whole life was one prolonged battle."
"From which you conclude----?"
"That we are all exceptions, my dear friend, and that we all establish
our great intangible laws only for other people, reserving the right to
take or to leave as much of them for ourselves as we choose. Good luck.
Good-bye!"
XXIV
A HUNTING ACCIDENT
I again met the charming woman to whom I owe the story of the Florentine
love affairs just related.
"What news of Don Giovanni?" I asked.
"I saw him yesterday, by chance. He confessed that he did not know the
reason of his exile. I gently insinuated that the husband might have
something to do with it. The idea made him laugh, and he answered:
'Anything is likelier than that!' which made me laugh in my turn."
"All blind, then?"
"And the result: Peace and happiness."
"And clear vision?"
"Clear vision would simply mean tragedy, because of each one regarding
his own infidelities as unimportant, only to reach the unexpected
conclusion that those of his partner are unforgivable crimes. Not
logical, but very human."
"And do you not think that conjugal fidelity is human, too?"
"Excuse me, I expressly told you that I had once seen a case of it."
"And might one hear the story of this solitary case?"
"An uneventful drama. Nothing is less romantic than virtue. You must be
aware of that."
"But does happiness lie in romance?"
"That I cannot say. Possibly, because the reality will never equal the
dream. At all events, my faithful pair were the most unhappy mortals I
have ever known."
"Do tell me about them."
"Oh, it is very simple. You know that I was brought up in England, near
the little town of Dorking. I still have friends there whom I visit
occasionally, when I want a change from Italy. Surrey is a picturesque
region, where lazy rivers wind their way to the sea between green banks,
through wide, fertile valleys at the foot of wooded hills. Everywhere
woods and streams, and ravines crested with yews and ancient oaks. Pale,
misty skies spread a mother-of-pearl canopy over the wide expanses of
thick grass. It is a fox hunting country, and I humbly confess that
there are to my mind few pleasures in life equal to the wild
intoxication of a mad, aimless gallop, in which, what with hedges and
ditches, rivers and precipices, one risks breaking one's neck a hundred
times a day. You will from current pictures of it get a fairly good idea
of the sport. It is a headlong rush to get--one does not clearly know
where. Nothing stops one, nothing furnishes a sufficient reason for
turning back. Onward, and still onward! The horses themselves are
infected with the general madness. Accidents make no difference. A
fallen horse scrambles to his feet again, an unseated rider gets back
into the saddle. Some are carried home on stretchers. At night the
fallen are counted. In three curt words their friends sympathize with
them for having to wait three weeks before going at it again.
"A few years ago, in one of these hunting tumults, I stopped to get my
breath after a long gallop on my cob. I was on a wide heath overlooking
the valley that ends at the red spires of Dorking. A silvery river,
whose name I forget, and a sprinkling of pools set patches of sky in the
vast stretch of flowering green. At the horizon a tower is seen, famous
in the district, a memorial of the whimsey of a pious personage, who had
himself buried there head downward so as to find himself standing
upright on the day of the resurrection, when, it seems, the world will
be upside down.
"I stood wondering at this ingenuous monument of human simplicity, when
I heard behind me the noise of frantic galloping. Before I could move or
cry out, a hunter and a maddened horse burst from the wood, within
gunshot, and plunged headlong down the steep bank that ended abruptly at
the gaping pit of an old quarry. What filled me with unspeakable horror
was that the rider was desperately spurring and lashing his horse, who
would have been unable anyhow to stop himself in his dizzy descent
toward death. In the twinkling of an eye the ground appeared to swallow
them both. Nothing was to be seen but heaven and earth smiling at each
other with the imperturbable smile of things that never end.
"I finally regained the use of my senses. I jumped from my saddle, and I
know not how, reached the bottom of the quarry. The horse had been
killed outright. In a red pool lay a gasping, shattered man. It was an
old friend of mine, who had been kind to me in my early days in Dorking.
I called him. He opened his eyes.
"'What!' he cried, 'it is not over?'
"I questioned him in vain.
"'It is not over! It is not over!' he repeated in vain despair, 'I shall
have to go through with it again!'
