“I really don’t remember, but there are so many other things in my life
which I have forgotten too.”
“I am sorry,” she said, and I was already beginning to bow in
expectation of a compliment. “Now that you are old I find you most
entertaining.” I straightened myself up with a jerk. There was nothing
to say thank you for.
One day I heard that the Malfenti family had come back to town after an
unusually long summer holiday in the country. I did not have to take
any steps to get invited to the house, for Giovanni forestalled me.
He showed me a letter from an old friend of his, asking for news of
me. We had been together at the university and I had been devoted to
him so long as I thought he was going to become a great light in the
scientific world. But I had lost all interest in him since he had
become instead the head of a great cement firm, and now I never saw him.
I remember that first visit as if it were yesterday. It was a cold,
dark autumn afternoon; and I even remember the relief of taking off
my overcoat in the warm atmosphere of the house. I felt as if I were
coming safely into port. I still cannot help wondering at my blindness,
which I regarded then as clairvoyance. I was in pursuit of health and
respectability. It is true that four girls were included under the
initial “A,” but I at once subtracted three of them, and in my mind
submitted the fourth to a searching examination. I could not however
have really told you which qualities I demanded from her and which I
abominated.
I was shown into an elegant drawing-room, furnished in two different
styles--Louis Quatorze and Venetian--the latter containing a good deal
of leather stamped in gold. There was in fact a profusion of gold. The
room was divided in two, and in the window-half Augusta sat reading.
She shook hands with me, seemed to know my name, and said that they
were expecting me, as her father had said that I should be coming. Then
she went to call her mother.
Well, that was the end of one of the four girls with the same initial,
as far as I was concerned. How could they have called her pretty? The
first thing that I noticed about her was that she squinted, and so
badly sometimes that if one had not seen her for a while that squint
seemed to sum up her whole personality. Her hair was not very thick and
of a dull shade of blondeness without any lights in it; and though she
had not exactly a bad figure she was rather broad for her age. In the
few moments I remained alone I thought to myself: “If all the others
are like this one...!”
Soon after, the bunch of girls was reduced to two, for the one who now
came in with her mother was only eight years old. She was a charming
child with long, curly golden hair hanging loose over her shoulders.
Her round, sweet baby face was like one of those pensive angel faces
painted by Raphael--so long as she did not speak!
Of my mother-in-law I feel, like many another, a slight reluctance
to speak freely. I have been fond of her for many years now, because
she is my mother, but I am telling an old story in which she did not
play a friendly part towards me. I intend however not to say a single
disrespectful word about her in this notebook, though she will never
see it. Besides, her intervention was so brief that I have almost
forgotten it; just a little push which, administered at the right
moment, was enough to make me lose my balance. I might have lost it
even without her intervention, and who knows whether she was really
responsible for what actually happened? She is too well brought up ever
to drink too much and so let me into her secrets, like her husband.
That sort of thing could never happen to her, so I am not really very
sure about the facts of my story, nor whether it was because she was so
designing or because I was so stupid that I married the very one of her
daughters I least wanted to.
I may say, in passing, that at the time I first called on her my
mother-in-law was still a good-looking woman. She dressed expensively,
but with quiet elegance and no display. Everything about her was
harmonious and subdued.
The mutual understanding between my parents-in-law was just such a
picture of married bliss as I had dreamed of. They were perfectly happy
together; he shouted at her and she smiled back at him with a smile
which expressed at the same time her agreement and her sympathy. She
loved her big husband, and he probably won her heart and kept it by
his business ability and extraordinary success. It was admiration far
more than self-interest which bound her to him, an admiration which I
shared and could therefore readily understand. An immense vitality gave
a perpetual impetus to his life, though exercised in so restricted a
sphere; a kind of cage containing merchandise, with two hostile parties
contracting for it, and perpetually weaving fresh combinations and
patterns. He told her everything about his business, and she was too
tactful ever to give him any advice, knowing well that it would only
distract him. He needed her silent sympathy and sometimes would hurry
home during the day, merely in order to monologise aloud, but quite
under the impression that he went to ask his wife’s advice.
