When we were in front of the door, I said: "Leave me." He pressed my
hand and left me. I entered alone.
*L.*
In the night the silence of the house was sepulchral. A light burned in
the corridor. I walked toward that light like a somnambulist. Some
extraordinary change was taking place within me; but I did not yet know
exactly what it was.
I stopped, warned by a sort of instinct. A door was open; a light
filtered through the drawn curtains. I crossed the threshold, parted
the portieres, and advanced.
The cradle was in the centre of the room, between four lighted candles
and draped with white. My brother was seated on one side, Giovanni di
Scordio on the other, holding the vigil. The old man's presence caused
me no surprise. It seemed to me natural that he should be there. I
asked nothing; I said nothing. I believe that I smiled faintly at them
when they looked at me. I do not know if my lips really smiled; but I
had intended they should, as if to say: "Do not grieve about me, do not
try to console me; you see I am calm. We must be resigned."
I made several steps; I went and placed myself at the foot of the cradle
between the two candles. To the foot of this cradle I bore a fearful,
humble, feeble soul, totally freed from its previous passions. My
brother and the old man had not left their places; and yet I felt alone.
The little dead body was clothed in white: in the same robe in which it
was baptized, it seemed to me. Only the face and the hands were
uncovered. The little mouth, whose wailings had so often aroused my
hate, was now motionless beneath a mysterious seal. The silence that
reigned over this mouth also reigned in me, reigned about me. And I
looked, looked.
Then, in the silence, there arose a great light in the centre of my
soul. _I understood_. That which neither my brother's words nor the
old man's smile had been sufficient to reveal to me, the little dumb
mouth of the Innocent revealed to me in a second. _I understood_. And
then I was assailed by a terrible desire to confess my crime, to publish
my secret, to declare in the presence of those two men: "It was I who
assassinated him!"
They both looked at me; and I perceived that they were both uneasy
concerning me and my attitude before the corpse, that they were both
waiting with anguish the end of my silence. Then I said:
"Do you know who killed this innocent?"
In the silence my voice was so strangely sonorous that it was
unrecognizable to me; it seemed to me that that voice was not my own.
And a sudden terror froze my blood, stiffened my tongue, clouded my
sight. And I began to tremble. And I felt that my brother was
supporting me, was holding my head. In my ears was such a strong
buzzing that his words reached me indistinctly, in fragments. I
understood that he thought my mind was deranged by a violent attack of
fever and that he was trying to lead me out. I let him take me away.
He led me to my room, supporting me. Terror still controlled me. At
the sight of a single candle that was burning on the table, I shuddered;
I could not remember having left it lit.
"Undress yourself and go to bed," said Federico to me, stroking me with
his hands tenderly.
He made me sit down on my bed and felt my forehead again.
"Listen. Your fever is increasing. Begin to undress. Come, come."
With a tenderness that recalled that of my mother, he assisted me to
undress. He helped me to get into bed. Seated at my bedside, he felt my
forehead from time to time, to judge of my fever; and as he saw that I
still trembled, he asked:
"Are you very cold? Does not your shivering cease at all? Shall I
cover you more? Are you thirsty?"
Shivering, I thought: "Suppose I had spoken! Suppose I had had the
strength to keep on! Was it I, positively I, who, with my own lips,
spoke those words? Was it absolutely I? And suppose Federico, on
thinking them over, on deeply reflecting, began to suspect? I asked:
'Do you know who killed this innocent?' Nothing more. But had I not the
aspect of an assassin about to confess? On thinking it over, Federico
could not fail to ask himself: 'What did he want to say? Against whom
did he direct that strange accusation?' My excitement will seem
equivocal. The doctor ... He must think: 'Perhaps he alluded to the
doctor.' He must have some new proof of my exaltation, he must continue
to believe my mind deranged by fever, in a condition of intermittent
delirium." While I reasoned thus, rapid and clear visions passed
through my mind, with evidence of real and tangible things. "I am
feverish, and very strongly so. What if true delirium should set in,
what if I unconsciously revealed my secret?"