"To-day, after lunch, I will go with Federico to the Assoro woods.
Shall we see one another this evening on my return?"
She made no movement to answer. Then I repeated, in a voice that
conveyed a thousand things understood:
"Shall we see one another this evening on my return?" From between her
lips, hidden among Natalia's curls, came like a sigh:
"Yes."
*XIV.*
In the violence of my multiple and contrary agitations, in the first
tumult of pain, beneath the menace of imminent perils, I had not yet had
the leisure to think of the Other. Moreover, from the very first, I had
not conceived even the shadow of a doubt of my former suspicion. In my
mind, the Other had immediately taken the form of Filippo Arborio, and
from the first outburst of carnal jealousy that had seized me in the
alcove, it was his abominable image which was coupled with that of
Juliana in a series of horrible visions.
Even now, while Federico and I trotted toward the forest, along the
banks of the tortuous river, contemplated so painfully on the afternoon
of Holy Saturday, the Other trotted beside us. Between my brother and
me interposed the image of Filippo Arborio, revived by my hate, animated
by my hate with life so intense that, on regarding it with a _sensation
of reality_, I felt a physical spasm, something similar to the savage
quivering that I had more than once felt on the duelling field, at the
signal of attack, when face to face with an adversary.
My brother's presence extraordinarily increased my uneasiness. Compared
with Federico, that man's face, so thin, so nervous, so feminine, grew
smaller, became impoverished, seemed contemptible and ignoble to me.
Beneath the influence of the new ideal of virile strength and simplicity
that my brother's example inspired in me, I not only hated, but I
despised that complicated and equivocal being, who yet belonged to my
own race, and who had several particularities in his cerebral
constitution in common with me, to which his works of art bore witness.
I pictured to myself a type of one of those literary men, affected by
the saddest maladies of the mind, a libertine, cruelly curious, hardened
by the habit of cold analysis of the warmest and most spontaneous
passions of the soul, accustomed to consider every human creature as a
subject of pure psychological speculation, incapable of love, incapable
of a generous action, of an abnegation, of a sacrifice, hardened in
falsehood, enervated by disgust, lascivious, cynical, cowardly.
Such was the man who had seduced Juliana, but who had certainly not
loved her. Did not the very _manner_ appear in the dedication written
on the fly-leaf of _The Secret_, in that emphatic dedication, the only
document known to me that bore on the relations between the romancer and
my wife? To take by assault the "Ivory Tower," to corrupt a character
whom public opinion declared to be incorruptible, to experiment with a
method of seduction on so rare a subject, that was an enterprise,
difficult but full of attraction, entirely worthy of the refined artist,
the abstractor of physiological quintessence who had written _The True
Catholic_ and _Angelica Doni_.
The more I thought of it, the more the facts appeared to me in their
ugliest crudity. Filippo Arborio had certainly made Juliana's
acquaintance during one of those crises when the woman of whom people
say, "She has a soul," after a long period of loneliness, feels herself
overcome by poetical aspirations, by indefinable desires, vague
languors--all those phenomena which are only the masks that disguise
passion. Filippo Arborio, with his experience, had divined the special
physical state of the woman whom he coveted, and had made use of the
most appropriate and the surest method; that is to say, he had spoken of
the ideal, of superior regions, of mystical alliance, while his thoughts
were turned in more material channels. And Juliana, the "Ivory Tower,"
the great silent creature made of ductile gold and steel, the unique,
had been captured by the old trick, had allowed herself to be taken in
the old snare, had, she also, obeyed the old law as to the frailty of
woman.
A horrible irony tortured my soul. I seemed to have, not in the mouth
but in the heart, the convulsion caused by the herb that produces death
by making one hysterical with laughter.
I spurred my horse and put him to a gallop on the steep bank of the
river.