I was not surprised to learn that he was faithless to her, and that she
knew all about it and bore him no ill will. I had been married just a
year when Giovanni told me one day, in a great state of excitement,
that he had lost a very important letter, and wanted to have a look
through the papers he had given me in the hope that he might find
it amongst them. A few days later he told me gleefully that he had
found it in his own pocket-book. “Was it from a woman?” He nodded,
and congratulated himself on his good fortune. Shortly afterwards,
when my mother-in-law and my wife accused me of having mislaid some
papers, I remarked that I was not so lucky as my father-in-law whose
papers found their way back into his pocket-book of their own accord.
My mother-in-law laughed so heartily that I felt certain it was she
who had replaced the missing paper. Evidently it made no difference to
their relationship. Everyone has to deal with their love affairs in
their own way. And I must say that I don’t think these two chose by any
means the most foolish.
I was received very kindly. Signora Malfenti apologised for bringing
little Anna with her, saying it was the hour when she always looked
after her. The child gazed at me with her great serious eyes. When
Augusta returned and sat down on a little sofa facing the one on which
I was sitting with her mother, the child went and nestled in her
sister’s lap, watching me all the time with an undivided attention
which amused me, because I could not guess what was going on in her
little head.
The conversation was not very lively at first. Signora Malfenti, like
all properly brought up people, was rather dull when you met her for
the first time. She would go on asking about the friend who she
pretended had introduced me to the house, and whose Christian name I
could not even remember.
At last Ada and Alberta came in. I breathed again. They were both
lovely, and brought into the drawing-room a radiance which had been
quite lacking till then. They were both dark, tall and slender, but
very different one from the other. The choice I had to make was not
difficult. Alberta could not have been more than seventeen years old.
Though she was dark she had, like her mother, a pink transparent
skin which added to her childish appearance. Ada, on the contrary,
was already a woman. Her eyes shone gravely out of the pallor of her
face, framed by thick curly hair which was gracefully though severely
arranged.
It is difficult to discover the first beginnings of a sentiment which
was later to become so passionate, but I am certain that in this case
the so-called _coup de foudre_ was lacking. But the absence of that
lightning flash was compensated by my immediate conviction that she was
the woman I wanted for my wife, the woman who was to guide me to moral
and physical health in the holy monogamy of marriage. Looking back I am
surprised that the _coup de foudre_ should have been lacking and that
I should have had that conviction instead. Men usually do not seek in
a wife the qualities they both adore and despise in a mistress. So I
suppose all Ada’s grace and beauty was not revealed to me at first,
and I was charmed and delighted with qualities that I myself endowed
her with, such as seriousness and energy; the very qualities, slightly
modified, which I already loved in her father. If, as I still believe,
Ada really did possess these qualities as a girl, I can account myself
a good observer, though a rather blind one. The first time I saw Ada
I was only conscious of one desire: to fall in love with her, because
that was the first step necessary to marrying her. I applied myself
to it with the energy that I always devote to measures of hygiene. I
don’t really remember how long it took me; perhaps I succeeded in the
relatively short period of my first visit.
Giovanni had evidently talked about me a lot to his daughters. They
knew, among other things, that I had deserted law for chemistry, and
gone back again to law. I tried to explain to them that if a man
confined himself to only one subject the greater part of knowledge
remained hidden from him. And I said:
“Were it not that I was obliged to take life seriously (I did not add
that it was only my decision to marry which had made me realise this
necessity) I should have gone on from subject to subject.”
Then to make them laugh I said it was odd that I always gave up a
subject just before the examinations came on.
“Mere chance,” I added with a smile intended to suggest that I was not
speaking the truth. The truth was that I had changed my subject at
every imaginable time of the year.
And so I set out to win Ada, and persisted in trying to make her
laugh at me, forgetting that what I had first chosen her for was her
seriousness. I am rather fantastic, it is true, but to her I must have
seemed positively unbalanced. It was not entirely my fault, as may be
seen from the fact that Augusta and Alberta, whom I had not chosen,
judged me quite differently. But Ada, who indeed was quite serious
enough to be already casting round her beautiful eyes in search of a
man with whom to build her nest, was incapable of falling in love with
anyone that made her laugh. She did laugh of course a great deal, too
much in fact, and her laughter covered with ridicule the person who
had provoked it. This was a bad trait in her and ended by bringing
her great trouble, but at first it was damaging only to me. If only
I could have learnt when to have held my tongue things might have
gone differently. I might at least have given her an opportunity to
talk herself, so that I could have seen what she was really like and
protected myself against her.
