He was, in fact, in his own eyes the victim of cruel and implacable

persons, who were unwilling to spare him any kind of torture. And the

recollection of certain phrases uttered by his mother in the embrasure

of the window on the day of the funeral, amid their joint tears,

augmented his bitterness, soured his irony: "No, George, no! It is not

for you to suffer! I ought to have said nothing. I shouldn't have told

you. Don't cry any more. I can't bear to see you cry." And,

nevertheless, since that day no kind of torture had been spared him.

That little scene had not made any change in his mother's attitude

towards him. The following day, and ever since, she had been just as

angry and violent; she had insisted on his listening over and over again

to old and new accusations, aggravated by a thousand odious particulars;

she had morally forced him to count on her face, one by one, the marks

of the suffering endured; she had almost said to him: "See how my eyes

are scorched by tears; how deep my wrinkles have become; how white my

hair has grown at the temples And what would it be could I show you my

heart?" What had been the good, therefore, of the grief of the other

day? Was it necessary for his mother to see burning tears shed to be

moved to pity? Then she did not appreciate the cruelty of the pain she

inflicted uselessly on her son? "Oh, how rare on earth are those beings

who know how to suffer in silence and accept the sacrifice with a

smile!" Still disturbed and exasperated by the recent excesses of which

he had been an involuntary witness, already pervaded by the horror of

the decisive act which he was preparing to accomplish, he had thus come

to despise his mother to the point of complaining that she did not know

how to suffer with sufficient perfection.

The farther he advanced on his way (he had not wished to take the

carriage, and had started on foot, so as to be free to lengthen at his

will the time of the journey, and perhaps, also, to have the

possibility, at the last moment, of retracing his steps, or to lose

himself on the country roads)--the farther he advanced, he felt grow

that indomitable horror; so much so, that finally it surmounted every

other sentiment and masked every other thought. The one image of his

father occupied his mind, and with the relief of an actual figure. And

he began to imagine the scene which would take place soon--he studied

the countenance which he would assume, prepared his first sentences,

lost himself in improbable hypotheses, explored the most distant

memories of his childhood and adolescence, tried to represent the

successive attitudes of his soul towards his father during the

successive periods of his past life. He thought: "Perhaps I have never

loved him." And, in fact, in not one of his clearest recollections did

he find a spontaneous movement of confidence, or a warm effusion of

tenderness, or an intimate and agreeable emotion. What he did find, in

the memories of his early childhood, was a continual fear which

oppressed all affection--the fear of corporal punishment, of cross words

followed by blows. "I have never loved him." Demetrius had been his

real father; he was his sole and only parent.

And he appeared to his mind, a mild, meditative man, with a face full of

a virile melancholy, and a single white curl in the centre of his

forehead among the black hair, giving him an odd appearance.

As always, the image of the dead man solaced him immediately and

banished from his mind the things which had just preoccupied him. His

uneasiness became composed, his bitterness disappeared, and his

repugnance gave place to a new sensation of tranquil security. What had

he to fear? Why did his imagination exaggerate so childishly the

suffering which awaited him and which henceforth was inevitable? And

once more he had the intimate consciousness that he had radically

transported himself from his present life, from the present state of his

being, from the contingencies which had most troubled him. Once more,

under the influence that his uncle exercised on him from the depth of

his tomb, he felt himself enveloped by a sort of isolating atmosphere,

and lost the precise notion of what had occurred and what was still

going to occur; the real events seemed to be divested of all

significance as far as he was concerned, and to have but a momentary

importance. It was like the resignation of a man whom fatality obliged

to submit to a trial in order to attain the future deliverance of which

his soul had already had the prevision and certitude. This interruption

of internal care, this singular respite which he had obtained without

effort and which did not surprise him, permitted his eyes to be opened

finally to the spectacle of the solitary and magnificent landscape. The

attention he gave to it was calm and serene. In the aspect of the

country he believed he recognized a symbol of his own sentiments and a

visible imprint of his thoughts.

It was the afternoon. A clear and liquid sky bathed all the terrestrial

objects in its own color, and appeared to subtilize all matter by an

infinitely slow penetration. The various forms of vegetation, distinct

close by, became effaced in the distance, lost by degrees their

contours, appeared to evaporate at the top, tended to become combined

into a single form, immense and confused, which a single rhythmic

respiration would animate. Little by little, beneath a deluge of azure,

the hills became equal in size, and the depths of the valley took on the

appearance of a peaceful gulf which reflected the sky. From this united

gulf the isolated mass of the mountain soared up, opposing to the liquid

space the immovable solidity of its ridges, which the whiteness of the

snows illumined with an almost supernatural light.

*CHAPTER VII.*

At last the villa appeared, between the trees, close by, with its two

broad lateral terraces provided with balustrades supported by little

stone pilasters, and ornamented with terra-cotta vases in the shape of

busts representing kings and queens upon whose heads the sharp points of

the aloes formed living crowns.

The view of these coarse reddish figures, several of which stood out

clearly outlined against the luminous azure, suddenly awakened in George

new memories of his distant childhood, confused recollections of rural

recreations, of sports, of races, of romances imagined concerning these

motionless and deaf kings, in whose hearts of clay the tenacious plants

had fastened their roots. He even recalled that he had long had a

predilection for a queen whose thick and long hair was formed by the

hanging foliage of a fertile plant, which, in Spring, dotted it with

innumerable golden flowerets. He looked for her with curiosity, while

in his mind he multiplied the images of the obscure and intense life

with which his childish phantasy had animated her. As he recognized her

on a corner pilaster, he smiled as if he had recognized a friend; and,

for several seconds, all his soul inclined towards the irrevocable past

with an agitation which was not without sweetness. Thanks to the final

resolution which had assumed shape in him since his unexpected calmness

in the midst of the pale green and silent country, he found now in his

sensations a forgotten savor, and took pleasure in tracing, to its most

remote sinuosities, the course of his own existence, so close,

thenceforth, to the end determined upon. This curiosity for the

manifestations, even the most fugitive, that his being had dispersed in

the past, this agitated sympathy for the things with which he had

formerly been in affinity, tended to change into a languishing, tearful,

and almost feminine tenderness. But, when he heard voices near the

railing, he shook off this languor; and when he perceived an open window

at which the cage of a canary-bird hung between the white curtains, he

came back to the sentiment of the present reality, and felt anew his

previous anguish. The surroundings were calm, and one could distinctly

hear the singing of the imprisoned bird.

"My visit is unexpected," he said to himself, his heart sinking. "If

that woman should be with him?" Near the railing he saw the children

playing in the sand; and, without having time to observe them, he

guessed they were his adulterine brothers, the sons of the concubine.

He advanced; and the two children turned round, began to gaze at him

with astonishment, but without intimidation. Healthy, robust,

flourishing, with cheeks crimson with health, they bore the manifest

imprint of their origin. The sight of them upset him; an irresistible

terror assailed him; he had the idea of hiding himself, to turn back, to

flee; and he raised his eyes to the window, with the fear of perceiving

between the curtains the face of his father or that of the odious woman

of whose perfidies, covetousness, turpitudes, he had so often been told.

"Ah, you here, sir?"

It was the voice of a domestic, who came to meet him. At the same time

his father cried to him from the window:

"Is that you, George? What a surprise!"

He resummoned his courage, composed his face into a smile, and tried to

assume an air of unconcern. He had felt that already, between his

father and himself, had just been reestablished those artificial

relations, almost ceremonious in form, which they had used for several

years towards one another in order to hide their embarrassment when they

found themselves in immediate and inevitable contact. And he had felt,

besides, that his will had just totally left him, and that he would

never be capable to expose frankly the true motive of his unexpected

visit.

"Aren't you coming up?" said his father to him, from the window.

"Yes, I am coming up."

He would have liked to make believe that he had not noticed the two

children. He started to go up by the open-air stairway leading to one

of the large terraces. His father came to meet him. They embraced.

There always was in his father's manner a manifest ostentation of

affection.

"So you finally decided to come?"

"I wanted a walk, and it landed me here. I have not seen the place for

so long! It's just as it always was, it seems."

His eyes wandered over the asphalt-covered terrace; he examined the

busts, one after the other, with more curiosity than was natural.

"You're almost always here now, aren't you?" he said, in order to say

something, to escape the embarrassing intervals of silence which he

foresaw would grow longer and more frequent.