"Not knowing what to do or say, I climbed to the top of the bank and
called for help. A farmer hastened to the spot. With infinite care, the
wounded man was lifted into a cart. By some miracle he had escaped
without mortal injury. Two months later he was in full convalescence. He
suspected before long that I had witnessed his leap, and my
embarrassment when he questioned me about our encounter at the bottom of
the quarry only confirmed him in his idea. One day, he could no longer
keep from speaking.
"'You do not believe it was an accident, do you?' he said, looking me
squarely in the eyes.
"'What do you mean?' I asked, avoiding the question.
"'I mean that I must have passed close by you on my way to the quarry.'
"'Yes,' I said, with a sudden resolve to tell the truth.
"'You know my secret. I am sure, my dear child, that you will keep it.
Death would not take me. I shall go on living. But since there is now
one human being before whom I can pour out the overflow of my misery,
and since that one is yourself, for whom I have so long felt the warmest
friendship, I will tell you all.'
"'Some other day. Later on.'
"'No, let me speak. In the first place, let me reassure you, there is no
crime in my life.'
"'What an idea!'
"'No, I am merely unhappy. And my unhappiness is of a kind for which
there is no help. It seems to you that I have everything, does it not?
Wealth, a happy family life, beloved children. My wife, I am sure, seems
to you----'
"'The best in the world.'
"'Doubtless. And yet, she exactly is the cause of my wretchedness. She
loves me, and I hate her. It is horrible.'
"'Oh, come. You do not hate your wife. That is impossible.'
"'I repeat it. I hate her. I loved her when I married her. I was in love
at that time, for she was very beautiful. She has been a faithful wife,
and a good mother. What have I to complain of, except that she
mechanically has confined herself to the narrow performance of her
duties, and while doing it, has allowed us to become strangers? Is she
above or beneath me? What does it matter? We are not on the same mental
plane. I have by my side an inert, submissive creature, with an
exasperating sorrow in her eyes, for although she has never formulated
any complaint, she naturally holds me responsible for the
misunderstanding which has never been expressed in words. You look at me
as if you did not understand. You think me mad, probably. Shall I be
more explicit? Very well, I no longer love her. There you have it in a
nutshell. Gradually, habit and her flatly commonplace mind made her
indifferent to me. There is no sense in blaming her. Be the fault hers
or mine, I was estranged from her. What remedy was there for the brutal
fact? I had loved her, and I loved her no longer. We cannot love by
order of the sheriff or of the Bible. It is as if you should reproach me
with having white hair instead of blond, as I once had. What have you to
say to it?'
"'Nothing at all, my dear and unhappy friend. If you wish me to speak
frankly, the idea had occurred to me that the lack of pleasure you took
in your excellent wife might come from the possibly unconscious pleasure
you took in someone else.'
"'Your imagination anticipates the facts. As you suspect, I have not
finished my story. Since you call for an immediate confession, let me
tell you, that having been strictly brought up in the discipline of the
Church, I came to marriage with the perfect purity required by Christian
morality. Let me also tell you that, for whatever reason you
choose--ignorance of the strategy of intrigue, or timidity, or fear of
losing my self-respect--I have remained guiltless of the least departure
from the strictest marriage laws. I no longer loved my wife, but I was
her husband, her faithful husband. You will readily guess at the
wretched lapses into weakness confessed in that statement, followed by a
reaction of shame, and even of repulsion, which in spite of my best
efforts I could not disguise.
"'I thought of going on a long journey. A year or two in India might, or
so I supposed, have brought me back to the woman from whom proximity was
daily separating me more widely. But she, not understanding this, raised
the most serious of all objections: the children needed my oversight.
"'Take us with you,' she stupidly suggested.
"'The die was cast. We remained where we were: chained together, each
horribly distressing the other, and, with each spasm of pain, deepening
our own hurt and that of our companion in irons. She, unfailingly
angelic, and I, unbalanced, full of whims, and doubtless unbearable. Who
knows? If it had been possible to her nature, a clap of thunder might
have scattered the contrary electric currents between us, and have
restored peace. But no. We were enemies always on the point of
grappling, with never the relief of a word or a gesture of battle. My
nerves were on the point of giving way, when the inevitable romance came
into my life.'