The four girls were seated on the sofa. They were rather cramped,
though Anna was sitting in Augusta’s lap. They looked charming sitting
together like that. I observed them with secret satisfaction, because I
was well on the way to falling in love. Yes, they really were charming!
Augusta’s rather mouse-coloured hair showed up to greater advantage the
rich brown of the others.
I had been talking about the university, and Alberta, who had only
one more year at school, told me about her work. She complained that
she found Latin so difficult. I said I was not surprised, because it
was a language unsuited to women; so much so that I thought that even
amongst the ancient Romans the women had talked Italian. For my part,
I said, Latin had always been my favourite subject. I was foolish
enough soon afterwards to quote something in Latin which Alberta was
obliged to correct. It was really most unfortunate, but I made light of
it and told Alberta that when she had been two or three years at the
university she would have to look out for her Latin quotations too.
Ada, who had just been spending several months in England with her
father, said that lots of girls there knew Latin. Then in her grave
and not at all musical voice, which was rather lower than one would
have expected in such a delicate creature, she described how entirely
different English women were from Italian. They were always forming
societies for philanthropic, religious or economic purposes. Her
sisters encouraged her to talk because they wanted to hear again things
which at that time seemed very strange to girls in a town like ours.
So Ada told us about women who became presidents or journalists or
secretaries or political agitators, and who would go up on the platform
and address hundreds of people without blushing and without losing
their head if anyone interrupted or questioned their statements. She
told it all quite simply without any emphasis, and with no idea of
making us laugh or exciting our astonishment.
I liked her simple way of talking all the more because I myself could
not open my mouth without misrepresenting things or people, for
otherwise I should have seen no use in talking at all. Talking seemed
to me an event in itself which must not be hampered by any other events.
But I had a particular dislike for perfidious Albion, and I showed
it without fear of offending Ada who, by the way, had shown neither
dislike nor love for England. I had spent several months there, but
I never got to know anyone in good society because _en route_ I had
lost the letters of introduction with which some business friend of my
father had provided me. So I only frequented a few French and Italian
families in London, and had come to the conclusion that all really nice
people in London had come from abroad. My knowledge of English was
very limited. With the help of my friends I arrived at understanding
a certain amount about English life, but above all I was given to
understand that they hated anyone who was not English.
I described to the girls how unpleasant it was to have to live among
enemies. I should have stood it out, however, and managed to endure
England for the six months prescribed by my father and Olivi, who
wanted me to study business methods in England (which I never did
because all their business seems to be carried on in secret corners),
had I not been the victim of a most unfortunate accident. I had gone
into a book-shop to buy a dictionary. On the counter was stretched
a huge and magnificent Angora cat whose soft fur seemed to invite
caresses. Well! Just because I stroked it very gently the treacherous
beast sprang at me and gave me a horrible scratch on the hand. From
that moment I found England unendurable, and the very next day I was in
Paris.
Augusta, Alberta and Signora Malfenti burst out laughing. But Ada was
absolutely bewildered and thought she must have misheard me. Surely I
had meant it was the bookseller who scratched me? I had to tell the
whole story again, which is always tiresome because one never tells it
so well the second time.
The learned Alberta came to my aid. The Ancients, she said, also
allowed themselves to be guided by animals in making any important
decision.
I refused to accept her aid. There was nothing oracular about that cat;
it was fate itself.
Ada opened her eyes and insisted on further explanations. “Do you mean
to say that cat symbolised for you the whole English race?”
How unfortunate I was! Though the story was quite true, it had seemed
to me as instructive and interesting as if it had been invented to
point a moral. It was easy enough to understand, if one reflected that
in Italy where I know and love so many people the cat’s action would
not have acquired such significance. But I did not point this out. I
said instead:
“I am sure no Italian cat could have been capable of such an action.”
Then Ada laughed too, until I thought she would never stop. My success
was really too great, for I played such a poor part in the story,
and I only made the adventure seem more ridiculous by adding further
explanations:
“Even the bookseller was amazed at the cat’s behaviour, because it
was generally so friendly to everyone else. There was no getting over
it; it happened to me just because it was me, or perhaps because I
was Italian. _It was really disgusting._ There was nothing for it but
flight.”