"Yes; I come here often now, and stay here," replied his father, with a

shade of sadness in his voice which surprised his son. "I believe the

air does me good--since my heart began to trouble me."

"Is your heart affected?" cried George, turning towards him with sincere

emotion, struck by the unexpectedness of the news. "How? Since when?

I never knew anything of it--nobody has ever breathed a word of it to

me."

He looked now at his father's face, in the strong light shed by the

sun's oblique rays and reflected by the wall, and fancied he could

detect the symptoms of the mortal malady. And it was with sympathetic

compassion that he remarked the deep wrinkles, the swollen,

worried-looking eyes, the white hairs that bristled on the unshaven

cheeks and chin, his mustache and hair to which the dye gave an

indefinite color between a greenish and a violet, the thick lips through

which the respiration came like the gasping of asthma, the short neck

which appeared to be colored by an extravasation of blood.

"Since when?" he repeated, without concealing his anxiety.

And he felt his repugnance to this man diminish as a rapid succession of

images, clear almost as the reality might be, represented him beneath

the menace of death, disfigured by the death agony.

"Does one ever know when it begins?" answered his father, who, in the

presence of his son's sincere emotion, exaggerated his suffering in

order to sustain and increase a pity by which he might succeed perhaps

in profiting. "Can one ever tell when it begins? These kind of

maladies breed for years; and then, one fine day, suddenly make their

presence felt. Then there is no remedy. One must be resigned, await

the end from one minute to another----"

Speaking in this strain, in a changed voice, he seemed to lose his

hardness and massive brutality, to become older, more feeble, more of a

physical and moral wreck. It was like a sudden dissolution of his entire

person, yet with an artificiality, exaggeration, and theatricalism which

did not escape George's perspicacity. And the young man thought

instantly of those comedians who, on the stage, have the facility of

instantly undergoing a metamorphosis, as they take off and replace a

mask. He had even a sudden intuition of what was about to follow.

Without doubt, his father had divined the motive of this unexpected

visit; and now he sought to obtain some useful effect by the exhibition

of his malady. Doubtless, too, he purposed to attain some definite

object. What was that object? George felt no indignation, no internal

anger; he made no preparation, either, to defend himself against the

ambush which he foresaw with such certitude; on the contrary, his

inertia increased in proportion to his lucidity. And he waited for the

comedy to follow its course, ready to accept all that might happen, sad

and resigned.

"Will you come in?" said his father.

"If you like."

"Very well. Let us go in. I have some papers I wish to show you."

The father passed in first, directing his steps towards the room the

open window of which shed over the entire villa the singing of the

canary-bird. George followed him, without looking around. He perceived

that his father had also changed his walk, so as to simulate fatigue;

and it gave him a poignant chagrin to think of the degrading impostures

of which he would soon be the spectator and the victim. He felt in the

house the presence of the concubine; he was sure that she was hidden in

some room, that she was listening, that she was spying. He thought:

"What papers is he going to show me? What does he expect to get from

me? He doubtless wants money. He is taking advantage of the

opportunity." And he thought he could still hear certain of his

mother's invectives; he recalled certain and almost unbelievable

particularities which he had learned from her. "What shall I do? What

shall I say?"

The canary in its cage sang in a limpid and strong voice, varying its

modulations; and the white curtains puffed out like two sails,

permitting a view of the distant azure. The breeze disturbed some of

the papers that littered the table; and on this table George perceived,

in a crystal disk which served as a paper-weight, a licentious vignette.

"What a bad day I have had to-day," murmured his father, who, affecting

to be tormented by palpitation of the heart, dropped heavily into a

chair, half-closed his eyelids, and began to breathe like an asthmatic.

"Are you suffering?" said George, almost timidly, not knowing if the

suffering were real or simulated, nor what face he should put upon the

matter.

"Yes--but it will pass in a moment. As soon as I have the slightest

excitement, the least anxiety, I feel worse. I need quiet and rest.

And, on the contrary----"

He began again to speak in that mournful, complaining tone which, owing

to a vague resemblance in accent, awoke in George the recollection of

his aunt Joconda, the poor idiot, when she tried to excite his pity in

order to get sweetmeats. The feint was now so evident, so vulgar, so

ignoble, and, in spite of all, there was so much human misery in the

condition of this man, reduced to such base means to satisfy his

implacable vice, there was so much true suffering in the expression of

his lying face, that it appeared to George that not one of the sorrows

of his past life was comparable with the horrible anguish of that

present moment.

"On the contrary?" he echoed, to encourage his father to continue, as if

to hasten the end of his own torture.

"On the contrary, for some time everything has been going from bad to

worse, and catastrophes succeed one another without cease. I have had

considerable losses. Three bad consecutive years, the failure of the

vines, the devastated flocks, the rents reduced by half, the taxes

increased in enormous proportions-- Look here. Here are the papers I

wished to show you."

And he took from the table a bundle of papers, spread them out before

his son's eyes, began to explain confusedly a number of very involved

business matters relative to unpaid landed taxes which had accumulated

during several months. It was absolutely necessary that he make a

settlement at once, in order to avoid incalculable injury. Their effects

had already been attached, and at any moment the bills of sale might be

posted. What could be done to remove the momentary embarrassment in

which he found himself without any fault of his own? The amount

involved was considerable. What could be done?

George was silent, his eyes fixed on the papers which his father was

turning over in his puffed-up, almost monstrous hand, with its visible

pores, and white with a pallor that made a singular contrast with his

sanguine face. At intervals he lost the sound of the words; but in his

ear still sounded the monotony of that voice in contrast with the shrill

singing of the canary and the intermittent cries which rose from the

path where the two little bastards were still doubtless playing in the

sand. The curtains stirred in the windows when an unusually strong

breeze swelled their folds. And all these voices, all these sounds, bore

an inexpressible expression of sadness for the silent visitor, who

regarded with a sort of stupor these bailiffs' wits over which passed

that swollen, pale hand, with its small, apparent scars left by

blood-letting. An image surged through his memory, a strangely distinct

remembrance of his childhood: his father was near a window, his face

grave, his shirt-sleeve rolled up on one arm, which he held plunged in a

basin of water; and the water was reddened by the flow of blood from the

open vein; and by his side stood the surgeon, watching the flow of blood

and holding the bandages ready for the ligature. One image recalled

another. He saw the bright lances in the green leather case; he saw his

mother carrying from the room a basin full of blood; he saw the hand

held in a sling by a black ribbon which was crossed on his fleshy, soft

back, sinking into it a little. Noticing his pensiveness, his father

asked him:

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, I am listening."

At that moment, the father perhaps expected a spontaneous offer.

Disappointed, he made a slight pause; then, surmounting his

embarrassment, said:

"Bartolomeo could save me if he gave me the amount."

He hesitated, and his physiognomy took on an indefinable expression in

which the son believed he recognized the last symptom of a modesty

vanquished by the almost desperate necessity of attaining his object.

"He would give me this sum for a note, but--I believe he would require

your signature."

At last the trap was sprung.

"Ah! my signature," stammered George, embarrassed, not at the demand,

but at the odious name of this brother-in-law, whom the maternal

accusations had already presented to him as a bird of ill omen, eager to

prey upon the remains of the house of the Aurispas.

And as he remained perplexed and gloomy, without saying anything, the

father, fearing a refusal, laid aside all reserve, and had recourse to

supplications.

That was the only way now to avoid a disastrous judicial sale which

would certainly determine all his other creditors to swoop down on him.

Disaster would be inevitable. Did his son wish to be a witness of his

ruin? Or, did he not understand that, by interposing in this instance,

he would act for his own interest and protect a heritage which was soon

to come to his brother and himself?

"Oh! It won't be so long; it will come from one day to the other,

perhaps to-morrow!"

And he began again to speak of his incurable malady, of the continual

peril that threatened him, of his worries and troubles that were

hastening the hour of his death.

At the end of his strength, unable to stand longer that voice and this

scene, yet restrained nevertheless by the thought of his other

executioners--those who had forced him to this place and who now awaited

him to demand an account of his mission--George stammered:

"But will you really use this money for the purpose you have stated?"

"So! you too, you too!" cried his father, who, beneath an apparent

explosion of sorrow, repressed clumsily one of his violent fits. "So

they have been telling you, too, what is always being gossiped about

everywhere--that I am a monster, that I have committed every crime, that

I am capable of every infamy. And you have believed it, too! Why, why

do they hate me to this extent, in that house yonder? Why do they

desire my death? Oh! you don't know how much your mother hates me! If

you went back to her now and told her that you had left me in my death

agony, she would kiss you and say, 'God be praised!' Oh! you don't

know."