The bank was dangerous, with very precipitous bends, and made more
menacing in some places by deep holes, obstructed in others by the
branches of great gnarled trees, in still others traversed by enormous
roots close to the ground. I was perfectly conscious of the peril to
which I exposed myself; yet, instead of tightening the rein, I still
urged the beast forward, not with the intention of facing death, but
because I sought in danger a respite from my intolerable torture. I
already knew the efficacy of such madness. Ten years before, when still
very young and while an attache of the embassy at Constantinople, in
order to overcome an attack of grief caused by the recollection of a
recent passion, I entered on horseback, one moonlight night, one of the
Mussulman cemeteries crowded with tombs, and I rode on the incline of
polished stones exposing myself a thousand times to the risk of a fatal
fall. Death, mounted with me on the crupper, overshadowed every other
care.
"Tullio! Tullio!" cried Federico after me. "Stop! Stop!"
I paid no attention to him. It is marvellous that a dozen times I
escaped crushing in my forehead against the horizontal branches. It is
marvellous that a dozen times I prevented my horse from stumbling
against the trunk of a tree. A dozen times, at difficult passages, I
saw a certain fall into the river that glistened beneath my feet. But
when I heard another gallop behind me, when I perceived Federico was
following me with loosened rein, I became frightened for him, and I
tightened the bit suddenly. The poor animal reared up, remained an
instant upright as if to make a plunge into the river, and then came to
a standstill, trembling.
"Are you mad?" cried Federico to me when he came up to me, very pale.
"Did I frighten you? Forgive me, I did not think there was any danger.
It was to try the horse; and then I could not control him--he is a
little hard in the mouth."
"Orlando hard in the mouth!"
"Don't you find him so?"
He looked at me fixedly, with an uneasy expression. I attempted a
smile. His unusual pallor pained me and aroused my sympathy.
"I do not understand how you escaped breaking your head against a tree;
I cannot imagine how it is you were not thrown."
"And you?"
To follow me, he had exposed himself to the same peril, perhaps to a
still greater one; because his horse was heavier, and he had had to put
him at his full speed for fear of not joining me in time. We both
looked back at the distance just covered.
"It is a veritable miracle," he said. "To get out of the Assoro is
almost impossible. Just look!"
We looked down at the deadly river that rolled beneath our feet. Deep,
shining, rapid, full of whirlpools and gulfs, the Assoro ran between two
chalky cliffs, with a silence that rendered it still more sinister. The
country harmonized with that treacherous and menacing aspect. The sky,
which early in the afternoon was covered with vapors, was now overcast
with diffused reflections of the tangle of reddish brushwood that still
survived to the spring. The dead leaves mingled with the growth of new
leaves, the dried brambles with the green shoots, the dead with the
newly born vegetation, in an inextricable, symbolic confusion. Above
the agitated surface of the river, above that incongruous thicket, the
sky blanched, faded away, seemed to dissolve.
"An unexpected fall, and I should have ceased to think, I should have
ceased to suffer, I should have ceased to support the weight of my
miserable flesh. But perhaps I should have dragged my brother with me
down the precipice; and my brother's life is a model of nobleness, my
brother is a Man. I escaped by a miracle, as he escaped by a miracle.
My madness has made him run a supreme risk. With him would have
disappeared a world of beauty and of goodness. What is this fatality
that condemns me to be harmful to those who love me?"
I looked at Federico. He had become thoughtful and grave. I did not
dare question him, but I felt a poignant remorse at having grieved him.
Of what was he thinking? On what reflections did his agitation feed?
Perhaps he had divined that I was dissimulating suffering and that the
sole cause which had driven me to my perilous race was the spur of some
fixed idea.
We followed the path, one behind the other, step by step. Then we
turned into a side-path that led through the bush, and, as it was wide
enough, we trotted side by side, while our horses whinnied, bringing
their nostrils together as if to exchange confidences, and mingling the
froth from their bridles.
From time to time I glanced at Federico, and, seeing that he was still
pensive, I thought: "Assuredly, if I were to reveal the truth to him, he
would not believe me. He could not believe in Juliana's sin, in the
sister's stain. Between his affection and that of my mother for Juliana,
I really could not decide whose is the more profound. Had he not always
kept on his table the two portraits of Juliana and our poor Constance,
united as in a diptych for the same adoration? This morning even, how
gentle his voice became in naming her!" Suddenly, by contrast, the
infamous image reappeared, more hideous. The bared chest I caught a
glimpse of in the dressing-room of the fencing-salon flitted now before
my imagination. And on that face my hate worked just like nitric acid
on the engraver's copper plate: the bitten characters became sharper and
sharper.
