Cornélie had changed her dress and now left her room. She went down
the corridor and saw nobody. She did not know the way, but walked
on. Suddenly a wide staircase fell away before her, between two
rows of gigantic marble candelabra; and Cornélie came to an atrio
which opened over the lake. The walls, with frescoes by Mantegna,
representing feats of bygone San Stefanos, supported a cupola which,
painted with sky and clouds, appeared as though it were open to the
outer air and which was surrounded by groups of cupids and nymphs
looking down from a balustrade.
She stepped outside and saw Gilio. He was sitting on the balustrade
of the terrace, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the lake. He came
up to her:
"I was almost sure that you would come this way," he said. "Aren't
you tired? May I show you round? Have you seen our Mantegnas? They
have suffered badly. They were restored at the beginning of the
century. [2] They look rather dilapidated, don't they? Do you see
that little mythological scene up there, by Giulio Romano? Come here,
through this door. But it's locked. Wait...."
He called out an order to some one below. Presently an old serving-man
arrived with a heavy bunch of keys, which he handed to the prince.
"You can go, Egisto. I know the keys."
The man went away. The prince opened a heavy bronze door. He showed
her the bas-reliefs:
"Giovanni da Bologna," he said.
They went on, through a room hung with tapestries; the prince pointed
to a ceiling by Ghirlandajo: the apotheosis of the only pope of
the house of San Stefano. Next through a hall of mirrors, painted
by Mario de' Flori. The dusty, musty smell of an ill-kept museum,
with its atmosphere of neglect and indifference, stifled the breath;
the white-silk window-curtains were yellow with age, soiled by flies;
the red curtains of Venetian damask hung in moth-eaten rags and
tatters; the painted mirrors were dull and tarnished; the arms of
the Venetian glass chandeliers were broken. Pushed aside anyhow,
like so much rubbish in a lumber-room, stood the most precious
cabinets, inlaid with bronze, mother-of-pearl and ebony panels,
and mosaic tables of lapis-lazuli, malachite and green, yellow,
black and pink marble. In the tapestries--Saul and David, Esther,
Holofernes, Salome--the vitality of the figures had evaporated,
as though they were suffocated under the grey coat of dust that lay
thick upon their worn textures and neutralized every colour.
In the immense halls, half-dark in their curtained dusk, a sort of
sorrow lingered, like a melancholy of hopeless, conquered exasperation,
a slow decline of greatness and magnificence; between the masterpieces
of the most famous painters mournful empty spaces yawned, the witnesses
of pinching penury, spaces once occupied by pictures that had once
and even lately been sold for fortunes. Cornélie remembered something
about a law-suit some years ago, an attempt to send some Raphaels
across the frontier, in defiance of the law, and to sell them in
Berlin.... And Gilio led her hurriedly through the spectral halls,
gay as a boy, light-hearted as a child, glad to have his diversion,
mentioning without affection or interest names which he had heard in
his childhood, but making mistakes and correcting himself and at last
confessing that he had forgotten:
"And here is the camera degli sposi...."
He fumbled at the bunch of keys, read the brass labels till he found
the right one and opened the door, which grated on its hinges; and
they went in.
And suddenly there was something like an intense and exquisite
stateliness of intimacy: a huge bedroom, all gold, with the dim gold
of tenderly faded golden tissues. On the walls were gold-coloured
tapestries: Venus rising from the gilt foam of a golden ocean, Venus
and Mars, Venus and Cupid, Venus and Adonis. The pale-pink nudity of
these mythological beings stood forth very faintly against the sheer
gold of sky and atmosphere, in golden woodlands, amid golden flowers,
with golden cupids and swans and doves and wild boars; golden peacocks
drank from golden fountains; water and clouds were of elemental gold;
and all this had tenderly faded into a languorous sunset of expiring
radiance. The state bed was gold, under a canopy of gold brocade, on
which the armorial bearings of the family were embroidered in heavy
relief; the bedspread was gold; but all this gold was lifeless, had
lapsed into the melancholy of all but grey lustre: it was effaced,
erased, obliterated, as though the dusty ages had cast a shadow over
it, had woven a web across it.
"How beautiful!" said Cornélie.
"Our famous bridal chamber," said the prince, laughing. "It was a
strange idea of those old people, to spend the first night in such
a peculiar apartment. When they married, in our family, they slept
here on the bridal night. It was a sort of superstition. The young
wife remained faithful only provided it was here that she spent the
first night with her husband. Poor Urania! We did not sleep here,
signora mia, among all these indecent goddesses of love. We no longer
respect the family tradition. Urania is therefore doomed by fate to
be unfaithful to me. Unless I take that doom on my own shoulders...."
"I suppose the fidelity of the husbands is not mentioned in this
family tradition?"
"No, we attached very little importance to that ... nor do we
nowadays...."
"It's glorious," Cornélie repeated, locking around her. "Duco will
think it perfectly glorious. Oh, prince, I never saw such a room! Look
at Venus over there, with the wounded Adonis, his head in her lap,
the nymphs lamenting! It is a fairy-tale."
