A week had passed. Duco had arrived. After the solemn dinner in
the gloomy dining-room, where Duco had been presented to Prince
Ercole, the summer evening, when Cornélie and Duco went outside,
was like a dream. The castle was already wrapped in heavy repose;
but Cornélie had made Giuseppe give her a key. And they went out,
to the pergola. The stars dusted the night sky with a pale radiance;
and the moon crowned the hill-tops and shimmered faintly in the mystic
depths of the lake. A breath of sleeping roses was wafted from the
flower-garden beyond the pergola; and below, in the flat-roofed town,
the cathedral, standing in its moonlit square, lifted its gigantic
fabric to the stars. And sleep hung everywhere, over the lake, over
the town and behind the windows of the castle; the caryatides and
hermes--the satyrs and nymphs--slept, as they bore the leafy roof
of the pergola, in the enchanted attitudes of the servants of the
Sleeping Beauty. A cricket chirped, but fell silent the moment that
Duco and Cornélie approached. And they sat down on an antique bench;
and she flung her arms about his body and nestled against him:
"A week!" she whispered. "A whole week since I saw you, Duco,
my darling. I cannot do so long without you. At everything that I
thought and saw and admired I thought of you, of how lovely you would
think it here. You have been here once before on an excursion. Oh,
but that is so different! It is so beautiful just to stay here,
not just to go on, but to remain. That lake, that cathedral, those
hills! The rooms indoors: neglected but so wonderful! The three
courtyards are dilapidated, the fountains are crumbling to pieces
... but the style of the atrio, the sombre gloom of the dining-room,
the poetry of this pergola!... Duco, doesn't the pergola remind you
of a classic ode? You know how we used to read Horace together: you
translated the verses so well, you improvised so delightfully. How
clever you are! You know so much, you feel things so beautifully. I
love your eyes, your voice, I love you altogether, I love everything
that is you ... I can't tell you how much, Duco. I have gradually
surrendered myself to every word of you, to every sensation of you, to
your love for Rome, to your love for museums, to your manner of seeing
the skies which you put into your drawings. You are so deliriously
calm, almost like this lake. Oh, don't laugh, don't make a jest of it:
it's a week since I saw you, I feel such a need to talk to you! Is it
exaggerated? I don't feel quite normal here either: there is something
in that sky, in that light, that makes me talk like this. It is so
beautiful that I can hardly believe that all this is ordinary life,
ordinary reality.... Do you remember, at Sorrento, on the terrace of
the hotel, when we looked out over the sea, over that pearl-grey sea,
with Naples lying white in the distance? I felt like this then; but
then I dared not speak like this: it was in the morning; there were
people about, whom we didn't see but who saw us and whom I suspected
all around me; but now we are alone and now I want to tell you, in
your arms, against your breast, how happy I am! I love you so! All my
soul, all that is finest in me is for you. You laugh, but you don't
believe me. Or do you? Do you believe me?"
"Yes, I believe you, I am not laughing at you, I am only just
laughing.... Yes, it is beautiful here.... I also feel happy. I am
so happy in you and in my art. You taught me to work, you roused me
from my dreams. I am so happy about The Banners: I have heard from
London; I will show you the letters to-morrow. I have you to thank for
everything. It is almost incredible that this is ordinary life. I have
been so quiet too in Rome. I saw nobody; I just worked a bit, not very
much; and I had my meals alone in the osteria. The two Italians--you
know the men I mean--felt sorry for me, I think. Oh, it was a terrible
week! I can no longer do without you.... Do you remember our first
walks and talks in the Borghese and on the Palatine? How strange we
were to each other then, not a bit in unison. But I believe I felt
at once that all would be well and beautiful between us...."
She was silent and lay against his breast. The cricket chirped again,
with a long quaver. But everything else slept....
"Between us," she repeated, as though in a fever; and she embraced
him passionately.
The whole night slept; and, while they breathed their life in each
other's arms, the enchanted caryatides--fauns and nymphs--lifted the
leafy roof of the pergola above their heads, between them and the
star-spangled sky.