Front matter (continued 5)

How could he escape the fascination of the mystery which spread over all created things and transfigured them into signs and emblems of another life?

George, troubled by these suggestions, which provoked in him the confused rising of all his mystic tendencies, said to himself: "Oh! if I possessed the true faith, that faith which enabled Saint Theresa to actually see God in the host." And this was not a vague or passing desire: it was a profound and fervent aspiration of his entire soul, and it was also an extraordinary anguish, which distressed all the elements of his substance; because he felt that this was the secret of his unhappiness and weakness. Like Demetrius Aurispa, George was an ascetic without a God.

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

Demetrius was his real father. By a singular coincidence of names, that spiritual paternity seemed consecrated in the legend inscribed around the marvellous ostensory given by the ancestors, and preserved in the cathedral at Guardiagrele.

[Double dagger symbol] EGO DEMETRIUS AURISPA ET UNICUS GEORGIUS FILIUS MEUS DONAMUS ISTUD TABERNACULUM ECCLESIAE S. M. DE GUARDIA, QUOD FACTUM EST PER MANUS ABBATIS JOANNIS CASTORII DE GUARDIA, ARCHIPRESBYTERI, AD USUM EUCHARISTIAE.

[Double dagger symbol] NICOLAUS ANDRAE DE GUARDIA ME FECIT A.D. MCCCCXIII.

Both, in fact, beings of intelligence and sentiment, bore the mystic heredity of the house of Aurispa; both had the religious soul, inclined to mystery, apt to live in a forest of symbols or in a heaven of pure abstractions; both loved the ceremonies of the Latin Church, sacred music, the perfume of incense, all the sensualities of worship, the most violent and the most delicate. But they had lost faith. They knelt before an altar deserted by God. Their misery arose therefore from a metaphysical need, which implacable doubt prohibited to blossom, to satisfy, to repose on the divine lap. As they had not conformed themselves in such a manner that they could accept and sustain the battle for vulgar existence, they had learned the necessity of seclusion. But how could the man exiled from life rest in a cell which lacked the sign of the Eternal? Solitude is the supreme proof of the humility or the sovereignty of a soul; because it is only borne on the condition of having renounced all for God, or on the condition of having a soul so strong that it might serve as an immovable foundation for a world.

All at once, one of them, feeling perhaps that the violence of his pain began to exceed the resistance of his organs, had wished to transform himself by death into a higher being; and he launched into the mystery, from which he contemplated the survivor with undimmed eyes.—Ego Demetrius Aurispa et unicus Georgius filius meus.

Now, in his lucid moments, the survivor comprehended that he would in no way succeed in realizing the type of exuberant life, the "Dionysiac" ideal seen as in a lightning flash beneath the great oak, when he had tasted the bread freshly broken by the young and joyous woman. He realized that his intellectual and moral faculties, too disproportioned, would never succeed in finding their equilibrium and their model. He realized, finally, that, instead of striving to reconquer himself for himself, it was himself he should renounce, and that two ways only could lead him to it: either to follow the example of Demetrius, or to give himself to heaven.

The second alternative fascinated him. In considering it, he made an abstraction of the unfavorable circumstances and immediate obstacles, impelled by his irresistible desire to completely construct all his illusions and to inhabit them for a few hours. On this natal earth, did he not feel himself enveloped by the ardor of faith much more than by the fire of the sun? Had he not in his veins the purest Christian blood? Did not the ascetic ideal circulate in the branches of his race, from the noble donor Demetrius down to the pitiful creature named Joconda? Was it, therefore, impossible that this ideal should be regenerated in him, should be elevated to its supreme heights, should attain the limit of human ecstasy in God? In him, all was ready to magnify the event. He possessed every quality of the ascetic; the contemplative mind, the taste for symbols and allegories, the faculty of abstraction, an extreme sensibility for visual and aural suggestions, an organic tendency towards dominating images and hallucinations. He lacked but one thing, a great thing, but which perhaps was not dead in him, and only slumbered: the faith, the ancient faith of the donor, the ancient faith of his race, that which came down from the mountain and chanted praises on the seashore.

How to awaken it? How to resuscitate it? No artifice would be efficacious. He must wait for a sudden spark, an unexpected shock. He must, perhaps, like the followers of Oreste, see the lightning flash and hear the Word in the midst of a field, at the turn of a road.

And, once more, he recalled the figure of Oreste, attired in his red tunic, advancing along the side of a little, sinuous river, where, beneath the shivering of the poplars, a stream of water coursed over a bed of polished sand. He imagined a meeting, a conversation with Oreste. It was at noon, on the coast, close to a field of wheat. The Messiah spoke like a simple, humble man, smiling with virginal candor; and his teeth were as white as jasmine. In the great silence of the sea, the continuous murmur of the breakers at the foot of the promontory imitated the distant chords of an organ. But, behind this mild person, in the gold of the ripe harvest, waved the poppies, violent symbols of desire.

"Desire!" thought George, thus recalling his mistress and the corporeal sorrow of his love. "Who will kill desire?" The admonitions of Ecclesiastes recurred to him. Non des mulieri potestatem animae tuae. A muliere initium factum est peccati, et per illam omnes morimur. He saw, at the sacred dawn of the ages, in a delicious garden, the first man, solitary and sad, attracted by the first companion; and he saw this companion become the scourge of the world, spread everywhere pain and death. But voluptuousness, contemplated as a sin, appeared to him prouder, more disturbing; it seemed to him that no other intoxication equalled the frantic intoxication of the embraces to which the martyrs of the early church surrendered themselves, in the prisons where they awaited punishment. He evoked pictures of women who, mad with terror and love, presented for kisses their faces bathed in silent tears.

In aspiring to faith and redemption, what did he, therefore, but aspire to new thrills and spasms, to unknown voluptuous sensations? Infringe on duty and obtain pardon; commit a fault and confess it tearfully; confess the slightest miseries while exaggerating them, and accuse oneself of mediocre vices while magnifying them almost to enormity; incessantly place one's sick soul and ailing flesh in the hands of a merciful physician—had not these things an entirely sensual fascination?

From the beginning, his passion had been impregnated with a pious odor of incense and violets. He recalled the Epiphany of Love, in the deserted oratory of the Via Belsiana: the little, mysterious chapel was plunged in a bluish penumbra; a choir of young girls garlanded the rostrum, curved like a balcony; below, an orchestra of string instruments stood up before the music stands of white pine; roundabout, in the oaken stalls, were seated the few auditors, almost all gray or bald; the chapel-master beat time; a religious odor of evaporated incense and of violets mingled with the music of Sebastian Bach.

He recalled also the dream of Orvieto, conjured up once more the vision of the silent city of the Guelphs: windows closed; grayish alleys in which the grasses grew; a capuchin monk crossing a square; a bishop all in black, descending from a carriage which has stopped in front of a hospital, with a decrepit servant at the carriage door; a tower rising against a white and rainy sky; a clock slowly chiming the hour; and all of a sudden, at the bottom of a street, a miracle—the Duomo.

Had he not dreamt of taking refuge at the summit of that rock of tufa, crowned by monasteries? Had he not, more than once, sincerely aspired to that silence, that peace? And now this dream also returned to his soul, suggested by an effeminate languor on this warm and ashy April day. To have a mistress, or, to express it better, a sister-lover, who would be very devoted; to go away yonder and stay there.... To spend hours and hours in the cathedral, in front of it, around it; to go and gather roses in the gardens of the convents; to visit the sisters and eat preserves.... To love a great deal and sleep a great deal, in a soft bed, all veiled in virginal white, between two praying-stools....

He was seized once more by the languid nostalgia of the darkness, of the silence, of the closed and isolated retreat in which could blossom the most frail flowers, the most subtle thoughts, the most disturbing sensualities. All that dazzling sunlight on those lines, too distinct and too strong, appeared almost offensive to him. And the same as the image of the murmuring spring fascinates the brain of him who is thirsty, so he was haunted by the cool and meditative shadow of a Roman nave.

The summons of the bells did not reach as far as the Hermitage, or, at least, it only arrived at rare intervals on the swells of a light breeze. The church of the market town was too far away, commonplace perhaps, certainly without any reputation for beauty or ancient tradition. George wanted a retreat nearer at hand, and one worthy of him, where his mysticism might flower æsthetically as in that deep marble urn which enclosed the Dantesque visions of Luca Signorelli.

He recalled the abbey of Saint Clement at Casauria, seen in one of the distant days of his adolescence, and he remembered that he had visited it in the company of Demetrius. The recollection, like all recollections connected with his kinsman, was as distinct and precise as if it had dated only from the day before.

He and Demetrius were descending the highroad towards the abbey, still hidden by the trees. An infinite calm reigned in the neighborhood of the solitary and magnificent spot, over the wide road of grasses and stones, deserted, uneven, as if marked with gigantic and silent vestiges, and the beginning of which was lost in the mystery of the distant and sacred mountains. One felt still floating there a primordial holiness, as if the grasses and stones had just been trodden by a long migration of biblical bands in search of a maritime horizon. Below, on the plain, the basilica appeared—almost a ruin. All around, the ground was encumbered with débris and brambles; fragments of sculptured stone were heaped against the pillars; wild grasses hung from every crevice; recent constructions, of brick and lime, closed up large openings in the lateral arcades; the doors were off their hinges. A band of pilgrims were taking a siesta in the court, brutishly, under the very noble portal erected by Leonato the Magnificent. But the three intact arched windows, above the several capitals, looked so graceful and proud, and the September sun gave to the light and soft stone such a precious appearance, that both of them, Demetrius and himself, had felt they were in the presence of a sovereign beauty.

Fascinated by the remembrance, the survivor had only one wish, a chimerical one—to return to the spot, to see the basilica again, to take up his dwelling there so as to protect it from ruin, to restore it to its primitive beauty, to reëstablish there the great worship, and, after so long a period of desertion and oblivion, renew the Chronicon Casaurienne.

