At ten o'clock in the morning of June 20th the sale began of the
furniture and hangings belonging to His Excellency the Minister
Plenipotentiary for Guatemala.
It was a burning hot morning. Summer blazed already over Rome. Up and
down the Via Nationale ran the tram-cars, drawn by horses with funny
white caps over their heads to protect them against the sun. Long lines
of heavily-laden carts encumbered the road, while the blare of trumpets
mingled with the cracking of whips and the hoarse cries of the carters.
Andrea could not make up his mind to cross the threshold of that house,
but wandered about the street a long time, weighed down by a horrible
sense of lassitude, a lassitude so overwhelming and desperate as to be
almost a physical longing for death.
At last, seeing a porter come out of the house with a piece of furniture
on his shoulder, he decided to go in. He ran rapidly up the stairs. From
the landing already he could hear the voice of the auctioneer.
The sale was going on in the largest room of the suite--the one in which
the Buddha had stood. The buyers were gathered round the auctioneer's
table. They were, for the most part, shopkeepers, second-hand furniture
dealers and the lower classes generally. There being little competition
in summer when town was empty, the dealers rushed in, sure of obtaining
costly articles for next to nothing. A vile odour permeated the hot air
exhaled by the crowd of dirty and perspiring people.
Andrea felt stifled. He wandered into the other rooms, where nothing had
been left but the wall hangings, the curtains, and the portières, the
other things having been collected in the sale room. Although he was
walking on a thick carpet, he heard his footsteps as distinctly as if
the boards had been bare.
He found himself presently in a semicircular room. The walls were deep
red, with here and there a sparkle of gold, giving the impression of a
temple or a tomb, a sad and mysterious sanctuary fit for praying in, or
for dying. The crude, hard light blazing in through the open windows
seemed like a violation.
He returned to the auction room. Again he breathed the nauseating
atmosphere. He turned round, and in a corner of the room perceived the
Princess of Ferentino and Barbarella Viti. He bowed and went over to
them.
'Well, Ugenta, what have you bought?'
'Nothing.'
'Nothing? Why, I should have thought you would buy everything.'
'Indeed, why?'
'Oh, it was just an idea of mine--a romantic idea.'
The princess laughed and Barbarella joined in.
'We are going. It is impossible to stay any longer in this perfume.
Good-bye, Ugenta--console yourself!'
Andrea went to the auctioneer's table. The man recognised him.
'Does the Signor Conte wish for anything in particular?'
'I will see,' Andrea answered.
The sale proceeded rapidly. He looked about him at the low faces of the
dealers, felt their elbows pushing him, their feet touching his, their
horrid breath upon him. Nausea gripped his throat.
'Going--going--gone!'
The stroke of the hammer rang like a knell through his heart and set his
temples throbbing painfully.
He bought the Buddha, a great carved cabinet, some china, some pieces
of drapery. Presently he heard the sound of voices, and laughter, and
the rustle of feminine skirts. He turned round to see Galeazzo Secinaro
entering, accompanied by Lady Heathfield and followed by the Countess
Lucoli, Gino Bomminaco and Giovanella Daddi. They were all laughing and
talking noisily.
He did his best to conceal himself from them in the crowd that besieged
the auctioneer's table. He shuddered at the thought of being discovered.
Their voices and laughter reached him over the heads of the perspiring
people through the suffocating heat. Fortunately the gay party very soon
afterwards took themselves off.
He forced himself a passage through the closely packed bodies,
repressing his disgust as well as he could, and making the most
tremendous efforts to ward off the faintness that threatened to overcome
him. There was a bitter and sickening taste in his mouth. He felt that
from the contact of all these unclean people he was carrying away with
him the germs of obscure and irremediable diseases. Physical torture
mingled with his moral anguish.
When he got down into the street in the full blaze of noon-day, he had a
touch of giddiness. With an unsteady step, he set off in search of a
cab. He found one in the Piazza del Quirinale and drove straight home.
Towards evening, however, a wild desire came over him to revisit those
dismantled rooms. He went upstairs and entered, on the pretext of asking
if the furniture he had bought had been sent away yet.
A man answered him: the things had just gone, the Signor Conte must have
passed them on his way here.
Hardly anything remained in the rooms. The crimson splendour of the
setting sun gleamed through the curtainless windows and mingled with the
noises of the street. Some men were taking down the hangings from the
walls, disclosing a paper with great vulgar flowers, torn here and there
and hanging in strips. Others were engaged in taking up and rolling the
carpets, raising a cloud of dust that glittered in the sunlight. One of
them sang scraps of a lewd song. Dust and tobacco-smoke mingled and rose
to the ceiling.