In the brutality of his tone, in the peculiar expression of his mouth,

which added bitterness to his words, in the vehement respiration which

dilated his nostrils, in the irritated redness of his eyes, the real man

was exposed in spite of himself; and against this man the son felt a new

impulse of his primitive aversion, an impulse so sudden and so impetuous

that, without reflecting, by a desire to appease his father and to be

freed from him, he interrupted him, saying in a convulsed voice:

"No, no; I know nothing. Tell me, what must I do? Where must I sign?"

And he arose dismayed, approached the window, returned to his father.

He saw him seek something in a drawer, with a species of nervous

impatience; he saw him lay on the table a promissory note not yet made

out.

"Here. Place your signature here; that will do----"

And with his enormous index, whose flat nail sank into the folds of

flesh, he pointed to the place for the signature.

Without sitting down, without having a clear consciousness of what he

was doing, George took a pen and signed rapidly. He would have liked to

be already free and away from that room, to run in the open air, to go

far away, to be alone. But when he saw his father take the note examine

the signature, dry it by sprinkling it with a pinch of sand, then

replace it and lock the drawer; when he remarked in everyone of these

acts the ignoble joy, badly dissimulated, of a man who had succeeded in

an evil purpose; when, in his soul, he felt the certitude that he had

permitted himself to be duped into a shameful fraud, when he thought of

the interrogations that awaited him in the other house-then the useless

regret for his act upset him so, that he was on the point of giving play

to his extreme indication, and to finally revolt with all his power

against the scoundrel, in defence of himself, his family, and of the

violated rights of his mother and sister. "Ah! it was true, then--all

that his mother had told him was true! This man had not a shadow of

shame, not a trace of self-respect. He recoiled from nothing and before

nobody when it was a question of getting money." And he felt once more

the presence of the concubine, of the rapacious, insatiable woman who

was certainly hidden in an adjoining room, eavesdropping, spying,

waiting for her share of the plunder.

Without succeeding in repressing the tremor that shook him, he said:

"You promise that this money will not be used--for any other purpose?"

"Why, yes; of course," replied his father, allowing his son to see now

how much this insistance annoyed him, and who had manifestly changed

countenance since it was no longer necessary for him to beg and feign in

order to obtain.

"Take care! I shall know," added George, who had become very pale, and

in a choking voice betraying an effort to restrain the outburst of

indignation which increased in proportion as the man appeared more truly

in his odious aspect, in proportion as the consequences of the

precipitate step that he had taken became more clearly defined. "Take

care! I do not wish to become your accomplice against my mother."

Affecting to be hurt by this suspicion, suddenly raising his voice as if

to intimidate his son, who was undergoing torture while compelling

himself to look him in the face, the father roared:

"What do you mean to insinuate? When will that viper of a mother of

yours cease spitting her venom? When will she finish? Does she want me

to close her mouth forever? Very well! I'll do it one of these days.

Ah! what a woman! For fifteen years, yes, fifteen years, she has not

given me one minute's peace. She has poisoned my life, she is killing

me by slow fire. If I am ruined, it is her fault. Do you understand?

It is her fault!"

"Be silent!" cried George, beside himself, unrecognizable, pale as

death, trembling in all his limbs, seized by a fury like that which he

had already felt against Diego. "Be silent! Do not speak her name!

You are not worthy to kiss her feet. I came here to speak to you of

her. I allowed myself to be played upon by your comedy. I permitted

myself to be caught in a trap. What you wanted was a present for your

ribald companion, and you succeeded. Oh! what shame! And you have the

heart to insult my mother!"

His voice failed him; he choked; a veil covered his eyes; his knees

shook beneath him as if all his strength was about to abandon him.

"Now, good-by! I am going. Act as you like. I am your son no longer.

I never want to see you or know anything of you. I will take my mother

away; I will take her away with me to some distant place. Farewell!"

He went out tottering, a shadow before his eyes. As he passed through

the rooms to reach the terrace, he heard the _frou-frou_ of skirts, and

a door which closed, as if behind someone retiring in haste, in order

not to be surprised.

As soon as he was in the open air, outside the railings, he felt a mad

desire to weep, to cry, to run across the fields, to knock his head

against a rock, to seek a precipice where all would end. His nerves

trembled painfully in his head, and caused him cruel twinges as if they

were being broken one after the other. And he thought, with a terror

that the dying day rendered more atrocious: "Where shall I go? Shall I

go back _there_ this evening?" The house seemed to him to be moved back

an infinite distance; the length of the road appeared impossible to

traverse; all that was not immediate and absolute cessation of his

frightful torture seemed to him inadmissible.

*CHAPTER VIII.*

The following morning, when he opened his eyes after a very restless

night, the events of the previous evening seemed but a confused memory.

The tragic deepening of the twilight on the silent country; the grave

sound of the Angelus, which, prolonged in his ears by a hallucination of

hearing, had seemed endless; the anguish which had come over him on

approaching the house, at the sight of the lighted windows crossed at

intervals by shadows; the feverish excitement which had seized him when,

pressed with questions by his mother and sister, he had related the

interview, exaggerating the violence of the invectives and the atrocity

of the altercation; the almost delirious desire to keep on speaking, to

add to the recital of the real facts the incoherence of his imagination;

the ejaculations of contempt or of tenderness with which his mother had

interrupted him, as he went on describing the brute's attitude and his

own energy in reproaching him; then the sudden hoarseness, the rapid

exasperation of the pain which hammered his temples, the spasmodic

efforts at a bitter and non-coercible vomiting, the severe cold which

had chilled him in bed, the horrible dreams which had caused him to

start while in the first torpor of his enfeebled nerves--all this came

back confusedly to his memory, augmented his painful physical stupor,

from which, however, he would not have been willing to emerge but to

enter into a state of complete extinction, into the insensibility of a

corpse.

The necessity of death was still suspended over him with the same

imminence; but it was unendurable for him to think that, in order to put

his design into execution, he would have to shake off his inertia,

accomplish a series of fatiguing acts, conquer the physical repugnance

which discouraged him from all effort. Where could he kill himself?

How? At the house? That same day? With a firearm? With poison? His

mind had not yet conceived the precise and definite idea. Even the

torpor that paralyzed him, and the bitterness of his mouth, suggested to

him the idea of a narcotic. And, vaguely, without stopping to seek a

practical means by which he could procure an efficacious dose, he

imagined its effect. Little by little the images multiplied, became

particularized, became more distinct; and their association formed a

visible scene. What he tried to imagine was, not so much the sensations

of his slow death-agony, as the circumstances which would lead to his

mother, sister, and brother learning of the catastrophe. He tried to

imagine the manifestations of their sorrow, their attitudes, their

words, their gestures. Still following the same idea, his curious

attention extended to all the survivors, not only his immediate

relatives but to the entire family, to his friends, to Hippolyte, the

far-distant Hippolyte, so distant that she had almost become as a

stranger to him.

"George!"

It was the voice of his mother, who was knocking at the door.

"Is it you, mother? Come in."

She entered, approached the bed with affectionate eagerness, leaned over

him, placed a hand on his forehead, and asked:

"How do you feel? Any better?"

"A little. I'm still dizzy--I have a bitter taste in my mouth. I

should like a drink."

"Camille is going to bring you up a cup of milk. Shall I open the

windows more?"

"Just as you like, mother."

His voice was changed. His mother's presence aroused in him that

sentiment of pity for himself which had given birth to the imaginary

picture of funereal regrets, the time for which he believed was close at

hand. In his mind, the actuality of his mother opening the windows

became identified with the imaginary action which would bring about the

terrible discovery; and his eyes grew moist with commiseration for

himself and for the poor woman whom he destined to receive such a cruel

blow; and the tragic scene appeared before him with all the distinctness

of a thing actually seen: his mother, a little frightened, turns round

in the light, calls him again by name; trembling, she approaches the

bed, touches him, shakes him, finds his body inert, cold, rigid; and

then she falls, fainting, prostrate over his corpse. "Perhaps dead.