He said to Hippolyte:

"Perhaps we'll change our quarters. Do you remember the dream of Orvieto?"

"Oh, yes," she cried; "the city of convents, where you wanted to take me!"

"I want to take you to a deserted abbey, more lonely than our Hermitage, beautiful as a cathedral, full of very old memories, where there is a great candelabra of white marble, a marvellous work of art by some unknown artist. Erect on the candelabra, in the silence, you will illuminate with your face the meditations of my soul."

He smiled at this lyric phrase, while contemplating at the same time the beautiful image evoked. And she, in the ingenuousness of her egotism, with that tenacious animalism which is the basis of the feminine being, was intoxicated by nothing more than by this passing poesy. Her happiness was to appear in her lover's eyes idealized, like the first evening in the bluish street, or again in the secret oratory amid the religious music and the faded perfumes, or like on the wild path strewn with furze.

In her most chaste voice, she asked:

"When do we go?"

"Will you go to-morrow?"

"Very well—to-morrow."

"Take care! If you rise, you won't be able to come down."

"What does it matter? I'll watch you."

"You will burn, you'll be consumed like a candle."

"I will light you."

"You will also light my funeral."

He spoke lightly; but at heart, with his ordinary intensity for imaginary life, he composed a mystic fable. After long years of error on the abyss of sensuality, repentance had come to him. Initiated by this woman in all the mysteries which his concupiscence excited, he now implored from the All Merciful the grace which would dissipate the unbearable sadness of this carnal love. "Pity for my pleasures in the past, and for my suffering in the present! Grant, O God! that I may have the strength to accomplish the Sacrifice in your name!" And he fled, followed by his mistress in search of the refuge. And, finally, on the threshold of the refuge the miracle was accomplished; for the impure, the corrupt, the implacable Enemy, the Rose of Hell, was now suddenly cleansed of all sin, and stood, chaste and immaculate, ready to follow her loved one to the altar. On the summit of the high marble candelabra, which had not heard the voice of the light for centuries, she burned in the inextinguishable and silent flame of her love. "Erect on the candelabra, in the silence, you will illuminate the meditations of my soul, until death." She was burning with an inner fire, without ever claiming any food for the flames, without ever asking anything from the loved one in return. She renounced forever all possession: higher in her purity than God himself, since God loves his creatures but exacts from them a reciprocity of love, and becomes terrible against those who refuse to love him. Her love was Stylite love, sublime and solitary, nourishing itself with one blood and one soul. She had felt fall around her that part of her substance which was opposed to an entire offering. Nothing disquieting or impure remained in her. Her body had been metamorphosed into a subtle, agile, diaphanous, incorruptible element; her senses had dissolved into one supreme and only voluptuousness. Set up on the summit of the marvellous stela, she burned up from and enjoyed her ardor and her splendor like a flame conscious of its own enflamed existence.

Hippolyte listened intently, and said:

"Don't you hear? Another procession! To-morrow is the Vigil."

The dawns, the noons, the twilights and the nights rang with the religious chants. One procession followed the other, in the hot glare of the sun, in the silvery rays of the moon. All were emigrating to the same land and were celebrating the same name, animated by the vehemence of a similar passion, terrible and wretched in appearance, deserting on the highroads the sick and the dying, without stopping, prompt to throw down no matter what obstacle to reach the place where awaited them the balm for all their ills, the promise of all their hopes. They marched, marched ceaselessly, obliterating with their own sweat their footprints in the endless dust.

What an immense irradiation of strength that simple image must possess, to move and allure all these masses of heavy flesh! Almost four centuries before, an old septuagenarian, in a plain devastated by the hail, thought he perceived the Virgin of Mercy in the tops of a tree; and since then, each year, on the anniversary of the apparition, all the peoples of the mountains and the coast have gone on a pilgrimage to the holy place to beseech mercy for its sufferings.

Hippolyte had already heard the legend from Candie; and for the past few days she had nourished a secret desire to visit the Sanctuary. The predominance of love and the habit of sensual pleasure had banished all religious sentiment in her; but, a Roman of good family, and, what is more, born in the Trastevere, brought up in one of those bourgeois families in which, according to immemorial tradition, the key of the conscience is always in the hands of a priest, she was a strict Catholic, devoted to all the external practices of the Church, subject to periodical returns of exalted fervor.

"Meanwhile, why should we not go to Casalbordino, too? To-morrow is the Vigil. Let us go there—shall we? It will be a great sight for you. We'll take the old man with us."

George consented. Hippolyte's desire corresponded with his own. He thought it necessary to him to follow this deep current, to form part of this wild conglomeration of men, to experience material contact with the inferior classes of his race, those dense and immutable layers on which the primitive impressions had perhaps been preserved intact.

"We'll start to-morrow," he added, seized by a kind of anxiety as he heard the chant approaching.

Hippolyte told him, as related by Candie, some of the atrocious tests to which the pilgrims had vowed to submit. She shuddered with horror. And, while the chant grew louder, both felt a tragic breath pass over their souls.

They were on the hill, at night. The moon was high in the sky. A cool humidity extended over the vast vegetable masses, still vibrating from the storm of the afternoon.

All the leaves were weeping, and these myriads of tears, scintillating like diamonds in the moonlight, transfigured the forest. As George had accidentally stumbled over the trunk of a tree, the luminous drops of the shaken branches fell on Hippolyte, covering her with constellations. She gave a little cry, and began to laugh.

"Ah, traitor!" she murmured, convinced that George had done it intentionally.

And she took measures for reprisals.

Thus shaken, the trees and bushes threw off their liquid gems with a lively crepitation, while Hippolyte's laughs resounded at intervals, on the slope of the hill. George also laughed, suddenly forgetful of his nightmare, permitting himself to be won by the seduction of youth, permitting himself to be penetrated by this bracing nocturnal coolness in which was distilled all the fragrance of the earth. He tried to reach first the tree whose foliage seemed most heavily laden with water; and she tried to reach it before him, running courageously on the slippery declivity. They almost always reached the tree at the same time, and they shook it together, both remaining under the shower. In the unsteady shadow of the foliage the whiteness of Hippolyte's eyes and teeth assumed extraordinary lustre; and the tiny drops, like diamond dust, glittered on the pretty curls on her temples, on her cheeks, on her lips, even on her eyelashes, trembling from her laughter.

"Ah, you magician!" cried George, letting go of the tree and seizing the woman, who once more appeared to him in a mysterious flash of nocturnal beauty.

He began to kiss her all over her face; and to his lips she was cool and wet with dew, like fruit just plucked from the tree.

"There! there! there!"

He imprinted hearty, resounding kisses on her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, her temples, her neck, as insatiable as if the flesh were a novelty to him. And, as she felt the kisses, Hippolyte took that almost ecstatic attitude usual with her when she felt that her lover was in one of his moments of true intoxication. At those times, she seemed anxious to release from the depths of her own substance the sweetest and most powerful perfume of love, to excite George's intoxication to the point of anguish.

"There!"

He stopped, seized by anguish. He had reached the extreme limit of sensation, and could not go beyond.

They said no more; they took each other's hand; they continued on their way to the Hermitage, cutting across the fields because, in their thoughtless frolic, they had wandered from the road. They felt now indefinable lassitude and melancholy. George seemed astonished. So Life, unexpectedly, like a furtive gesture in the shadow, had offered him a new savour—a new sensation, real and profound, at the close of a day full of anxiety, spent in a cloister of flitting phantoms! But was that Life? Was it not rather Dreamland? "The one is always the shadow of the other," he thought. There where is Life, there is Dreamland; there where is Dreamland, there is Life.

"Look!" interrupted Hippolyte, with a start of admiration.

It was as if she illustrated with a picture the thought he had not revealed.

In the moonlight, a vine was there, silent. The upright vine-stocks were twined around the reeds like around agile thyrses; and the streaming branches, diaphanous against the luminous horizon with a thousand intertwinings of their subtle ribs, in the perfect immobility of mineral things, and with an appearance of indescribably fragile and ephemeral crystal, had neither terrestrial reality nor any communion with the environing forms, but seemed to be the last visible fragment of an allegorical world conceived by a theurgy and about to fade away.

Spontaneously arose in George's memory the verse of the hymn: "Vinea mea coram me est."

CHAPTER V.[*]

[*] It should, perhaps, be mentioned here that the publication of "The Triumph of Death" began in the Mattino, of Naples, on February 12, 1893, while the publication of Émile Zola's work "Lourdes" only began in the Gil Blas, of Paris, on April 15, 1894.—TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

Since dawn, train after train had vomited immense waves of humanity on the platforms of the Casalbordino Station. People from the villages and market towns mingled with fraternities from the most distant hamlets who had not wished, or been able, to make the pilgrimage on foot. They precipitated themselves in a tumult from the carriages, shouting, gesticulating, and pushing each other to storm the wagons and coaches, amid the cracking of whips and the tinkling of bells; or, again, they fell into line, in long files, behind a crucifix, and, when their procession started on the dusty road, they struck up the hymn.

Already frightened by the size of the crowd, George and Hippolyte turned instinctively toward the sea close by, to wait until the crowd dispersed. A field of hemp undulated peacefully before the blue background of the waters. The sails shone like flames on the clear horizon.

George said to his companion:

"Aren't you afraid? I fear the fatigue will hurt you."

She replied:

"Do not be alarmed; I am strong. Besides, to deserve a favor, must one not suffer a little?"

He replied, smiling:

"Are you going to ask a favor?"

"Yes, only one."

"But are we not in the state of mortal sin?"

"That is true."

"Well, then?"

"I shall ask, just the same."

