is discreet, languorous, propitious for delicate sensualities. Oh, if you were with me! This evening will be my second night at the Hermitage, and I shall spend it alone. If you only saw the bed! It is a rustic bed, a monumental hymeneal altar, large as a field, deep as the slumber of the just—thalamus thalamorum! The mattresses contain the wool of an entire flock, the straw-bed contains the shucks of an entire field of maize. Can these chaste things have the presentiment of your nudity?

"Good-by, good-by. How slowly the hours go by! Who says time has wings? I do not know what I would give if I could go to sleep in this enervating languor, and not awake until Tuesday morning. But no, I will not sleep. I, too, have killed my sleep. I have the constant vision of your mouth."

CHAPTER VI.

For several days voluptuous visions had haunted him without a truce. Desire awoke in his flesh with inconceivable violence. A warm puff of air, a waft of perfume, the rustle of a skirt, mere trifles, sufficed to modify his entire being, to make him languorous, to light up his face with a flame, to accelerate the pulsations of his arteries, to throw him into an agitation bordering on delirium.

At the profoundest depths of his substance he bore the germs inherited from his father. He, the creature of thought and sentiment, had in his flesh the fatal heredity of that brutish being. But in him instinct had become a passion, and sensuality had assumed almost morbid forms. He was as grieved over this as if it were a shameful malady: he had a horror of these fevers which assailed him unexpectedly, which consumed him miserably; which left him debased, arid, powerless to think. He suffered from certain passions as though they degraded him. Certain sudden passages of brutality, similar to hurricanes over a growing field, devastated his mind, dried up all his inner sources, made painful furrows which for a long time he could not succeed in filling up.

At the dawn of the great day, as he awoke after a few hours of a restless dozing, he thought, with a thrill of all his nerves: "She arrives to-day! To-day, in the light of to-day, my eyes will see her! I will hold her in my arms! It almost seems to me as if it will be the first possession; it seems to me, too, that I could die of it." The vision conjured up gave him so rude a shock that he felt his body traversed from tip to toe by a start similar to that caused by an electric discharge. In him appeared those terrible physical phenomena against the tyranny of which he was defenceless. All his conscience fell beneath the absolute empire of desire. Once more the hereditary lewdness broke out with an invincible fury in this delicate lover whom it pleased to call his mistress "sister," and who had a thirst for spiritual communions. He contemplated, in mind, his mistress's beauty; and every contour, seen through the flame, assumed in his eyes a radiant splendor, chimerical, almost superhuman. He contemplated, in mind, his mistress's grace; and every attitude assumed a voluptuous fascination of inconceivable intensity. In her, all was light, perfume, and rhythm.

This admirable creature he possessed—he, he alone.... But, spontaneously, as the smoke rises from a poor fire, a jealous thought disengaged itself from his desire. To dissipate the agitation which he felt growing, he sprang from the bed.

At the window, at dawn, the olive-tree branches had an imperceptible undulation, pale, between gray and white. The sound of the sparrows discreetly twittering was heard above the dull, monotonous wash of the sea. In a stable a lamb bleated timidly.

He went out into the loggia, comforted by the tonic virtue of a bath, and drank in deeply the morning air charged with savory odors. His lungs dilated; his thoughts took their flight, agile, each marked with the image of the waited-for woman; a feeling of renewed youth made his heart palpitate.

Before him was the maturity of the sun, pure, simple, without a vestige of clouds, without mystery. Above the silver sea arose a crimson disk, clearly defined, almost sharp, like a disk of metal fresh from the forge.

Colas di Sciampagne, who was busy cleaning the court, cried out to him:

"To-day is a great holiday. The lady is coming. The corn comes into the ear without waiting for the Ascension."

George smiled at the courteous remark of the old man, and asked:

"Did you think of the women to gather the furze flowers? The entire length of the road must be strewn with them."

The old man gave an impatient gesture, as if to signify that he required no reminder.

"I sent for five!"

And he named them, showing the places where the young girls lived.

"The Monkey's daughter, the Ogress's daughter, Favetta, Splendor, and Garbin's daughter."

These names provoked in George a sudden mirth. It seemed to him that all the spirit of springtime entered into his heart, that a wave of fragrant poesy inundated it. Did not these virgins step out of a fairy tale to strew flowers on the road under the feet of the beautiful Roman?

He abandoned himself to the anxious enjoyment of expectation. He asked, restlessly:

"Where are they gathering their harvest of furze?"

"Up yonder," replied Colas di Sciampagne, pointing to the hillock; "up yonder, on the Chesnaie. Their singing will guide you."

In fact, a feminine chant came at intervals from the hill. George started up the incline, in search of the singers. The small, tortuous path wound through a copse of young oaks. At a certain place it branched out into a number of paths, the ends of which could not be seen; and the narrow groves, hollowed between the thickets, crossed by innumerable roots close to the ground, formed a sort of mountainous labyrinth in which the sparrows twittered and the blackbirds whistled. George, led by both chant and perfume, did not go astray. He found the field of furze.

