As a rule, he passed in all modesty down the lane, and entered by the
little side door, a key of which had been given him. But he had that
morning received a letter from M. de la Choue, and desired to communicate
it to Benedetta. So he ascended the grand staircase, and on reaching the
anteroom was surprised to find nobody there. As a rule, whenever the
man-servant went out Victorine installed herself in his place and busied
herself with some needlework. Her chair was there, and Pierre even
noticed some linen which she had left on a little table when probably
summoned elsewhere. Then, as the door of the first reception-room was
ajar, he at last ventured in. It was almost night there already, the
twilight was softly dying away, and all at once the young priest stopped
short, fearing to take another step, for, from the room beyond, the large
yellow /salon/, there came a murmur of feverish, distracted words, ardent
entreaties, fierce panting, a rustling and a shuffling of footsteps. And
suddenly Pierre no longer hesitated, urged on despite himself by the
conviction that the sounds he heard were those of a struggle, and that
some one was hard pressed.
And when he darted into the further room he was stupefied, for Dario was
there, no longer showing the degenerate elegance of the last scion of an
exhausted race, but maddened by the hot, frantic blood of the Boccaneras
which had bubbled up within him. He had clasped Benedetta by the
shoulders in a frenzy of passion and was scorching her face with his hot,
entreating words: "But since you say, my darling, that it is all over,
that your marriage will never be dissolved--oh! why should we be wretched
for ever! Love me as you do love me, and let me love you--let me love
you!"
But the Contessina, with an indescribable expression of tenderness and
suffering on her tearful face, repulsed him with her outstretched arms,
she likewise evincing a fierce energy as she repeated: "No, no; I love
you, but it must not, it must not be."
At that moment, amidst the roar of his despair, Dario became conscious
that some one was entering the room. He turned and gazed at Pierre with
an expression of stupefied insanity, scarce able even to recognise him.
Then he carried his two hands to his face, to his bloodshot eyes and his
cheeks wet with scalding tears, and fled, heaving a terrible,
pain-fraught sigh in which baffled passion mingled with grief and
repentance.
Benedetta seated herself, breathing hard, her strength and courage
wellnigh exhausted. But as Pierre, too much embarrassed to speak, turned
towards the door, she addressed him in a calmer voice: "No, no, Monsieur
l'Abbe, do not go away--sit down, I pray you; I should like to speak to
you for a moment."
He thereupon thought it his duty to account for his sudden entrance, and
explained that he had found the door of the first /salon/ ajar, and that
Victorine was not in the ante-room, though he had seen her work lying on
the table there.
"Yes," exclaimed the Contessina, "Victorine ought to have been there; I
saw her there but a short time ago. And when my poor Dario lost his head
I called her. Why did she not come?" Then, with sudden expansion, leaning
towards Pierre, she continued: "Listen, Monsieur l'Abbe, I will tell you
what happened, for I don't want you to form too bad an opinion of my poor
Dario. It was all in some measure my fault. Last night he asked me for an
appointment here in order that we might have a quiet chat, and as I knew
that my aunt would be absent at this time to-day I told him to come. It
was only natural--wasn't it?--that we should want to see one another and
come to an agreement after the grievous news that my marriage will
probably never be annulled. We suffer too much, and must form a decision.
And so when he came this evening we began to weep and embrace, mingling
our tears together. I kissed him again and again, telling him how I
adored him, how bitterly grieved I was at being the cause of his
sufferings, and how surely I should die of grief at seeing him so
unhappy. Ah! no doubt I did wrong; I ought not to have caught him to my
heart and embraced him as I did, for it maddened him, Monsieur l'Abbe; he
lost his head, and would have made me break my vow to the Blessed
Virgin."
She spoke these words in all tranquillity and simplicity, without sign of
embarrassment, like a young and beautiful woman who is at once sensible
and practical. Then she resumed: "Oh! I know my poor Dario well, but it
does not prevent me from loving him; perhaps, indeed, it only makes me
love him the more. He looks delicate, perhaps rather sickly, but in truth
he is a man of passion. Yes, the old blood of my people bubbles up in
him. I know something of it myself, for when I was a child I sometimes
had fits of angry passion which left me exhausted on the floor, and even
now, when the gusts arise within me, I have to fight against myself and
torture myself in order that I may not act madly. But my poor Dario does
not know how to suffer. He is like a child whose fancies must be
gratified. And yet at bottom he has a good deal of common sense; he waits
for me because he knows that the only real happiness lies with the woman
who adores him."