They had brought with them old Colas, who, acquainted with the localities and usages, served them as a guide. As soon as the door of their compartment was disencumbered they descended, and got into a coach which started off at a gallop, with a great tinkling of bells. The horses were decorated and plumed like barberi. The drivers wore peacocks' feathers in their hats, and did not cease flourishing their whips, accompanying the deafening cracks with hoarse cries.

Hippolyte, tormented by impatience and extraordinary uneasiness, as if this day were to realize some great event for her, asked the old man:

"How long will it take to get there?"

"Half an hour at the most."

"Is the church very old?"

"No, signora. I can still remember the time when it didn't exist. Fifty years ago, there was only a small chapel."

He drew from his pocket a sheet of paper folded in four, unfolded it, and showed it to George.

"You can read it. It's the history of the church."

It was a picture, with the legend at the bottom. The Virgin, in a cloud of angels, was seated on an olive-tree, and an old man was adoring her, prostrated at the foot of the trunk. This old man was named Alexander Muzio: and this is the story as told by the legend:

"In the year of Our Lord 1527, during the evening of the 10th of June, the Sunday of the Pentecost, a storm broke over the district of Casalbordino and devastated the vines, the corn, and the olive-groves. The following morning, an old septuagenarian of Pollutro, Alexander Muzio, proprietor of a wheat field at Pinno del Lago, started on his way to visit it. His heart sank at the sight of the damaged crops; but, in his profound humility, he praised the justice of God. Very devoted to the Holy Virgin, he was telling his beads while walking, when, at the end of the valley, he heard the bell ringing at the elevation of the Mass. He immediately kneeled down and concentrated all his fervor for the prayer. But while he prayed he saw himself surrounded by a brilliancy which eclipsed that of the sun, and in this brilliancy appeared to him the Mother of Mercy, robed in azure; and she spoke to him sweetly: 'Go and carry the news. Let a temple be raised on this spot, and I will distribute my favors here. Go to thy field, and thou wilt find thy wheat intact.' She disappeared with her crown of angels. And the old man rose, went as far as his field, found his wheat intact. Then he hastened to Pollutro, saw the curate Mariano d' Iddone, related to him the prodigy. In a few seconds the news had spread all over the Casalbordino district. The entire population ran to the holy spot, saw the dry soil around the tree, saw undulate the prosperous harvest, recognized the miracle, and shed tears of penitence and feeling. Soon afterwards the Vicar of Arabona laid the first stone of a chapel, and the proxies for the edification were Geronimo di Geronimo and Giovanni Fatalone, Casalesians. On the altar they painted the Virgin, with the old Alexander prostrated in the act of adoration."

The legend was simple, commonplace, similar to a hundred others founded on miracle. Since that first act of mercy, it was in the name of the Virgin that ships were saved from the tempest, lands from the hail, travellers from robbers, sick people from death. Placed amidst an unfortunate people, the Image was an inexhaustible source of salvation.

"Of all the Madonnas in the world, ours is the one who does most good," said Colas di Sciampagne, kissing the sacred sheet before replacing it in his bosom. "They say that another vision has been seen in the kingdom. But ours is the best. Don't be afraid. She's worth all the others——"

His tone and his attitude displayed that sectarian fanaticism which fires the blood of all idolaters, and which, at times, in the region of the Abruzzi, impels populations to ferocious wars for the supremacy of an idol. The old man, like all his brothers in belief, did not conceive the Divine Being outside of the painted image; it was in the image that he saw and adored the real presence of the celestial personage. The Image upon the altar, for him, was a creature of flesh and bones; she breathed, smiled, winked, bowed her head, made gestures with her hand. And everywhere it was the same thing: all the sacred statues, in wood, wax, bronze, or silver, lived a real life in their vile substance or precious metal. When they became old, when they broke, or were destroyed in the course of the years, they did not give way to new statues without giving savage signs of their anger. One day a fragment of a bust, become unrecognizable and confounded with firewood, had splurted blood under the axe and uttered threatening words. Another fragment, planed and arranged among the staves of a vat, had manifested its supernatural character by causing the apparition in the water of its primitive and integral form.

"Hey, there!" cried the old man to a pedestrian, who was painfully walking in the suffocating dust along the curbstone. "Hey, there, Aligi!"

He turned towards his guests, adding with commiseration:

"He's a good Christian, a man of hereabouts. He's going to carry his vow. He is convalescent. Do you see, signora, how winded he is? Will you let him ride on the front seat?"

"Yes, yes. Stop, stop!" said Hippolyte, affected.

The carriage stopped.

"Run, Aligi! The gentlefolk are kind to you. Come, get up!"

The good Christian approached. He was gasping, bent over his stick, covered with dust, bathed in perspiration, dazed by the sun. A collar of reddish beard surrounded his chin from one ear to the other, and framed his face dotted with freckles; locks of reddish hair emerged from under his hat, sticking to the forehead and temples; his hollow eyes, converging towards the base of the nose, of no precise color, recalled those of epileptics. Gasping and hoarsely, he said:

"Thanks! God will reward you. May the Madonna protect you! But I can't ride."

He held in his right hand an object wrapped in a white handkerchief.

"Is that your offering?" asked Colas. "Let us see."

The man opened the corners of the handkerchief, and showed a waxen leg as livid as the leg of a cadaver and on it was painted a festering sore. The heat had softened it and made it shiny, as if moist with sweat.

"Don't you see it's melting?"

And Colas stretched out his hand to feel it.

"It's soft. If you go on walking, it'll drip on to the road."

Aligi repeated:

"I can't ride. I made a vow to go on foot."

And, not without anxiety, he examined the leg by raising it to the level of his oblique eyes.

On this scorching road, amid this dust, under this great strong light, nothing sadder could be imagined than this emaciated man and that livid thing, repugnant as an amputated limb, which was to perpetuate the memory of a sore on walls already covered by silent and motionless effigies of so many infirmities visited upon human flesh through all the centuries.

"Hey, there!"

And the horses resumed their trot.

After the small hills were left behind, the road crossed a plain rich in harvests, almost ripe. The old man, with his senile loquaciousness, related the episodes of Aligi's malady, spoke of the gangrenous sore cured by the Virgin's finger. To the right and left of the road the sweet ears of corn surpassed the hedges, suggesting a beautiful overflowing cup.

"There's the Sanctuary!" exclaimed Hippolyte.

And she pointed to a red brick edifice which rose in the centre of a great, encumbered plain.

A few moments later, the carriage rejoined the crowd.

CHAPTER VI.

It was a marvellous and terrible spectacle, unheard of, without resemblance to any conglomeration ever seen before, whether of men or things; a pell-mell so strange, so violent and incongruous, that it exceeded the most troubled dreams of nightmare. All the ugliness of the eternal islet, all the shameful vices, all the stupors; all the spasms and all the deformities of the baptized flesh, all the tears of repentance, all the mockery of the debauchee; insanity, cupidity, cunning, lewdness, stupidity, fear, mortal fatigue, stony indifference, silent despair; sacred choirs, demoniacal shrieks, acrobatic performances, the chiming of bells, the blasts of trumpets, discordant cries, roars, sighs; the crackling of fires beneath cauldrons, heaps of fruits and sugared delicacies, shop windows full of utensils, draperies, arms, jewels, rosaries; the obscene contortions of dancing girls, the convulsions of epileptics, the blows exchanged in angry brawls, the flight of the hunted thief through the surging mob; the scum of the worst corruptions vomited from out the filthy alleys of distant towns and cast upon an ignorant and amazed multitude; clouds of parasites, like gadflies about cattle, falling upon the compact crowd, incapable of self-defence; every base temptation for the brutal appetite, every fraud, every immodesty was exhibited in broad daylight—a pell-mell of everything was there, seething and fermenting around the House of the Virgin.

This House was a massive red brick structure, of vulgar architecture, devoid of ornamentation. Against the exterior walls, against the pillars of the portal, peddlers of sacred objects had established their tents, arranged their stalls, and sold their wares. Close by were erected canvas booths, conical in shape, ornamented with large pictures representing bloody battles and cannibal feasts. At the entrance, sinister-looking men, of ignoble and equivocal appearance, trumpeted and vociferated. Shameless women, with enormous legs, swollen abdomens, flabby breasts, clad in dirty tights and bespangled rags, glorified, in extravagant jargon, the marvels hidden by the red curtain behind them. One of these tattered ribalds, who looked like a monster engendered by a dwarf and a sow, gave kisses from her sticky lips to a lascivious monkey, while near her a clown, covered with powder and carmine, struck an ear-splitting bell with frantic fury.

The processions arrived in long files, preceded by their cross-bearers, chanting the hymn. The women held each other by a corner of their dresses and walked like ecstatics, stupefied, their eyes wide open and fixed. Those of Trigno wore robes of scarlet plush with a thousand folds, caught up in the middle of the back, almost under the shoulders, and crossed at the hips by a multicolored scarf which raised the dress, tightened it, and formed a swelling like a hump. And as, broken by fatigue, they wended their way—bent, their limbs staggering, dragging shoes heavy as lead, they had the appearance of strange, gibbous animals. Many had goitres; and their golden necklaces glistened beneath the sunburnt swellings.

Viva Maria!

Above the crowd appeared the soothsayers, seated in front, opposite each other, on a small, raised platform. Their head-bandage permitted a view only of the loquacious mouth, tireless, full of saliva. They spoke in a sing-song tone, raising and lowering their voices, their nodding heads keeping time with the music. At intervals they reswallowed the superabundant saliva, with a light, whistling sound. One of them displayed a greasy playing-card, crying, "This is the anchor of good hope!" Another, from whose enormous mouth darted in and out, between decayed teeth, a tongue covered with a yellowish ecuma, leaned her whole person towards the auditors, having on her knees her large varicose hands and in the hollow of her lap a heap of copper coins. The auditors, very attentive, did not lose a word, did not wink, did not make a single gesture. But, from time to time, they moistened their parched lips with their tongues.