Such a shock might kill her." And his anxiety increased; and the moment

seemed solemn to him, like all that is final; and his mother's

appearance, actions, and words assumed in his eyes such an unusual

signification and value that he followed them with almost anxious

attention. Drawn suddenly from his spiritual torpor, he had just

recovered an extraordinarily active consciousness of life. There

reappeared in him a well-known phenomenon, the singularity of which had

often attracted his attention. It was an instantaneous passage from one

state of consciousness to another; between the new state and the

anterior state there was the same difference as exists between waking

and slumber, and that recalled to his mind the sudden change produced in

the theatre when the footlights are unexpectedly turned up and project

their strongest light.

So, as on the day of the funeral, the son gazed on his mother with eyes

that were no longer the same, and saw her as he had seen her then, with

strange lucidity. He felt that this woman's life was brought closer to,

became connected with as if adherent to, his own life; he felt the

mysterious relation of the blood, and the affliction of the fate which

menaced them both. And when his mother came close to him again and sat

down by his bedside, he raised himself a little on his pillow, took one

of her hands, tried to dissimulate his agitation by a smile. Under the

pretext of looking at the cameo of a ring, he examined the long and thin

hand, to which each particularity imparted an extraordinary expression

of life and whose contact caused him a sensation resembling no other.

His soul still enveloped in the gloomy images recently evoked, he

thought: "When I am dead, when she touches me, when she feels the icy--"

And he shuddered as he remembered his own aversion to touching a corpse.

"What's the matter?" asked his mother.

"Nothing--a little nervous, that's all."

"Oh! you are not well," she went on, shaking her head. "Where do you

feel ill?"

"Nowhere, mother. I am naturally a little upset."

But the unnatural and convulsive look in her son's face did not escape

the maternal eye.

"How sorry I am that I sent you there! How wrong it was of me to send

you."

"No, mother. Why? It was necessary, sooner or later."

And all at once, without the slightest confusion henceforth, he relived

the frightful hour; he saw once more his father's gestures, heard once

more his voice; he heard again his own voice, that voice so changed,

which, contrary to all expectation, had uttered such grave words. It

seemed to him he was a stranger to that action and these uttered words;

and nevertheless, at the bottom of his soul, he felt a sort of obscure

remorse; he felt something akin to an instinctive consciousness of

having passed beyond bounds, of having committed an irreparable

transgression, of having trampled under foot something human and sacred.

Why had he departed with such violence from the great, calm resignation

with which the funereal image of Demetrius had inspired him, when it had

appeared to him in the midst of the silent country? Why had he not

persisted in considering with the same painful and clairvoyant pity the

baseness and ignominy of that man upon whom, as upon all other men,

weighed an invincible destiny? And he himself, he who carried that

blood in his veins, did he not also bear, perhaps, at the bottom of his

substance, all the latent germs of those abominable vices? If he

continued to live, did not he, too, risk falling into a similar

abjection? And then, all the cholers, all the hates, all the violences,

all the punishments, appeared to him to be unjust and useless. Life was

a heavy fermentation of impure matters. He believed he felt that in his

substance he had a thousand forces, occult, unrecognizable, and

indestructible, whose progressive and fatal evolution had made up his

existence up to then, and would make up his future existence, if it had

not happened precisely that his will had to obey one of these forces

that now imposed on him the supreme action. "In short, why regret what I

did yesterday? Could I have prevented myself from doing it?"

"It was _necessary_," he repeated, with a new signification, as if

speaking to himself.

And he sat a spectator, lucid and attentive, at the unrolling of the

little of the life that remained for him to live.

*CHAPTER IX.*

When his mother and sister had left him alone, he stayed in bed a few

moments longer, through a physical repugnance to do anything whatever.

It seemed to him that, to rise, he would have to make an enormous

effort. It seemed to him too fatiguing to leave that horizontal

position in which, in one hour perhaps, he was going to find eternal

repose. And, once more, he thought of a narcotic. "Close the eyes and

wait for sleep!" The virginal light of that May morning, the azure

reflected in the window-panes, the beam of sunlight that streamed on the

floor, the voices and murmurs that arose from the street, all those

living signs that seemed to rise above the balcony and reach as far as

him and reconquer him, all inspired him with a kind of fright mixed with

rancor. And he saw again, in his mind, the image of his mother going

through the gesture of opening the window. He saw Camille once more at

the foot of the bed; he reheard the words of both, always relating to

the same man. What he most clearly remembered was a cruel exclamation,

uttered by his mother, with lips overflowing with bitterness; and with

it he associated the vision of the paternal features, those features on

which he believed he had discovered, over there, on the terrace, in the

strong light reflected by the whiteness of the wall, the symptoms of a

mortal malady. In front of Camille and himself, his mother had said

passionately: "If that were only true! Heaven grant it is true!" So

that, then, was the last impression left in his heart, on the eve of his

departure from the world, by the creature who was formerly in his house

the source of every tenderness!

An energetic impulse suddenly came over him; he threw himself from his

bed, definitely resolved to act. "It will be done before evening.

Where shall I do it?" He thought of Demetrius's closed rooms. He had

not yet a definite plan; but he felt morally certain that, during the

hours that still remained to run, the means would be spontaneously

offered, by a sudden suggestion which he would be forced to obey.

While he proceeded to make his toilet, the preoccupation haunted him to

prepare his body for the tomb. He, too, had that species of funereal

vanity that has been remarked in certain criminals condemned to death,

and in suicides. He rendered this sentiment more intense on observing it

in himself. And a regret came over him at having to die in this little,

obscure town, at the bottom of that wild province, far from his friends,

who for a long time, perhaps, would be ignorant of his death. If, on

the contrary, the act were done in Rome, in the great city where he was

well known, his friends would have grieved for him; they would,

doubtless, have given to the tragic mystery the adornment of poetry.

And, once more, he tried to picture what would follow his death--his

attitude on the bed, in the chamber of his amours; the profound emotion

of the youthful souls, the fraternal souls, at the sight of the corpse

reposing in austere peace; the dialogues at the funereal vigil, by the

light of the candles; the coffin covered with wreaths, followed by a

crowd of young and silent men; the words of farewell pronounced by a

poet, Stefano Gondi: "He died _because he could not make his life

correspond to his dreams_." And then Hippolyte's sorrow, despair, and

loss of reason.

Hippolyte! Where was she? What were her thoughts? What was she doing?

"No," he thought, "my presentiment does not deceive me." And he saw

again, in imagination, his mistress's gesture as she lowered her black

veil after the last kiss; and he went over in his mind the little

_final_ points. Yet there was one thing he could not explain, and that

was the almost absolute acquiescence of his soul at the necessary and

definite renunciation which dispossessed him of this woman, only lately

the object of so many dreams and of so much adoration. Why, after the

fever and anguish of the first days, had hope abandoned him little by

little? Why had he fallen into the melancholy certainty that all effort

would be useless to resuscitate that dead and incredibly distant thing,

_their love_? Why had all that past been so entirely separated from him

that during these last days, beneath the shock of recent tortures, he

had barely felt a few vibrations reverberate clearly in his conscience?

Hippolyte! Where was she? What were her feelings? What was she doing?

On what sights were her eyes resting? From what words, from what

contacts, did she suffer uneasiness? What could have happened, that,

for two weeks, she had not found the means to send him news less vague

and brief than four or five telegrams sent from always different places?

"Perhaps she is already giving way to desire for another man. That

brother-in-law of whom she was continually speaking--" And the

frightful thought aroused by the old habit of suspicion and accusation

suddenly mastered him, overwhelmed him as in the gloomiest hours of his

past life. A tumult of bitter recollections arose in him. Leaning on

the same balcony where, the first evening, amidst the perfume of the

bergamots, in the anguish of first regrets, he had invoked the name of

the loved one, he relived in one second the miseries of two years. And

it seemed to him that, in the splendor of this May morning, it was the

recent happiness of the unknown rival that blossomed, and was diffused

as far as where he stood.

*CHAPTER X.*

As if to initiate himself in the profound mystery into which he was

about to enter, George desired to see once more the deserted apartment

where Demetrius had passed the last days of his life.

In willing all his fortune to his nephew, Demetrius had also willed him

this apartment. George had kept the rooms intact, with pious care, as

one guards a reliquary. The rooms were situated on the upper floor, and

looked south over the garden.

He took the key and went upstairs, treading cautiously, to avoid being

questioned. But, as he traversed the corridor, he was necessarily

obliged to pass by his Aunt Joconda's door. Hoping to pass unnoticed,

he walked softly, on tip-toe, holding his breath. He heard the old

woman cough; he made a few quicker strides, believing that the noise of

the cough would cover the sounds of his footsteps.

