"Juliana, Juliana, where are you?"
Maria and Natalia ran to meet me, giving me a boisterous welcome,
delighted at the sight of the flowers, dancing about as if possessed.
"Come in! Come in!" they cried. "Mamma is here, in the bedroom. Come
in!"
On crossing the threshold my heart beat faster. Juliana was there,
smiling and embarrassed. I threw the bunch at her feet.
"Look!"
"Oh! how beautiful!" she exclaimed, bending over the fragrant treasure.
She was dressed in one of her favorite gowns, hanging in ample and
graceful folds, and of a green hue resembling the green of an
aloes-leaf. Her hair, not yet dressed, covered the nape of her neck,
hiding her ears beneath its thick masses. The emanations from the
hawthorns, that odor of thyme mixed with bitter almonds, enveloped,
inundated the room, penetrating everything.
"Take care not to prick yourself," I said to her. "See my hands."
I showed her the still bleeding lacerations, as if to enhance the value
of my offering. "Oh! if now she would take my hands!" I thought. And
in my mind passed confusedly the recollection of a day, far distant,
when she had kissed my hands, lacerated by the thorns, when she had
wanted to suck the drops of blood that appeared one after the other.
"If now she would take my hands, and if, by this single action, she
would accord me full pardon, and yield herself up to me entirely!"
At that time I was in constant expectation of some such movement. I
could not, of course, have said what gave me such confidence; but I was
sure that Juliana would give herself to me again in this manner sooner
or later, by some simple and silent action by which she would "accord me
full pardon and yield herself up to me entirely."
She smiled. A shade of suffering passed over her pale face and in her
sunken eyes.
"Don't you feel a little better since you are here?" I asked,
approaching her.
"Yes, I'm better," she answered.
Then, after a pause:
"And you?"
"Oh, I! I am cured. Don't you see?"
"Yes, it is true."
At that time, when she spoke to me, her words had a curious hesitation
that seemed to me full of grace, but which now it is impossible for me
to define. One would have said that she was continually preoccupied in
restraining the word that rose to her lips, to pronounce another word.
Moreover, her voice was, so to speak, more _feminine_; it had lost its
former firmness, and some of its sonorousness; it was veiled, like an
instrument played in secret.
But, since it had only tender accents for me now, what obstacle
prevented us from being all in all to each other again? What obstacle
maintained the separation between us?
During that period, which in the history of my soul will ever remain
mysterious, my natural perspicacity seemed to have deserted me. All my
terrible analytical faculties, even those that had made me suffer so
much, seemed exhausted; the power of these restless faculties appeared
to be annihilated. Innumerable sensations, innumerable feelings
relative to that epoch, are now incomprehensible, inexplicable, because
I have no indication to aid me in retracing their origin, in determining
their character. There was a break in the continuity, or lack of solder
between that period of my psychic existence and the other periods.
Formerly, I had narrated a fabulous tale in which a young prince, after
the adventures of a long pilgrimage, finally succeeds in rejoining the
lady whom he had pursued with his ardent love. The young man trembled
with hope, and the lady smiled on him, close by. But a veil seemed to
render this smiling lady intangible, a veil of unknown substance, so
subtle that it was confounded with the air; and, nevertheless, this veil
was a barrier that prohibited the young man from clasping the woman he
loved to his heart.
This fable helps me a little to form an idea of the singular state in
which I found myself at that time _vis-a-vis_ Juliana. I felt that
between her and me an unknown something constantly maintained an abyss.
But, at the same time, I was confident that, sooner or later, the
"simple and silent gesture" would annihilate the obstacle and bring back
my happiness.
Meanwhile, how Juliana's room pleased me! It was furnished with
light-colored hangings, with faded pink flowers and it had a deep
alcove. What a perfume the hawthorns shed!
"This odor is penetrating," she said, very pale. "It gives one a
headache. Don't you feel it?"
She went and opened a window.
Then she added:
"Maria, call Miss Edith."
The governess came in.
"Edith, please take these flowers to the music-room; put them into
vases. Take care not to prick yourself."
Maria and Natalia wanted to carry a part of the bunch. We remained
alone. She went once more to the window, and leaned against it, her
back turned toward the light.
"Have you anything to do? Do you wish me to go?" I asked.
"No, no; stay, be seated. Tell me about your walk this morning. How
far did you go?"