Then, while I still felt in my blood the excitement produced by the
ride, by the effect of that exuberance of physical courage, of that
instinct of hereditary combativeness that, so often, surged up in me at
the contact with other men, I felt that I would not have the strength to
resist challenging Filippo Arborio. "I will go to Rome, I will find out
all about him; I will incense him, no matter how; I will force him to
fight. I will do everything to kill him or cripple him." I imagined
the poltroon to myself.
There recurred to my memory a rather ridiculous retreat which he had not
been able to prevent at the salle d'armes, when he received a thrust in
the breast from the fencing-master. I also remembered his questioning me
regarding my duel, that puerile curiosity of those who have never been
on the field of honor. I recalled that, during my assault, he had kept
his eyes fixed on me ceaselessly. The consciousness of my superiority,
the certainty of vanquishing him, excited me. In my imagination, a
thread of red blood furrowed that pale and disgusting flesh. And I saw
him bleeding and inert on a mattress, with two doctors leaning over him.
How often I, the ideologist, the analyst, the sophist of an epoch of
decadence, had prided myself on being the descendant of that Raymond
Hermil of Panedo who, at the Goulette, had accomplished prodigies of
valor and of ferocity beneath the eyes of Charles the Fifth! The
excessive development of my intelligence and of my many-souled state had
not been able to modify the depths of my substance, in the deepest
stratifications of which were preserved the imprint of every hereditary
characteristic of my race. In my brother, whose organization was well
balanced, thought was always associated with labor; in me thought
predominated. I was, in short, a violent and a passionate person
conscious of himself, in whom the hypertrophy of certain cerebral
centres rendered impossible the cooerdination necessary to the normal
state of the mind. I was able to contemplate my actions with perfect
clear-sightedness, and yet I had every undisciplinable impulse of
primitive natures. More than once had I been possessed by sudden
criminal ideas; more than once I had been surprised by feeling the
surging up of a cruel instinct within me.
"There are the charcoal-burners." said my brother to me, putting his
horse at a trot.
The blows of the axe could be heard in the forest and the spirals of
smoke could be seen rising between the trees. Federico interrogated the
workmen as to the progress made in their labor, gave them advice, while
examining their work with an experienced eye. Every one of them assumed
a respectful attitude, and listened attentively. Around about, the
labor seemed to become more eager, easier, lighter, and even the
crackling of the fire more efficacious. Men ran right and left,
throwing earth here and there wherever the smoke poured out in too great
abundance, to stop up with clods the holes caused by the explosions;
they ran, they shouted. With these rude voices mingled the guttural
sounds of the wood-cutters. The surroundings resounded with the crash of
some falling tree. During the few moments of our halt could be heard
the whistling of blackbirds. And the great, motionless forest
contemplated the wood-cutters, to whom its life served as food.
While my brother proceeded in his examination of the work, I withdrew,
leaving to my horse the choice of the unfamiliar paths that led into the
bush. Behind me the sounds decreased, the echoes died away. A heavy
silence fell from the tree-tops. I thought: "What shall I do to regain
courage? What will my life henceforth be? Can I continue to live in my
mother's house with my secret? Can I associate my life with that of
Federico? What man in all this world, what event could ever resuscitate
in my soul a spark of faith?" The sounds of the workers away behind me;
the solitude became complete, "To work, to accomplish good, to live for
others! ... I _henceforth_ recover in these things the true sense of
life? And are there really only these things which, to the exclusion of
individual happiness, permit of finding the true sense of life? The
other day, while my brother was speaking, I believed I understood his
remarks; I believed that the _doctrine of truth_ was revealed to me by
his mouth. The doctrine of truth, according to my brother, is not in
laws, not in precepts, but simply and solely in the interpretation that
man gives to life. It seemed to me I had understood it fully. But, all
at once, I now found myself fallen back among the shadows; I had become
blind again. I no longer understood. What man in all the world, what
event, could console me for all the good I had lost?" And the future
seemed frightful and hopeless to me. The undefined image of the infant
to be born grew, enlarged, like horrible and formless things one sees
sometimes in a nightmare, and ended by enveloping everything. It was no
longer a question of regret, of remorse, of an indestructible
recollection, of no matter what inner bitterness; it now concerned a
living being. My future was fettered to a being whose life was
tenacious and malefic; it was shackled to a stranger, to an intruder, to
an abominable creature, against whom not only my mind, but also my
flesh, all my blood and every fibre, rose with a brutal, ferocious,
implacable aversion, until death, beyond death. I thought: "Who could
have imagined a worse torture for torturing the soul and the flesh at
the same time?"