"Who's there?" demanded a hoarse voice from within.

"It is I, Aunt Joconda."

"Ah! It's you, George? Come in, come in----"

She appeared upon the threshold, with her ugly, yellowish face, which,

in the shadow, was almost cadaveric; and she glanced at her nephew's

hands before looking at his face, as if to see first if his hands had

brought something.

"I am going in the next apartment," said George, repelled by the ignoble

bodily odor, which filled him with disgust. "I must air the rooms a

little."

And he resumed his steps in the corridor, until he came to the other

door. But, as he turned the key, he heard behind him the limping of the

old woman.

George felt his heart sink, as he thought that perhaps he would not find

a way to disembarrass himself of her, that perhaps he would be obliged

to listen to her stammering voice amid the almost religious silence of

these rooms, with their beloved yet terrible souvenirs. Without saying

anything, without turning round, he opened the door and entered.

The first room was dark, the air somewhat warm and suffocating,

impregnated with that singular odor peculiar to old libraries. A streak

of faint light showed where the window was. Before opening the

shutters, George hesitated; he strained his ear to hear the gnawing of

the wood-ticks. Aunt Joconda began to cough, invisible in the darkness.

Then, feeling on the window to find the iron catch, he felt a slight

thrill, a fugitive fear. He opened it, and turned round; he saw the

vague shapes of the furniture in the greenish penumbra produced by the

shutters; he saw the old woman in the middle of the room, one side

distorted, swaying her flaccid body to and fro, chewing something. He

pushed back the shutters, which creaked on their hinges. A flood of

sunlight inundated the interior. The discolored curtains fluttered.

At first he was undecided: the presence of the old woman prevented him

from abandoning himself to his feelings. His irritation increased to

such a degree that he did not speak a single word to her, fearing that

his voice would only be cross and angry. He passed into the adjoining

room and opened the window. The light spread everywhere, and the

curtains fluttered. He passed into the third room and opened the

window. The light spread everywhere, and the curtains fluttered. He

went no farther. The next room, in the angle, was the bedroom. He

wished to enter it alone. He heard, with nausea, the limping gait of

the unfortunate old woman rejoining him. He took a chair and relapsed

into an obstinate silence, waiting.

The old woman crossed the threshold slowly. Seeing George seated, and

not speaking, she was perplexed. She did not know what to say. The

fresh air that blew in from the window unquestionably irritated her

catarrh; and she began to cough again, standing in the middle of the

room. At every spell her body seemed to swell and then to subside, like

the bag of a bagpipe beneath an intermittent breath. She held her hands

on her breast--fat hands, like tallow, with nails bordered with black.

And in her mouth, between the toothless gums, her whitish tongue

quivered.

As soon as her fit of coughing was over, she drew from her pocket a

dirty paper bag, and took out a pastille. Still standing, she chewed,

staring at George in a stupid manner.

Her gaze wandered from George towards the closed door of the fourth

room. And the old woman made the sign of the cross, then went and sat

down on the seat nearest to George. Her hands on her abdomen, and the

eyelids lowered, she recited a _Requiem_.

"She is praying for her brother," thought George; "for the soul of the

_damned_." It seemed inconceivable to him that this woman should be the

sister of Demetrius Aurispa! How could the proud and generous blood

which had soaked the bed in the adjoining room, the blood sprung from a

brain already corroded by the highest cares of the intelligence, have

come from the same source as that which coursed, so impoverished, in the

veins of this peevish and disgusting old woman? "With her, it is

greediness--the greediness which regrets the liberality of the donor.

How strange, this prayer of gratitude from an old, dilapidated stomach

towards the most noble of suicides! How odd life is!"

All at once, Aunt Joconda began to cough again.

"You had better go from here, aunt; it isn't good for you," said George,

who no longer had the strength to master his impatience. "The air here

is bad for your cough. You had better go, really. Come, I will see you

back to your room."

Aunt Joconda looked at him, surprised at his abrupt speech and unusual

tone. She rose, and went limping through the rooms. When she reached

the corridor, she again made the sign of the cross, as if muttering an

exorcism. When she had gone, George closed the door, and gave the key a

double turn. At last, he was alone and free, with an invisible

companion.

He remained motionless for a few moments, as if under magnetic

influence. And he felt his whole being invaded by the supernatural

fascination which that man, existing without life, exercised over him

from the bottom of the tomb.

And he reappeared to his mind, a mild, meditative man, with a face full

of a virile melancholy, and with a single white curl in the centre of

his forehead, among the black hair, giving him an odd appearance.

"For me," thought George, "he exists. Since the day of his corporeal

death I have felt his presence every minute. Never so much as since his

death have I felt our consanguinity. Never so much as since his death

have I had the perception of the intensity of his being. All that he

consumed in contact with his fellow-creatures; every action, every

gesture, every word that he has sown in the course of time; every

diverse manifestation which determined the special character of his

being in relation with other beings; every characteristic, fixed or

variable, which distinguished his personality from other personalities

and made of him a man apart in the human multitude; in short, all that

which differentiated his own life from other lives--all now seems to me

to be collected, concentrated, circumscribed in the unique and ideal tie

that binds him to me. He does not exist for anyone but me alone; he is

freed from all other contact, he is in communication with me alone. He

exists, purer and more intense than ever."

He took a few steps, slowly. The heavy silence was disturbed at moments

by little, mysterious noises, scarcely perceptible. The fresh air, the

warmth of the day, contracted the fibres of the benumbed furniture,

accustomed to the obscurity of the closed windows. The breath of heaven

penetrated the pores of the wood, shook the particles of dust, swelled

the folds of the hangings. In a ray of sunlight, myriads of atoms

whirled about. The odor of the books was overcome gradually by the

perfume of the flowers.

The things suggested to the survivor a crowd of recollections. From

these things arose a light and murmuring chorus which enveloped him.

From every side arose the emanations of the past. One would have said

that the things emitted the odors of a spiritual substance which had

impregnated them. "Do I exalt myself?" he asked himself, at the aspect

of the images that succeeded one another in his mind with prodigious

rapidity, clear as visions, not obscured by a funereal shadow, but

living a superior life. And he remained perplexed, fascinated by the

mystery, seized by a terrible anguish at the moment of venturing on the

confines of that unknown world.

The curtains, which a rhythmic breath seemed to swell, undulated softly,

giving glimpses of a noble and calm landscape. The slight noises made

by the wainscoting, the papers, and the partitions continued. In the

third room, severe and simple, the recollections were musical, and came

from mute instruments. On a long, violet-wood piano, whose varnished

surface reflected things like a mirror, a violin reposed in its box. On

a chair a page of music rose and fell at the pleasure of the breeze, and

almost in time with the curtains.

George picked it up. It was a page from a Mendelssohn motet: DOMENICA

II POST PASCHA: _Andante quasi allegretto. Surrexit pastor bonus_--

Farther on, on a table, there was a heap of parts for the violin and

piano, Leipzig editions: Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Rode, Tartini,

Viotti. George opened the case, examined the fragile instrument that

slept on olive-colored velvet, with its four strings still intact. A

curiosity seized him to awaken them. He touched the treble string,

which gave a plaintive moan that vibrated through the entire body. It

was a violin made by Andrea Guarneri, dated 1680.

Demetrius reappeared, tall and slender, a little bent, his neck long and

pale, his hair brushed back, and with the single white lock in the

centre of his forehead. He held the violin. He passed one hand through

his hair on the temple, near the ear, with his usual gesture. He tuned

the instrument, rosined the bow, then attacked the sonata. His left

hand, shrivelled and proud, ran up and down the neck; the tips of his

thin fingers pressed the strings, and, beneath the skin, the play of his

muscles was so visible as to be painful; his right hand, when drawing

the bow, moved with a long, faultless motion. Sometimes he held the

instrument tighter with his chin, his head inclined, his eyes

half-closed, enjoying keenly his inner voluptuousness.

Sometimes he drew himself erect, looked fixedly before him, his eyes

strangely brilliant; smiled a fugitive smile; and from his brow beamed

an extraordinary purity.