She spoke with some precipitation. As the window support was at about
the height of her waist, she had placed her elbows on it, and her bust
was inclined backward, framed by the rectangle of the window. Her face,
turned directly toward me, was entirely shaded, particularly about the
orbits of the eyes; but her hair, on the summit of which fell the light,
formed a slight aureole; the light also touched the tops of her
shoulders. One of her feet--the one that supported the weight of her
body--was raised, drawing up the dress, partly disclosing the
ash-colored stocking and the patent-leather slipper. In that attitude,
in that light, her entire person possessed extraordinarily seductive
power. A section of bluish and voluptuous landscape, pinked out between
the two window-posts, formed a distant background behind her head.
And then, instantaneously, as if by a crushing revelation, I saw once
more in her the desirable woman; and all my blood fired up at the memory
of, and the desire of, her caresses.
I spoke to her, my eyes fixed on her. And the more I gazed on her, the
more disturbed I became. She also, no doubt, must have read my look,
since her uneasiness became visible. I thought, with poignant internal
anxiety: "If I only dared? If I went closer to her? If I took her in
my arms?" The apparent assurance that I sought to put in my frivolous
remarks rapidly abandoned me. My disturbance grew. My embarrassment
became insupportable. From the adjoining rooms came the sound of the
voices of Maria, Natalia, and Edith, indistinctly.
I arose, approached the window, and stood beside Juliana. I was on the
point of bending toward her to speak at last the words that I had so
many times repeated to myself in imaginary conversations. But the fear
of a probable interruption stopped me. I thought that perhaps the
moment was badly chosen, that perhaps I should not have the time to say
all to her, to open all my heart to her, to relate my intimate life
during the last few weeks, the mysterious convalescence of my soul, the
awakening of my most tender fibres, the arousing of my most delicate
dreams, the depth of my new sensation, the tenacity of my hope. I
thought that I should not have the time to recount in detail the recent
episodes, to make those little, innocent confessions to her, so
delicious to the ear of the woman who loves, fresh with sincerity, more
persuasive than any eloquence. In fact, I must succeed in convincing her
of a great truth, perhaps incredible to her after so many disillusions;
succeed in convincing her that now my return was no longer deceptive,
but sincere, definite, necessitated by a vital desire of my entire
being. Of course, she was still distrustful; of course, her distrust
was the cause of her reserve. Between us the shadow of an atrocious
recollection ever interposed itself. It was for me to banish this
shadow, to draw my soul and hers so closely together that nothing more
could interpose between them. But, for that, a favorable occasion was
required in some secret and silent place, inhabited only by memories.
That place was the Lilacs.
We remained in the embrasure of the window, by each other's side, both
silent. From the adjoining rooms came the sound of the voices of Maria,
Natalia, and Edith, indistinctly. The perfume of the hawthorn was
dissipated. The curtains that hung from the arch of the alcove permitted
a view of the bed in its depth, and my eyes wandered ceaselessly toward
it, searching the shadows, almost concupiscent.
Juliana had lowered her head, perhaps because she also felt the
delicious and agonizing weight of the silence. The light breeze toyed
with a loose curl on her temple. The restless agitation of that dark
curl, in which were light scattered threads of gold, on that temple
white as a wafer, made me languorous. And, as I gazed at her, I saw
again on her neck the little brown mole which, in former days, had so
often curiously attracted me.
Then, incapable of containing myself, with a mixture of apprehension and
hardihood, I raised my hand to arrange the curl; and my fingers trembled
on her hair, and they brushed against the ear, the neck, but lightly,
very lightly, with the most furtive of caresses.
"What are you doing?" said Juliana, shaken by a start, turning on me a
bewildered look, trembling perhaps more than I.
She left the window. Then, feeling that I was following her, she made
several steps as if to flee, dismayed.
"Ah! Juliana, why, why?" I cried, stopping short.
Then immediately I added:
"It is true. I am still unworthy. Pardon!"
At that moment the two bells of the chapel began to chime. And Maria
and Natalia rushed into the room, ran up to their mother with cries of
joy, and hung around her neck, one after the other, covering her face
with kisses; then, leaving their mother, they came to me, and I raised
them in my arms, one after the other.
The two bells chimed furiously; the whole of the Badiola seemed to be
invaded by the thrill of the bronze. It was Holy Saturday, the hour of
the Resurrection.
*IV.*
In the afternoon of that same Saturday, I had a strange attack of
melancholy.
The post had arrived at the Badiola, and I happened to be in the
billiard-room with my brother, glancing through the newspapers. My eyes
fell by chance on the name of Filippo Arborio, mentioned in an article.
A sudden agitation seized me. Thus it is that a slight jar will stir up
the dregs of a quiescent liquid.
