They looked at each other again, and their gaze was charged with
caresses.
"Adored one!" he murmured.
"Addio!" she rejoined softly. "Think of me until eleven."
"Addio!"
They separated at the foot of the Via Gregoriana. She went down the Via
Capo-le-Case. As long as he could see her going along the wet pavement,
lit up by the reflection of the shop windows, his gaze followed her.
"Thus it is," he thought. "She leaves me; she enters a house of which I
know nothing; she reenters upon her commonplace life, despoiled of all
the ideality in which I have clothed her; she becomes another woman
entirely. I no longer know her. The gross necessities of life occupy
her, absorb her, and degrade her...."
A perfume of violets was carried to him from a florist's close by, and
his heart swelled with confused aspirations.
"Ah! why is it not permitted us to conform our existence according to
our dreams, and to live forever in ourselves alone?"
*CHAPTER II.*
At ten o'clock in the morning George was still buried in the profound
and refreshing slumber which, in the young, follows a night of
voluptuousness, when his servant entered to awaken him.
Turning in his bed, he cried ill-humoredly:
"I am at home to no one. Let me be."
But from the adjoining room he heard the importunate visitor's voice
addressing him in beseeching accents:
"Excuse me, George; I must speak to you."
George recognized the voice of Alphonso Exili, and his annoyance was
only the greater.
This Exili was a college chum, a man of mediocre intelligence, who,
ruined by gambling and debauch, had become a parasite and adventurer.
He still appeared a handsome young man, in spite of his face devastated
by vice; yet in his person and manners there was that indefinable
cunning and ignobleness noticeable in persons reduced to living by their
wits.
He entered, waited until the servant had retired, and assumed a
distressed air. Then, swallowing half his words, he said: "Forgive me,
George, if I have recourse once more to your kindness. I must pay a
card debt. I want you to help me. It's a small sum. Only three
hundred lira. Forgive me."
"What? You pay your card debts now?" said George. "I'm surprised."
He threw this insult at him with the most perfect _sans-gene_. Not
knowing how to break off all connection with the parasite, he treated
him with contempt, just as one would use a stick to ward off a dirty
animal.
Exili smiled.
"Come, don't be unkind," he pleaded, in supplicating tones, like a
woman's. "You'll give me the three hundred lira, won't you? I will pay
you back to-morrow, on my word of honor!"
George burst into laughter. He pulled the bell to summon the servant.
The servant entered. "Get my bunch of keys out of those clothes there,
on the sofa." The servant found the keys. "Open the second drawer.
Give me the large card-case." The servant passed him the card-case.
"Very well, you may go."
"Couldn't you let me have four hundred lira?" asked Exili, with a
half-timid, half-convulsive smile when the servant had left the room.
"No, there's three hundred. It's the last time. Now go."
Instead of handing him the bills, George laid them on the edge of the
bed. Exili smiled, took them, and placed them in his pocket; then, in
an ambiguous tone, in which irony was mixed with adulation, he said:
"You have a noble heart."
His gaze wandered around the chamber, and he added: "You have a
delicious bedroom."
He seated himself on the sofa, poured out a small glass of liqueur, and
refilled his cigar-case.
"Who is your present mistress?" he went on. "What's her name? I
believe it's no longer the one you had last year."
"Go away, Exili. I want to sleep."
"What a splendid creature! She has the handsomest eyes in Rome. She's
away, I suppose. I have not met her for several days. She must be out
of town. She has a sister in Milan, I think."
He refilled his _petit verre_ and swallowed its contents at a single
gulp. Possibly he gossiped only in order to gain time enough to empty
the bottle.
"She's separated from her husband, isn't she?" he continued. "I imagine
that her finances must be at a very low ebb, and yet she is always most
elegantly dressed. About two months ago I met her in the Via del
Babuino. You know your probable successor. But no, you can't know him.
It's Monti, the _mercante di campagna_, a great big fellow, with dirty
blond hair. That very day I saw her he was close at her heels in the
Via del Babuino. You know one can see at a glance when a man is
following a woman. Monti has money, too."