And it was just at the time that the nausea set in that I--who fed on
dreams, who drank of the ideal--found the ingenuities of my adolescence,
thought of nothing but of gathering flowers. Oh! those flowers, those
heart-breaking flowers that I so timidly offered her. And, after a
great intoxication, half-sentimental, half-sensual, I received the
delightful news, from whom? from my mother! And after the news, I
experience a feeling of generous exaltation, I accept in good faith a
noble role, I sacrifice myself in silence, like one of Octave Feuillet's
heroes! What heroism! The irony tortured my soul, bruised every
fibre.... Then, for the second time, I conceived the mad idea of
escaping from my fate.
I looked before me. Close at hand, between the tree-trunks, unreal like
the illusion of a hallucination, shone the glistening Assoro.
"Strange!" I thought, with a curious shudder. Up to this time I had not
noticed that my horse, left to himself, had entered a path that led to
the river. The Assoro seemed to have a fatal fascination for me.
I hesitated a moment between two things--to go on as far as the cliff,
or return. Finally, I stopped, fascinated by the water and the guilty
thought. I made my horse curvet.
A heavy oppressiveness succeeded the internal convulsion. It seemed to
me that, all at once, my soul had become a poor, faded thing, a bruised,
diminished, miserable thing. I became softened; I felt pity for myself,
I felt pity for Juliana, I felt pity for every creature upon whom
suffering had set its seal, that trembled under the embrace of life as
some vanquished enemy in the power of some pitiless conqueror. "What
are we? What do we know? What do we wish for? No one has ever
obtained what he would like; no one will ever obtain what he would like.
We seek goodness, virtue, enthusiasm, the passion that will fill our
soul, the faith that will calm our inquietudes, the inspiration that
will give us courage, the work to which we consecrate ourselves, the
cause for which we will joyfully die. And the result of so many efforts
is an empty lassitude, the sensation of strength spent in pure loss, and
of the flight of time." At that moment, life appeared to me like a
distant vision, confused, strange, monstrous. Madness, imbecillity,
poverty, blindness, every malady, every misfortune, the obscure and
continuous agitation of unconscious atavic, bestial powers in the depths
of our substance, the highest manifestations of the ever-unstable,
fugitive mind necessarily subordinated to a physical condition,
connected with the functions of an organ, instantaneous metamorphoses
produced by an imperceptible cause, by a mere nothing, the infallible
amount of egotism in the noblest actions, the inutility of so much moral
energy directed toward an uncertain object, the futility of amours that
we believe to be eternal, the frailty of virtue that we believe
unshakable, the feebleness of the most robust wills, every shame, every
misery, appeared before me in that instant. "How is it possible to
live? How is it possible to love?"
The axes resounded in the forest; a short and savage cry accompanied
every blow. Here and there, in the clearings, great piles of wood, in
the form of truncated cones or of quadrangular pyramids, were smoking.
Columns of smoke, thick and straight as the trunks of trees, arose in
the quiet air. To me, everything was symbolical at that moment.
I turned my horse toward the neighboring charcoal-burner, where I had
recognized Federico.
He had descended from his horse and was speaking to a tall old man with
shaven chin.
"Ah! At last!" he cried, on seeing me. "I was afraid that you were
lost."
"No, I was not far off."
"Let me introduce to you Giovanni di Scordio--a Man," he said, placing
his hand on the old man's shoulder.
I looked at the being whom he so designated. A singularly sweet smile
gathered around his withered mouth. I had never seen such sad eyes
before under a human brow.