Viva Maria!

New bands of pilgrims arrived, passed, disappeared. Here and there, in the shadow of the booths, under big blue parasols, or even in the sun, old women, broken by fatigue, lay on the dry grass, sleeping, their bodies bent forward, their faces between their hands. Others, seated in a ring, their legs wide apart, painfully and silently chewing carrots and bread, caring for naught, indifferent to the surrounding tumult; and one saw the too large mouthfuls pass with effort down their gullets as yellow and wrinkled as the membrane of a tortoise. Several were covered with sores, scabs or scars, without teeth, without eyelashes, without hair; they did not sleep, did not eat; they lay motionless and resigned, as if they awaited death; and upon their poor carcasses whirled a cloud of thick and eager flies as over carrion in a ditch.

But in the booths, beneath the tents heated by the mid-day sun, around the posts driven in the earth and ornamented with branches, was exercised the voracity of those who had laboriously scraped together until this day a few savings so as to accomplish the sacred vow, and also to satisfy an enormous desire to indulge in the feast, long anticipated during the meagre meals and rude toil. One saw their faces bent over their porringers, the movements of their grinding jaws, the gestures of their hands which rend, all their brutish actions in a desperate struggle with the unaccustomed aliments. Large saucepans full of a violet-colored mass were smoking in circular holes in the ground, transformed into furnaces; and the appetizing vapors spread all around. One young girl, lank and greenish as a locust, offered long rows of cheese, shaped like little horses, birds, or flowers. A man who had a face as smooth and soft as a woman's, with gold rings in his ears, with hands and arms colored by aniline like dyers', offered for sale sorbets which looked like poison.

Viva Maria!

New bands arrived, passed by. The mob surged about the portal, unable to penetrate into the church, already invaded and jammed. Jugglers, sharpers, sharks, gamesters, thieves, charlatans of all kinds, called them, misled them, cajoled them. This brotherhood of plunder scented its prey from afar, struck it like a thunderbolt, never missed its aim. They allured the simpleton in a thousand ways, raising in him the hope of rapid and sure gains; with infinite artifice, they persuaded him to take chances—they excited in him an almost feverish cupidity. Then, when he had lost all prudence and all clearsightedness, they robbed him of his last penny, merciless, by the easiest and quickest frauds; and they left him stupefied and miserable, laughing in his face and sneaking away. But the example did not prevent the others from falling into the trap. Each, deeming himself more clever and less gullible, offered to avenge his ridiculed comrade, and plunged furiously to his ruin. Incalculable privations, supported without respite in order to make a little money, amounting to the savings of an entire year scraped together penny by penny from the vital necessities—those inexpressible privations which make the avarice of the countryman as sordid and as greedy as that of mendicants—were all revealed in the trembling, callous hand which drew the money from the bottom of the pocket to expose it to chance.

Viva Maria!

New bands arrived, passed by. A constantly renewed torrent persisted in cleaving the confused and surging mob; a cadence, always the same, rose above the medley of all the acclamations. Gradually, against this rumbling background of discordant sounds, the ear no longer discerned anything but the distinct name of Mary. The hymn triumphed over the uproar. The continuous and unchained tide battered the walls of the Sanctuary heated by the sun.

Viva Maria!

Viva Maria!

For a few minutes longer George and Hippolyte, dismayed, afflicted, contemplated this formidable crowd, from which arose a nauseating stench, from which emerged here and there the painted faces of mimes and the hooded faces of the fortune-tellers. Disgust arose in their throats, impelled them to flee; and yet the attraction of this human spectacle was stronger, retained them in this heaped-up horde, led them to the spots where the worst misery was exhibited, where the worst excesses of cruelty, ignorance, and fraud were revealed, where voices howled or tears streamed.

"Let us get nearer the church," said Hippolyte, who, forgetting herself, seemed to be invaded by the flame of insanity diffused by the passing bands, whose wild fanaticism seemed to increase in fury as the sun beat down more furiously on their heads.

"Are you not tired?" asked George, taking her hands. "If you like, we'll go away. We'll look for some place where we can rest. I'm afraid it may hurt you. We will go if you like."

"No, no; I am strong. I can stand it. Let us get nearer. Let us enter the church. You see, everybody is going there. Do you hear how they are shouting?" She was visibly suffering. Her mouth was convulsed, the muscles of her face contracted; and her hand constantly tormented George's arm. But her gaze never left the door of the Sanctuary, nor that veil of bluish smoke through which, by turns, scintillated and disappeared the little flames of the wax tapers.

"Do you hear how they are shouting?"

She staggered. The cries resembled those of a massacre, as if men and women were cutting each other's throats, were struggling in oceans of blood.

Colas said:

"They are asking favors."

The old man had not left his guests for an instant; he had taken a thousand pains to open a passage for them in the crowd, to make a little space about them.

"Do you want to go there?" he asked.

Hippolyte made up her mind.

"Yes, let us go."

Colas preceded them, pushing right and left with his elbows in order to get near the portals. Hippolyte no longer touched the ground, almost carried in the arms of George, who summoned all his strength in order to support her and himself. A female beggar pursued them, kept at their heels, pleading for charity in a lamentable tone, stretching out her hand, at times advancing it so far as to touch them. And they saw nothing but this senile hand, deformed by large knots at the joints, of a bluish yellow, with long violet-hued nails, with the skin peeling between the fingers—such a hand as might belong to a sick and decrepit monkey.

Finally they arrived at the portal; and they leaned back against one of the pillars, near the stand of a vender of rosaries.

The processions, while waiting their turn to enter, marched around the church; they turned, turned without cease—heads uncovered, behind the cross-bearers, without ever interrupting their chant. Men and women carried a stick surmounted either with a cross or a bunch of flowers, and leaned upon it with all the weight of their fatigue. Their brows dripped with perspiration; streams of perspiration rolled down their cheeks, soaked their clothes. The men had their shirts open at their breasts, the neck bare, the arms bare; and on their hands, on their wrists, on the backs of their arms, on their breasts, the skin was checkered with marks tattooed in indigo, in commemoration of sanctuaries visited, of favors received, of vows accomplished. Every deformity of muscle or bone, every variety of physical ugliness, every indelible imprint left by manual toil, intemperateness, and disease: heads pointed and flat, bald or woolly, covered with scars or excrescences; eyes white and opaque as globes of butter-milk, eyes glaucous and sad like those of large, lonely frogs; flat noses as if crushed by the blow of a fist, or hooked like the beaks of vultures, or long and fat like trunks, or almost destroyed by eating ulcers; cheeks red-veined like the bunches of the vine in Autumn, or yellowish and wrinkled like the belly of a ruminant, or bristling with reddish hairs like the spears of maize; mouths as thin as the gash of a razor, or wide open and flabby like over-ripe figs, or shrunken and shrivelled like dry leaves, or furnished with teeth as formidable as those of a wild boar; hare-lips, goitres, erysipelas, scrofulas, pustules—all the horrors of the human flesh passed, in the light of the sun, before the House of the Virgin.

Viva Maria!

Each band had its cross-bearer and its chief. The leader was a strong-limbed, violent man, who incessantly stimulated the faithful by the yells and actions of a maniac, sinking the laggards on their backs, dragging the exhausted old men, swearing at the women who interrupted the hymn to take breath. An olive-colored giant, whose eyes glittered beneath a great shock of black hair, dragged along three women by the three cords of three halters. Another woman marched in front, naked in a sack from which only her head and arms appeared. Another, long and emaciated, with a livid face and whitish eyes, marched along like a somnambulist, without chanting, without ever turning, displaying on her breast a red sash resembling the bloody bandage of a mortal wound; and every moment she tottered, as if her limbs had no longer sufficient strength to support her, and she were about to fall to rise no more. Another, wild as a beast of prey, a true rustic Fury, with a blood-colored mantle wound around her bony shanks, with glittering embroideries on her bosom, like scales on a fish, brandished a black crucifix to guide and excite her detachment. Another wore on her head a cradle covered with a sombre cloth, like Liberata on the funereal night.

Viva Maria!

They turned, turned without cease; hastening their steps, raising their voices, exciting themselves more and more to yell and gesticulate like demons. Virgins, almost bald at the top of their heads, their scant hair flowing loose and almost impregnated with olive-oil, stupid as sheep, advanced in files, each holding her hand on the shoulder of her companion, her eyes fixed on the ground, and full of repentance: miserable creatures whose wombs were destined to perpetuate in the baptized flesh, without enjoyment, the instincts and sadness of the primeval beast. In a sort of deep coffin carried by four men lay a paralytic, suffocating from obesity, with dangling hands, twisted and knotted like roots by a frightful case of gout. A continual trembling shook his hands; an abundant sweat dropped from his brow and bald head, streaming down his big face, colored like a faded rose, covered with fine network like the spleen of an ox. And he wore a number of scapularies suspended from his neck, with the picture of the Image spread over his abdomen. He wheezed and lamented as if already seized by the terrors of the impending death-agony; round about him was an unbearable stench, as of putrefying flesh; he exhaled from every pore the atrocious torments which the last palpitations of life caused him. And yet he did not wish to die, and so as not to die he had himself carried in a coffin to the feet of the Mother. Not far from him, other vigorous men, experienced in carrying massive statues on high standards at holy festivals, dragged a lunatic by the arms; and the lunatic struggled in their grasp, shrieking, his clothes in tatters, foaming at the mouth, his eyes starting from their sockets, the veins of his neck swollen, his hair dishevelled, as black in the face as a hanged man. Aligi also passed, the man elect by grace, paler now than his waxen limb. And once more they all went by again in their endless turning: the three women led by halters passed; the Fury with the black crucifix passed; and passed also the taciturn woman with the bloody scarf; and she carrying the cradle on her head; and she dressed in a sack, imprisoned in her mortification, bathed in silent tears which gushed from beneath her lowered eyelids, a figure of the distant ages, isolated in the crowd, as if enveloped in a breath of ancient penitential rigor, and resurrecting in George's soul the great and spotless Clementine basilica, whose rude, primitive crypt reminded him of the Christians of the ninth century, the time of Ludovic II.