"'You are still far from strong. Do not tell me any more to-day.'
"'Nay, chance has forced this confession. Let us go through with it to
the end. After this, we will never refer to it again. The romance you
have guessed at was connected with a lovable and light-hearted girl. She
was a little intoxicated with her own youth, and full of the exquisite
charm which illusion had once lent to the woman I married, and in which
she was to me so lamentably lacking now. What shall I say? I loved and
was loved. Our passion was an ideal one, very sweet, very pure, carrying
with it no remorse. Were I to tell you the story of it, it might even
seem childish to you. It contained, however, the two happiest years of
my life. Two years that passed like a flash. Two years of silent
delight, ending one day in a definite avowal. No sooner had we uttered
the words, than fear of the sin we glimpsed assailed us, and we fell
back aghast into the depths of despair. Our only kiss was the kiss of
eternal farewell.
"'I was left more broken and bleeding by the horrible fall than when you
found me on the stones of the quarry. She went away, and if I am to tell
the whole miserable truth, she has found comfort, she is married to a
boor, who, they say, makes her happy. Why should I care to appear better
than I am? I often regret the imbecile heroism prompting me, when to
save that shallow creature I made myself into the victim of an atrocious
fate. I spared her, and consequently am dying, while she, in the arms of
her hod carrier----Do not misjudge me. I have suffered. She had sworn to
love me forever. She is happy, and I--I who could have taken her and
broken her and made of the eventual harm to her an overwhelming joy,
while it lasted, have not even the right to proclaim her unworthy of my
foolish pity. I curse her, and I love her still.
"'And my wife, my blameless wife, who guessed everything, I am sure, and
forgave it, either from incapacity to resent an outrage, or from
insulting pity for me, my wife to whom I owe this double disillusion in
love, who unwittingly tortures me, and whom I equally torture, I
execrate her, I hate her with all the intensity of my misery. Had I
yielded to the moment's temptation I might have returned to her sated
with happiness, or disenchanted, or remorseful.
"'In my deepest misery I shall never forgive her the look of silent
anguish wherewith she stabs me. I shall never forgive her resignation,
the quiet submission which, together with her interest in her duties,
makes our tormented life bearable to her. She is not unaware, you may be
sure, that I have a hundred times thought of seeking oblivion in death.
She was no more taken in than you were by the accident on Dunley Hill.
She will never betray it by a word. She offers herself as a sacrifice,
and this magnanimity which fills me with despair constantly aggravates
the intolerable anguish of our daily association. I no longer love the
woman who loves me; I still love the one who loves me no longer. I have
committed no sin, I am even blameless. Will you deny that if I had given
myself cause for remorse I might also have suffered less, might have
even had chances of happiness?'"
With a far-away look in her eyes, the narrator ended her story abruptly.
"And what did you answer?" I questioned.
"I answered that pain wears itself out no less than joy, that it is our
nature to regret the things that might have been, because they are so
different from reality. I answered that patience to live is the greatest
among the virtues."
XXV
GIAMBOLO
I, too, have known the joys of travel! I, too, have left the easy slopes
of home for the steep ascents of foreign lands! Like many another
simpleton, sated with the familiar, I have enthusiastically crossed
frontiers in search of that something or other which might give me
unexpected sensations.
After being tossed and jolted and bruised in the hard sleeping cars, I
have fallen into the hands of porters, or "_traegers_" or "_facchini_,"
who bewildered me with their violent pantomime accompanied by
anti-French sounds, obliged me to follow them by going off with my wraps
and bags, and after an extortionate charge flung me on to the
sympathetically dejected cushions of the hotel omnibus, amid strange
companions. Next, a hideous rattling of iron and window glass, while a
gold-laced individual asks me simultaneously in three different
languages to account for my presence here, and say how I mean to spend
my time, telling me in the same breath the great advantage there would
be in doing something quite different from what I intend to do.
Presently the torture changes. A gigantic porter in an imperial great
coat transfers me to silent automata in black broadcloth and white tie,
who hand people and luggage from one to the next as far as the elevator.