"Adieu, Giovanni, and keep up your courage!" added my brother in that
voice which seemed, at certain moments, like certain liquors, to have
the power of stimulating the vital tone. "As for us, Tullio, let us
return to the Badiola. It is getting late. They will be waiting for
us."
He remounted his horse. He again saluted the old man. On passing by the
furnaces, he once more instructed the workmen concerning the operations
of the coming night, on which the _great fire_ was to take place. We
then trotted off, side by side.
The blue sky slowly appeared over our heads. The veils of vapor floated
away, dispersed, reformed, in such a manner that the azure seemed to
pale progressively, as if through its limpidity a continuous milky wave
was spread and extended. We were nearing the hour when, the evening
before, at the Lilacs, I had contemplated with Juliana the undulating
garden in its ideal light. Around us the brushwood began to be gilded.
The invisible birds were warbling.
"Did you take good notice of that old man, Giovanni di Scordio?" asked
Federico.
"Yes," I replied. "I do not think I shall ever forget his smile or his
eyes."
"That old man is a saint," pursued Federico. "No man has worked or
suffered so much as he has. He had fourteen sons, and all, one after
the other, have left him, just as ripe fruit leaves the tree. His wife,
a virago, is dead. He is left alone. His sons have despoiled and
disowned him. He has experienced every human ingratitude. He has
experienced the perversity, not of strangers, but of his own creations.
Do you understand? His own blood has turned to venom in the beings for
whom he had only love and affection, in the beings whom he has not
ceased to love, whom he cannot curse, whom he will certainly bless at
the hour of his death, even if they permit him to die in solitude. Is
not such obstinacy of man in his goodness an extraordinary, an almost
unbelievable thing? After so much suffering, his face still has the
smile that you saw. _You will do well, Tullio, not to forget that
smile_."
*XV.*
The hour of trial was drawing near, the hour dreaded yet desired at the
same time.
Juliana was ready. She had firmly opposed Maria's caprice; she wished
to be alone in her room to await me.
"What shall I say to her? What will she say to me? What will be my
attitude towards her?" All my prejudices, all my plans, were scattered.
There remained to me only an intolerable anguish. Who could foresee the
result of the meeting? I neither felt master of myself, nor of my
words, nor of my acts. I only felt within me a fermentation of obscure
thoughts that, at the slightest shock, would surge up. Never, as at
that moment, had I had the clear and hopeless consciousness of the
intestine discords that rent me, the perceptions of the irreconcilable
elements that warred at the depths of my being, that overthrew one
another, that destroyed each other by turns in a perpetual conflict,
rebellious to all restraint. To the dejection of my mind was added a
particular agitation of my feelings produced by the images which, on
that day, had ceaselessly tortured me. I knew that agitation well, I
knew it but too well; I knew it was more certain than any other thing to
stir up the muddy depths in man. I knew but too well that base
concupiscence from which nothing can save us--that dreadful sexual fever
which, for months, had held me chained to a despised and odious woman,
Teresa Raffo. And now, the sensations of goodness, of pity, and of
strength, that were necessary to me to enable me to support a meeting
with Juliana and to persist in my original project, died away in me like
moving mists over a swamp of mire.
It lacked but little of midnight when I left my room to go to Juliana's.
Every sound had ceased. The Badiola reposed in profound silence. I
listened intently, and it seemed to me I heard the calm respiration of
my mother, of my brother, of my daughters, those innocent and spotless
beings. I thought I saw the face of Maria again sleeping, as I had seen
it the night before; I imagined I saw the other faces, with an
expression of repose, of peace, of goodness on each. A sudden
tenderness seized me. The feeling of happiness, experienced but for a
moment the evening before, and then eclipsed, threw a great light over
my mind. If nothing had happened, if I had remained under the illusion,
what a night that would have been! I would have gone to Juliana as to a
divine being. And what could I have wished sweeter than that silence to
envelop the inquietude of my love? I traversed the room in which, the
evening before, I had received from my mother's mouth the unexpected
revelation. Again I heard the ticking of the clock that had marked the
hour, and, I do not know why, that tick, tack, so invariably equal,
increased my anguish. I do not know why, but I imagined I felt Juliana's
anguish respond to mine through the space that still separated us, and
that the palpitations of our hearts were accelerated in unison. I
walked straight before me, without further stopping, without seeking to
muffle the sound of my footfalls. I did not knock at the door; I opened
it and entered. Juliana was standing, supporting herself with one hand
on the corner of a table, motionless, more rigid than a Hermes.
