These words, full of tenderness, pained Don Juan, who could not forgive
his father for such goodness.
"What, sorrow for me, father!" he cried.
"Poor Juanino," answered the dying man, "I have always been so gentle
toward you that you could not wish for my death?"
"Oh!" cried Don Juan, "if it were possible to preserve your life by giving
you a part of mine!" ("One can always say such things," thought the
spendthrift; "it is as if I offered the world to my mistress.")
The thought had scarcely passed through his mind when the old spaniel
whined. This intelligent voice made Don Juan tremble. He believed that the
dog understood him.
"I knew that I could count on you, my son," said the dying man. "There,
you shall be satisfied. I shall live, but without depriving you of a
single day of your life."
"He raves," said Don Juan to himself.
Then he said, aloud: "Yes, my dearest father, you will indeed live as long
as I do, for your image will be always in my heart."
"It is not a question of that sort of life," said the old nobleman,
gathering all his strength to raise himself to a sitting posture, for he
was stirred by one of those suspicions which are only born at the bedside
of the dying. "Listen, my son," he continued in a voice weakened by this
last effort. "I have no more desire to die than you have to give up your
lady loves, wine, horses, falcons, hounds and money----"
"I can well believe it," thought his son, kneeling beside the pillow and
kissing one of Bartholomeo's cadaverous hands. "But, father," he said
aloud, "my dear father, we must submit to the will of God!"
"God! I am also God!" growled the old man.
"Do not blaspheme!" cried the young man, seeing the menacing expression
which was overspreading his father's features. "Be careful what you say,
for you have received extreme unction and I should never be consoled if
you were to die in a state of sin."
"Are you going to listen to me?" cried the dying man, gnashing his
toothless jaws.
Don Juan held his peace. A horrible silence reigned. Through the dull wail
of the snowstorm came again the melody of the viol and the heavenly voice,
faint as the dawning day.
The dying man smiled.
"I thank you for having brought singers and music! A banquet, young and
beautiful women, with dark locks, all the pleasures of life. Let them
remain. I am about to be born again."
"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.
"I have discovered a means of resuscitation. There, look in the drawer of
the table--you open it by pressing a hidden spring near the griffin."
"I have it, father."
"Good! Now take out a little flask of rock crystal."
"Here it is."
"I have spent twenty years in----"
At this point the old man felt his end approaching, and collected all his
energy to say:
"As soon as I have drawn my last breath rub me with this water and I shall
come to life again."
"There is very little of it," replied the young man.
Bartholomeo was no longer able to speak, but he could still hear and see.
At these words he turned his head toward Don Juan with a violent wrench.
His neck remained twisted like that of a marble statue doomed by the
sculptor's whim to look forever sideways, his staring eyes assumed a
hideous fixity. He was dead, dead in the act of losing his only, his last
illusion. In seeking a shelter in his son's heart he had found a tomb more
hollow than those which men dig for their dead. His hair, too, had risen
with horror and his tense gaze seemed still to speak. It was a father
rising in wrath from his sepulchre to demand vengeance of God.
"There, the good man is done for!" exclaimed Don Juan.
Intent upon taking the magic crystal to the light of the lamp, as a
drinker examines his bottle at the end of a repast, he had not seen his
father's eye pale. The cowering dog looked alternately at his dead master
and at the elixir, as Don Juan regarded by turns his father and the phial.
The lamp threw out fitful waves of light. The silence was profound, the
viol was mute. Belvidéro thought he saw his father move, and he trembled.
Frightened by the tense expression of the accusing eyes, he closed them,
just as he would have pushed down a window-blind on an autumn night. He
stood motionless, lost in a world of thought.
Suddenly a sharp creak, like that of a rusty spring, broke the silence.
Don Juan, in his surprise, almost dropped the flask. A perspiration,
colder than the steel of a dagger, oozed out from his pores. A cock of
painted wood came forth from a clock and crowed three times. It was one of
those ingenious inventions by which the savants of that time were awakened
at the hour fixed for their work. Already the daybreak reddened the
casement. The old timepiece was more faithful in its master's service than
Don Juan had been in his duty to Bartholomeo. This instrument was composed
of wood, pulleys, cords and wheels, while he had that mechanism peculiar
to man, called a heart.
In order to run no further risk of losing the mysterious liquid the
skeptical Don Juan replaced it in the drawer of the little Gothic table.
At this solemn moment he heard a tumult in the corridor. There were
confused voices, stifled laughter, light footsteps, the rustle of silk, in
short, the noise of a merry troop trying to collect itself in some sort of
order. The door opened and the prince, the seven women, the friends of Don
Juan and the singers, appeared, in the fantastic disorder of dancers
overtaken by the morning, when the sun disputes the paling light of the
candles. They came to offer the young heir the conventional condolences.
