With these mortal eyes I beheld within a brief space of time three
peerless souls unfold and blossom, and then wither away and perish one
by one: the most beautiful, most passionate, and most miserable souls
ever embodied in the latest descendants of a haughty race.
From the scenes where their desolation, their pride, and their grace
wandered every day, clear and terrible thoughts came to me, such as
the most ancient ruins of illustrious cities had never suggested. In
hopes of unravelling the mystery of their strange ascendency, I used
to explore the depths of the vast ancestral mirrors, where, often
unnoticed by themselves, their three figures were reflected bathed in
a pallor like that which heralds dissolution after death; and I gazed
long and earnestly at the old, worn-out things which they touched with
their chilled or fevered hands, using the same gestures perhaps as had
been used by other hands long since crumbled into dust.
Was it thus, indeed, that I knew them in the tedious monotony of daily
life, or are they only creations of my yearning desire and perplexity?
It was thus, indeed, that I knew them in the tedious monotony of
daily life, and yet they are also creations of my yearning desire and
perplexity.
That fragment of the web of my life, unconsciously woven by them, is
of such priceless value to me, that I would fain embalm it in the
strongest of spices to prevent it from becoming faded or destroyed in
me by Time.
Therefore I now try the power of art.
Ah! but what magic could impart the coherency of tangible and durable
matter to that spiritual texture which the three prisoners wove in the
barren monotony of their days, and embroidered little by little with
images of the noblest and most heart-rending things in which human
passion has ever been hopelessly reflected?
Unlike the three ancient sisters, because victims rather than daughters
of necessity, they seemed nevertheless, as they wove the richest
zone of my life, to be preparing the destiny of him who was to come.
Together they toiled, scarcely ever accompanying their labour with
a song, but less rarely shedding visible tears--tears in which the
essence of their unexhausted, cloistered souls was sublimated.
And because from the first hour that I knew them a dark cloud had
overhung them, a cruel decree had struck them to the heart, and left
them discouraged and gasping, and ready to die--all their attitudes
and gestures and lightest words seemed to me heavy with a meaning of
which they, in their profound unconsciousness, were ignorant.
Bending and breaking as they were beneath the weight of their own
maturity, like autumn trees overladen with bounteous fruit, they were
unable either to sound the depth of their misery or to give voice to
it. Their anguished lips revealed to me only a small portion of their
secrets. But I could understand the ineffable things spoken by the
blood flowing in the veins of their beautiful bare hands.
“_E il ricettacolo delle virtù sarà pieno di sogni e vane speranze._”