I can still see everything. Nothing at that hour escaped me; nothing
eluded my attention. The actual world had vanished. There subsisted
but a fictitious world in the midst of which I panted with anguish, with
oppressed heart, incapable of articulating a syllable, and yet
singularly lucid, as if I had been a spectator at a theatre. On the
table burned a candle, which lent a sort of visible reality to this
semblance of scenic fiction, because the little, flickering flame seemed
to shed about it that vague horror which the actors in a drama diffuse
in the ambient air with their great gestures of despair or menace.
The strange sensation disappeared when, finally, powerless to longer
support that silence and Juliana's marble-like immobility, I spoke the
first words. There was nothing in my voice of the sound that I believed
it would have when I would open my lips. Without wishing it, I spoke in
a gentle, trembling, almost timid voice.
"Were you waiting for me?"
She kept her eyes cast down. Without raising them she answered:
"Yes."
I looked at her arm, as motionless as marble, which seemed to become
more and more rigid upon the hand placed on the corner of the table. I
feared that that fragile support, on which she leaned her entire weight,
would yield from one moment to another, and that she would fall.
"You know why I came?" I continued, with extreme slowness, plucking the
words from my heart, one by one.
She remained silent.
"Is it true?" I went on. "Is it true--what I have learned from my
mother?"
She still remained silent. She seemed to be gathering all her strength.
Strange! During that interval it did not seem absolutely impossible
that she would answer:
"No."
She answered, and I heard less the sound of her words than I saw them
outlined by her bloodless lips:
"It is true."
It was a ruder shock perhaps than that given me by my mother's words.
Of course, I knew all, I had already lived twenty-four hours with my
certitude; and yet this confirmation, so clear, so precise, crushed me
to earth, as if it were the first time I had heard the revelation of the
irreparable truth.
"It is true!" I repeated instinctively, speaking to myself, with a
sensation analogous to that which I would have had, had I found myself
living and conscious at the bottom of an abyss.
Then Juliana raised her eyes and fixed them on mine with a sort of
spasmodic violence.
"Tullio," she said, "listen."
A choking stopped the voice in her throat.
"Listen. I know what I must do. I was prepared for anything to spare
you this; but destiny willed that I live until now to suffer that most
horrible thing, the thing of which I had a mad terror--ah! you
understand me--a thousand times more than of death. Tullio, Tullio,
your look----"
Another suffocation choked her at a moment when her voice had become so
distressed in tone that it gave me the physical impression of the
tearing out of the most hidden fibres. I dropped into a seat, covered
my face with my hands, and waited for her to continue.
"I should have died before now, I should have died long ago! Without
doubt it would have been better if I had not come to the Badiola; it
would have been better if at your return from Venice you had not come to
me again. I would have been dead, and you would not have known this
shame; you would have regretted me, perhaps you would always have
cherished my memory. Perhaps I should always have remained your great
love, your unique love, as you said yesterday.... I did not fear death,
you know; I do not fear it. It is the thought of our two little
daughters and of our mother that has made me postpone the execution from
day to day. And that has been an agony, Tullio, a cruel agony, in which
I have consumed, not one, but a thousand lives. And I am still alive!"
After a pause, she added:
"How is it possible that with such poor health I have so much resistance
to pain? That also is a misfortune for me. Think of it! In consenting
to accompany you here, I thought: 'It is certain that I shall become
ill; directly I arrive I shall have to go to my bed, and I shall rise
from it no more. They will think I died a natural death. Tullio will
never know anything, will never suspect anything. Everything will be
ended.' On the contrary, I am still alive, and you know all, and all is
lost, without hope."