Viva Maria!

They turned and turned, without ever stopping, hastening their steps, raising their voices, almost crazed by the sun which beat upon their heads, excited by the yells of the fanatics and by the acclamations heard within the church as they passed before the door, carried away by a terrific frenzy which impelled them to sanguinary sacrifices, to the tortures of the flesh, to the most inhuman tests. They turned, turned, impatient to enter, impatient to prostrate themselves on the sacred stone, to fill with their tears the furrows worn there by thousands upon thousands of knees. They turned, turned, increasing in number, pushing, jostling, with such an accordance of fury that they appeared no longer a conglomeration of individuals, but a compact mass, some kind of blind matter projected by a vertiginous power.

Viva Maria!

Viva Maria!

In the mass, a young man suddenly fell down, struck by an attack of epilepsy. His neighbors surrounded him, carried him away from the whirlpool. Others, numerous, left the mob which occupied the esplanade, and ran to see the sight.

"What has happened?" asked Hippolyte, growing paler, with an extraordinary change in her face and voice.

"Nothing, nothing—a sunstroke," replied George, taking her by the arm, and trying to lead her away.

But Hippolyte had understood. She had seen two men forcibly open the jaws of the epileptic, and insert a key in his mouth, doubtless to prevent his biting his tongue. And, at the thought, she felt in her own teeth that horrible grating, and an instinctive shudder shook her to the inner-most depths of her being, there where the "sacred evil" slept with a possibility of awakening.

Colas di Sciampagne said:

"It is someone who has the Saint Donat malady. Don't be afraid."

"Let us go—let us go away!" insisted George, uneasy, dismayed, trying to lead his companion elsewhere.

"What if she were similarly taken, all at once," he thought. "What if the disease attacked her here, in the midst of this crowd?"

A chill ran through him. He recalled the letters dated from Caronno, those letters in which she had made the frightful revelation in hopeless terms. And again, as then, he imagined: "Her hands, pallid and shrivelled, and between the fingers the torn-out curl of hair."

"Let us go away! Do you want to enter the church?"

She remained silent, stupefied, as if by a blow on the head.

"Shall we enter?" repeated George, shaking her, and attempting to dissimulate his own anxiety.

He would have liked to ask, also: "Of what are you thinking?" But he did not dare. He saw in Hippolyte's eyes such profound sadness that he felt his heart oppressed and a choking sensation in his throat. Then, the suspicion that this silence and stupor might be the precursors of an imminent attack filled him with a sort of panicky terror.

Without reflection, he stammered:

"Are you ill?"

These anxious words, which were a confession of his suspicion, which revealed his secret fear, increased still more the trouble of the two lovers.

"No, no," she said, with a visible shudder, benumbed with horror, and pressed close to George, that he might defend her from the peril.

Hemmed in by the mob, dismayed, disgusted, miserable like the others, as needful of pity and help as the rest, crushed like the others beneath the weight of their mortal flesh, both, for a moment, felt in veritable communion with the multitude in the midst of which they trembled and suffered; both, for a moment, forgot in the immensity of human sorrow the limits of their souls.

It was Hippolyte who was the first to turn towards the church, towards the great portal, towards that veil of bluish smoke through which, by turns, scintillated and disappeared the little flames of the wax tapers.

"Let us go in," she said, in a choking voice, without leaving George's side.

Colas remarked that it was impossible to enter by the main entrance.

"But," he added, "I know another door—follow me."

With great difficulty they forced a passage. And yet, a false energy sustained them; a blind obstinacy impelled them on, almost like that displayed by the fanatics in their endless turning. They had caught the contagion. From now on George no longer felt he was master of himself. His nerves dominated him, imposed on him the disorder and excess of their sensations.

"Follow me!" repeated the old man, stemming the torrent by sheer strength of his elbows, and struggling fiercely to protect his guests against the crush.

They entered by a side door into a sort of sacristy, from which could be seen, through a bluish smoke, the walls entirely covered by votive offerings of wax suspended there in proof of the miracles accomplished by the Virgin. Limbs, arms, hands, feet, breasts, shapeless pieces representing tumors, gangrenes, and ulcers, horrid representations of monstrous maladies, pictures of violet and crimson sores which cried out from the pallor of the wax—all these objects, motionless on the four high walls, had a mortuary appearance, horrifying and frightful, evoking the image of a charnel-house where are piled up all the limbs amputated in a hospital. Heaps of human bodies encumbered the pavement, inert; and in the heap appeared livid faces, bleeding mouths, dusty faces, bald heads, white hair. They were nearly all old people, prostrated by a spasm in front of the altar, carried in arms, and heaped in piles like cadavers in time of a pest. Another old man arrived from the church, carried in the arms of two men who were sobbing: the motion caused his head to hang now on his chest, now on his shoulder; drops of blood rained on his shirt front from lacerations of his nose, lips, and chin. Behind him continued the hopeless cries of anguish, imploring the favor which this old man had not obtained.

"Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!"

It was an unheard-of clamor, more atrocious than the yells of a man burnt alive without hope of salvation; more terrible than the cry of shipwrecked sailors condemned to a certain death upon the nocturnal sea.

"Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!"

A thousand arms were stretched towards the altar with savage frenzy. The women dragged themselves along on their knees, sobbing, tearing out their hair, striking their hips, bruising their foreheads on the stones, twisting as if in convulsions or possessed. Many, on all fours, sustaining the entire weight of their horizontal bodies on their elbows and naked toes, advanced gradually towards the altar. They crawled along like reptiles, they gathered themselves together, springing on their toes, with progressive propulsions, and beneath their petticoats could be seen their callous yellow soles, the projecting and pointed ankle-bones of their feet. At times the hands seconded the efforts of the elbows, trembling around the mouth which kissed the dust, near the tongue which traced in this dust the sign of the cross, with a saliva mixed with blood. And the crawling bodies passed over these bloody tracings without effacing them, whilst, before each head, a man erect struck the pavement with the tip of a stick in order to indicate the right way to the altar.

"Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!"

Kinswomen, dragging themselves along on their knees on each side of the furrow, superintended the votive agony. From time to time they leaned forward to encourage their unfortunate sisters. When the latter seemed about to faint, they went to their relief, supported them under the arms, or fanned their heads with a cloth. While doing this they shed hot tears; and wept even more copiously when they assisted the old men or adolescents, acquitting themselves of the same vows. For there were not only women, but also old men, adults, adolescents, who, to approach the altar, to be worthy to lift their eyes towards the Image, subjected themselves to this torment. Each placed his tongue on the spot where another had already left a wet trace; each struck his forehead or his chin on the spot where another had already left a shred of his skin, a drop of his blood, of his sweat, and of his tears. Suddenly a long ray of sunlight penetrated the large portal into the interstices of the crowd, illuminating the soles of the shrunken feet, calloused by the arid soil or mountainous rocks, so deformed that they appeared less the feet of human beings than the feet of beasts; illuminating bald and hairy heads, white with old age, or light brown or black, supported by bull-like necks which swelled in the effort, or shaking and weak like the greenish head of an old turtle, out of his shell, or like a disinterred skull still bearing a few grayish locks and a few shreds of reddish skin.

Now and then, over this swarm of reptiles, a blue wave of incense spread slowly, veiling for a moment this humility, this hope, and this bodily pain, as if in compassion. New patients forced a passage, presented themselves at the altar to solicit the miracle; and their shadows and their voices covered the prostrate bodies that seemed as if they would never be able to rise.

"Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!"

The mothers exposed their dried-up breasts, which they showed to the Virgin, imploring the blessing of milk, while behind them their kinswomen carried the emaciated children, almost dying, who uttered wailing cries. Wives prayed for the fecundity of their sterile womb, and gave as offerings their clothes and marriage jewels.

"Holy Virgin, have mercy on me, in the name of the Son whom thou dost bear in thine arms!"

They prayed at first in low tones, tearfully reciting their woes, as if they were having a secret conversation with the Image, as if the Image were bending forward from above to listen to their lamentations. Then, gradually, they exalted themselves almost to the point of fury, insanity, as if they wished, by their acclamations and insane gestures, to compel consent to the prodigy. They summoned all their energy to utter a superhuman shriek capable of reaching the very bottom of the Virgin's heart.

"Have mercy on us! Have mercy on us!"

And they stopped, staring anxiously, with their dilated and fixed eyes, in the hope of surprising, finally, a sign upon the visage of the celestial person who scintillated in a reflection of jewels between the columns of the inaccessible altar.

Another wave of fanatics arrived, took their places, spread out along the entire length of the railing. Tumultuous cries and violent gestures alternated with their offerings. Inside the railing which intercepted the access to the large altar, priests received in their fat and white hands the moneys and trinkets. In the act of tendering the right or left hand, on either side, they balanced themselves like caged beasts in a menagerie. Behind them, the clerks held large metal plates on which the offerings jinglingly accumulated. On one side, near the door of the sacristy, other priests were stooping over a table: they were counting the money and examining the jewels, while one of them, bony and brownish, made entries with a quill pen in a large ledger. They each performed this task in turn, and then left it to officiate. From time to time the bell sounded, and the censer was elevated amidst a cloud of smoke. Long, bluish waves rolled around the tonsured heads and dispersed on the other side of the railing. The sacred perfume mingled with the human stench.

"Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix ...

Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi."

At times, during unexpected and terrible pauses like those of a hurricane, when the crowd was oppressed by the anguish of expectation, one could distinctly hear the Latin words:

"Concede nos famulos tuos."