As Pierre listened he was able to form a more precise idea of the young
prince, of whose character he had hitherto had but a vague perception.
Whilst dying of love for his cousin, Dario had ever been a man of
pleasure. Though he was no doubt very amiable, the basis of his
temperament was none the less egotism. And, in particular, he was unable
to endure suffering; he loathed suffering, ugliness, and poverty, whether
they affected himself or others. Both his flesh and his soul required
gaiety, brilliancy, show, life in the full sunlight. And withal he was
exhausted, with no strength left him but for the idle life he led, so
incapable of thought and will that the idea of joining the new /regime/
had not even occurred to him. Yet he had all the unbounded pride of a
Roman; sagacity--a keen, practical perception of the real--was mingled
with his indolence; while his inveterate love of woman, more frequently
displayed in charm of manner, burst forth at times in attacks of frantic
sensuality.
"After all he is a man," concluded Benedetta in a low voice, "and I must
not ask impossibilities of him." Then, as Pierre gazed at her, his
notions of Italian jealousy quite upset, she exclaimed, aglow with
passionate adoration: "No, no. Situated as we are, I am not jealous. I
know very well that he will always return to me, and that he will be mine
alone whenever I please, whenever it may be possible."
Silence followed; shadows were filling the room, the gilding of the large
pier tables faded away, and infinite melancholy fell from the lofty, dim
ceiling and the old hangings, yellow like autumn leaves. But soon, by
some chance play of the waning light, a painting stood out above the sofa
on which the Contessina was seated. It was the portrait of the beautiful
young girl with the turban--Cassia Boccanera the forerunner, the
/amorosa/ and avengeress. Again was Pierre struck by the portrait's
resemblance to Benedetta, and, thinking aloud, he resumed: "Passion
always proves the stronger; there invariably comes a moment when one
succumbs--"
But Benedetta violently interrupted him: "I! I! Ah! you do not know me; I
would rather die!" And with extraordinary exaltation, all aglow with
love, as if her superstitious faith had fired her passion to ecstasy, she
continued: "I have vowed to the Madonna that I will belong to none but
the man I love, and to him only when he is my husband. And hitherto I
have kept that vow, at the cost of my happiness, and I will keep it
still, even if it cost me my life! Yes, we will die, my poor Dario and I,
if it be necessary; but the holy Virgin has my vow, and the angels shall
not weep in heaven!"
She was all in those words, her nature all simplicity, intricate,
inexplicable though it might seem. She was doubtless swayed by that idea
of human nobility which Christianity has set in renunciation and purity;
a protest, as it were, against eternal matter, against the forces of
Nature, the everlasting fruitfulness of life. But there was more than
this; she reserved herself, like a divine and priceless gift, to be
bestowed on the one being whom her heart had chosen, he who would be her
lord and master when God should have united them in marriage. For her
everything lay in the blessing of the priest, in the religious
solemnisation of matrimony. And thus one understood her long resistance
to Prada, whom she did not love, and her despairing, grievous resistance
to Dario, whom she did love, but who was not her husband. And how
torturing it was for that soul of fire to have to resist her love; how
continual was the combat waged by duty in the Virgin's name against the
wild, passionate blood of her race! Ignorant, indolent though she might
be, she was capable of great fidelity of heart, and, moreover, she was
not given to dreaming: love might have its immaterial charms, but she
desired it complete.
As Pierre looked at her in the dying twilight he seemed to see and
understand her for the first time. The duality of her nature appeared in
her somewhat full, fleshy lips, in her big black eyes, which suggested a
dark, tempestuous night illumined by flashes of lightning, and in the
calm, sensible expression of the rest of her gentle, infantile face. And,
withal, behind those eyes of flame, beneath that pure, candid skin, one
divined the internal tension of a superstitious, proud, and self-willed
woman, who was obstinately intent on reserving herself for her one love.
And Pierre could well understand that she should be adored, that she
should fill the life of the man she chose with passion, and that to his
own eyes she should appear like the younger sister of that lovely, tragic
Cassia who, unwilling to survive the blow that had rendered self-bestowal
impossible, had flung herself into the Tiber, dragging her brother Ercole
and the corpse of her lover Flavio with her.