She spoke in a low voice, very feebly, and yet in as heart-breaking a
tone as if it were a sharp and reiterated cry. I pressed my temples and
felt them throbbing so violently that I was almost afraid, as if the
arteries would burst the skin and their soft and warm membrane adhere,
naked, to the cranial wall.
"My only preoccupation was to hide the truth from you, not for myself,
but for you, for your good. You will never know what terrors have
frozen me, what anguish has choked my throat. Since the day we arrived
here, up to yesterday, you have hoped, you have dreamed, you have been
almost happy. But my life, to me, in this blessed house, in contact
with your mother, with my secret, can you imagine it? Yesterday, at the
Lilacs, while we were at table, during that sweet chat which tortured
me, you said to me: 'You knew nothing, you perceived nothing.' Oh! no,
that is false; I knew all, I divined all; and, when I detected the
affectionate look in your eyes, I felt my soul grow faint. Listen,
Tullio. What I am going to say is the truth, the real truth. I am
before you here as on my death-bed. It would be impossible for me to
lie. Believe what I tell you. I do not care to exculpate myself, I do
not dream of defending myself. Henceforth all is at an end. But I wish
to tell you one thing, because it is true. You know what love I have had
for you, since the day we first met. For years, for years, I was
blindly devoted, and not only during the years of happiness, but also
during the years of misery, when your love grew weary. You know it,
Tullio. You could always do with me as you wished. You have always
found in me the friend, the sister, the wife, the mistress, ready to
make no matter what sacrifice to please you. Do not believe, Tullio, do
not believe that I recall my long devotion in order to accuse you. No,
no. There is not in my soul a single drop of bitterness against you, do
you hear? Not a single drop! But let me now remind you of a devotion
and a tenderness that have lasted for so many years, let me speak to you
of love, of the _uninterruptedness of my love_, without any
intermission, do you understand me?--without one intermission. I
believe that my passion for you has never been as ardent as during the
last few weeks. Yesterday you told me many things. Ah! what could not
I, too, tell of my life during these last few days! I knew all, I
divined all; and I was compelled to avoid you. How many times have I
been on the point of falling in your arms, of closing my eyes, and
yielding myself entirely to you, in my moments of feebleness and extreme
lassitude! The other morning, Saturday morning, when you came in with
the flowers, it seemed to me as I looked at you that I saw the lover of
the old days, because of the ardor that animated you, and your smile,
and your amiability, and the light that shone in your eyes. And you
showed me the scratches on your hands! Then I felt a sudden impulse to
take those hands, to kiss them. Where did I get the strength to
restrain myself? _I did not feel myself worthy_. And I saw in a flash
all the happiness that you offered me with the flowering thorns, all the
happiness that I must renounce forever. Ah! Tullio, my heart is proof
against all trials, since it can be so crushed without breaking. I die
hard."
She pronounced this last phrase in a deeper tone, with an indefinable
accent of irony mingled with anger. I dared not raise my face to look
at her. Her words caused me atrocious suffering, and yet I trembled
every time she stopped. I feared that her strength would suddenly
abandon her, that it would be impossible for her to continue. And I
awaited from her mouth other confessions, other fragments of soul.
"It was a great, great mistake," she continued, "not to have died before
you returned from Venice. But poor Maria, poor Natalia, could I abandon
them?"
She hesitated an instant:
"Nor you either; I could not leave you in such a manner. I might have
caused you remorse. You would have been the object of everybody's
accusations. We could not have dissimulated with our mother. She would
have asked you: 'Why should Juliana have wished to die?' She would have
come to know the truth, which we have kept from her till now--poor
saintly woman."
Emotion choked her utterance, her voice became hoarse, began to tremble,
tearfully. I felt a lump rise in my throat, too.
"I thought of all that; and, when you wished to bring me here, I
thought, too, that I was no longer worthy of her, that I was no longer
worthy to receive her kisses on my forehead and be called her daughter.
But you know how weak we are, how easily we give way to the force of
circumstances. I had no more hope; I knew that, outside of death, there
remained no other refuge for me; I knew that, every day, the circle was
closing in more. And yet I permitted the days to pass, one by one,
without taking any resolution. Yet I had a sure means of death."