Andrea fled.
In the Piazza del Quirinale a brass band was playing in front of the
royal palace. Great waves of metallic music spread through the glowing
air. The obelisk, the fountain, the statues looked enormous and seemed
to glow as if impregnated with flame. Rome, immense and dominated by a
battle of clouds, seemed to illumine the sky.
Half-demented, Andrea fled; through the Via del Quirinale, past the
Quattro Fontane and the gates of the Palazzo Barberini with its many
flashing windows and, at last, reached the Cassa Zuccari.
There the porters were just taking his purchases off a cart,
vociferating loudly. Several of them were carrying the cabinet up the
stairs with a good deal of difficulty.
He went in. As the cabinet occupied the whole width of the staircase, he
could not pass. So he had to follow it, slowly, slowly, step by step, up
to his door.
THE END
* * * * *
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AIKEN, CONRAD Modern American Poetry 127
ANDERSON, SHERWOOD Poor White 115
ANDERSON, SHERWOOD Winesburg, Ohio 104
ANDREYEV, LEONID The Seven That Were Hanged; and the Red Laugh 45
BALZAC Short Stories 40
BAUDELAIRE Prose and Poetry 70
BEARDSLEY, AUBREY 64 Reproductions 42
BEEBE, WILLIAM Jungle Peace 30
BEERBOHM, MAX Zuleika Dobson 116
BIERCE, AMBROSE In the Midst of Life 133
BLAKE, WILLIAM Poems 91
BRONTE, EMILY Wuthering Heights 106
BROWN, GEORGE DOUGLAS The House with the Green Shutters 129
BUTLER, SAMUEL Erewhon 136
BUTLER, SAMUEL The Way of All Flesh 13
CABELL, JAMES BRANCH Beyond Life 25
CABELL, JAMES BRANCH The Cream of the Jest 126
CARPENTER, EDWARD Love's Coming of Age 51
CARROLL, LEWIS Alice in Wonderland, etc. 79
CELLINI, BENVENUTO Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini 3
CHEKHOV, ANTON Rothschild's Fiddle, etc. 31
CHESTERTON, G. K. Man Who Was Thursday 35
CRANE, STEPHEN Men, Women and Boats 102
D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE Flame of Life 65
D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE The Child of Pleasure 98
D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE The Maidens of the Rocks 118
D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE The Triumph of Death 112
DAUDET, ALPHONSE Sapho 85
DEFOE, DANIEL Moll Flanders 122
DOSTOYEVSKY Poor People 10
DOUGLAS, NORMAN Old Calabria 141
DOUGLAS, NORMAN South Wind 5
DOWSON, ERNEST Poems and Prose 74
DREISER, THEODORE Free, and Other Stories 50
DUMAS, ALEXANDRE Camille 69
DUNSANY, LORD A Dreamer's Tales 34
DUNSANY, LORD Book of Wonder 43
ELLIS, HAVELOCK The New Spirit 95
FABRE, JEAN HENRI The Life of the Caterpillar 107
FLAUBERT Madame Bovary 28
FLAUBERT Temptation of St. Anthony 92
FRANCE, ANATOLE Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard 22
FRANCE, ANATOLE The Queen Pedauque 110
FRANCE, ANATOLE The Red Lily 7
FRANCE, ANATOLE Thais 67
FRENSSEN, GUSTAV Jorn Uhl 101
GAUTIER, THEOPHILE Mlle. De Maupin 53
GEORGE, W. L. A Bed of Roses 75
GILBERT, W. S. The Mikado, Iolanthe, etc, 26
GILBERT, W. S. Pinafore and Other Plays 113
GISSING, GEORGE New Grub Street 125
GISSING, GEORGE Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft 46
GONCOURT, E. AND J. DE Renée Mauperin 76
GORKY, MAXIM Creatures That Once Were Men and Other Stories 48
DE GOURMONT, REMY A Night in the Luxembourg 120
DE GOURMONT, REMY A Virgin Heart 131
HARDY, THOMAS Jude the Obscure 135
HARDY, THOMAS The Mayor of Casterbridge 17
HARDY, THOMAS The Return of the Native 121
HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL The Scarlet Letter 93
HEARN, LAFCADIO Some Chinese Ghosts 130
HECHT, BEN Erik Dorn 29