Beneath the large portal advanced with pomp a married couple, escorted by all their relatives in a blaze of gold, in a rustling of silk. The spouse, young and vigorous, had a head like a barbarian queen, with thick and joining eyebrows, wavy and shining black hair, a fleshy and blood-red mouth, in which the incisive, irregular teeth raised the upper lip, shaded with a virile shadow. A necklace of large gold beads was wound thrice around her neck; large gold hoops embellished with filigree work hung from her ears, on her cheeks; a corsage scintillating like a coat of mail confined her bosom. She marched gravely, entirely absorbed in her thoughts, scarcely winking her eyelids, holding her ringed hand on her husband's shoulder. The husband was also young, of medium stature, almost beardless, very pale and with an expression of profound sadness, as if devoured by a sad secret. The appearance of both seemed to indicate the fatality of a primitive mystery.

Whispers spread around their passage. They themselves neither spoke nor turned their heads, followed by their parents, men and women, entwined in a chain by their arms, as if about to perform an ancient dance. "What vow were they accomplishing? What favors were they asking?"

The news spread in a low tone from mouth to mouth: they asked for the young man a return of genital virility, of which some evil influence doubtless had deprived him. The virginity of his spouse still remained intact; the conjugal couch was still immaculate.

When they were near to the railing they both raised their eyes toward the Image silently; and they remained a few moments motionless, absorbed in the same mute supplication. But, behind them, the two mothers extended their arms, agitated their dried and wrinkled hands, which on the marriage day had distributed in vain the augural grain. They stretched out their arms and cried:

"Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!"

With slow gestures, the wife removed the rings from her fingers and offered them. Then she took out the heavy golden hoops. Then she took off her hereditary necklace. All this wealth she offered at the altar.

"Take it, blessed Virgin! Take it, most Holy Mary of Miracles!" cried the mothers, with voices already rendered hoarse by their cries, with demonstrations redoubled by fervor, each glancing at the other sidewise to see that her neighbor was not surpassing her in ardor in the eyes of the attentive crowd.

"Take it! Take it!"

They saw the gold fall, fall into the hands of the impassive priest; then they heard the precious metal jingle on the clerk's plate, coin acquired by dint of the persistent toil of several generations, preserved for years and years at the bottom of the strong box, and brought to light again at every new wedding-day. They beheld fall the family wealth, fall, disappear forever. The immensity of the sacrifice plunged them into despair, and their distress extended to their kinsmen. The relatives ended by uttering piercing shrieks altogether. The young man alone remained silent, keeping constantly fixed on the Image his eyes, from which gushed two streams of silent tears.

Then there was a pause, during which one could hear the Latin words of the service and the cadence chanted by the processions which were still turning around the church. Then the couple resumed their first position, and, their eyes still fixed on the Image, slowly fell back.

A new band, yelling furiously, now interposed between them and the railing. For a few seconds the young woman towered a head above the tumult, despoiled now of all her bridal jewelry, but more beautiful and more vigorous, enveloped in a sort of Dionysiac mystery, exhaling over this barbaric multitude a breath as of very ancient life; and she disappeared, never to be forgotten. Exalted far beyond the time and the reality, George's gaze followed her until she disappeared. His soul lived in the horror of an unknown world; in the presence of a nameless people, associated with rites of very obscure origin. The faces of men and women appeared to him as if in a delirious vision, marked with the stamp of a humanity other than his own, and formed of a different substance; and the looks, the motions, and the voices, and all the perceptible signs, struck him with stupor, as if they had had no analogy with the habitual human expressions which he had known up to then. Certain figures exercised over him a sudden magnetic attraction. He followed them in the crowd, dragging Hippolyte with him; he gazed after them on tiptoe; he watched all their actions; he felt their cries reverberate in his own heart; he felt himself invaded by the same madness; he himself felt a brutal desire to shout and gesticulate.

From time to time Hippolyte and he glanced at each other; they saw each other pale, convulsed, aghast, exhausted. But neither one proposed to leave the terrible place, as if they lacked the strength to do so. Jostled by the mob, almost carried away at times, they wandered here and there in the midst of the uproar, holding hands or arms, while the old man made continuous efforts to help and protect them. A procession, coming up, forced them against the railing. During several minutes they remained there, prisoners, closed in on all sides, enveloped by the smoke of the incense, deafened by the cries, suffocated by the heat, in the thickest part of the gesticulating and insanity.

"Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!"

It was the reptile women, who, arrived at last, rose to their feet. One among them was carried by her relatives, rigid as a corpse. They stood her on her feet; they shook her. She seemed dead. Her face was all dusty, the skin flayed from her nose and forehead, her mouth full of blood. Those who helped her blew in her face to bring her back to consciousness, wiped her mouth with a cloth which became crimson, shook her again and called her by name. All at once her head fell back; then she threw herself against the railing, grasped the iron bars, stiffened her whole body, and began to scream like a woman in delivery.

She yelled and struggled, drowning every other clamor. A torrent of tears inundated her face, washing off the dust and blood.

"Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!"

And behind her, by her sides, other women surged, tottered, reanimated themselves, implored:

"Mercy! Mercy!"

They lost their voices, grew pale, broke down heavily, and were carried away inert masses, while others again seemed to surge up from below ground.

"Mercy! Mercy!"

These shrieks, which rent the breasts that emitted them; these syllables repeated without cease, with the persistence of the same unconquerable faith; this thick smoke, which overhung like the cloud of a tempest; this contact of bodies, this mixture of breaths, the sight of this blood and these tears—all this made that at one moment the entire multitude found itself possessed by a single soul, became a single being, miserable and terrible, having but one gesture, but one voice, but one convulsion, but one frenzy. All the evils melted into one single evil, which the Virgin should destroy; all the hopes melted into one single hope, which the Virgin should grant.

"Mercy! Mercy!"

And, beneath the scintillating Image, the little flames of the waxen tapers trembled before this wind of passion.

CHAPTER VII.

George and Hippolyte were now seated in the open air, away from the turmoil, beneath the trees, stupefied and faint, like two shipwrecked people escaped from peril, mute, almost without power of thought, although, from time to time, a shudder at the recent horror again ran through them. Hippolyte's eyes were red from crying. Both, in the Sanctuary, at the tragic moment, had been seized by a common delirium; and, from fear of madness, they had taken flight.

They were now seated away from the turmoil, at the extreme end of the esplanade, beneath the trees. This corner was almost deserted. One only saw there, around several twisted olive-tree trunks, groups of beasts of burden with empty pack-saddles, in an immobility of lifeless forms; and they cast a sad aspect over the shade of the trees. In the distance could be heard the murmur of the swarming multitude; one heard the cadences of the sacred chants, the blasts of the trumpets, the ringing of the bells; one perceived the pilgrimages developing into long files, turning around the church, entering it and leaving it.

"Do you want to sleep?" asked George, who noticed that Hippolyte was closing her eyes.

"No; but I have no longer the courage to look——"

George felt the same repugnance. The continuity and acuteness of the sensations had overcome the resistance of his organs. The spectacle had become intolerable. He arose.

"Come, get up," he said. "Let us go and sit down farther off."

They descended into a cultivated valley, seeking a little shade. The sun was very ardent. Both thought of their house at San Vito, of the beautiful, airy rooms, opening on the sea.

"Are you suffering much?" asked George, discovering on his friend's face the manifest signs of pain, and, in her eyes, the sombre sadness that lately, in the midst of the crowd, near the pillar of the portal, had already frightened him.

"No. I am very tired."

"Do you want to sleep? Why not sleep a little? Lean against me. Afterwards you will feel better. Will you?"

"No, no."

"Lean against me. We will wait until Colas returns before we go to Casalbordino. Meanwhile, rest a little."

She removed her hat, bent towards him, and leaned her head. He looked at her in this attitude.

"How beautiful you are," he said.

She smiled. Once more the suffering transfigured her, gave her greater seductive charm.

He said again:

"How long it is since you gave me a kiss!"

They embraced.

"Now, sleep a little," he begged, tenderly.

His sentiment of love seemed renewed in him, after so many horrible and strange things that had oppressed them. He began once more to isolate himself, to recoil within himself, to repulse all communion that was not with the elect of his heart. His mind freed itself with an inconceivable rapidity from all the phantoms created during the period of the mystic illusion, the ascetic ideal; he threw off the yoke of that "divine" which he had tried to substitute for his inert will, from the very hopelessness of arousing it. He now felt for "faith" the same disgust that he had felt in the church for the unclean beasts that crawled in the sacred dust. He saw again the fat and pale hands of the priests who received the offerings, the continual balancing of the black figures behind the closed railing. All that was ignoble, denied the presence of that Lord whom he had hoped to know in an annihilating revelation. But, finally, the great proof had been accomplished. He had experienced the material contact with the inferior classes of his race, and nothing had resulted from it for him but a sentiment of invincible horror. His being had no roots in that ground, could have nothing in common with that multitude which, like most species of animals, had attained its definite type, had definitely incarnated in its brutish flesh permanency of habit. For how many centuries, during how many generations, had this immutable type been perpetuated? So the human species had an absolutely inert basis which persisted beneath the undulations of moving superior elements.