It was a plateau on which the furze flourished so plentifully that it presented to the eye the uniformity of a vast yellow mantle, sulphur-colored, resplendent. The five lasses were gathering the flowering branches in order to fill their baskets, and were singing. They were singing at the top of their voices, in a perfect chord of the third and fifth. When they came to the refrain, they straightened up above the bushes to permit the note to more freely emerge from their unconfined chests; and they held the note a long time, looking in each other's eyes, holding before them their hands full of flowers.

At the sight of the stranger they stopped, and bent over the bushes. Ill-suppressed laughter ran along the yellow carpet. George asked:

"Which of you is named Favetta?"

A young girl, brown as an olive, rose to reply, astonished, almost afraid.

"It is I, signor."

"Aren't you the best singer in San Vito?"

"No, signor. That is not true."

"It is true, it is true!" cried all her companions. "Make her sing, signor."

She denied it, laughing, her face on fire; and while her companions insisted, she twisted her apron. She was of small stature, but very well formed, her bosom large and heaving, developed by singing. She had curly hair, heavy eyebrows, an aquiline nose, a rather defiant carriage of her head.

After several refusals, she consented. Her companions threw their arms around her, imprisoned her in their circle. They emerged from among the flowering tufts up to their waists, amid the buzzing of the diligent bees.

Favetta commenced, at first timidly; then, note by note, her voice became more assured. She had a limpid voice, fluid, crystalline as a spring of water. She sang a distich, and her companions took up the refrain in chorus. They prolonged the final notes in unison, their mouths close together so as to make but one vocal wave; and this wave undulated in the light with the slowness of liturgic cadences.

Favetta sang:

All the fountains are dry,

My love is dying of thirst,

Tromme lari, lira....

Love, forever!

Love, I am thirsty, oh! so thirsty,

Where is the water you bring me?

Tromme lari, lira....

Love, forever!

I bring you a bowl of potter's clay.

Suspended from a chain of gold,

Tromme lari, lira....

Love, forever!

And her companions repeated:

Love, forever!

This salutation of May to love, gushing from these bosoms, which perhaps did not know it yet, which perhaps would never know its veritable sorrows, resounded in George's ears like a good augury. The girls, the flowers, the woods, the sea, all these free and unconscious things which breathed around him the voluptuousness of life—all that caressed the surface of his soul, soothed, lulled him in the habitual sentiment that he had concerning his own being, gave him an increasing, harmonious, and rhythmic sensation of a new faculty which had developed little by little in the intimacy of his substance, and that would be revealed to him in a very vague manner, as in a sort of confused vision of a divine secret. It was a fugitive enchantment, a state of consciousness so exceptional and so incomprehensible that he could not retain even its phantom.

The singers pointed to the already overflowing baskets—a heap of flowers humid with dew. Favetta asked:

"Will that do?"

"No, no, that won't be enough. Keep on gathering them. The entire road from the Trabocco to the house must be strewn. The stairway, the loggia, must be covered."

"But what shall we do for Ascension Day? Won't you leave a single flower for Jesus?"

CHAPTER VII.

She had arrived. She had trod on the flowers, like the Madonna who is going to perform a miracle; she had trod on a carpet of flowers. She had at last arrived! She had at last crossed the threshold!

And now, tired, happy, she presented to her lover's lips a face all bathed in tears, without speaking, with a gesture of inexpressible abandon. Tired, happy, she wept and smiled beneath the innumerable kisses of the adored one. What mattered the recollections of the days from which he had been absent? What mattered the miseries, the chagrins, the anxieties, the heart-breaking struggles against the inexorable brutalities of life? What mattered all the discouragements and all the despairs, in comparison with this supreme joy? She lived, she respired between her lover's arms; she felt herself infinitely loved. All else disappeared, returned to oblivion, seemed to have never existed.

"Oh, Hippolyte, Hippolyte! Oh, my soul! how much, how much I have longed for you! And here you are! And now, you will stay with me a long, long time, will you not? Before leaving me, you will kill me."

And he kissed her on the mouth, on the cheeks, on the neck, on the eyes, insatiable, profoundly thrilled every time he met a tear. Those tears, that smile, that expression of felicity on the tired-looking face, the thought that this woman had not hesitated for a second in consenting; the thought that she had come to him from a great distance, and that, after a fatiguing journey, she wept beneath his kisses, powerless to say a word because her heart was too full—all these passionate and delightful things refined his sensations, freed his desire from impurity, gave him an emotion of almost chaste love, exalted his soul.

Removing the long pin that fastened the hat and veil, he said:

"How tired you must be, my poor Hippolyte! You are very pale!"

Her veil was raised on her brow; she still had on her travelling cloak and her gloves. He removed the veil and hat, with a gesture that was customary with him. The beautiful brown head appeared, unencumbered, with that simple coiffure which made of the hair a sort of adherent helmet, without altering the delicate and elegant outline of the occiput, without hiding any of the nape of the neck.

She wore a gorget of white lace, and a narrow black velvet ribbon which was defined with exquisite violence against the whiteness of the skin. Under the cloak could be seen a gray cloth dress—the dress of the memorable Albano days. She spread around her a faint odor of violets, the familiar perfume.