Then something happened which really ought to have opened my eyes and
saved me from myself. Little Anna, who all this time had been sitting
motionless with her eyes fixed on me, suddenly said out loud what Ada
had been thinking. She cried out:
“But he’s mad, isn’t he? Quite, quite mad!”
Signora Malfenti scolded her:
“Will you be quiet? Aren’t you ashamed to break in like that when
grown-up people are talking?”
The scolding only made it worse. Anna burst out again:
“He _is_ mad! He talks to cats! You ought to get some rope and tie him
up at once!”
Augusta, blushing with annoyance, got up and carried her off, telling
her that she was very naughty and at the same time apologising to me.
But when they had got as far as the door the spiteful little creature
managed to catch my eye, made a horrid face at me and called out again:
“They’ll come and tie you up, you see if they don’t!”
The onslaught had been so sudden that it took me quite a few moments to
recover myself. But I was somewhat relieved to notice that Ada suffered
at seeing her own feelings expressed for her in this way. The child’s
impertinence had drawn us together.
I laughed heartily as I told them that I had at home a stamped
certificate guaranteeing that I was perfectly sane in every respect.
And so I came to tell them about the trick I had played on my father. I
suggested bringing along the certificate to show to little Anna.
When I said I must be going they would not hear of it. They wanted me
to forget first the scratches I had received from their own kitten.
They begged me to stay on a little and offered me a cup of tea.
I think I realised from the first that if I wanted Ada to like me I
ought to be rather different from what I was; but I thought I should
have no difficulty in becoming what she would like me to be. We went
on talking of my father’s death and I thought if I showed her what a
great grief it was to me she would sympathise with me. But in my desire
to become like her I very soon became unnatural and, as you will see,
only succeeded in estranging her still more. I said that the pain one
suffered at a loss like that was so great that if I had children I
should try to make them love me less, so that when I died their sorrow
would be less unbearable. I was a little embarrassed when they asked
what steps I proposed taking to attain this object. Ill-treating them?
Beating them? Alberta said, laughingly:
“The safest way would be to kill them yourself!”
I saw that Ada was afraid of displeasing me; so she remained silent.
But not all her good will could do more for me than that. At last she
said she was sure it was out of kindness that I wanted to arrange my
children’s life for them, but she did not think it was right to live
by preparing yourself for death. I stuck to my idea, and asserted that
death was really the great organising force of life. I was always
thinking about death and so I had only one sorrow: the certainty that
I must die. Everything else became so unimportant that I could welcome
it with a smile, even laugh at it. I think my reason for talking in
this way was that I wanted to show them I had a sense of humour, which
had often before made me popular with women. She looked thoughtful
and confessed with some hesitation that she did not like that way of
looking at things. If you make life of little value its balance becomes
more disturbed than Mother Nature has ordained. She was really saying
that I did not suit her, but to me it seemed that I had scored a
success, since I had succeeded in making her thoughtful.
Alberta quoted an ancient philosopher whose view of life, she said, was
rather like mine, and Augusta added that laughter was a splendid thing.
Her father laughed a great deal too.
“Yes, when business goes well,” said Signora Malfenti.
At last that memorable visit came to an end.
It is the most difficult thing in the world to make exactly the
marriage you want; as you may see from my own case, where my resolution
to get married was made long before my choice of a bride. Why didn’t I
go about and meet a great many more girls before choosing one? No, I
really felt I should dislike seeing too many women, and I did not want
to tire myself. When I had chosen a girl I might at least have examined
her more closely in order to discover whether she was prepared to meet
me half-way, as is the custom in novels with a happy ending. But I
straight away chose a girl with a very deep voice and rather rebellious
though severely dressed hair, and thought that so serious a young lady
would surely not refuse a rich man of good family who was intelligent
and not bad-looking. It is true that we disagreed over the very first
words we exchanged, but I reflected that discords resolve themselves
into harmonies. I even thought, I must confess: She shall stay just as
she is, for that is how I like her; but if she wants it, I will change
to please her. I was, on the whole, very modest, for it is undoubtedly
easier to change oneself than to re-educate someone else.
