_Nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum._--OVID.
_FIFTH EDITION._
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. RICHMOND & CO.
1897
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
GEORGE H. RICHMOND & CO.
*CONTENTS.*
I. THE PAST
II. THE PATERNAL ROOF
III. THE HERMITAGE
IV. THE NEW LIFE
V. TEMPUS DESTRUENDI
VI. THE INVINCIBLE
*I.*
*THE PAST.*
*CHAPTER I.*
When she perceived a group of men leaning against the parapet and
looking down into the street below, Hippolyte stopped and exclaimed:
"What has happened?"
With a slight gesture, betraying fear, she placed her hand involuntarily
on George's arm as if to restrain him.
After watching the men a moment George said: "Someone must have leaped
from off the terrace." Then he added: "Shall we turn back?"
She hesitated a few moments, wavering between curiosity and fear, and
then replied: "No. Let's see what it is."
They advanced along the parapet as far as the end of the walk.
Unconsciously, Hippolyte accelerated her pace towards the small crowd
that had gathered.
On this March afternoon the Pincio was almost deserted. Occasional
sounds died away in the gray and heavy atmosphere.
"That's what it is," said George. "Someone has killed himself."
They stopped close to the crowd. All the spectators had their gaze
intently fixed upon the pavement below. Most of them were workmen
without occupation. Their faces, each different, expressed neither
compassion nor sorrow, and the immobility of the gaze imparted a sort of
bestial dulness to their eyes.
A young lad came up, eager to see; but scarcely had he ensconced himself
in a position satisfactory to himself than he was hailed by one of the
bystanders, in an indefinable tone of jubilation and pleasantry, as if
delighted that no new arrival could enjoy the spectacle. "You're too
late," he cried; "they've taken him away."
"Where to?"
"To the Santa Maria del Popolo."
"Dead?"
"Yes, dead."
Another individual, emaciated and of a greenish complexion, with a large
woollen muffler around his neck, leaned half over; then, removing a pipe
from his mouth, he shouted: "What's that on the ground?"
His mouth was distorted on one side, seamed as if by a burn, and
convulsed as if by an endless flow of bitter saliva. His voice was so
deep that it sounded as if it emerged from a cavern.
"What's that on the ground?" he repeated.
Down in the street below, a wagon-driver was squatting close to the foot
of the wall. So as to hear his answer the better, the spectators became
quiet and motionless. On the pavement could be seen a little blackish
mud.
"It's blood," replied the wagon-driver without rising.
And with the point of a stick he continued his search in the bloody
mire.
"Anything else?" asked the man with the pipe.
The wagon-driver rose. On the end of his stick he held something
extended that could not be identified from above.
"Hair."
"What color?"
"Blond."
The precipice formed by the high walls lent a strange resonance to the
voices.
"Let us go, George!" pleaded Hippolyte.
Disturbed and pale, she shook her lover's arm, as he leaned against the
parapet near the group, fascinated by the horror of the scene.
They silently left the tragic spot. Both were preoccupied with painful
thoughts of this death, and sadness was visible on their features.
"Happy are the dead!" exclaimed George at last. "They have no more
doubts."
"That's true," replied his companion.
The weary tones in which both spoke seemed to indicate boundless
discouragement.
She bent her head and added, with a bitterness mixed with regret: "Poor
love!"
"What love?" asked George, preoccupied.
"Ours."
"Do you feel that it is growing cold?"
"In me, no," replied Hippolyte significantly.
"But you think it is in me?" persisted George.
An ill-concealed irritation lent sharpness to his words. Fixing his gaze
on her, he repeated: "But you think it is in me? Don't you?"
She remained silent, her head drooping still lower.
"You won't answer? You know you're not telling the truth."
There was a pause. Both felt an unspeakable desire to read the other's
heart. Then he continued:
"That is how the agony of love begins. You are not as yet aware of it,
but since your return I have studied you ceaselessly and I daily
discover in you a new symptom."
"What symptom?"
"A bad symptom, Hippolyte." Then, in a burst of mental agony, he
exclaimed: "Oh, how horrible it is to love and yet not lose one's
keenness of perception!"
She shook her head with a gesture of anger, and her face darkened. Once
more, as on many previous occasions, hostility had risen between the two
lovers. Each felt hurt by the injustice of suspicion, and secretly
rebelled with that restrained anger which breaks out, from time to time,
in brutal and irrevocable words, grave accusations and absurd
recriminations. An indescribable fury seized them to torture
themselves, to rend and martyrize their hearts.
Hippolyte became gloomy and silent. Her brows were knit in a frown and
her lips were tightly pressed together. George regarded her with an
irritating smile.
"Yes, that's how it will begin," he repeated, still smiling his
disagreeable smile and fixing her with his keen glance. "You find at
the bottom of your soul an inquietude, a sort of vague impatience which
you cannot repress. When near me, you feel an instinctive repugnance
arise in your breast against me--a repugnance which you cannot subdue.
And then you become taciturn, you're obliged to make an enormous effort
to speak to me at all; you misunderstand everything I say, and, perhaps
unconsciously, you speak crossly even about the most trivial things."
She did not interrupt him even by so much as a gesture. Hurt by this
indifference on her part, he continued to reproach her, spurred on to
torment his companion not only by his sudden fit of temper, but also by
a certain disinterested taste for investigation rendered the keener and
the more literary by culture. He always tried to express himself with
the accuracy and demonstrative precision which the works of the analysts
had taught him; but, in the monologues, the formulas by which he
interpreted his inner inquiry exaggerated and modified the mental
condition under observation, while, in the dialogues, the preoccupation
caused by being perspicacious often obscured the sincerity of his
emotion and led him to err as to the secret motives which he claimed to
discover in others. His brain, encumbered by a mass of psychological
observations, personal or gathered from books, ended by confounding and
confusing everything both as regarded himself and others.
He continued:
"Mind you, I make no reproach. I know it is not your fault. Every
human soul has but a fixed quantity of sensitiveness for passion. It is
inevitable that this quantity is exhausted in time and that no power can
prevent the cessation of passion. Now, you have already loved me for a
long time--almost two years! It will be the second anniversary of our
love on the second of April. Had you thought of it?"