Nothing more remains but to answer the chambermaid's investigations as
to my habits and tastes, my theory of existence, while by an error of
the hall boy my luggage is scattered in neighbouring rooms, and I am
burdened with someone else's. All is finally straightened out. Alone, at
last!
Then comes a discreet knock at my door. It is the interpreter, the
guide, the cicerone, the indispensable man, who with touching
obsequiousness places his universal knowledge at my disposal for to-day,
to-morrow, or all time. Here follows a long enumeration of what custom
imposes upon the stranger. There is no question of breaking away from
tradition. There stand the monuments, and here are the roads leading to
them. One may begin the round by one or another. My liberty is limited
to the order in which I shall see them. The rest does not concern me.
Here is such and such a picture, there stands such and such a piece of
statuary. We shall cross the street or the square where such and such an
event took place. A date, the year, and month, and day, are supposed to
stamp the facts on my memory. Why did the men of the past choose this
precise spot to make history? I have no time to inquire, for in three
turns of the wheel I am in another and still more memorable place, where
other dates and other names are dextrously driven into the quick of my
memory. Galleries follow upon galleries, trips to rivers, to mountains.
A glimpse of a cool garden tempts me. How sweet to rest there for a
while, and dream! But where is one to find the time, when interpreter
and coachman are growing impatient because there is no more than time to
go to the Carthusian monastery, and get back before nightfall?
The interminable road unfolds before me while I delve into my Baedeker
for the history of the monastery. Suddenly the coachman stops, points
with his whip at the horizon, and makes an emphatic, incomprehensible
speech. A battle was fought there in the time of the Risorgimento. His
little cousin's brother-in-law was wounded there, not mortally, though
his corporal had his leg cut off. How should one not be proud of such
memories? My guide says that his father was fond of telling that he had
seen it all from the top of a tower. He begins another version of the
story, which is interrupted by our arrival at the monastery, and taken
up again on the return journey. Next day in the train I shall have
leisure to think over all these things, if the complete confusion in my
memory leaves me capacity for anything but stupefaction.
When we try to get at the reason for these extraordinary performances,
people offer different explanations. This one will call it "taking a
holiday." The other will say that he has had an unhappy love affair and
needs distraction. For the most part, people will confess that they are
trying to forget something--their wife, their children, their business.
All seem tormented by the same desire for novelty. What they are seeking
from men and monuments and places in foreign lands is something not yet
seen, a fresh enjoyment, a virgin impression which shall draw them
outside the circle of outworn sensations. It is something to rouse a
happy wonder, and fulfil a hope of pleasure that always keeps ahead of
any pleasure experienced. Do they find it? Everyone must answer for
himself. Many probably never ask themselves the question, lest they be
obliged to confess a weary disappointment.
Before this procession of churches, statues, and pictures, where shall
we stop, what shall we try to retain? How shall we disentangle the
significance of things, the meaning and power and expressiveness of
which can only be grasped by deep study? It would be too simple, if one
need merely open one's eyes in order to understand. The work of art
speaks, but we must know its language. Not only is time wanting,
knowledge of the need of knowledge is wanting in most passers by, who
will never do anything but pass by. Their pride is satisfied when they
can say: "I have seen." That is the most definite part of their harvest
of pleasure. It is apparently a conscientious scruple that obliges them
to go out of their way to obtain it.
"I am going to Rome," said a young Englishman to Miss Harriet Martineau,
"oh, just so as to be able to say that I have been there."
"Why don't you say so without going?" was the simple reply.
It is upon Italy particularly that the crowd hurls itself. Wherever you
may go in that classic land, you will be surrounded by an ever-rising
flood of the natives of every known continent, all seeking under new
skies for self-renewal. Silent, tired, their eyes straining at invisible
things, they file past with their shawls and veils and parasols,
levelling field glasses, marking maps, asking senseless questions, and
emitting exclamations expressive of an equal admiration for everything
they see. I have always pitied these poor people, dragged from their
native land by a force which their simple minds are unable to analyze.
They will never express their disappointment, most of them will never
realize it. But I feel it for them, and I pity their wasted effort.