I remember. It was a foggy afternoon, illuminated by the fatigued
reverberation of a whitish light. Outside, before the window looking on
the lawn, Juliana passed with my mother, arm in arm, chatting. Juliana
carried a book, and walked as if fatigued.
With the incoherence of the images that unrolled before me in thought,
there arose in my mind certain remnants of my past life: Juliana before
the mirror, on that November day; the bouquet of white chrysanthemums;
my anxiety on hearing the air from Orpheus; the words written on the
fly-leaf of _The Secret_; the color of Juliana's dress; my soliloquy at
the window; Filippo Arborio's face, dripping with perspiration; the
scene in the dressing-room of the salle d'armes. I thought with a
shudder of fear, like a man who suddenly finds himself leaning over the
edge of a precipice: "Can it be possible that I am lost?"
Overcome by anguish, feeling a desire to be alone in order to commune
with myself, to meet my fear face to face, I took leave of my brother,
left the hall, and returned to my room.
My agitation was mingled with impatience and anger. I was like a man
who, in the midst of the comfort of an illusory cure, in the full
assurance of having regained his health, would feel all at once the
sting of his old malady, would perceive that in his flesh the
ineradicable disease still remained, and would be constrained to watch
himself, to note his symptoms, in order to convince himself of the
horrible truth. "Can it be possible that I am lost? And why?"
In the strange forgetfulness in which the entire past was buried, in
that sort of obscurity which seemed to have entirely invaded one layer
of my conscience, the doubt against Juliana, that odious doubt, had also
vanished, was dissolved. My soul had so great a desire to lull itself
with illusions, to believe and to hope! My mother's saintly hand, in
caressing Juliana's hair, had rekindled for me the aureole around that
head. By one of those sentimental errors frequent during the period of
weakness, when I had seen the two women leading the same existence in
such sweet concord, I had involved them in the same irradiation of
purity.
But now, a slight accidental fact, a mere name read by chance in a
journal, the awakening of a recollection had sufficed to upset me, to
frighten me, to open an abyss beneath my feet; and I did not dare sound
the depths of a resolute scrutiny, because my dream of happiness
withheld me, drew me back, clung to me obstinately. I wavered at first
in an obscure and indefinable anguish, traversed at moments by dreadful
glimpses. "It may be that she is not pure, and then? Filippo Arborio,
or another ... who knows? Were I certain of the sin, could I pardon it?
What sin? What pardon? You have not the right to judge her; you have
not the right to raise your voice. She has kept silent too often. Now,
it is your duty to keep silent. And your happiness? The happiness that
you dream of, is it your own or does it belong to both of you? To both
of you, of course; for the shadow of _her_ sorrow would suffice to
obscure all your joys. You suppose that, if you are happy, she will be
happy also--you with your past of constant misconduct, she with her past
of constant martyrdom? The happiness that you dream of has for its only
foundation the abolition of the past. Why, then, if she had truly
ceased to be pure, would it be impossible to throw a veil over it or
condone her sin as you would your own? Why, if she forgets, should you
not forget, yourself? Why, if you claim to be a man without prejudice
and completely freed from social convention, should you not consider her
also as a woman in the same state of being? Such an inequality would be
perhaps the worst of your injustices. But the Ideal? But the Ideal?
My own felicity would not be possible except on the condition of
recognizing in Juliana a creature absolutely superior, impeccable,
worthy of every adoration; and it is precisely also in the innate
feeling of this superiority, in the consciousness of her personal moral
greatness, that she would find the most precious elements of her own
felicity. I should not succeed in forgetting my own past or hers,
because the existence of this special happiness presupposes both the
profligacy of my former life and her unconquered and almost superhuman
heroism, the image of which has always constrained my mind to bow before
it. But do you take into account the amount of egotism and high
ideality that enters into your dream? Do you believe you merit that
supreme prize, happiness? By what privilege? So your long misconduct
has entitled you, not to expiation, but to a reward?"
I rose hastily to my feet to cut short this debate. "In brief, it
concerns only an old suspicion, very vague, and awakened by chance.
This unreasonable agitation will go away. I have made a substance of a
shadow. In two or three days, after Easter, we will go to the Lilacs,
and then I shall know, I shall unquestionably _feel_ the truth. But is
not that profound and immutable melancholy which is in her eyes also
suspicious? That bewildered air, that species of continual
preoccupation which is marked so heavily on her brow, that great fatigue
which is revealed by certain attitudes, that anguish which she cannot
succeed in dissimulating at your approach--is not all that
_suspicious_?" The ambiguity of such symptoms bore also a favorable
interpretation. Then, submerged by a flood of the most violent pain, I
went up to the window, with the instinctive desire of plunging into the
spectacle of the outer world to discover there something that would
correspond to the state of my soul--a revelation or an appeasement.