So the ideal type of humanity was not in a distant future, at the unknown end of a progressive evolution; it could only manifest itself on the crest of the waves, in the most elevated beings. He perceived now that, in trying to find himself entirely and to recognize his veritable essence by means of an immediate contact with the race from which he had sprung, he deceived himself like a man who attempts to determine the form, dimension, direction, speed, and power of a sea wave by the action of the subjacent volume of water. The experiment had not succeeded. He was as much a stranger to this multitude as to a tribe of Oceanians; he was as much a stranger to his country, to the land of his birth, to his fatherland, as he was to his family and to his hearth. He should forever renounce that vain search for the fixed state, the stable support, the assured help. "The sensation I have of my being resembles that which a man would have, who, condemned to hold himself upright on a ceaselessly oscillating and unbalanced surface, would feel his support ceaselessly fail him, no matter where he placed his foot." He had used this vision once to paint his perpetual anxiety. But why, since he wished to preserve life, did he not become, by dint of method, sufficiently strong and agile to become habituated to preserving his equilibrium amid the diverse impulsions, and to dance even on the edge of the precipice, freely and boldly? In truth, he wished to preserve life. What proved that, as far as evidence could, was his successive experiments themselves. In him a deep instinct, resting intact up to then, arose with ever new artifices against mortal languor. That ascetic dream which he had constructed with such richness, trimmed with such elegance, was it anything else than an expedient for combating death? He himself, since the beginning, had set himself the dilemma: either to follow the example of Demetrius, or to give himself to Heaven. He had chosen Heaven, to preserve his life. "Apply henceforth your mind to acquire the disgust of truth and certitude, if you wish to live. Renounce searching experience. Respect the veils. Believe in the visible line and in the proffered Word. Do not seek beyond the world any of the appearances that your marvellous senses have created. Adore the illusion."

And he already found a charm in this fleeting hour. The profundity of his conscience and the infinite extension of his sensibility filled him with pride. The innumerable phenomena that, instant by instant, succeeded one another in his inner world made the comprehensive power of his soul appear to be illimitable. And that fleeting hour during which he believed he could discover hidden connections and secret analogies between the representations of Chance and his own sentiment possessed, in reality, a singular charm for him.

In the distance could be heard the confused murmur of the wild crowd from which he had just extricated himself; and that confused murmur aroused in him, in flashes, the vision of a great, sinister furnace in which demons were struggling in a tragic combat. And above this incessant murmur he distinguished also, at every breath of the breeze, the delicious rustling of the branches that shielded his meditation and Hippolyte's repose. Hippolyte was resting in a doze, her mouth half-open, scarcely breathing; and a light moisture dampened her brow. Her hands were folded in her lap, ungloved, pale; and in imagination George saw between the fingers the "plucked-out tuft of hair." Just as this tuft of hair appeared and disappeared in the strong light, on the burning soil, appeared also the phantom of the epileptic, he who had unexpectedly fallen at the doorway writhing beneath the grasp of two men who were trying to force open and place a key in his mouth. This phantom appeared and disappeared, as if it were the dream of the sleeping woman, and rendered visible. "What if she awoke and the epilepsy returned?" thought George, with an inner shudder. "The image that forms in my brain is perhaps transmitted to me from her. I see perhaps her dream. And her dream is perhaps caused by an organic disturbance that commences and will increase as far as an attack. Is not a dream sometimes the presage of a malady that is breeding?" He dwelt for a long time in the meditation of these mysteries of the animal substance, vaguely perceived. Against the diffuse depths of this physical sensibility, already enlightened by the five superior senses, gradually appeared other intermediary senses, whose very subtle perceptions disclosed to him a world up to then unknown. Was it impossible that Hippolyte's latent malady furnished him with a condition favorable for communicating with her in some extraordinary manner?

He regarded her attentively, as he had done in bed on that first day, already so distant. He saw the light shadows of the hanging branches tremble on her face. He heard the continual tumult that spread out from the Sanctuary in the infinite light. Sadness again fell on his heart; lassitude crushed him to earth again. He leaned his head against the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes, without thinking of anything.

Slumber was about to seize him, when a start of Hippolyte awoke him.

"George!"

She awoke frightened, agitated, no longer recognizing the surrounding spot; the strong light annoyed her, and she covered her eyes with her hands, groaning.

"My God, how I'm suffering!"

She complained of a pain in her temples.

"Where are we? Oh! what an awful dream it was."

"I should not have brought you," said George, uneasy. "How sorry I am!"

"I have not strength enough to rise. Help me."

He raised her up by the arms. She tottered, and, seized by vertigo, clung to him.

"What's the matter? Where do you suffer?" he cried in a changed voice, seized by a panicky terror, believing that she was about to be taken with a fit, there, in the open country, far from all help. "What's the matter? What's the matter?"

He clasped her closely to him, pressing her to his heart, which beat with horrible violence.

"No, no, it is nothing," stammered Hippolyte, who had all at once understood his terror, and who had grown pale. "It is nothing. My head is giddy. The sun has made me dizzy. It is nothing."

Her lips were almost white, and she avoided looking her lover in the eyes. He could not yet succeed in dominating his anguish, and poignantly regretted having awakened in her the fearful and shameful preoccupation. His memory recalled this passage in a letter: "What if the malady should seize me while in your arms? No, no, I will never see you again; I do not wish to see you any more!"

She said, in a feeble voice:

"It's over. I'm better. But I'm thirsty. Where can I get a drink?"

"Over there, near the church, where the tents are," said George.

She refused vigorously, with a motion of her head.

"I will go. Wait for me here!"

She was obstinate in her refusal.

"Let us send Colas. He must be near by; I'll call him."

"Yes, call him, so we may return to Casalbordino. I will drink there. I can wait. Let us go."

She leaned on George's arm. They remounted the hill. Arrived at the top, they saw once more the plain swarming with people, the white huts, the reddish edifice. Around the twisted trunks of the olive-trees still stood, ever motionless, the melancholy forms of the beasts of burden. Near them, in the same shade where they had previously sought a refuge, an old woman was seated, who, to all appearances, seemed to be a centenarian; she, also, was motionless, her hands placed on her knees, the fleshless limbs only partly covered by her petticoat. Her white hair hung down the sides of her waxen cheeks; the mouth, without lips, resembled a deep furrow; her eyes were sealed forever beneath the corroded eyelids; her entire air expressed a reminiscence of innumerable pains.

"Is she dead?" asked Hippolyte in a whisper, stopping, seized by fear and respect.

The multitude was pushing about the Sanctuary. The processions whirled around chanting, beneath the cruel sun. One of these processions came from under the great portal and turned towards the open space, preceded by its cross-bearer. Arrived at the edge of the esplanade, men and women stopped and turned towards the church in a half-circle, the women squatting, the men upright, the cross-bearer in the centre. They prayed and crossed themselves. Then they sent towards the church a great, simultaneous cry—the last salutation. And they resumed then way, intoning the hymn:

Viva Maria!

Viva Maria!

The old woman did not change her attitude. Something great, terrible, and indefinitely supernatural emanated from her solitary old age in the shadow of the arid and almost petrified olive-tree whose cleft trunk seemed marked by a bolt from heaven. If she still lived, her eyes at least did not see, her ears no longer heard, all her senses were obliterated. Yet she had the appearance of a Witness who was looking towards the invisible region of eternity. "Death is not as mysterious as this remnant of life in this human ruin," thought George. And at the same time there arose in his mind, accompanied by an extraordinary emotion, the vague image of a very ancient myth. "Why dost thou not awaken the Mother secular who sleeps on the threshold of Death? In her slumber resides the first Science. Why dost thou not interrogate the wise earthly Mother?" Vague words, the obscure fragments of ancient epics, awoke in his memory; indefinite lines and symbols swayed and enveloped him.

"Let us go, George," said Hippolyte, shaking him lightly, after an interval of pensive silence. "How sad everything is here!"

Her voice was weak, and in her eyes was that sad shadow in which her lover read an inexpressible horror and disgust. He dared not encourage her, for fear she would feel in his encouragements the preoccupation of the horrible menace that seemed to hang over her, since the moment that she had seen the epileptic fall in the crowd.

But, a few steps farther on, she stopped again, choked by incoercible anguish, strangled by a knot of sobs that she could not untie. She looked at her lover, then gazed about her, distracted.

"My God, my God! What sorrow!"

It was a sorrow entirely corporeal, a brutal sorrow that arose from the depths of her being like a compact and heavy thing, crushing her with an insupportable weight. She would have liked to sink to the ground as if beneath an enormous burden, never to arise again; she would have liked to lose consciousness, to become an inert mass, to expire.

"Tell me, tell me, what can I do? What can I do to ease you?" stammered George, pressing her hand, prey to a mad terror.

Was not this sadness perhaps the chrysalis of the illness?

For a few seconds, she remained with her eyes fixed and rather haggard. She shivered beneath the shock caused by the clamor raised in the vicinity by a procession which saluted the church on leaving.

"Take me away somewhere. Perhaps there is a hotel at Casalbordino. Where can Colas be?"

George looked anxiously around, in the hope of discovering the old man. He said:

"Perhaps he is looking for us in the crowd; or perhaps he has gone to Casalbordino, thinking he will find us there."

"Let us go alone, then. Down below, yonder, I see some carriages."

"Let us go, if you like. But lean on me."

They directed their steps towards the highroad, which lay like a long white ribbon on the other side of the esplanade. It seemed as if the tumult followed them. The trumpet of a mountebank sent after them its piercing notes. The always even cadence of the hymn, persistently dominated all other sounds by its exasperating continuity.

Viva Maria!

Viva Maria!

A beggar unexpectedly appeared, as if he had sprung from below ground; and he stretched out his hand.

"Charity, for the love of the Madonna!"

It was a young man, with his head bound in a red handkerchief, one corner of which covered his eye. He raised this corner and showed an enormous eye, swollen like a pocket, purulent, on which the winking of the upper eyelids forced a shudder horrible to see.

"Charity, for the love of the Madonna!"

George gave him money; and the beggar again hid his deformity. But, a little farther on, a man of gigantic stature, with an empty sleeve, half-raised his shirt in order to show the red and furrowed cicatrice of the amputation.

"A bite—a horse's bite! Look!"

And he threw himself on the ground, thus uncovered, and he kissed the ground several times, crying each time, in a harsh voice:

"For pity's sake!"

