F. ARBORIO.
All Saints' Day, '85.
So Juliana knew the novelist? And what did Juliana think of him? I
conjured up the writer's fine and seductive face as I had seen it
several times in public. There was certainly much in him that must
please Juliana. According to current gossip, he pleased women. His
romances, full of a complicated psychology, at times very subtle, often
false, disturbed sentimental souls, fired restless imaginations, taught
with supreme grace contempt of common life. _An Agony, The True
Catholic, Angelica Doni, Giorgio Aliora, The Secret_, suggested an
intense vision of life, as if life were a vast conflagration of
innumerable ardent figures. Each of his characters fought for his
chimera, in a hopeless duel against reality.
Had not this extraordinary artist, who in his books appeared to be, so
to speak, like a distilled quintessence of pure spirit, also exerted his
fascination on me? Had I not said of his _Giorgio Aliora_ that it was a
_fraternal_ work? Had I not found in certain of his literary creations
strange resemblances with my inner being? And suppose the strange
affinity that there is between us facilitated his work of seduction,
perhaps already undertaken? Suppose Juliana was yielding to him,
precisely because she had recognized in him some one of those
attractions by which, previously, I had made myself adored by her? I
thought with a new fright.
She reentered the room. On seeing me with the book in my hand, she
said, with an embarrassed smile, and blushing slightly:
"What are you looking at?"
"Do you know Filippo Arborio?" I asked her immediately, but without any
change in my voice, in the most calm and natural voice that I could
command.
"Yes," she answered frankly. "He was introduced to me at the Monterisi.
He has even been here several times, but you have not had the
opportunity of meeting him."
A question rose to my lips: "Why have you never spoken of him to me?"
But I restrained it. How could she have mentioned it, since, by my
attitude, I had interrupted for a long time past all friendly exchange
of news and confidences?
"He is much more simple than his works would lead one to suppose," she
continued carelessly, slowly drawing on her gloves. "Have you read _The
Secret_?"
"Yes, I have read it."
"Did you like it?"
Without thinking, and by an instinctive desire to affirm my superiority
in Juliana's eyes, I answered:
"No, it is commonplace."
At last she said:
"I am going."
She made a motion to leave. I followed her as far as the antechamber,
walking in the wake of the perfume she left behind her, so subtle as to
be scarcely perceptible. In the presence of the servant she said only:
"_Au revoir._"
And, with a light step, she crossed the threshold.
I went back to my room. I opened the window, and leaned out to watch
her in the street.
She hurried along, with her light step, on the sunny side of the street,
straight on, without turning her head to the right or left. The St.
Martin summer shed a delicate gilding over the crystal of the sky; a
calm warmth softened the air and conjured up the perfume of the absent
violets. An immense sadness weighed on me, crashed me down on the
window-sill; gradually it became intolerable.
Rarely in my life have I suffered so much as from that doubt which
crumbled at one stroke my faith in Juliana, a faith that had lasted for
so many years. Rarely had the flight of an illusion drawn from my soul
such cries of anguish. But was it true that the illusion had fled and
that the evil was irremediable? I could not, I would not, be persuaded
of it.
That great illusion had been the companion of my whole misguided life.
It answered not only to the exigencies of my egotism, but also to my
aesthetic dream of moral greatness.
"Since moral greatness results from the violence of pains which one
triumphs over, it is necessary, so that she may have an opportunity to
be heroic, that she should suffer all I have made her suffer." This
axiom, which had often succeeded in calming my remorse, was deeply
rooted in my mind, and had caused to surge there from the best part of
myself an ideal phantom to which I had vowed a sort of platonic cult.
Debauched, culpable, tired, I took pleasure in recognizing in the ray of
my own existence a soul severe, upright, and strong, an incorruptible
soul, and it pleased me to be the object of its love, of an eternal
love. All my vice, all my misery, all my feebleness, found a support in
this illusion. I believed that for me there was a possible realization
of the dream of all intellectual men: to be constantly unfaithful to a
constantly faithful woman.
"What are you seeking? All the intoxication of life? Very well! go, run
on, intoxicate yourself. In your house a dumb creature remembers and
waits, like a veiled image in a sanctuary. The lamp in which you do not
put a single drop more of oil burns without ever becoming extinguished.
