A few days afterwards the Lenzdorffs left Berlin, to spend the winter
in Rome, where Erika, incited thereto by her grandmother, went into
society perpetually, without taking the least pleasure in it. And she
made no secret of her indifference, her discontent. The bark of her
existence, once so safe and sure in its course, seemed to have lost its
bearings: she saw no aim in life worthy the effort to pursue it.
She indulged in fits of causeless melancholy; yet all the while her
beauty bloomed out into fuller perfection, and all unconsciously to
herself life throbbed within her and demanded its right. The old
Countess, who did not understand her condition, looked upon it as a
morbid crisis in the girl's life; but she never dreamed how fraught
with danger the crisis was.
Thus she utterly failed to appreciate or to sympathize with her
grand-daughter; and, whether because of her exaggerated admiration for
her, or because her age was beginning to tell upon her powers of
perception, she did not suspect the slow approach of the fever which
had begun to undermine the young creature's existence.
Towards the end of February, just at the close of the Carnival, Erika
told her grandmother that she was heartily tired of Rome, and wished to
see Italy from some other point of view.
After much deliberation, Venice was chosen for their next abode; and
here the old Countess refused to follow the usual custom of foreigners
and rent a palazzo: she declared that in Venice true comfort was to be
found only in a hotel. So a suite of rooms was hired in the Hotel
Britannia,--four airy apartments, in which their predecessor had been a
crowned head, and two of which looked out upon the church of Santa
Maria della Salute, whilst the other two had a view of the small garden
of the hotel, and, across its low wall, of the Grand Canal.
Of course they had a gondola for their own private use; but Erika was
not fond of availing herself of it. The rocking motion, the monotonous
plash of the water, excited still further her irritated nerves; she
preferred taking long walks,--at first, out of deference to her
grandmother's wishes, accompanied by the maid Marianne. She soon tired,
however, of such uncongenial companionship, and induced her grandmother
to allow her to pursue alone her investigations of the corners and
by-ways of Venice. She explored the curiosity-shops, spent whole days
in the galleries, and made wonderful discoveries in the way of bargains
in old stuffs and artistic antiquities, until her little salon became a
museum of such treasures. In one corner stood a grand piano, seated at
which at times she poured out her soul in all that is most beautiful
and most tragic in music.
The old Countess left her to pursue her own path, and occupied herself
very differently.
In spite of her original and independent view of life, and her
readiness to criticise frankly all that was artificial and
conventional, she loved _les chemins battus_. She went the way of the
multitude,--saw nothing of Venetian by-ways, but devoted her time to
museums and works of art, being indefatigable in her daily round of
sight-seeing. And yet, although her health seemed as robust as
ever, and she could apparently endure far more fatigue than her
grand-daughter, she was no longer what she had been.
Her extraordinary memory began to fail, and the interest which formerly
had been excited only by affairs of some moment was now ready to be
aroused in petty concerns. She took pleasure in gossip, allowed
Marianne to detail to her scraps of the Venetian _chronique
scandaleuse_ picked up from the couriers in the hotel, and, worst of
all, the fine edge of her moral sentiment seemed in a degree blunted.
She would repeat to Erika, without the slightest idea of the pain she
was inflicting, stories and reports of a nature to offend the girl's
sense of morality and delicacy.
Nothing any longer shocked her: love and hatred of her kind seemed
blunted under the influence of a low estimate of human nature which she
called a philosophic view of life.
She simply never observed how Erika's cheeks burned when she suddenly
disclosed to her the lapse from virtue, hidden from the superficial
world, of some woman whom they had met in society; she never perceived
the girl's feverish agitation upon hearing her grandmother calmly
advance all sorts of excuses for the so-called indiscretion. She did
not suppose her revelations could affect Erika disagreeably; although
Erika did not always allow her to talk on without interruption; she
would sometimes bluntly declare that she could not believe what her
grandmother thus told her.
Then the old Countess would reply, "I really cannot see what reason you
have to disbelieve it. You cannot alter human nature by shutting your
eyes to its defects."
Whereupon Erika would say, with annihilating emphasis, "If human nature
really is what you describe it, I cannot understand your pleasure in
frequenting society, since you must despise unutterably those who
compose it."
"Despise!" her grandmother repeated, shaking her head. "I despise no
one. Knowing, as I do, how mankind struggles under the burden of animal
instincts, I wonder to see it ever rise above them, and I am forced to
esteem men in spite of everything."
Erika only repeated, angrily, "Esteem! esteem!" Her grandmother's mode
of esteeming mankind was certainly extraordinary.