Under a tree was another beggar, a bandy-legged fellow, on a kind of seat composed of a pack-saddle, a goat-skin, an empty petroleum can and large stones. Wrapped in a sordid covering from which protruded two hairy legs, soiled with dry mud, he wildly shook his hand, twisted like a root, to chase away the flies that assailed him in clouds.

"Charity! Charity! Have pity on a poor man! The Madonna will pardon you. Have pity on a poor man!"

At the sight of other beggars who came running up, Hippolyte hastened her steps. George made a sign to the nearest coachman. When they were in the carriage, Hippolyte uttered a cry of relief:

"At last!"

George questioned the coachman:

"Is there a hotel at Casalbordino?"

"Yes, signor, there is one."

"How long will it take to get there?"

"A short half-hour."

"Let us go on, then!"

He took Hippolyte's hands, tried to cheer her up.

"Courage, courage! We will take a room; we can rest. We will see nothing, hear nothing more. I, too, am exhausted with fatigue and my head feels tired."

He added, smiling:

"Aren't you a little hungry?"

She responded to his smile. He added again, evoking the remembrance of the old hotel of Ludovic Togni:

"It will be as it was at Albano. Do you remember?"

It seemed to him that she was becoming a little calmer. He wanted to bring her to a state of light and joyous thoughts. He said:

"What has become of Pancrace? Ah! if we had one of his oranges. Do you remember? I do not know what I would give for an orange. Are you very thirsty? Are you suffering?"

"No.... I feel better.... I can hardly believe that the torture is over.... My God! I shall never forget this day, never—never!"

"Poor soul!"

He tenderly kissed her hands. Then, pointing to the vegetation that bordered the road:

"Look!" he exclaimed, "see how beautiful the corn is. Let us purify our eyes."

To right and left the harvest stretched immaculate, already ripe for the sickle, high and vigorous, breathing in the light by the slender points of their innumerable ears, that, at certain moments, seemed to wave and become converted into a volatile gold. Alone beneath the limpid arch of heaven, they exhaled a spirit of purity by which both their hearts, sad and tired, were refreshed.

"How strong the reflection is?" said Hippolyte, half lowering her long lashes.

"You have your curtains."

She smiled. It seemed that the shadow of her sadness was about to be dissipated.

Many carriages came in a long line from the opposite direction, descending towards the Sanctuary. For a few minutes the road, the bushes, the fields, all disappeared from around them in the dust.

"Charity, for the love of the Madonna! Charity! Charity!"

"Charity! In the name of the Virgin of Miracles!"

"Have pity on a poor, unfortunate man!"

"Charity! Charity!"

"Give me a piece of bread!"

"Charity!"

One, two, three, four, five voices, more and still more voices, the voices of beings still invisible, burst forth in the midst of the cloud, hoarse, penetrating, sharp, cavernous, humble, angry, plaintive, all different and discordant.

"Charity!"

"Charity!"

"Stop! Stop!"

"Charity, in the name of the most holy Mary of Miracles!"

"Charity! Charity!"

"Stop!"

And through the dust appeared confusedly a growling mob of monsters. One shook the stumps of his amputated hands, bleeding as if the mutilation were fresh or badly cicatrized. Another had on his palms disks of leather, that he used painfully to drag along the weight of his inert body. Another had an enormous goitre, wrinkled and violet-hued, that dangled like a pendant. Another, on account of an excrescence on his lip, seemed to hold between his teeth the remains of a raw liver. Another displayed a face devastated by a deep erosion that showed his nasal cavities and upper jaw. Others exhibited similar horrors, freely, with violent gestures, with almost menacing attitudes, as though to enforce a right.

"Stop! Stop!"

"Charity!"

"Look! Look! Look!"

"Help me! Help me!"

"Charity!"

"Charity!"

"Help me!"

It was an assault—almost an extortion. They all seemed resolved to demand a mite, even if they had to seize the wheels and hang on the limbs of the horses.

"Stop! Stop!"

While George sought for some money in his pockets in order to throw it among the horde, Hippolyte pressed close to him, seized at the throat by a feeling of disgust, powerless henceforth to master the fantastic terror which invaded her in this powerful white light in this unknown land where swarmed so lugubrious a life.

"Stop! Stop!"

"Charity!"

"Pity! Pity!"

But the coachman, becoming angry, rose suddenly on his seat, shook his whip vigorously, and began to beat the beggars with all his might; and he accompanied every blow with invectives. The lash whistled. Beneath his blows the beggars howled maledictions, but did not retreat. Each wished his share.

"Give me some! Give me some!"

Then George threw a handful of coins in the dust; and the dust covered the scuffle of the monsters, choked their blasphemies. The man with the amputated hands and the fellow with the inert limbs still essayed to follow the carriage for a moment; but, menaced by the whip, they stopped.

"Don't be afraid, signora," said the coachman. "Nobody will get near us now, I promise you."

New voices arose, groaning, yelling, invoking the Virgin and Jesus, announcing the nature of their deformities and sores, recounting the malady or misfortune. On the other side of the ambush prepared by the first bandits, a second army in tatters stretched along in a double chain on the borders of the road as far as the houses of the distant market town.

"My God, my God! What a cursed country!" murmured Hippolyte, exhausted, feeling herself fainting. "Let us get away from here. Let us go away! Please, George, let us go back."

Nothing—not the whirlwind of madness that drove the fanatic bands around the temple, nor the hopeless cries that seemed to issue from a place on fire, from a shipwreck or a massacre, nor the inanimate and bloody old men who lay in heaps along the court of the votive hall, nor the convulsed women who crawled towards the altar tearing their tongues against the stone, nor the supreme clamor that issued from the entrails of the multitude confounded in an unique anguish and in an unique hope—nothing, nothing, was as terrible as the spectacle of that great dusty hillside blinding in the glare of the sun, where all these monsters of human misery, all this débris of a ruined race, these bodies vilified to the level of the unclean beast and excremental matter, opened their rags to expose their impurities and proclaim them. The innumerable horde occupied the slope and the ditches; they had with them their family, their progeniture, their relatives, their household goods. One saw women half-naked and as lean as bitches who have just littered, children green as lizards, emaciated, with rapacious eyes, their mouths already withered, taciturn, breeding in the blood the hereditary disease. Each tribe possessed its monster: one-armed, bandy-legged, subject to goitre, blindness, leprosy, epilepsy. Each had as a patrimony his ulcer to cultivate, from which to derive an income. Urged on by his own people, the monster left the group, advanced in the dust, gesticulated and implored, for the common benefit:

"Charity, charity, if you hope for mercy! Charity! Take pity on me! Take pity on me!"

A monomere, black and flat-nosed as a mulatto, with a long leonine mane, picked up the dust in the curls of his hair, then shook his head, enveloping himself in a cloud. A woman afflicted with hernia, of no age, having no longer a human face, squatted on a post, raised her apron to show her hernia, enormous and yellowish like a bladder full of suet. Seated on the ground, a man afflicted with elephantiasis pointed with his finger to his leg, massive as the trunk of an oak, covered with warts and yellow crusts, dotted with black or hardened spots, so voluminous that one would have said it did not belong to him. A blind man, on his knees, his hands stretched towards heaven in the attitude of an ecstatic, had under his high and bald brow two little blood-stained holes. Others and still others showed themselves in the dazzling glare of the sun, as far as the view could carry. All the great hillside was infested by them without an interval. Their supplications continued uninterruptedly, rising and falling in chorus, in discord, with a thousand accents. The vast extent of the solitary country, the deserted and silent sky, the hallucinating reverberation of the fiery road, the immobility of the vegetable forms—all these environments rendered the hour tragic, evoked the biblical image of a road of desolation conducting to the gates of a cursed city.

"Let's go! Let's go back! Please, George, let's go back!" repeated Hippolyte, with a shudder of horror, dominated by the superstitious idea of a divine punishment, fearing other spectacles and more atrocious ones, under this burning and empty sky in which there began to be heard a metallic rumbling.

"But where can we go? Where shall we go?"

"No matter where. No matter where. Let us go back over there, near the sea. We'll wait there until it's time to leave. Please!"

The fast, the torture of thirst, the hot, oppressive atmosphere, had increased in both their uneasiness of mind.

"Do you see? Do you see?" she cried, as if in front of a supernatural apparition. "Do you see? Will it then never end?"

In the light, the glaring and implacable light, advanced towards them a band of tattered men and women, and in front of the band marched a sort of crier who vociferated while agitating a copper tray. These men and women bore upon their shoulders a trestle covered with a mattress on which lay an invalid of cadaverous appearance, a yellowish-looking creature, thin as a skeleton, tightly wrapped in bands of cloth like a mummy, the feet bare. And the crier—an olive-colored and serpentine man with the eyes of a madman—pointed to the dying woman, and related in a high key that this woman, who had been ill from hemorrhage for years, had obtained the miracle from the Virgin at the very dawn of that day, and he begged for alms so that, cured of her disease, she could gain fresh blood. And he shook the copper tray, on which tinkled a few coins.

"The Madonna has performed the miracle! The miracle! The miracle! Charity! In the name of the Very Holy and the Very Merciful Mary, charity!"

The men, the women, all together, contracted their faces as if about to weep. And the invalid, with a vague gesture, slightly raised her bony hands, the fingers of which moved as if to seize something in the air; while her bare feet, as yellow as her hands and face, shiny at the ankles, had the rigidity of death. And all that was exposed in the glaring and implacable light—near, near, always nearer.

"Turn back! Turn back!" cried George to the driver. "Turn back, and whip up your horses."

"We're there, signor. What alarms you?"

"Turn back!"

The injunction was so imperative that the driver turned round his horses amidst the deafening cries.

"Whip them up! Whip them up!"

From the top to the bottom of the hill the carriage seemed, among the clouds of thick dust, pierced every now and then by a hoarse yell.