Is not that the dream of all intellectual men?"
And again: "No matter at what hour, no matter after what adventure, you
will find her there on your return. She was awaiting your return with
confidence, but she will not tell you of her waiting. You will rest
your head on her knees and she will caress your temples with her
finger-tips, to take away your pain."
I had a presentiment that one day I would return thus; I would end by
coming back, after one of those intimate catastrophes that metamorphose
a man. All my hopelessnesses were softened by the secret conviction
that this refuge could not fail me, and in the depth of my abjectness a
little light came to me from that woman who, for love of me and _by my
work_, had raised herself to the summit of greatness and had perfectly
realized the form of my ideal.
Would one doubt suffice to destroy all that in a moment?
I repassed from one end to the other the scene that had taken place
between Juliana and myself from the moment I had entered the room to the
instant she had left it. And it was in vain I attributed a great part
of my inner agitation to a special and transient nervous condition; I
could not succeed in dissipating the strange impression exactly
translated by these words:
"She seemed to me to be _another woman_."
There was certainly something new about her. But what? Was not Filippo
Arborio's dedication in a sense reassuring? Did it not precisely affirm
that the _Turris Eburnea_ was impregnable? This glorious qualification
had been suggested to the author either simply by the reputation for
purity that Juliana Hermil's name bore, or by the non-success of an
attempted assault, or, possibly, by the abandonment of a siege
undertaken. In consequence, the Ivory Tower still remained unsullied.
While reasoning thus to allay the gnawings of suspicion, I could not
remove the confused anxiety that lay at the bottom of my being, as if I
feared a sudden apparition of some ironical objection. "You know,
Juliana has extraordinarily white skin. She is literally _as white as
her night-dress_. The pious qualification might well hide some profane
meaning." But the word _unworthy_? "Oh! Oh! What subtleties!"
An attack of impatience and anger cut short this humiliating and vain
debate. I withdrew from the window, shrugged my shoulders, made two or
three turns in the room, mechanically opened a book, then threw it down
again. But my anguish did not decrease. "In short," I thought, stopping
short, as if to confront some invisible adversary, "to what does all
this lead me? Either she has already fallen, and the loss is
irreparable; or she is in danger, and in my present situation I cannot
interfere to save her; or else she is pure, and then there is no change.
In any case, it is not for me to _act_. What exists, exists of
necessity; what is to happen, will of necessity happen. This crisis of
suffering will pass. One must wait. How beautiful those white
chrysanthemums were that were on Juliana's table just now! I will go
and buy a heap more just like them. My rendezvous with Teresa is for
two o'clock to-day. I have still almost three hours before me. Did she
not tell me, the last time, that she wished to find the fire burning?
This will be the first fire of the winter on such a warm day. It seems
to me she is in a week of kindness. I only hope it will last! But, at
the first opportunity, I shall challenge Eugenio Egano."
My thoughts followed a new course, with sudden checks, with unforeseen
divergences. In the midst even of the pictures of the approaching
voluptuousness, another contaminating imagination passed like a
lightning flash, one that I feared, one from which I should like to
flee. Certain audacious and ardent pages of _The True Catholic_ recurred
to me. One of these passions aroused the other, and, while suffering
from the distinct pains, I confounded the two women in the same
pollution, Filippo Arborio and Eugenio Egano in the same hate.
The crisis passed, leaving in my soul a species of vague contempt mixed
with rancor against the _sister_. I drifted away still further from
her; I became more and more hardened, more and more careless, more and
more reserved. My sad passion for Teresa Raffo became more exclusive,
occupied all my faculties, left me no respite. I was really a maniac, a
man possessed by a diabolical insanity, devoured by an unknown and
frightful malady. My mind has retained of that winter only confused,
incoherent souvenirs, interspersed with strange, rare obscurities.
