SCENE.--_Up the Hillside, inside the Shrub-house._ LUCA'S _wife,_
OTTIMA, _and her paramour, the German_ SEBALD.
_Sebald_ [_sings_].
_Let the watching lids wink!
Day's ablaze with eyes, think!
Deep into the night, drink!_
_Ottima._ Night? Such may be your Rhineland nights, perhaps;
But this blood-red beam through the shutter's chink 5
--We call such light the morning: let us see!
Mind how you grope your way, though! How these tall
Naked geraniums straggle! Push the lattice
Behind that frame!--Nay, do I bid you?--Sebald,
It shakes the dust down on me! Why, of course 10
The slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content,
Or must I find you something else to spoil?
Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is 't full morning?
Oh, don't speak then!
_Sebald._ Aye, thus it used to be.
Ever your house was, I remember, shut 15
Till midday; I observed that, as I strolled
On mornings through the vale here; country girls
Were noisy, washing garments in the brook,
Hinds drove the slow white oxen up the hills;
But no, your house was mute, would ope no eye. 20
And wisely; you were plotting one thing there,
Nature, another outside. I looked up--
Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars,
Silent as death, blind in a flood of light,
Oh, I remember!--and the peasants laughed 25
And said, "The old man sleeps with the young wife."
This house was his, this chair, this window--his!
_Ottima._ Ah, the clear morning! I can see St. Mark's;
That black streak is the belfry. Stop: Vicenza
Should lie--there's Padua, plain enough, that blue! 30
Look o'er my shoulder, follow my finger!
_Sebald._ Morning?
It seems to me a night with a sun added.
Where's dew, where's freshness? That bruised plant, I bruised
In getting through the lattice yestereve,
Droops as it did. See, here's my elbow's mark 35
I' the dust o' the sill.
_Ottima._ Oh, shut the lattice, pray!
_Sebald._ Let me lean out. I cannot scent blood here,
Foul as the morn may be.
There, shut the world out!
How do you feel now, Ottima? There, curse
The world and all outside! Let us throw off 40
This mask: how do you bear yourself? Let's out
With all of it.
_Ottima._ Best never speak of it.
_Sebald._ Best speak again and yet again of it.
Till words cease to be more than words. "His blood,"
For instance--let those two words mean "His blood" 45
And nothing more. Notice, I'll say them now,
"His blood."
_Ottima._ Assuredly if I repented
The deed--
_Sebald._ Repent? Who should repent, or why?
What puts that in your head? Did I once say
That I repented?
_Ottima._ No; I said the deed-- 50
_Sebald._ "The deed" and "the event"--just now it was
"Our passion's fruit"--the devil take such cant!
Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol,
I am his cutthroat, you are--
_Ottima._ Here's the wine;
I brought it when we left the house above, 55
And glasses too--wine of both sorts. Black? White then?
_Sebald._ But am not I his cutthroat? What are you?
_Ottima._ There trudges on his business from the Duomo
Benet the Capuchin, with his brown hood
And bare feet; always in one place at church, 60
Close under the stone wall by the south entry.
I used to take him for a brown cold piece
Of the wall's self, as out of it he rose
To let me pass--at first, I say, I used--
Now, so has that dumb figure fastened on me, 65
I rather should account the plastered wall
A piece of him, so chilly does it strike.
This, Sebald?
_Sebald._ No, the white wine--the white wine!
Well, Ottima, I promised no new year
Should rise on us the ancient shameful way; 70
Nor does it rise. Pour on! To your black eyes!
Do you remember last damned New Year's day?
_Ottima._ You brought those foreign prints. We looked at them
Over the wine and fruit. I had to scheme
To get him from the fire. Nothing but saying 75
His own set wants the proof-mark, roused him up
To hunt them out.
_Sebald._ 'Faith, he is not alive
To fondle you before my face.
_Ottima._ Do you
Fondle me then! Who means to take your life
For that, my Sebald? 80
_Sebald._ Hark you, Ottima!