"There's too much gold for my taste."
"It may have been so before, too much gold...."
"Masses of gold denoted wealth and abundant love. The wealth is
gone...."
"But the gold is softened now, so beautifully toned down...."
"The abundant love has remained: the San Stefanos have always loved
much."
He went on jesting, called attention to the wantonness of the design
and risked an allusion.
She pretended not to hear. She looked at the tapestries. In the
intervals between the panels golden peacocks drank from golden
fountains and cupids played with doves.
"I am so fond of you!" he whispered in her ear, putting his arm round
her waist. "Angel! Angel!"
She pushed him away:
"Prince...."
"Call me Gilio!"
"Why can't we be just good friends?"
"Because I want something more than friendship."
She now released herself entirely:
"And I don't!" she answered, coldly.
"Do you only love one then?"
"Yes."
"That's not possible."
"Why not?"
"Because, if so, you would marry him. If you loved nobody but Van
der Staal, you would marry him."
"I am opposed to marriage."
"Nonsense! You're not marrying him, so that you may be free. And, if
you want to be free, I also am entitled to ask for my moment of love."
She gave him a strange look. He felt her scorn.
"You ... you don't understand me at all," she said, slowly and
compassionately.
"You understand me."
"Oh, yes! You are so very simple!"
"Why won't you?"
"Because I won't."
"Why not?"
"Because I haven't that feeling for you."
"Why not?" he insisted; and his hands clenched as he spoke.
"Why not?" she repeated. "Because I think you a cheerful and pleasant
companion with whom to take things lightly, but in other respects
your temperament is not in tune with mine."
"What do you know about my temperament?"
"I can see you."
"You are not a doctor."
"No, but I am a woman."
"And I a man."
"But not for me."
Furiously, with a curse, he caught her in his quivering arms. Before
she could prevent him, he had kissed her fiercely. She struggled out
of his grasp and slapped his face. He gave another curse and flung
out his arms to seize her again, but she drew herself up:
"Prince!" she cried, screaming with laughter. "You surely don't think
that you can compel me?"
"Of course I do!"
She gave a disdainful laugh:
"You can not," she said, aloud. "For I refuse and I will not be
compelled."
He saw red, he was furious. He had never before been defied and
thwarted; he had always conquered.
She saw him rushing at her, but she quietly flung back the door of
the room.
The long galleries and apartments stretched out before them, as
though endlessly. There was something in that vista of ancestral
spaciousness that restrained him. He was an impetuous rather than a
deliberate ravisher. She walked on very slowly, looking attentively
to right and left.
He came up with her:
"You struck me!" he panted, furiously. "I'll never forgive it, never!"
"I beg your pardon," she said, with her sweetened voice and smile. "I
had to defend myself, you know."
"Why?"
"Prince," she said, persuasively, "why all this anger and passion and
exasperation? You can be so nice; when I saw you last in Rome you
were so charming. We were always such good friends. I enjoyed your
conversation and your wit and your good-nature. Now it's all spoilt."
"No," he entreated.
"Yes, it is. You won't understand me. Your temperament is not in
harmony with mine. Don't you understand? You force me to speak
coarsely, because you are coarse yourself."
"I?"
"Yes. You don't believe in the sincerity of my independence."
"No, I don't!"
"Is that courteous, towards a woman?"
"I am courteous only up to a certain point."
"We have left that point behind. So be courteous again as before."
"You are playing with me. I shall never forget it; I will be revenged."
"So it's a struggle for life and death?"
"No, a struggle for victory, for me."
They had reached the atrio:
"Thanks for showing me round," she said, a little mockingly. "The
camera degli sposi, above all, was splendid. Don't let us be angry
any more."
And she offered him her hand.
"No," he said, "you struck me here, in the face. My cheek is still
burning. I won't accept your hand."
"Poor cheek!" she said, teasingly. "Poor prince! Did I hit hard?"
"Yes."
"How can I extinguish that burning?"
He looked at her, still breathing hard, and flushed, with glittering
carbuncle eyes:
"You're a bigger coquette than any Italian woman."
She laughed:
"With a kiss?" she asked.
"Demon!" he muttered, between his teeth.
"With a kiss?" she repeated.
"Yes," he said. "There, in our camera degli sposi."
"No, here."
"Demon!" he muttered, still more softly.
She kissed him quickly. Then she gave him her hand:
"And now that's over. The incident is closed."
"Angel! She-devil!" he hissed after her.
She looked over the balustrade at the lake. Evening had fallen and
the lake lay shimmering in mist. She regarded him as a young boy,
who sometimes amused her and had now been naughty. She was no longer
thinking of him; she was thinking of Duco:
"How lovely he will think it here!" she thought. "Oh, how I long
for him!..."
There was a rustle of women's skirts behind her. It was Urania and
the Marchesa Belloni.