It was a consolation to me to find one day that there are people who
turn homeward satisfied, with the object of their desires attained, and
the happiness secured of having seen and felt what it is granted only to
a chosen few to see and feel.
I was quite alone on the platform of the bell tower of Torcello, from
which the entire Venetian lagoon is visible at a glance. Sea, air, and
sky, all luminous and transparent, melted into one another, building a
vast dome of light. In the distance, bluish spots--islands, or perhaps
clouds--what cared I for names! Do clouds have names? Boats loaded with
fruit and vegetables streaked the bright mirror of the sea, and alone
reminded one of the reality of the earth. Not a sound. The desert calm
of sky and sea imposes silence. The lagoon has no song.
I stood there, as if transfixed in the crystal of the universe, admiring
without reflection, when lo!--a group of Germans arriving, led by the
fever-shaken cicerone whose aid I had a little earlier refused. Here was
his chance for revenge. Immediately, without preamble, he gathers his
audience in a circle, and begins to "exhibit" the horizon. With
outstretched arms he throws at every point of the compass names, and
names, and then more names. From the top of the peaceful tower fly
sonorous sounds to the spots where his imperious gesture firmly fastens
them. Mountain, island, tower, village, indentations of the coast line,
everything has its turn, visible objects and objects that might be
visible. Men, women, and children, all Germany hangs upon the lips of
the voluble showman. At each name, as if at a military command, all
glances follow the pointing finger and take an anxious plunge into
space. For one must be sure to see the designated spot. Otherwise what
is the good of coming? But as soon as the eyes are settling down to
feed upon the sight just announced, a new command drags them all in
another direction. That blue line, that white gleam have a name, a
history--this is the name, and here is the history. Now let us go on to
the next thing.
These people, marvellously disciplined, listen in admiring attitudes. A
student is taking notes, so as to impart his learning when he gets home.
But the end is not yet. The cicerone, suddenly silent, one hand
shielding his eyes, appears hypnotized by something at the horizon. The
attitude, the fixed stare, particularly the silence, keep the spectators
in suspense. The man has drawn from his pocket a battered opera glass
which, possibly, in the last century, contributed to the delight of some
noble dame at the Fenice. Its lenses acquire from being dextrously
rubbed with an accurately proportioned mixture of saliva and tobacco,
and then dried with a handkerchief reminiscent of fish fried in oil, and
of polenta, the unique property of making infinitely small objects at
the horizon visible--objects smaller than any other optical instrument
could enable one to see. The man brandishes the apparatus.
"To-day Giambolo is visible," he says. "I am going to show you
Giambolo."
Everyone exclaims joyously: "What! Is it possible? He is going to show
us Giambolo!"
And the man on the bell tower of Torcello is as good as his word.
Pushing aside the German field glasses with a scornful gesture, he
thrusts his precious instrument upon the group.
"Do you see, just above the horizon line, something white that seems to
move in a burst of light? Half close your eyes, in order to see farther.
By an uncommon piece of luck Giambolo is visible to-day. You cannot help
seeing it. I can even see it with my naked eye. But of course I know
where to look for it."
The rigid German, ankylosed at his glass, suddenly straightens up.
"Yes, yes, I saw it very well. It is all white, and there is something
shining."
"That is it," answers the man of Torcello, satisfied.
Then everyone took his turn. The women all saw it at the very first
glance; they even gave detailed descriptions of it. The student alone
could not see Giambolo. He confessed it with genuine humiliation, and
was looked upon with pitying disdain by all the others.
"What is it like?" he asked of everyone. And everyone gave his own
description. There was a slight vapour at the top. A streak at the
right, said some, some said at the left; there was nothing of the kind,
according to the _pater familias_ who had had the distinction of being
the first to see Giambolo.
The unfortunate student tried again and again, and went on exclaiming
in despair: "I can see nothing! I can see nothing!"
The Italian shrugged his shoulders with a placid smile, the meaning of
which obviously was that some people had not the gift.
"But," cried the exasperated youth, "what is Giambolo, will you tell me?
Is there any such thing, really, as Giambolo?"