He uttered these last words in a curious tone; an odious tone of envy
and cupidity. Then he drank for the third time, noiselessly.
"Are you asleep, George?"
Instead of answering, George pretended to sleep. He had heard
everything, but he feared that Exili might see his heart-beats through
the bedclothes.
"George!"
He feigned to start like a man suddenly awakened.
"What! You are still here? Aren't you going?"
"I am going now--but look! A tortoise-shell pin!"
He stooped to pick it up from the carpet, examined it with curiosity,
and laid it on the coverlid.
"Lucky fellow!" he exclaimed in the same ambiguous tone. "And now,
ta-ta--a thousand thanks."
He extended his hand, but George kept his beneath the clothes. The
chatterbox turned towards the door.
"Your cognac is exquisite. I'll take another _petit verre_."
He drank, and then went away. George, in his bed, could relish the
poison at his leisure.
*CHAPTER III.*
The second anniversary fell on the second of April.
"This time," said Hippolyte, "we will celebrate it away from Rome. We
must pass a great week of love; all by ourselves, no matter where, but
not here."
"Do you remember the first anniversary," asked George, "that of last
year?"
"Yes, I remember."
"It was a Sunday, Easter Sunday. And I came to your rooms at ten
o'clock in the morning. And you wore that little English jacket that
pleased me so. You had brought your prayer-book."
"Oh! that morning, I had not been to mass."
"You were in such a hurry."
"My departure from the house was like a flight," answered Hippolyte.
"You know, on holy days, I could not call a moment my own. Yet, for all
that, I found a way to remain with you until noon. And we had guests
for lunch that day."
"Then, the rest of the day we could not see each other. It was a sad
anniversary."
"Yes, it was," murmured Hippolyte.
"And that sun!"
"And that forest of flowers in your room," she laughed. "I, too, on that
morning, had gone out for a moment; I bought up almost the entire flower
market."
"You threw hands full of rose-leaves at me. You put a number of the
leaves down my neck, in my sleeves. Do you remember?"
"Yes, I remember."
"And then, at the house, I found them all when I disrobed."
She smiled.
"And on my return my husband found leaves on my hat, in the folds of my
dress."
"Yes, you told me."
"I did not go out again that day. I did not care to go out again. I
thought, and rethought. Yes, it was a sad anniversary."
After an interval of silent revery, she spoke again.
"Did you believe, in your heart, that we should reach our second
anniversary?"
"I--no," he replied.
"Nor I."
"What love!" thought George, "that which carries within itself the
presentiment of its end." He then thought of the husband, without hate
and even with a sort of compassionate benevolence. "Now she is free.
Why, then, am I more uneasy now than formerly? The husband was a sort
of guarantee for me; I looked on him as a guardian who shielded my
mistress from all danger. Maybe these are illusions; because at that
time, also, I suffered much. But the suffering which is passed seems
always less severe than the present pain." Following his own
reflections, he no longer listened to Hippolyte's words.
"Well," she said, "where shall we go? We must decide. To-morrow is the
first of April. I have already said to my mother: 'You know, mamma, one
of these days I am going on a short journey.' I must prepare her for my
departure. Do not worry. I will invent a plausible pretext. Leave it
to me."
She spoke gayly; she smiled. And in the smile which illuminated her
closing remarks he believed he discovered the instinctive contentment
which a woman feels when concocting some deception. The facility with
which Hippolyte succeeded in deceiving her mother displeased him. He
thought once more, and not without regret, of the marital vigilance.
"Why suffer so cruelly on account of this liberty," he reflected, "when
it is in the service of my pleasure? I do not know what I would give
could I get away from my fixed idea, from my suspicions which do her
injustice. I love her, and I wrong her; I love her, and I believe her
capable of an unworthy action!"
"We must not go too far," she said. "You ought to know of some peaceful
spot, secluded, full of trees, interesting. Not Tivoli, nor Frascati."