One thing to guard against. We'll not make much
One of the other--that is, not make more
Parade of warmth, childish officious coil,
Than yesterday--as if, sweet, I supposed
Proof upon proof were needed now, now first, 85
To show I love you--yes, still love you--love you
In spite of Luca and what's come to him--
Sure sign we had him ever in our thoughts,
White sneering old reproachful face and all!
We'll even quarrel, love, at times, as if 90
We still could lose each other, were not tied
By this--conceive you?
_Ottima._ Love!
_Sebald._ Not tied so sure!
Because though I was wrought upon, have struck
His insolence back into him--am I
So surely yours?--therefore forever yours? 95
_Ottima._ Love, to be wise (one counsel pays another),
Should we have--months ago, when first we loved,
For instance that May morning we two stole
Under the green ascent of sycamores--If
we had come upon a thing like that 100
Suddenly--
_Sebald._ "A thing"--there again--"a thing!"
_Ottima._ Then, Venus' body, had we come upon
My husband Luca Gaddi's murdered corpse
Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close--
Would you have pored upon it? Why persist 105
In poring now upon it? For 'tis here
As much as there in the deserted house;
You cannot rid your eyes of it. For me,
Now he is dead I hate him worse; I hate--
Dare you stay here? I would go back and hold 110
His two dead hands, and say, "I hate you worse,
Luca, than"--
_Sebald._ Off, off--take your hands off mine,
'Tis the hot evening--off! oh, morning, is it?
_Ottima._ There's one thing must be done--you know what thing.
Come in and help to carry. We may sleep 115
Anywhere in the whole wide house tonight.
_Sebald._ What would come, think you, if we let him lie
Just as he is? Let him lie there until
The angels take him! He is turned by this
Off from his face beside, as you will see. 120
_Ottima._ This dusty pane might serve for looking-glass.
Three, four--four gray hairs! Is it so you said
A plait of hair should wave across my neck?
No--this way.
_Sebald._ Ottima, I would give your neck,
Each splendid shoulder, both those breasts of yours, 125
That this were undone! Killing! Kill the world,
So Luca lives again!--aye, lives to sputter
His fulsome dotage on you--yes, and feign
Surprise that I return at eve to sup,
When all the morning I was loitering here-- 130
Bid me dispatch my business and begone.
I would--
_Ottima._ See!
_Sebald._ No, I'll finish. Do you think
I fear to speak the bare truth once for all?
All we have talked of, is at bottom, fine
To suffer; there's a recompense in guilt; 135
One must be venturous and fortunate--
What is one young for, else? In age we'll sigh
O'er the wild, reckless, wicked days flown over;
Still, we have lived; the vice was in its place.
But to have eaten Luca's bread, have worn 140
His clothes, have felt his money swell my purse--
Do lovers in romances sin that way?
Why, I was starving when I used to call
And teach you music, starving while you plucked me
These flowers to smell! 145
_Ottima._ My poor lost friend!
_Sebald._ He gave me
Life, nothing else; what if he did reproach
My perfidy, and threaten, and do more--
Had he no right? What was to wonder at?
He sat by us at table quietly--
Why must you lean across till our cheeks touched? 150
Could he do less than make pretense to strike?
'Tis not the crime's sake--I'd commit ten crimes
Greater, to have this crime wiped out, undone!
And you--oh, how feel you? Feel you for me?
_Ottima._ Well then, I love you better now than ever, 155
And best (look at me while I speak to you)--
Best for the crime; nor do I grieve, in truth,
This mask, this simulated ignorance,
This affectation of simplicity,
Falls off our crime; this naked crime of ours 160
May not now be looked over--look it down!
Great? Let it be great; but the joys it brought,
Pay they or no its price? Come: they or it
Speak not! The past, would you give up the past
Such as it is, pleasure and crime together? 165
Give up that noon I owned my love for you?
The garden's silence! even the single bee
Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopped,
And where he hid you only could surmise
By some campanula chalice set a-swing. 170
Who stammered--"Yes, I love you?"
_Sebald._ And I drew
Back; put far back your face with both my hands
Lest you should grow too full of me--your face
So seemed athirst for my whole soul and body!