"Oh, oh, is poor Don Juan really taking this death seriously?" said the
prince in la Brambilla's ear.
"Well, his father was a very good man," she replied.
Nevertheless, Don Juan's nocturnal meditations had printed so striking an
expression upon his face that it commanded silence. The men stopped,
motionless. The women, whose lips had been parched with wine, threw
themselves on their knees and began to pray. Don Juan could not help
shuddering as he saw this splendor, this joy, laughter, song, beauty, life
personified, doing homage thus to Death. But in this adorable Italy
religion and revelry were on such good terms that religion was a sort of
debauch and debauch religion. The prince pressed Don Juan's hand
affectionately, then all the figures having given expression to the same
look, half-sympathy, half-indifference, the phantasmagoria disappeared,
leaving the chamber empty. It was, indeed, a faithful image of life! Going
down the stairs the prince said to la Rivabarella:
"Heigho! who would have thought Don Juan a mere boaster of impiety? He
loved his father, after all!"
"Did you notice the black dog?" asked la Brambilla.
"He is immensely rich now," sighed Bianca Cavatolini.
"What is that to me?" cried the proud Veronese, she who had broken the
comfit dish.
"What is that to you?" exclaimed the duke. "With his ducats he is as much a
prince as I am!"
At first Don Juan, swayed by a thousand thoughts, wavered toward many
different resolutions. After having ascertained the amount of the wealth
amassed by his father, he returned in the evening to the death chamber,
his soul puffed up with a horrible egoism. In the apartment he found all
the servants of the household busied in collecting the ornaments for the
bed of state on which "feu monseigneur" would lie to-morrow--a curious
spectacle which all Ferrara would come to admire. Don Juan made a sign and
the servants stopped at once, speechless and trembling.
"Leave me alone," he said in an altered voice, "and do not return until I
go out again."
When the steps of the old servant, who was the last to leave, had died
away on the stone flooring, Don Juan locked the door hastily, and, sure
that he was alone, exclaimed:
"Now, let us try!"
The body of Bartholomeo lay on a long table. To hide the revolting
spectacle of a corpse whose extreme decrepitude and thinness made it look
like a skeleton, the embalmers had drawn a sheet over the body, which
covered all but the head. This mummy-like figure was laid out in the
middle of the room, and the linen, naturally clinging, outlined the form
vaguely, but showing its stiff, bony thinness. The face already had large
purple spots, which showed the urgency of completing the embalming.
Despite the skepticism with which Don Juan was armed, he trembled as he
uncorked the magic phial of crystal. When he stood close to the head he
shook so that he was obliged to pause for a moment. But this young man had
allowed himself to be corrupted by the customs of a dissolute court. An
idea worthy of the Duke of Urbino came to him, and gave him a courage
which was spurred on by lively curiosity. It seemed as if the demon had
whispered the words which resounded in his heart: "Bathe an eye!" He took
a piece of linen and, after having moistened it sparingly with the
precious liquid, he passed it gently over the right eyelid of the corpse.
The eye opened!
"Ah!" said Don Juan, gripping the flask in his hand as we clutch in our
dreams the branch by which we are suspended over a precipice.
He saw an eye full of life, a child's eye in a death's head, the liquid
eye of youth, in which the light trembled. Protected by beautiful black
lashes, it scintillated like one of those solitary lights which travelers
see in lonely places on winter evenings. It seemed as if the glowing eye
would pierce Don Juan. It thought, accused, condemned, threatened, judged,
spoke--it cried, it snapped at him! There was the most tender
supplication, a royal anger, then the love of a young girl imploring mercy
of her executioners. Finally, the awful look that a man casts upon his
fellow-men on his way to the scaffold. So much life shone in this fragment
of life that Don Juan recoiled in terror. He walked up and down the room,
not daring to look at the eye, which stared back at him from the ceiling
and from the hangings. The room was sown with points full of fire, of
life, of intelligence. Everywhere gleamed eyes which shrieked at him.
"He might have lived a hundred years longer!" he cried involuntarily when,
led in front of his father by some diabolical influence, he contemplated
the luminous spark.
Suddenly the intelligent eye closed, and then opened again abruptly, as if
assenting. If a voice had cried, "Yes," Don Juan could not have been more
startled.
"What is to be done?" he thought
He had the courage to try to close this white eyelid, but his efforts were
in vain.
"Shall I crush it out? Perhaps that would be parricide?" he asked himself.
"Yes," said the eye, by means of an ironical wink.
"Ah!" cried Don Juan, "there is sorcery in it!"
He approached the eye to crush it. A large tear rolled down the hollow
cheek of the corpse and fell on Belvidéro's hand.
"It is scalding!" he cried, sitting down.
This struggle had exhausted him, as if, like Jacob, he had battled with an
angel.