"Take the _Baedeker_--it's there on the table--and look."
"Let us look together."
She took the red book, knelt close to the couch on which he was seated,
and with pretty gestures and infantile grace she began to turn over the
pages. Every few moments she read a few lines in a low tone.
He sat watching her, fascinated by the finesse of the nape of her neck,
from which the little brown curls mounted towards the crown of her head,
twisted into a sort of coil. He looked at the two little brown spots,
beauty spots, the Twins placed one by the side of the other on the
whiteness of the velvety neck to which they gave an ineffable charm. He
remarked that she wore no earrings. In fact, for two or three days she
had not worn her sapphire earrings. "Has she sacrificed them on account
of some money embarrassment? Who knows? She may be suffering silently
from the cares of hard, daily necessities." He had to forcibly compel
himself to consider seriously the thought which haunted him. This
thought was as follows: "When she becomes tired of me (and that will not
be very long), she will fall into the hands of the first comer who will
offer her an easy life, and who, in exchange for sensual pleasure, will
keep her from want. This man may even be the _mercante_ of whom Exili
spoke. Disgusted with petty miseries, she will triumph over the other
disgust; she will adapt herself. It is even possible that she will not
have to overcome any repugnance."
He remembered the mistress of one of her friends, the Countess
Albertini. This woman, separated from her husband, left free without
fortune, had descended progressively to lucrative _amours_, having
enough cleverness to save appearances. He remembered a second example,
which illustrated even more truly the possibility of what he feared.
And confronted with this possibility, which emerged from the
unfathomable future, he felt an inexpressible pain. Henceforth his
apprehensions would give him no truce. Sooner or later, he was fated to
witness the fall of the creature he had placed so high. Life was full
of such forfeitures.
"I have found nothing," she said in a disappointed tone.
"Gubbio, Narni, Viterbo, Orvieto! Look at the map of Orvieto: the
Monastery of Saint Peter, the Monastery of Saint Paul, the Monastery of
Jesus, the Monastery of Saint Bernardin, the Monastery of Saint Louis,
the Convent of Saint Dominique, the Convent of Saint Francis, the
Convent of the Servants of Mary."
She read in a sing-song tone, as if she were reciting a litany. All at
once she began to laugh, threw back her head, and offered her beautiful
forehead to the lips of her lover. She was in one of those moments of
expanding kindness which gave her the air of a young girl.
"What a number of monasteries! How many convents! It must be a strange
place. Shall we go to Orvieto?"
George experienced a sensation as if his soul had been overwhelmed by a
sudden wave of freshness. He abandoned himself with gratitude to this
comforting sign. And, as he pressed his lips to Hippolyte's brow, he
gathered there the souvenir of the city of the Guelphs, of the deserted
city which is silent in mute adoration of its marvellous Duomo.
"Orvieto! were you never there? Imagine to yourself, at the top of a
rock of tufa, overlooking a melancholy valley, a city so perfectly
silent as to seem without inhabitants; shutters closed; gray lanes in
which the grass grows; a capuchin monk crossing a public square; a
bishop descending from a black carriage in front of some hospital, with
a decrepit domestic at the carriage-door; a tower against a white and
rainy sky; a clock slowly tolling the hours; and all at once, at the
bottom of a street, a miracle--the Duomo."
"What peace!" murmured Hippolyte, rather dreamily, as if she had before
her eyes the vision of this silent city.
"I have seen Orvieto in February," he went on, "when the weather was
like to-day, uncertain--a few drops of rain; a few beams of sunshine. I
stayed there one day, and I was sorry to leave. I brought away with me
a feeling of nostalgia for that peace. Oh! what peace! I had no other
companion than myself, and I indulged in this dream: 'To have a
mistress, or, to express it better, a sister-lover, who would be full of
devotion; and to come here, to live here for a month, a long April
month, a rather rainy April, ashen but mild, with showers of sunshine;
to pass hours and hours in, or before, or about the cathedral; to gather
roses in the convents' gardens; to visit the houses of the sisters to
get preserves; to drink delicious perfumed liqueurs from small Etruscan
cups; to love a great deal, and sleep a great deal in a soft bed all
veiled in virginal white.'"