She stopped. Obeying a sudden impulse, I raised my eyes, and looked at
her fixedly. She shuddered violently; and the pain which my look caused
her was so apparent that I lowered my forehead, and resumed my first
attitude.
Up to now she had been standing. She sat down. An interval of silence
followed.
"Do you believe," she asked me, with a timid and unhappy air, "do you
believe that the sin is great when the soul did not consent?"
That allusion to the _sin_ sufficed to stir up in me instantly the dregs
that had settled, and a sort of bitter acridity rose to my mouth. An
involuntary sarcasm left my lips. I said, affecting a smile:
"Poor soul!"
That expression caused a look of such intense pain to appear on
Juliana's face that I felt immediately the acute sting of repentance. I
understood that it were impossible for me to have inflicted a more cruel
blow, and that, at that moment, and against such a poor, submissive
creature, irony was the worst of cowardices.
"Forgive me," she said.
She had the appearance of a woman smitten by death. And it seemed to me
that her look had precisely the sad gentleness, almost infantile, that I
had already seen on the wounded when they are placed on their biers.
"Forgive me. Yesterday, you, too, spoke of the soul. You think now:
'_Women say those things to obtain forgiveness_.' But I do not seek to
exculpate myself. I know that pardon is impossible, and that it is
impossible to forget. I know there is no hope. You understand me? I
only seek to excuse myself for having received your mother's kisses."
She still spoke in a low tone, very weak and yet heart-breaking, like a
sharp and reiterated cry.
"I felt on my brow so heavy a weight of sorrows that, not for myself,
Tullio, but for my pain, only for my pain, I let your mother kiss me
then. I was unworthy of them; but my pain deserved them. You can
forgive me."
I felt an impulse of kindness, of pity; but I did not yield to it. My
eyes avoided hers, and I made enormous efforts not to writhe in
convulsive spasms, not to yield to extravagant actions.
"Certain days, I deferred from hour to hour the execution of my project;
the thought of this house, of what would afterwards happen in this
house, took away my courage. See how I have ended by losing even the
hope of being able to hide the truth from you, of being able to spare
you; for, from the first days, your mother guessed my condition. Do you
remember the day when I was at the window and when the odor of the
violets nauseated me? It was then that your mother noticed it. Imagine
my terror! I thought: If I kill myself, he will learn the secret from
his mother. And who knows how far the consequences of the sin I have
committed will reach? Night and day I racked my soul to find a means of
sparing you. On Sunday, when you asked me: 'Shall we go to the Lilacs
on Tuesday?' I consented without reflecting, I abandoned myself to
destiny, I trusted to chance. I was certain that that day would be my
last, and this certitude exalted me, inspired me with a sort of
dementia. But, Tullio, remember your words of yesterday, and tell me
if, now, you appreciate my martyrdom. Do you appreciate it?"
She bent toward me as if to project her painful question into my soul,
and she entwined her fingers convulsively.
"You had never spoken to me like that before, you had never spoken in
such a voice. When, on the bench, you asked me: '_It is too late,
perhaps?_' I looked at you, and your face frightened me. Could I
reply: '_Yes, it is too late?_' Could I have broken your heart at one
blow? What would have become of us? Then I determined to yield to one
last intoxication, and I saw nothing more but my death and my passion."
Her voice had become strangely hoarse. I looked at her, and it seemed
to me that I no longer recognized her, so transfigured was she. A
convulsion contracted every line of her face; her lower lip trembled
violently; her eyes burned with febrile ardor.
"Do you blame me?" she asked in a hoarse, distressed tone. "Do you
despise me for what I did yesterday?"
She covered her face with her hands. Then, after a pause, she shook off
her weakness with a resolute gesture. Her voice became stronger.
"Destiny has willed that I should live until now. Destiny has willed
that you should learn the truth from your mother. From your mother!
Yesterday evening, when you came into this room, you knew all and you
said nothing, and, before your mother, you kissed the cheek I offered
you. Before I die, permit me to kiss your hands. It is the only favor
I implore of you. Now, I await your commands. I am ready for anything.
Speak."