That winter I never encountered Filippo Arborio at my house; but I saw
him sometimes in public. One evening, however, I met him in a salle
d'armes; and there we became acquainted. We were introduced by the
fencing-master, and we exchanged a few words. The gaslight, the
creaking of the flooring, the flash and clatter of the foils, the clumsy
or graceful attitudes of the swordsmen, the rapid extension of all those
bent limbs, the warm and acrid exhalations of all those bodies, the
guttural cries, rude interjections, the bursts of laughter--such are the
details that my memory furnishes to reconstruct with singular clearness
the scene that unrolled itself before us, while we were standing face to
face and the master pronounced our names. I again see the gesture with
which Filippo Arborio, raising his mask, displayed a heated face all
bathed in perspiration. He was panting with fatigue, and somewhat
convulsed, like a man unaccustomed to muscular exercise. Instinctively
I thought that he would not be a formidable opponent in a duel. I
affected also a certain haughtiness; I especially avoided saying
anything that bore any reference to his celebrity or to my admiration; I
assumed the attitude I would have taken towards a perfect stranger.
"So it is for to-morrow?" said the fencing-master to me, smiling.
"Yes, at ten o'clock."
"Are you going to fight?" asked Arborio, with evident curiosity.
"Yes."
He hesitated a little, and then added:
"May I ask with whom, if it is not an indiscretion?"
"With Eugenio Egano."
I noticed that he would have liked to learn more, but that he was
restrained by the coldness of my attitude and my apparent inattention.
"Maestro," I said, "I'll give you five minutes."
I turned my back to go to the dressing-room. At the door I stopped, and
glancing back, saw that Arborio had recommenced to fence. One glance
sufficed to show me that he was a very poor swordsman.
When, watched by all the persons present, I engaged with the
fencing-master, a singular nervous excitement seized upon me and
redoubled my energy. I felt Arborio's eyes were fastened on me.
Later on, I saw him again in the dressing-room. The room had a very low
ceiling, and was already full of smoke and an acrid, sickening smell of
men. All those in it, naked save for their large white dressing-gowns,
were smoking and slowly rubbing their chests, arms, shoulders, and
chaffing one another loudly. The splashing of the shower-bath
alternated with the loud laughter. Two or three times, with an
indefinable motion of repulsion, with a start similar to that which a
violent physical shock would produce, I saw the frail form of Arborio,
whom my eyes sought involuntarily. And, once again, the odious image was
formed.
Since then I had no other opportunity to approach or meet him. I ceased
to busy myself with him, and, as a consequence, I remarked nothing
suspicious in Juliana's behavior. Outside the constantly narrowing
circle in which I moved, there no longer existed for me anything lucid,
or sensible, or intelligent. Every external impression passed over me
like drops of water over red-hot iron, rebounding or evaporating.
Events came one after the other. Toward the end of February, after a
last proof of infamy, a definite rupture occurred between Teresa Raffo
and myself. I left for Venice, alone.
I remained there about one month in a state of incomprehensible
uneasiness, in a sort of stupor that made the fogs seem thicker and the
lagoons more silent. There remained to me only the innate sensation of
my own isolation amidst the inert phantoms of all things. For long
hours, I felt no other sensation than that of the persistent and
crushing weight of life, and that of the slight pulsation of an artery
in my head. For long hours, I endured that strange fascination exerted
by the uninterrupted and monotonous murmur of some indistinct thing on
the soul. It drizzled; on the water, the fog at times took on lugubrious
forms, advancing like spectres, with slow and solemn step. Often I
found a sort of imaginary death in a gondola, as in a coffin. When the
rower asked where I desired to be taken, I almost always answered by a
vague gesture, and I comprehended internally the hopeless sincerity of
the answer: "_No matter where ... beyond the world_."
I came back to Rome during the last days of March. I felt a new
sensation of the reality, as if after a long eclipse of conscience.
Sometimes, unexpectedly, a timidity, an uneasiness, an unreasoning fear
seized me, and I felt as powerless as an infant. I looked about me
ceaselessly with unusual attention, to grasp once more the true sense of
things, to find again the proper connections, to take note of what was
changed and what had disappeared. And, in proportion as I slowly
reentered into the ordinary existence, the equilibrium reestablished
itself in my being, hope revived, and I began to become preoccupied with
the future.
I found Juliana's strength much reduced and her health very much
changed. She was sadder than ever. We spoke but little and without
looking at one another, without opening our hearts. We both sought the
society of our two little daughters; and, with their happy innocence,
Maria and Natalia filled our long silences with their fresh chatter. One
day Maria asked:
"Mamma, shall we go this Easter to the Badiola?"