This dream made Hippolyte smile with happiness. Putting on an innocent
expression, she said: "I am pious, you know. Will you take me to
Orvieto?"
And huddling at her lover's feet, she took both his hands in hers. An
immense joy invaded her whole being; she had already a foretaste of the
promised repose, idleness, melancholy.
"Tell me again."
He kissed her forehead, lingering over it with chaste emotion. Then for
a long time he regarded her caressingly.
"Your forehead is so beautiful," he said, with a little thrill.
At that moment the real Hippolyte corresponded with the ideal Hippolyte
which lived in his heart. He beheld her beautiful, tender, submissive,
breathing a noble and sweet poesy. According to the motto he had
invested her with, she was grave and suave--_gravis dum suavis_.
"Tell me again," she murmured.
A soft light entered from the balcony. From time to time the windows
rattled gently under the breeze; and the raindrops pattered almost
noiselessly on the panes.
*CHAPTER IV.*
"Since we have already enjoyed in imagination the essence of pleasure,
since we have tasted all that our sensations and sentiments could
experience of what is rarest and most delicate, I would advise that we
renounce the experience of reality. Don't let us go to Orvieto." And
he chose another place: Albano-Laziale.
George was not acquainted with Albano, nor Ariccia, nor the Lake of
Nemi. Hippolyte, during her infancy, had been taken to Albano to the
house of an aunt, now dead. For him this trip would have the charm of
the unknown, and for her it would evoke the souvenir of days long
distant. Does it not seem as if a new vision of beauty renews and
purifies love? Do not the memories of the virginal age embalm the heart
with a perfume always fresh and soothing?
They decided to leave on the second of April, at noon, by train. Both
were punctual at the rendezvous at the station, and when they found
themselves amidst the crowd they felt a restless joy penetrate their
souls.
"Shan't we be seen? Tell me, shan't we be seen?" asked Hippolyte,
half-laughing and half-trembling, and imagining that all eyes were fixed
on her. "How much longer before we start? Dio Mio! How afraid I am!"
They hoped to have a compartment to themselves; but, to their great
regret, they were forced to resign themselves to having three travelling
companions. George saluted a gentleman and lady.
"Who is that?" asked Hippolyte, leaning towards her lover's ear.
"I will tell you."
She examined the couple with curiosity. The gentleman was an old man
with a long, venerable beard, a broad, bald, yellowish head, marked in
the centre by a deep depression, a sort of enormous and deformed navel,
like the imprint which would be caused by a large finger pressed into a
soft substance. The lady, wrapped in a Persian shawl, showed, under a
bonnet fashioned like a lamp-shade, an emaciated and meditative face;
and in her dress as in her physiognomy could be found something of the
English caricatures of the blue-stocking. The watery eyes of the
elderly man had, however, a singular vivacity; they seemed illumined by
an internal fire, like those of an ecstatic. He had acknowledged
George's bow by a very amiable smile.
Hippolyte racked her memory. Where could she have met these two
persons? She could not succeed in refreshing her memory, but she had a
confused feeling that these strange old people had been involved in one
of her love-dreams.
"Who is it? Tell me," she repeated in a whisper.
"The Martlets--Mr. Martlet and his wife. They will bring us good luck.
Do you know where we first met them?"
"No; but I am sure that I have seen them somewhere."
"It was in the chapel in the Via Belsiana, on April the 2d, when I first
knew you."
"Ah! yes. I remember!"
Her eyes lighted up; the coincidence seemed marvellous to her. She
examined anew the two old people, and felt a kind of emotion.
"What a good augury!"