Thus the violinist reappeared to the survivor. And George lived again

the hours of life already lived; he lived them again, not in pictures

only, but in actual and profound sensations. He lived again the long

hours of close intimacy and forgetfulness, the time when Demetrius and

himself, alone, in the warm room to which no noise could penetrate,

executed the music of their favorite masters. How they used to forget

their very existence! In what strange raptures this music, executed by

their own hands, soon threw them! Often the fascination of a single

melody held them prisoners an entire afternoon, without their being able

to leave the magic circle in which they were enclosed. How often they

had rehearsed that _Song without Words_ of Mendelssohn, which had

revealed to them both, at the bottom of their hearts, a sort of

inconsolable hopelessness! How often they had rehearsed a Beethoven

sonata which seemed to grasp their souls, to carry them away with a

vertiginous rapidity across the infinity of space, and hover with them,

during the flight, over every abyss!

The survivor went back in his recollections as far as the autumn of

188-, to that unforgetful autumn of melancholy and poetry, when

Demetrius had scarcely emerged from convalescence. That was to be the

last autumn! After a long period of enforced silence, Demetrius took up

his violin again with strange disquietude, as if he feared having lost

all his aptitude and all his mastery, all his knowledge of the

instrument. Oh, what trembling of the enfeebled fingers on the strings

and the incertitude of the bowing when he essayed the first tones! And

those two tears that formed slowly in the cavity of his eyes, rolled

down his cheeks, and were arrested in the threads of his beard, rather

long and still untrimmed.

The survivor again saw the violinist about to improvise, while he

himself accompanied him on the piano with an almost insupportable

anguish, attentive in following him, in anticipating him, always fearing

to break the measure, strike a false note, make a discord, or miss a

note.

In his improvisations, Demetrius Aurispa was almost always inspired with

poetry. George remembered the marvellous improvisation that, on a

certain October day, the violinist had composed on a lyric poem by

Alfred Tennyson, in _The Princess_. George himself had translated the

verse so that Demetrius could understand it, and he had proposed it to

him as a theme. Where was that page?

The curiosity of a sad sensation prompted George to search for it in an

album placed among the pieces of music. He was sure he could find it; he

remembered it very clearly. And, in fact, he found it.

It was a single sheet, written in violet ink. The characters had paled

and the sheet had become rumpled, yellowish, without consistency, soft

as a spider's web. It bore the sadness of pages traced a long time ago

by a dear hand, gone henceforth forever.

George, who scarcely recognized the characters, said to himself: "It is

I who wrote this page! This writing is mine!" It was a rather timid

hand, unequal, almost feminine, recalling a schoolboy's writing,

preserving the ambiguity of the recent adolescence, the hesitating

delicacy of a soul that dares not yet know all. "What a change in that,

too!" And he read again the poet's verse:

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

That brings our friends up from the underworld.

Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

On lips that are for others; deep as love,

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Demetrius improvised standing, beside the piano, a trifle paler, a

trifle more bent; but from time to time he drew himself erect beneath

the breath of inspiration, as a bent reed straightens beneath the breath

of the wind. He kept his eyes fixed in the direction of the window,

where, as if in a frame, appeared an autumn landscape, reddish and

misty. According to the vicissitudes of the heavens without, a

changeable light flooded at intervals his person, flashed in the

humidity of his eyes, gilded his extraordinarily pure brow. And the

violin said: "Sad as the last which reddens over one that sinks with all

we love below the verge; so sad, so fresh, the days that are no more."

And the violin repeated, with sobs: "O Death in Life, the days that are

no more."

At the reminiscence, at the vision conjured up, a supreme anguish

assailed the survivor. When the images had passed, the silence seemed

to him still heavier. The delicate instrument through which Demetrius's

soul had sung its loftiest songs had again sunk to sleep, with its four

strings still intact, in the velvet-lined case.

George lowered the lid, as on a corpse. Around him the silence was

lugubrious. But he still retained, at the bottom of his heart, like a

refrain indefinitely prolonged, this sigh: "O Death in Life, the days

that are no more."

He remained a few moments before the door which shut off the tragic

chamber. He felt that henceforth he was no longer master of himself.

His nerves dominated him, imposed on him the disorder and excess of

their sensations. He felt about his head a band that contracted and

enlarged according to the palpitations of his arteries, as if it were an

elastic and cold substance. The same cold chill ran down his spinal

column.

With sudden energy, in a sort of rage, he turned the knob and entered.

Without looking about him, walking in the ray of light which, projected

through the open door, was shed across the floor, he went straight

towards one of the balconies, opened the two shutters. He also opened

the shutters of the other balcony. After this rapid action,

accomplished under the impulse of a sort of horror, turned, agitated,

gasping. He felt his flesh creep.

What he saw before anything else was the bed stationed in front of him,

with its green counterpane, all of walnut, but simple in form, without

carving, without ornaments without curtains. For several moments he saw

nothing but the bed, like on that terrible day when, crossing the

threshold of the room, he had stopped petrified at the sight of the

corpse.

Evoked by the survivor's imagination, the corpse, with its head

enveloped in a black veil and its arms stretched alongside the body,

retook its place on the mortuary couch. The strong light which entered

from the wide-open balconies did not succeed in dissipating the phantom.

It was a vision, not continuous but intermittent, seen now and then, as

if by a rapid closure of the eyelids, although the witness's eyelids

remained immovable.

In the silence of the room, and in the silence of his soul, George

heard, very distinctly, the scratching of the wood-tick. And this

trifling fact sufficed to dissipate momentarily in him the extreme

violence of the nervous tension, as the prick of a needle suffices to

empty a swollen blister.

Every particular of the terrible day came back to his memory: the

unexpected news brought to Torricelle di Sarsa, at about three o'clock

in the afternoon, by a breathless messenger who stammered and wept; the

exhausting journey on horseback, in the heat of the dog-days, across the

scorched hills, and, during the journey, the sudden fainting spells

which made him reel in his saddle; then the house filled with sobs,

filled with noises of doors banged by the gale, filled with the buzzing

he had in the arteries; and, finally, the impetuous entry into the room,

the sight of the corpse, the curtains swelling and swishing, the

tinkling of the holy-water basin suspended on the wall.

The deed had been done on the morning of the fourth of August, without

any suspicious preparations. The suicide had left no letter, not even

for his nephew. The will by which he constituted George his sole

legatee was already of old date. Demetrius had taken evident

precautions to conceal the causes of his resolution, and even to avoid

every pretext for hypotheses; he had taken care to destroy even the

least traces of the acts which had preceded the supreme act. In the

apartment, everything was found in order, in an order almost excessive;

not a paper remained on the desk, not a book was missing from the

shelves of the bookcase. On the little table, near the bed, was the

pistol-case, open; nothing more.

For the thousandth time, a question arose in the mind of the survivor:

"Why did he kill himself? Had he a secret which gnawed at his heart?

Or else, was it the cruel sagacity of his intelligence which rendered

life insupportable? He bore his destiny within himself, as I bear mine

in myself."

He looked at the little silver emblem still suspended on the wall at the

head of the bed, a symbol of religion, a maternal pious souvenir. It

was a fine piece of workmanship by an old master goldsmith of

Guardiagrele, Andrea Gallucci--a sort of hereditary jewel. "He loved

religious emblems, sacred music, the odor of incense, crucifixes, the

hymns of the Latin Church. He was a mystic, an ascetic, the most

passionate contemplator of the inner life; but he did not believe in

God."

He looked at the pistol-case; and a thought, latent in the deepest

recesses of his brain, was revealed to him as by a lightning flash. "I,

too, will kill myself with one of these pistols--_with the same, on the

same bed_." After a short appeasement, his exaltation took hold of him

again; again he felt his flesh creep. Once more he felt the actual and

profound sensation of the shudder already experienced on the tragic day,

when he had wished to raise, with his own hands, the black veil spread

over the dead man's face, and when, through the linen wrappings, he

believed he could see the ravages of the wound, the horrible ravage made

by the explosion of the firearm, by the impact of the ball against the

bone of the skull, against that brow so delicate and so pure. In

reality, he had seen only a portion of the nose, the mouth, and the

chin. The rest was hidden by the bandages several times folded, perhaps

because the eyes had started from their sockets. But the mouth, intact,

permitted a view of the beard, silky and thin--the mouth, pale and

withered, which, living, opened so softly for the unexpected smile--the

mouth had received from the seal of death an expression of superhuman

calmness, rendered more extraordinary by the bloody havoc hidden by the

bandages.

This image, fixed in an ineffaceable imprint, was graven in the soul of

the inheritor, in the centre of his soul; and after five years it still

preserved the same evidence, preserved by a fatal power.