However, with a gesture of kindly affection Benedetta caught hold of
Pierre's hands. "You have been here a fortnight, Monsieur l'Abbe," said
she, "and I have come to like you very much, for I feel you to be a
friend. If at first you do not understand us, at least pray do not judge
us too severely. Ignorant as I may be, I always strive to act for the
best, I assure you."
Pierre was greatly touched by her affectionate graciousness, and thanked
her whilst for a moment retaining her beautiful hands in his own, for he
also was becoming much attached to her. A fresh dream was carrying him
off, that of educating her, should he have the time, or, at all events,
of not returning home before winning her soul over to his own ideas of
future charity and fraternity. Did not that adorable, unoccupied,
indolent, ignorant creature, who only knew how to defend her love,
personify the Italy of yesterday? The Italy of yesterday, so lovely and
so sleepy, instinct with a dying grace, charming one even in her
drowsiness, and retaining so much mystery in the fathomless depths of her
black, passionate eyes! And what a /role/ would be that of awakening her,
instructing her, winning her over to truth, making her the rejuvenated
Italy of to-morrow such as he had dreamt of! Even in that disastrous
marriage with Count Prada he tried to see merely a first attempt at
revival which had failed, the modern Italy of the North being over-hasty,
too brutal in its eagerness to love and transform that gentle, belated
Rome which was yet so superb and indolent. But might he not take up the
task? Had he not noticed that his book, after the astonishment of the
first perusal, had remained a source of interest and reflection with
Benedetta amidst the emptiness of her days given over to grief? What! was
it really possible that she might find some appeasement for her own
wretchedness by interesting herself in the humble, in the happiness of
the poor? Emotion already thrilled her at the idea, and he, quivering at
the thought of all the boundless love that was within her and that she
might bestow, vowed to himself that he would draw tears of pity from her
eyes.
But the night had now almost completely fallen, and Benedetta rose to ask
for a lamp. Then, as Pierre was about to take leave, she detained him for
another moment in the gloom. He could no longer see her; he only heard
her grave voice: "You will not go away with too bad an opinion of us,
will you, Monsieur l'Abbe? We love one another, Dario and I, and that is
no sin when one behaves as one ought. Ah! yes, I love him, and have loved
him for years. I was barely thirteen, he was eighteen, and we already
loved one another wildly in those big gardens of the Villa Montefiori
which are now all broken up. Ah! what days we spent there, whole
afternoons among the trees, hours in secret hiding-places, where we
kissed like little angels. When the oranges ripened their perfume
intoxicated us. And the large box-plants, ah, /Dio!/ how they enveloped
us, how their strong, acrid scent made our hearts beat! I can never smell
then nowadays without feeling faint!"
A man-servant brought in the lamp, and Pierre ascended to his room. But
when half-way up the little staircase he perceived Victorine, who started
slightly, as if she had posted herself there to watch his departure from
the /salon/. And now, as she followed him up, talking and seeking for
information, he suddenly realised what had happened. "Why did you not go
to your mistress instead of running off," he asked, "when she called you,
while you were sewing in the ante-room?"
At first she tried to feign astonishment and reply that she had heard
nothing. But her good-natured, frank face did not know how to lie, and
she ended by confessing, with a gay, courageous air. "Well," she said,
"it surely wasn't for me to interfere between lovers! Besides, my poor
little Benedetta is simply torturing herself to death with those ideas of
hers. Why shouldn't they be happy, since they love one another? Life
isn't so amusing as some may think. And how bitterly one regrets not
having seized hold of happiness when the time for it has gone!"
Once alone in his room, Pierre suddenly staggered, quite overcome. The
great box-plants, the great box-plants with their acrid, perturbing
perfume! She, Benedetta, like himself, had quivered as she smelt them;
and he saw them once more in a vision of the pontifical gardens, the
voluptuous gardens of Rome, deserted, glowing under the August sun. And
now his whole day crystallised, assumed clear and full significance. It
spoke to him of the fruitful awakening, of the eternal protest of Nature
and life, Venus and Hercules, whom one may bury for centuries beneath the
soil, but who, nevertheless, one day arise from it, and though one may
seek to wall them up within the domineering, stubborn, immutable Vatican,
reign yet even there, and rule the whole, wide world with sovereign
power!