_Ottima._ And when I ventured to receive you here, 175
Made you steal hither in the mornings--
_Sebald._ When
I used to look up 'neath the shrub-house here,
Till the red fire on its glazed windows spread
To a yellow haze?
_Ottima._ Ah--my sign was, the sun
Inflamed the sear side of yon chestnut-tree 180
Nipped by the first frost.
_Sebald._ You would always laugh
At my wet boots: I had to stride through grass
Over my ankles.
_Ottima._ Then our crowning night!
_Sebald._ The July night?
_Ottima._ The day of it too, Sebald!
When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat, 185
Its black-blue canopy suffered descend
Close on us both, to weigh down each to each,
And smother up all life except our life.
So lay we till the storm came.
_Sebald._ How it came!
_Ottima._ Buried in woods we lay, you recollect; 190
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burned through the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,
As if God's messenger through the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture, 195
Feeling for guilty thee and me; then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead--
* * * * *
_Sebald._ Slower, Ottima!
Do not lean on me!
_Ottima._ Sebald, as we lay,
Who said, "Let death come now! 'Tis right to die!
Right to be punished! Naught completes such bliss 200
But woe!" Who said that?
_Sebald._ How did we ever rise?
Was't that we slept? Why did it end?
_Ottima._ I felt you
Taper into a point the ruffled ends
Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips.
My hair is fallen now: knot it again! 205
_Sebald._ I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now!
This way? Will you forgive me--be once more
My great queen?
_Ottima._ Bind it thrice about my brow;
Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent in sin. Say that!
_Sebald._ I crown you 210
My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent--
[_From without is heard the voice of_ PIPPA _singing_--
_The year's at the spring_
_And day's at the morn;_
_Morning's at seven;_ 215
_The hillside's dew-pearled;_
_The lark's on the wing;_
_The snail's on the thorn:_
_God's in his heaven--_
_All's right with the world!_ 220
[PIPPA _passes_.
_Sebald._ God's in his heaven! Do you hear that?
Who spoke?
You, you spoke!
_Ottima._ Oh--that little ragged girl!
She must have rested on the step: we give them
But this one holiday the whole year round.
Did you ever see our silk-mills--their inside? 225
There are ten silk-mills now belong to you.
She stoops to pick my double heartsease--Sh!
She does not hear: call you out louder!
_Sebald._ Leave me!
Go, get your clothes on--dress, those shoulders!
_Ottima._ Sebald?
_Sebald._ Wipe off that paint! I hate you. 230
_Ottima._ Miserable!
_Sebald._ My God, and she is emptied of it now!
Outright now!--how miraculously gone
All of the grace--had she not strange grace once?
Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes,
No purpose holds the features up together, 235
Only the cloven brow and puckered chin
Stay in their places; and the very hair,
That seemed to have a sort of life in it,
Drops, a dead web!
_Ottima._ Speak to me--not of me.
_Sebald._ That round great full-orbed face, where not an 240
angle
Broke the delicious indolence--all broken!
_Ottima._ To me--not of me! Ungrateful, perjured cheat!
A coward, too: but ingrate's worse than all!
Beggar--my slave--a fawning, cringing lie!
Leave me! Betray me! I can see your drift! 245
A lie that walks and eats and drinks!
_Sebald._ My God!
Those morbid, olive, faultless shoulder-blades--
I should have known there was no blood beneath!
_Ottima._ You hate me then? You hate me then?
_Sebald._ To think
She would succeed in her absurd attempt, 250
And fascinate by sinning, show herself
Superior--guilt from its excess superior
To innocence! That little peasant's voice
Has righted all again. Though I be lost,
I know which is the better, never fear, 255
Of vice or virtue, purity or lust,
Nature or trick! I see what I have done,
Entirely now! Oh, I am proud to feel
Such torments--let the world take credit thence--
I, having done my deed, pay too its price! 260
I hate, hate--curse you! God's in his heaven!
_Ottima._ --Me!
Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourself--kill me!
Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me--then
Yourself--then--presently--first hear me speak
I always meant to kill myself--wait, you! 265
Lean on my breast--not as a breast; don't love me
The more because you lean on me, my own
Heart's Sebald! There, there, both deaths presently!
_Sebald._ My brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all I feel
Is ... is, at swift-recurring intervals, 270
A hurry-down within me, as of waters
Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit:
There they go--whirls from a black, fiery sea!
_Ottima._ Not me--to him, O God, be merciful!
_Talk by the way, while_ PIPPA _is passing from the hillside to Orcana.
Foreign Students of painting and sculpture, from Venice, assembled
opposite the house of_ JULES, _a young French statuary, at Possagno_.
_1st Student._ Attention! My own post is beneath this
window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three
or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and
his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five--who's a
defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be 5
suffered to hurt his bride when the jest's found out.
_2nd Student._ All here! Only our poet's away--never
having much meant to be present, moonstrike him! The
airs of that fellow, that Giovacchino! He was in violent
love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in 10
his suit, so unmolested was it--when suddenly a woman
falls in love with him, too; and out of pure jealousy he
takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all--whereto
is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as
Bluphocks assures me--"_Here a mammoth-poem lies, 15
Fouled to death by butterflies._" His own fault, the
simpleton! Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife
in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both
classically and intelligibly.--_Æsculapius, an Epic. Catalogue
of the drugs: Hebe's plaister--One strip Cools_ 20
_your lip. Phoebus's emulsion--One bottle Clears your
throttle. Mercury's bolus--One box Cures--_
_3rd Student._ Subside, my fine fellow! If the marriage
was over by ten o'clock, Jules will certainly be here
in a minute with his bride. 25
_2nd Student._ Good!--Only, so should the poet's muse
have been universally acceptable, says Bluphocks, _et
canibus nostris_--and Delia not better known to our
literary dogs than the boy Giovacchino!
_1st Student._ To the point now. Where's Gottlieb, 30
the new-comer? Oh--listen, Gottlieb, to what has called
down this piece of friendly vengeance on Jules, of which
we now assemble to witness the winding-up. We are all
agreed, all in a tale, observe, when Jules shall burst out
on us in a fury by and by: I am spokesman--the verses 35
that are to undeceive Jules bear my name of Lutwyche--but
each professes himself alike insulted by this strutting
stone-squarer, who came alone from Paris to Munich,
and thence with a crowd of us to Venice and Possagno
here, but proceeds in a day or two alone again--oh, alone 40
indubitably!--to Rome and Florence. He, forsooth, take
up his portion with these dissolute, brutalized, heartless
bunglers!--so he was heard to call us all: now, is Schramm
brutalized, I should like to know? Am I heartless?
_Gottlieb._ Why, somewhat heartless; for, suppose Jules 45
a coxcomb as much as you choose, still, for this mere
coxcombry, you will have brushed off--what do folks
style it?--the bloom of his life.
Is it too late to alter? These love-letters now, you
call his--I can't laugh at them. 50
_4th Student._ Because you never read the sham letters
of our inditing which drew forth these.
_Gottlieb._ His discovery of the truth will be frightful.
_4th Student._ That's the joke. But you should have
joined us at the beginning; there's no doubt he loves the 55
girl--loves a model he might hire by the hour!
_Gottlieb._ See here! "He has been accustomed," he
writes, "to have Canova's women about him, in stone,
and the world's women beside him, in flesh; these being
as much below, as those above, his soul's aspiration; 60
but now he is to have the reality." There you laugh
again! I say, you wipe off the very dew of his youth.
_1st Student._ Schramm! (Take the pipe out of his
mouth, somebody!) Will Jules lose the bloom of his youth? 65
_Schramm._ Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this
world: look at a blossom--it drops presently, having done
its service and lasted its time; but fruits succeed, and
where would be the blossom's place could it continue?
As well affirm that your eye is no longer in your body, 70
because its earliest favorite, whatever it may have first
loved to look on, is dead and done with--as that any affection
is lost to the soul when its first object, whatever
happened first to satisfy it, is superseded in due course.