In thinking that he also would stretch himself on the same bed, and that

he would kill himself with the same weapon, George did not feel that

tumultuous and vibrant emotion which sudden resolutions impart; it was

rather an indefinable feeling, as if it concerned a project formed a

long time ago, and approved in a rather indefinite fashion, and that the

time had come to decide about it and to accomplish it. He opened the

case, examined the pistols.

They were fine weapons, rifled duelling pistols, of old English make,

with a stock perfectly fitted to the hand. They reposed on a light-green

velvet, a little frayed at the edges of the compartments which contained

everything necessary for loading them. As the barrels were of large

calibre, the balls were large; those which, when they touch their

object, always produce a decisive effect.

George took one and weighed it in the palm of his hand. "In less than

five minutes I could be dead. Demetrius has left on this bed the hollow

where I shall lie." And by an imaginary transposition it was himself

whom he saw stretched on the couch. But that wood-tick! That

wood-tick! He had a perception of being gnawed by the insects, as

distinctly and as frightfully as if the animals were in his brain. This

implacable gnawing came from the bed, and he perceived it. Then he

understood the sadness of the man who, before dying, hears beneath him

the gnawing of the wood-tick. When he pictured himself in the act of

pressing the trigger, he felt an agonized and repulsive contraction of

all his nerves. When he came to the conclusion that nothing forced him

to kill himself, and that he could wait, he felt at the deepest recesses

of his substance the spontaneous expansion of intense relief. A

thousand invisible ties still bound him to life. "Hippolyte!"

He went towards the balcony, towards the light, with a sort of

impetuosity. A background of an immense landscape, bluish and

mysterious, melted in the languor of the day. The sun was slowly

setting on the mountain, which it flooded with gold, like the couch of a

mistress who awaited. The Majella, enormous and white, all bathed in

this liquid gold, reared its huge mass in the sky.

*III.*

*THE HERMITAGE.*

*CHAPTER I.*

In her letter of May 10th, Hippolyte had said: "I can at last dispose of

a free hour to write you a long letter. My brother-in-law has now been

dragging his pain from hotel to hotel around the lake for the last ten

days; and we both follow him like troubled souls. You could never

imagine the melancholy of this pilgrimage. I myself am utterly

exhausted; I await the first favorable opportunity to leave them. Have

you already found the Hermitage?" She had said: "Your letters increase

my torment inexpressibly. I know well your malady; and I divine that

words fail you to express your suffering. I would give half of my blood

to succeed in convincing you, once for all, that I am yours, absolutely

yours, forever, until death. I think of you, of you only,

uninterruptedly, every instant of my life. Away from you, I cannot

enjoy one moment's calm and happiness. Everything disgusts and

irritates me. Oh, when will it be given me to be with you entire days,

to live your life! You will see; I shall no longer be the same woman.

I shall be amiable, tender, gentle. I shall take care to be always the

same, always discreet. I shall tell you all my thoughts, and you will

tell me all yours. I shall be your mistress, your friend, your sister;

and, if you believe me worthy, I will be also your counsellor. I have a

lucid intuition of things, and a hundred times I have experienced this

lucidity, which has never led me into error. My sole care will be to

please you always, never to be a burden in your life. In me you should

find only sweetness and repose.... I have many faults, my friend; but

you will aid me to conquer them. You will make me _perfect_, for

yourself. I await from you the first encouragement. Later, when I am

sure of myself, I will say to you: Now I am worthy; now I have the

consciousness of being what you desire. And you, too, will be proud to

think that I owe you all, that I am your creature in everything; and

then it will seem to you that I am more intimately yours, and you will

love me always more, always more. It will be a life of love such as has

never before been seen."

In a postscript: "I send you a rhododendron gathered in the park of

Isola Madre.... Yesterday, in the pocket of that gray dress which you

know, I found the note from Albano which I had asked you for as a

souvenir. It is dated _April 9th_. It has been marked with several

_baskets of wood_. Do you recall our great fires of love? Courage,

courage! The renewal of happiness is approaching. In one week, in ten

days at the most, I shall be wherever it pleases you. With you, no

matter where."

*CHAPTER II.*

And George, who at heart hardly believed in success, but who was

suddenly seized by an insensate ardor, attempted the supreme test.

He left Guardiagrele for the littoral, in quest of the Hermitage. The

country, the sea, the motion, the physical activity, the variety of the

incidents strewn along the course of this exploration, the singularity

of his own condition--all these new things stirred him, restored his

equilibrium, gave him an illusory confidence. It seemed to him that he

had just escaped by a miracle from the assault of a mortal malady in

which he had been face to face with death. For the first few days, life

had for him that sweetness and depth which it only has for

convalescents. Hippolyte's romantic dream floated about his heart.

"If she should succeed in curing me! To cure me would require a

_healthy_ and _strong love_." He avoided looking into the very bottom

of his conscience; he fought shy of the interior sarcasm that those two

adjectives provoked. "On earth, there is but one durable intoxication:

_security_ in the possession of another creature, absolute and

unshakable security. This intoxication I am seeking. I would like to

be able to say: My loved one, present or absent, lives entirely in me;

my will is her only law; if I ceased to love her she would die; in

dying, she will regret only my love." Instead of resigning himself to

enjoy love in the form of suffering, he persisted in following it in the

form of pleasure. He felt that his mind was corroded irreparably. Once

more he felt he had degraded his manhood. He discovered the Hermitage at

San Vito, in the land of the furze, on the borders of the Adriatic. It

was the ideal Hermitage--a house built on a plateau, half-way up on the

cliffs, in a grove of orange and olive trees, facing a little bay closed

in by two promontories.

Very primitive, the architecture of the house. An outer stairway led up

to a loggia on which opened the four doors of four rooms. Each room had

its door, and vis-a-vis, in the wall opposite, a window looking out on

the olive-grove. To the upper loggia there was a corresponding lower

loggia; but the rooms on the ground floor, with the exception of one,

were uninhabitable.

On one side, the house was contiguous to an old ruin inhabited by the

peasants who owned it. Two enormous oaks, that the persevering breath

of the northerly winds had bent towards the hill, shaded the court and

protected the stone tables, useful for dining in summer time. This

court was surrounded by a stone parapet, and, rising above the parapet,

acacia-trees, loaded with odorous bloom, delineated against the

background of the sea the delicate elegance of their foliage.

This house was used only for lodging strangers who rented it for the

bathing season, according to the industry practised by all the villagers

of the coast in the region of San Vito. It was about two miles distant

from the borough, on the border of a territory called Portelles, in

quiet and mild solitude. Each of the two promontories was pierced by a

tunnel, the two openings of which were visible from the house. The

railroad ran from one to the other in a straight line, along the shore,

a distance of from five to six hundred yards. At the extreme point of

the right-hand promontory, on a bank of rocks the Trabocco stretched, a

strange fishing machine, constructed entirely of beams and planks, like

a colossal spider-web.

The tenant, out of season, was greeted like an unhoped for and

extraordinary piece of good fortune.

The head of the family, an old man, said:

"The house is yours."

He refused to name a price, and said: "If you are satisfied with it, you

will give me what you wish and when you please."

While uttering these cordial words, he examined the stranger with an eye

so scrutinizing that the latter was embarrassed and surprised by this

too piercing look. The old man was blind with one eye, bald on the top

of his head, with two little tufts of white hair on the temples; his

chin was shaven, and he carried his entire body before him, sustained by

two bow legs. His limbs were deformed by hard work: by the labor at the

plough, which advances the right shoulder and twists the body; by the

labor of mowing, which forces the knees apart; by the labor of thinning

the vines, which bends the body in two; by all the slow and patient

labors of agriculture.

"You'll give what you wish."

He had already scented in this affable young man, with his somewhat

distracted and almost wandering air, the generous milord, inexperienced,

careless of money. He knew that the generosity of his guest would be

much more profitable for him than if he made his own terms.

George asked:

"Is the place quiet, without visitors, without noise?"

The old man pointed to the sea and smiled:

"Look; you will hear nothing but that."

He added:

"Sometimes the sound of the loom, too. But now Candia hardly weaves at

all."

And he smiled, pointing to the threshold where stood his

daughter-in-law, blushing.

She was _enceinte_, already very large at the waist, blond, a clear

carnation, her face sown with freckles. She had big gray eyes, the iris

veined like agates. She wore in her ears two heavy gold rings, and on

her bosom the presenfoso, a large star of filigree work, with two hearts

in the centre. On the threshold beside her was a little girl of ten, a

blonde also, with a sweet expression.