The sky was quite white, like a scaffolding of superimposed veils
between which the air circulated, producing large mobile folds. One of
these veils seemed at times to detach itself and approach the earth,
graze the tops of the trees, break up, be reduced to falling fragments,
undulate on the ground, fade away. On the horizon, the lines of the
heights were confusedly unrolled, disappearing to reappear in the
fantastic landscapes, like a vista perceived in a dream, without
reality. A lead-colored shadow covered the valley, and the Assoro,
whose shores were invisible, animated it with its reflections. This
tortuous river, glistening in that sombre gulf, beneath that slow and
continued disaggregation of the sky, attracted the attention, and had
for the mind the fascination of symbolical things, seemed to bear in
itself the occult sense of that indefinable spectacle.
My pain gradually lost its acuteness, became appeased and calm. "Why do
you aspire with such avidity to a happiness of which you are not worthy?
Why do you base the whole edifice of your future life on an illusion?
Why believe with such blind faith in a privilege that does not exist?
All men perhaps, in the course of their lives, encounter a decisive
period in which the most perspicacious are able to understand what
_their life should be_. That period you have already met. Remember the
moment when the white and faithful hand which offered you love,
indulgence, peace, dreams, forgetfulness, everything that is good and
beautiful, trembled in the air, was extended toward you _as if for the
supreme offering..._"
Bitterness swelled my heart with tears. I leaned my elbows on the
balustrade, my hands to my face, and, my eyes fixed on the windings of
the river at the bottom of the leaden valley, while the scaffolding of
the sky ceaselessly disaggregated, I remained for several minutes under
the menace of an imminent punishment, I felt that an unknown disaster
was suspended above me.
But, suddenly, from the room below arose the sound of the piano; and
instantaneously, that heavy oppression disappeared, and I was seized by
a confused anxiety in which all the dreams, every desire, each hope,
every regret, remorse, and terror were mingled anew with inconceivable
and suffocating rapidity.
I recognized the music. It was a _Romance without Words_ of which
Juliana was very fond, and which Miss Edith often played; it was one of
those veiled yet profound melodies in which the Soul appeared to ask
Life, with ever-changing accents, this single question, "Why have you
disappointed my expectation?"
Yielding to a kind of instinctive impulse, I went out, agitated,
traversed the corridor, descended the staircase, and stopped before the
door from which issued the sounds. The door was ajar; I slipped in
without making any noise, and looked through the portieres. Was it
Juliana? At first my eyes, blinded by the light, were incapable of
distinguishing anything, before adapting themselves to the darkness; but
I was struck by the penetrating perfume of the hawthorns, that odor of
mingled thyme and bitter-almond, fresh as country milk. I looked in.
The room was poorly lighted by a greenish light that struggled in from
between the slats of the Venetian blinds. Miss Edith was alone at the
piano, and she continued to play without noticing my presence. The
polished case of the instrument glistened in the dark; the branches of
hawthorns made a white spot. In the quiet of this retreat, in this
perfume emanating from the branches that recalled the happy matinal
intoxication, and Juliana's smile and my own fear, the romance seemed
more desolate than ever.
Where was Juliana? Gone upstairs? Still out of doors? I withdrew; I
went down the other stairs; I traversed the vestibule without meeting
anyone. I had an unconquerable desire to seek her, to see her; I
thought that, perhaps, it would suffice me to be near her in order to
recover my calmness, to regain confidence. On going out on the lawn, I
perceived her beneath the elms, sitting with Federico.
Both smiled at me. When I came up to them my brother said smilingly:
"We were speaking of you. Juliana thinks you will soon be tired of the
Badiola.... If so, what will become of our projects?"
"No, Juliana _does not know_," I replied, making an effort to recover my
habitual ease. "But you will see. On the contrary, it is of Rome that I
am tired ... _and of everything else_."
I looked at Juliana. A marvellous change was taking place in my soul.