Keep but ever looking, whether with the body's eye or the 75
mind's, and you will soon find something to look on! Has
a man done wondering at women?--there follow men,
dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at
men?--there's God to wonder at; and the faculty of wonder
may be, at the same time, old and tired enough with 80
respect to its first object, and yet young and fresh sufficiently,
so far as concerns its novel one. Thus--
_1st Student._ Put Schramm's pipe into his mouth again!
There you see! Well, this Jules--a wretched fribble
--oh, I watched his disportings at Possagno, the other 85
day! Canova's gallery--you know: there he marches first
resolvedly past great works by the dozen without vouchsafing
an eye; all at once he stops full at the
_Psiche-fanciulla_--cannot
pass that old acquaintance without a
nod of encouragement--"In your new place, beauty? 90
Then behave yourself as well here as at Munich--I see
you!" Next he posts himself deliberately before the unfinished
_Pietà_ for half an hour without moving, till up he
starts of a sudden, and thrusts his very nose into--I say,
into--the group; by which gesture you are informed that 95
precisely the sole point he had not fully mastered in
Canova's practice was a certain method of using the drill
in the articulation of the knee-joint--and that, likewise,
has he mastered at length! Good-by, therefore, to poor
Canova--whose gallery no longer needs detain his successor 100
Jules, the predestinated novel thinker in marble!
_5th Student._ Tell him about the women; go on to the
women!
_1st Student._ Why, on that matter he could never be
supercilious enough. How should we be other (he said) 105
than the poor devils you see, with those debasing habits we
cherish? He was not to wallow in that mire, at least;
he would wait, and love only at the proper time, and
meanwhile put up with the _Psiche-fanciulla_. Now, I
happened to hear of a young Greek--real Greek girl at 110
Malamocco; a true Islander, do you see, with Alciphron's
"hair like sea-moss"--Schramm knows!--white and quiet
as an apparition, and fourteen years old at farthest--a
daughter of Natalia, so she swears--that hag Natalia, who
helps us to models at three _lire_ an hour. We selected 115
this girl for the heroine of our jest. So first, Jules received
a scented letter--somebody had seen his Tydeus at the
Academy, and my picture was nothing to it: a profound
admirer bade him persevere--would make herself known to him
ere long. (Paolina, my little friend of the _Fenice_, 120
transcribes divinely.) And in due time, the mysterious
correspondent gave certain hints of her peculiar charms--the
pale cheeks, the black hair--whatever, in short, had
struck us in our Malamocco model: we retained her name,
too--Phene, which is, by interpretation, sea-eagle. Now, 125
think of Jules finding himself distinguished from the
herd of us by such a creature! In his very first answer
he proposed marrying his monitress: and fancy us over
these letters, two, three times a day, to receive and
dispatch! I concocted the main of it: relations were in 130
the way--secrecy must be observed--in fine, would he
wed her on trust, and only speak to her when they were
indissolubly united? St--st--Here they come!
_6th Student._ Both of them! Heaven's love, speak
softly, speak within yourselves! 135
_5th Student._ Look at the bridegroom! Half his hair
in storm and half in calm--patted down over the left
temple--like a frothy cup one blows on to cool it! and
the same old blouse that he murders the marble in!
_2nd Student._ Not a rich vest like yours, Hannibal 140
Scratchy!--rich, that your face may the better set it off.
_6th Student._ And the bride! Yes, sure enough, our
Phene! Should you have known her in her clothes?
How magnificently pale!
_Gottlieb._ She does not also take it for earnest, I 145
hope?
_1st Student._ Oh, Natalia's concern, that is! We settle
with Natalia.
_6th Student._ She does not speak--has evidently let
out no word. The only thing is, will she equally remember 150
the rest of her lesson, and repeat correctly all those
verses which are to break the secret to Jules?
_Gottlieb._ How he gazes on her! Pity--pity!
_1st Student._ They go in; now, silence! You three--not
nearer the window, mind, than that pomegranate--just 155
where the little girl, who a few minutes ago passed
us singing, is seated!