"One could drink down that little madcap in a glass," said the old man.

"That's all! There are only us and Albadora."

He turned toward the olive-grove and began to call:

"Albadora! Albado!"

Then, addressing his granddaughter:

"Helen, go and call her," he said.

Helen disappeared.

"Twenty-two children!" cried the old man. "Albadora gave me twenty-two

children--six boys and sixteen girls. I have lost three boys and seven

girls. The other nine girls are married. One of my boys went to

America; another has made his home in Tocco, and works in the petroleum

mines; the youngest, the one whom Candia married, is employed on the

railway, and only visits us every two weeks. We are left all alone. Ah!

signor, it is well said that one father supports a hundred children, and

that a hundred children do not support one father."

The septuagenarian Sibyl appeared, bearing in her apron a heap of large

earth-snails, a slimy and flaccid heap, from which protruded long

tentacles. She was a woman of tall stature, but bent, emaciated, broken

by fatigue and by frequent pregnancies, weakened by childbirths, with a

small head, wrinkled like a withered apple, on a neck full of hollows

and tendons. In her apron the snails stuck together, twisted about one

another, glued to one another, greenish, yellowish, whitish, frothy,

with colorations of pale iridescent reflections. One of them had

crawled up on her hand.

The old man exclaimed:

"This gentleman wishes to rent the house from to-day on."

"God bless you!" she cried.

And, with a rather silly yet kind air, she drew closer to George,

leering at him with eyes sunk deep in their orbits, almost sightless.

She added:

"It's Jesus come back to earth. God bless you! May you live as long as

there's bread and wine. May you become as great as the sun!"

And, with a joyous step, she passed on into the house, through the same

door which all her twenty-two children had passed through on their way

to baptism.

The old man said to George:

"My name is Colas di Cinzio; but, as my father's surname was Sciampagne,

everybody calls me Colas di Sciampagne. Come and see the garden."

George followed the peasant.

"The crops are very promising this year."

The old man, walking in front, praised the plantations, and, as is

common with persons who have grown old in the midst of nature, he made

prognostications. The garden was luxuriant, and seemed to enclose in

its circle all the gifts of abundance. The orange-trees shed such waves

of perfume that, at moments, the atmosphere acquired a sweet and

powerful savor, like that of a generous wine. The other fruit-trees

were no longer in flower, but their innumerable fruits hung from

nourishing branches, rocked by the breath of heaven.

George thought: "This, perhaps, is what the superior life would be: a

limitless liberty; a noble and fruitful solitude which would envelop me

with its warmest emanations; to journey on amidst the vegetal creation

as one would amongst a multitude of intelligences; to wrest from it the

occult thought and to divine the mute sentiment which reigns beneath the

externals; to successively render my being comfortable with each of

these beings, and to successively substitute for my weakened and oblique

soul each of these simple and strong souls; to contemplate nature with

such a continuity of attention that I should succeed in reproducing, in

my own person, the harmonious palpitation of all creatures; finally, by

a laborious and ideal metamorphosis, identify myself with the robust

tree whose roots absorb the invisible subterranean ferments, and whose

summit imitates, by its agitation, the voice of the sea. Would not that

be truly a superior life?" At the sight of the spring-time exuberance

that transfigured the surrounding places, he permitted himself to be

dominated by a sort of drunken panic. But the fatal habit of

contradiction cut short this transport, brought him back to his old

ideas, opposed reality to dreams. "We have no contact whatever with

nature. We have only the imperfect perception of exterior forms. It is

impossible for man to enter into communion with things. Man has

certainly the power to inject into things all his own substance; but he

never receives anything in return. The sea will never speak to him in

an intelligible language, the earth will never reveal to him its secret.

Man may feel all his blood circulate in the fibres of the tree, but the

tree will never give him one drop of its vital sap."

Pointing out with his finger such or such a marvel of luxuriance, the

one-eyed old peasant said:

"A stableful of dung performs more miracles than a churchful of saints."

Pointing with his finger to a field of flowering beans at the end of the

garden, he said:

"The bean is the spy of the year."

The field undulated almost imperceptibly. The small leaves, of a

grayish green, agitated their thin points beneath the white or azure

flowering. Every flower resembled a half-closed mouth, and bore two

spots, black as eyes. Among those that were not yet faded, the superior

petals slightly covered the spots, like pale eyelids on pupils which

regard sidewise. The quivering of all those lipped and eyed flowers had

a strange animal expression, attractive and indescribable.

George thought: "How happy Hippolyte will be here! She has a delicate

and passionate taste for all the humble beauties of the earth. I

remember her little cries of admiration and pleasure on discovering some

plant of unknown form, a new flower, a leaf, a bay, a bizarre insect, a

shadow, a reflection." He pictured her to himself, slim and agile, in

graceful attitudes, among the verdure. And an anguish suddenly

overwhelmed him: the anguish of taking her again, of reconquering her

entirely, of making himself loved immensely by her; of giving her a new

joy every second. "Her eyes will be always filled with me. All her

senses will remain closed to all sensations but those that will come to

her from me. My words will seem to her more delicious than any other

sound." Suddenly the power of love appeared to him to be unlimited.

His inner life acquired a vertiginous acceleration.

When he mounted the stairway of the Hermitage, he believed that his

heart would break under the pressure of his increasing anxiety. Arrived

at the loggia, he took in the landscape with an intoxicated look. In

his profound agitation, he believed he felt that at that minute the sun

beamed truly on the bottom of his heart.

The sea, stirred by an equal and continuous thrill, reflecting the

happiness scattered in the sky, seemed to refract this happiness in

myriads of inextinguishable smiles. Through the crystal air, all the

distant vistas were clearly defined--the Vasto Point, Mount Gargano, the

Tremiti Islands, on the right; Cape Moro, the Nicchiola, Cape Ortona, on

the left. The white Ortona resembled a glittering Asiatic city on a

hill in Palestine, standing boldly against the azure, all in parallel

lines, without minarets. That chain of promontories and gulfs, in the

shape of a half-moon, suggested the image of a row of offerings, because

each handle bore a cereal treasure. The furze spread its mantle of gold

over the entire coast. From every bush arose a dense cloud of effluvia,

as from a censer. The air respired was just as delicious as a sip of

elixir.

*CHAPTER III.*

The first few days, George gave all his care to the little house which

was to receive the New Life within its great peace; and to help him in

the preparations he had Colas di Sciampagne, who seemed expert at all

trades. On a band of fresh plastering he had written with the point of

a reed this old device, suggested by the illusion: _Parva domus, magna

quies_. And he saw a favorable presage even in the three blades of bay

sown by the wind between the interstices of the raised edge of the

window.

But, when all was ready and this false energy had gone, he found again

in his inmost self the inquietude, the discontent, and that implacable

anguish the true cause of which he did not know; he felt confusedly that

his destiny had once more pushed him into an oblique and perilous pass.

It seemed to him that, from another house and from other lips, there

came to him now a voice of recall and reproach. In his soul there

revived the heartbreaking farewells, tearless and yet so cruel, in which

he had lied from shame on reading in his deceived mother's tired eyes

the question, too sad: "_For whom_ are you abandoning me?"

Was it not this mute question, the recollection of that blush and that

lie, which inspired him with the inquietude, the discontent, and the

anguish, at the moment that he was about to enter the New Life? And how

could he silence that voice? By what intoxication?

He did not dare reply. In spite of his deep trouble, he wished still to

believe in the promise of her who was going to come; he hoped to be able

still to attribute to his love a high moral signification. Had he not

an ardent desire to live, to give to all the forces of his nature a

rhythmic development, to feel himself complete and harmonious? Love

would finally effect this prodigy; he would finally find in love the

plenitude of his humanity, deformed and diminished by so many miseries.

With these hopes and these vague tendencies, he sought to cheat his

remorse; but what dominated him in presence of this woman's image was

always desire. In despite of all his platonic aspirations, he could not

succeed in seeing in love anything else but the work of the flesh, could

not imagine the days to come but as a succession of already familiar

sensual pleasures. In that benign solitude, in the company of that

passionate woman, what life could he live, if not a life of idleness and

voluptuousness?

And all the past sorrows came back to his mind, with all the painful

pictures: his mother's haggard face and swollen red eyes, scorched by

tears; Christine's sweet and heart-broken smile; the large head of the

sickly child, always leaning on a bosom barren of all but sighs; the

cadaveric mask of the poor idiotic gormand.