A delicious melancholy came over her. She leaned her head against the
back of the seat, and thought once more of bygone days. She saw again
the little church in the Via Belsiana, mysterious, shrouded in a bluish
penumbra; the gallery, which had a curve like a balcony; the posy of
young girls chanting in the choir. Below, the group of musicians with
their string instruments, standing in front of white-pine pulpits.
Roundabout, in the stalls of oak, the seated auditors, few in number,
almost all gray or bald. The chapel-master beat the time. A pious
perfume of incense and violets mingled with the music of Sebastian Bach.
Overcome by the suavity of her recollections, she leaned over more
towards her lover, and murmured: "Are you thinking of the old days too?"
She would have liked to be able to communicate her emotions, in order to
prove to him that she had forgotten nothing, not even the slightest
circumstance of that solemn event. He, with a furtive gesture, sought
Hippolyte's hand beneath the large folds of their travelling rug, and
kept it slightly pressed in his own. Both felt in their souls a thrill
which recalled to them certain delicate sensations of the first days of
their love. And they remained in this attitude, pensive, somewhat
exalted, somewhat lethargic from the warmth, soothed by the even and
continuous movement of the train, at times seeing a green-clad landscape
in the haze through the carriage windows. The sky was clouded; it was
raining. Mr. Martlet dozed in a corner; Mrs. Martlet was reading a
review-the _Lyceum_. The third traveller slept soundly, his cap down
over his eyes.
"If the choir missed the _tempo_, Mr. Martlet beat time with energy,
like the chapel-master. At a certain moment, all the old men beat time,
as if moved by the spirit of the music. There was in the air an
evaporated perfume of incense and violets." George abandoned himself
with delight to the capricious workings of his memory. "Could I have
dreamed of a stranger or more poetic prelude to my love? It seems like
a recollection of some romantic tale; yet, on the contrary, it is a
souvenir of my actual life. I constantly retain the smallest details of
it before the eyes of my soul. The poetry of this beginning shed, later
on, the shadow of a dream over my entire love." In the drowsiness of a
light torpor, he dwelt on certain confused images which exerted a
species of musical fascination over his mind. "A few grains of
incense--a little bouquet of violets!"
"Look how Mr. Martlet sleeps!" said Hippolyte in a whisper. "As
peacefully as an infant."
Then she added, smiling: "You, too, are sleepy, are you not? It is
still raining. What a strange languor! My eyelids feel so heavy."
Her eyes half-shut, she looked at him from between her long eyelashes.
George thought to himself: "Her eyelashes pleased me at once. She was
in the centre of the chapel, seated on a high-backed bench. Her profile
was delineated in the light streaming from the window. When the clouds
outside cleared away, the light suddenly grew stronger. She made a
slight movement, and in the light I saw the real length of her
eyelashes--a prodigious length."
"Tell me," said Hippolyte, "will it be long before we arrive?"
The shrill whistle of the locomotive announced the proximity of a
station.
"I'll wager," she added, "that we have gone beyond our station."
"Oh! no."
"Very well, inquire."
"Segni-Paliano," cried a hoarse voice on the platform.
George, somewhat startled, stretched out his head, and asked: "Is this
Albano?"
"No, sir, this is Segni-Paliano," answered the man with a smile. "Are
you going to Albano? Then you should have alighted at Cecchina."
Hippolyte burst into such a loud peal of laughter that Mr. and Mrs.
Martlet looked at her with amazement. George immediately joined in the
contagious hilarity.
"What shall we do?"
"First of all, we must get out of this train."
George handed their hand-bags to a porter, while Hippolyte continued to
laugh--her fresh, hearty laugh--amused at this misadventure, which she
considered capital fun. Mr. Martlet looked startled at this outburst of
youth, which seemed to him like a wave of sunshine, but he smiled with
benevolent condescension and bowed to Hippolyte, who at heart felt a
vague regret at leaving the train.
"Poor Mr. Martlet!" she said, half in earnest, half in jest, as she
watched the train moving away through the bleak and deserted country.
"I am sorry to part with him. Who knows if I shall ever meet him again."