The sad things that, up to then, had oppressed me, now faded away,
disappeared, gave place to a salutary feeling that the mere sight of her
and of my brother sufficed to awaken in me. She was seated in a
careless and nonchalant attitude, holding on her knees a book that I
recognized, the book that I had given her some days before, Tolstoi's
_Peace and War_. Truly, all about her, her attitude, her look, breathed
sweetness and goodness. And in me an emotion was born similar to that
which I should doubtless have felt if, in the same place, beneath the
familiar elms, that shed their dead flowers, I had seen Constance, the
poor sister, side by side with Federico.
The elms rained thousands of flowers at every breath of the wind. There
was, in the white light, a continual and very slow rain of diaphanous,
almost impalpable pellicles, that loitered in the air, hesitating,
trembling like the wings of dragon-flies, of an indefinable color
between green and blond, and whose incessant fall imparted a sensation
of vertigo. They fell on Juliana's knees, on her shoulders; from time
to time she made a movement to remove one that had ensconced itself in
her hair.
"Ah! If Tullio stays at the Badiola," said Federico, addressing her,
"we will do great things. We will promulgate the new agrarian laws; we
will establish the foundations of the new agricultural constitution...
You smile? You also will have your share in our work; we will confide
to you the execution of two or three precepts of our Decalogue. You
will work like the others. Apropos, Tullio, when shall we commence this
novitiate? Your hands are too white. Eh! It is not enough to simply
prick them with thorns...."
He spoke gayly, in his clear and strong voice, that immediately inspired
every listener with a feeling of security and confidence. He spoke of
his old and new projects relative to the interpretation of the primitive
Christian law on alimentary labor with a gravity of thought and emotion
that tempered that sportive gayety with which he protected himself as
with a veil of modesty against the admiration and eulogy of his
auditors. In him all appeared simple, easy, spontaneous. This young
man, by the sole power of a mind that illumined his inborn virtue, had
had, for several years already, the intuition of the social theory that
the Moujik Bondareff inspired in Leo Tolstoi. At that time, he had not
the least knowledge of _Peace and War_, the great book that had just
appeared in the East.
"Here is a book for you," I said to him, taking the volume from
Juliana's knees.
"Thanks; lend it to me. I will read it."
"Do you like it?" I asked Juliana.
"Yes; very much. It is sad and consoling at the same time. I already
love Marie Bolkonsky, and Pierre Besoukhow too."
I sat down near her, on a bench. It seemed to me that I was thinking of
nothing, that I had not one precise thought; but my soul kept vigil and
meditated. There was a manifest contrast between the feeling that
sprang from the circumstance, from the neighboring objects, and that
which corresponded with Federico's words, with that book, with the names
of the characters whom Juliana loved.
The time passed slowly and gently, almost lazily, in this diffused and
whitish mist in which the elms gradually shed their flowers. The sound
of the piano reached us, muffled, unintelligible, rendering the light
more melancholy, cradling, so to speak, the drowsy atmosphere.
Absorbed, listening no longer, I opened the book, I turned the leaves at
several places, and ran through the beginning of several pages. I
noticed that there were several pages turned down at the corners, as if
to mark them; on others, there were finger-nail marks, the habit of the
reader. Then I wished to read in turn, curious, almost anxious. In the
scene between Pierre Besoukhow and the unknown old man at the Torjok
post-house, many passages were marked.
"Let your spiritual look fall back on your inner being. Ask yourself if
you are satisfied with yourself. At what result have you arrived,
having but your intelligence for a guide? You are young, you are rich,
you are intelligent. What have you done with all these gifts? Are you
satisfied with yourself and with your life?"
"No, I have a horror of it!"
"If you have a horror of it, change it, purify yourself. And, in measure
as you transform yourself, you will learn to recognize wisdom. How have
you passed your existence? In orgies, in debauches, in depravities,
receiving everything from society without giving it anything. What use
have you made of the benefits of fortune? What have you done for your
fellow-man? Have you thought of your tens of thousands of serfs? Have
you assisted them morally or materially? No, you have not. You have
profited by their labor in order to live a life of corruption. Have you
sought to employ yourself in the service of your fellow-man? No. You
have lived in indolence. And then you married; you accepted the
responsibility of serving as a guide to a young woman. And then?
Instead of helping her to find the path of truth, you have plunged her
into the abyss of deceit and of misery...."
Again the unbearable load weighed me down, crushed me; and it was a more
atrocious torture than that I had already suffered, because Juliana's
presence exasperated the crisis. On the leaf, the passage transcribed
was marked by a single pencil stroke. Without any doubt, Juliana had
marked it, thinking of me, of my misconduct. But the last line? To
whom did that refer? To me? To us?
Had I thrown her, had she fallen "into the abyss of deceit and misery"?