HUDSON, W. H. Green Mansions 89
HUDSON, W. H. The Purple Land 24
HUXLEY, ALDOUS A Virgin Heart 131
IBSEN, HENRIK A Doll's House, Ghosts, etc. 6
IBSEN, HENRIK Hedda Gabler, Pillars of Society,
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IBSEN, HENRIK The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm,
The League of Youth 54
JAMES, HENRY Daisy Miller, etc. 63
JAMES, WILLIAM The Philosophy of William James 114
JOYCE JAMES Dubliners 124
KIPLING, RUDYARD Soldiers Three 71
LATZKO, ANDREAS Men in War 88
LAWRENCE, D. H. The Rainbow 128
LAWRENCE, D. H. Sons and Lovers 109
LEWISOHN, LUDWIG Upstream 123
LOTI, PIERRE Mme. Chrysantheme 94
MACY, JOHN The Spirit of American Literature 56
MAETERLINCK, MAURICE Pelleas and Melisande, etc. 11
DE MAUPASSANT, GUY Love and Other Stories 72
DE MAUPASSANT, GUY Mademoiselle Fifi, and Twelve Other Stories 8
DE MAUPASSANT, GUY Une Vie 57
MELVILLE, HERMAN Moby Dick 119
MEREDITH, GEORGE Diana of the Crossways 14
MEREDITH, GEORGE The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 134
MEREJKOWSKI, DMITRI The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci 132
MISCELLANEOUS A Modern Book of Criticism 81
Best Ghost Stories 73
Best American Humorous Short
Stories 87
Best Russian Short Stories 18
Contemporary Science 99
Evolution in Modern Thought 37
Outline of Psychoanalysis 66
The Woman Question 59
MOLIERE Plays 78
MOORE, GEORGE Confessions of a Young Man 16
MORRISON, ARTHUR Tales of Mean Streets 100
NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Ecce Homo and the Birth of Tragedy 68
NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Thus Spake Zarathustra 9
NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Beyond Good and Evil 20
NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Genealogy of Morals 62
O'NEILL, EUGENE Seven Plays of the Sea 111
PATER, WALTER The Renaissance 86
PATER, WALTER Marius the Epicurean 90
PAINE, THOMAS Writings 108
PEPYS, SAMUEL Samuel Pepys' Diary 103
POE, EDGAR ALLEN Best Tales 82
PREVOST, ANTOINE Manon Lescaut 85
RENAN, ERNEST The Life of Jesus 140
RODIN 64 Reproductions 41
RUSSELL, BERTRAND Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell 137
SALTUS, EDGAR The Imperial Orgy 139
SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR Anatol, Green Cockatoo, etc. 32
SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR Bertha Garlan 39
SCHOPENHAUER Studies in Pessimism 12
SCHREINER, OLIVE The Story of an African Farm 132
SHAW, G. B. An Unsocial Socialist 15
SPINOZA The Philosophy of Spinoza 60
STEVENSON, ROBERT L. Treasure Island 4
STIRNER, MAX The Ego and His Own 49
STRINDBERG, AUGUST Married 2
STRINDBERG, AUGUST Miss Julie, The Creditor, etc. 52
SUDERMANN, HERMANN Dame Care 33
SWINBURNE, CHARLES Poems 23
THOMPSON, FRANCIS Complete Poems 38
TOLSTOY, LEO Redemption and Other Plays 77
TOLSTOY, LEO The Death of Ivan Ilyitch and Four Other Stories 64
TURGENEV, IVAN Fathers and Sons 21
TURGENEV, IVAN Smoke 80
VAN LOON, HENDRIK W. Ancient Man 105
VILLON FRANCOIS Poems 58
VOLTAIRE Candide 47
WELLS, H. G. Ann Veronica 27
WHITMAN, WALT Poems 97
WILDE, OSCAR An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance 84
WILDE, OSCAR De Profundis 117
WILDE, OSCAR Dorian Gray 1
WILDE, OSCAR Poems 19
WILDE, OSCAR Fairy Tales, Poems in Prose 61
WILDE, OSCAR Pen, Pencil and Poison 96
WILDE, OSCAR Salome, The Importance of Being Ernest, etc 83
WILSON, WOODROW Selected Addresses and Papers 55
YEATS, W. B. Irish Fairy and Folk Tales 44
ZOLA, EMILE Nana 142
End of Project Gutenberg's The Child of Pleasure, by Gabriele D'Annunzio