It did not take long for the Malfenti family to become the centre of my
life. I spent every evening with Giovanni who, after he had introduced
me into his household, had become more friendly and confidential than
ever. His great friendliness gave me courage. At first I only called
on his wife and daughters once a week, then several times, and at last
I took to going every afternoon and spending several hours there. I
had no lack of pretexts for establishing myself in the house, and I
think I can honestly say that a good many were offered me. Sometimes I
brought my violin and had some music with Augusta, who was the only one
in the house who played the piano. It was a pity Ada did not play. It
was also a pity that I played the violin so badly, and most unfortunate
that Augusta was not a great musician. In every sonata we played I
was obliged to cut out some passage that was too difficult for me,
because, as I quite untruthfully said, I had not touched the violin
for so long. An amateur pianist almost always plays better than an
amateur violinist, and Augusta’s technique was quite good; but though
I did not play nearly as well as she did, I was dissatisfied with her
playing and inwardly thought: “If I could play as well as you, I would
certainly play better.” While I was busy judging Augusta others were
doing the same by me and, as I discovered later, none too favourably.
Augusta would have liked to have some more practice at our sonatas,
but I noticed that Ada was bored by it, and I pretended two or three
times to have forgotten to bring my violin. After that Augusta did not
mention it again.
But alas, it was not only the time I was in their house that I spent
with Ada. Very soon the thought of her accompanied me all day long. She
was the woman I had chosen, therefore she must be mine, and I endowed
her with every ideal quality to make my life’s prize more beautiful.
All the qualities lacking in myself, and which I longed to possess, I
gave to her; she was to become not only my wife but a second mother to
me, who would equip me for a full virile life, encourage me to fight
and help me to be victorious.
In my dreams I made her more beautiful too, physically. I have run
after a good many women in the course of my life and succeeded in
winning a fair number of them. In my dreams I possessed them all. I
do not of course make them more beautiful by actually altering their
features, but I do as an artist friend of mine, a very subtle painter,
who when he is painting the portrait of a beautiful woman calls up
vividly to his mind some other exquisite object, like fine porcelain
for instance. It is a dangerous proceeding, for it is not only confined
to dreams, and the lady continues in real life to keep something of the
fruit, the flower or the porcelain with which you adorned her.
It is not easy to relate my courtship of Ada. There was a long
subsequent period of my life in which I tried to forget my stupid
adventure. I felt so thoroughly ashamed of myself that I longed to
protest loudly that it could not have been I who had made such a fool
of myself. Who else then could it have been? But the mere fact of
protesting gave me a certain amount of relief. If I had behaved like
that ten years ago, when I was twenty, it would not have been so bad.
But to be stricken with folly, just because I had decided to marry,
seemed really too unjust. That I, who had had every sort of experience,
and had carried through my adventures in a spirit of reckless daring,
should be reduced to trying to touch my lady’s hand without her
noticing it, like any timid schoolboy, and then almost worshipping
my own hand for having been hallowed by such a contact! This was the
purest adventure of my life; and yet, though I am old now, I still
remember it as the most shameful. All that stuff was out of place, it
came at the wrong time; it was like a boy of ten going back to his
nurse’s breast. Disgusting!
I simply can’t explain why I kept hesitating to propose to her, and
did not insist on her making up her mind whether she would have me or
not. I walked straight from my dreams into that house; I counted the
stairs up to the first floor and said to myself: If they are even that
is a proof that she loves me. It was an uneven number: forty-three. Yet
each time I went to her with the same assurance, and each time I talked
about something quite different. Ada had never had any opportunity
of rejecting me, but still I did not speak. I think in Ada’s place I
certainly would have given that boy of thirty a good kick and shown him
the door.
In a certain sense I was not an exact replica of the twenty-year-old
inamorato who waits mutely for his beloved to throw her arms round his
neck. I expected nothing of the kind. I meant to speak to her, but
later. If I waited so long it was because I was so unsure of myself.
I was always waiting to become nobler and stronger, more worthy of my
divine mistress. This might always happen from one day to another. Why
not wait?
But I am ashamed not to have realised earlier that I was heading for
a disaster. I had to deal with a most single-minded nature, but by
continually dreaming about her I had transformed her into a consummate
flirt. My fierce resentment when she at last made me understand she did
not want me was quite unjust. But I had so closely interwoven dreams
with reality that it was hard for me to believe she had actually never
even kissed me.
It is a great sign of inferiority in a man not to understand women. I
had never made a mistake before, and I think I deceived myself about
Ada because my relations had been false with her from the start. I
approached her not in order to win her, but with the direct intention
of marrying her, which is an unusual way for love to take; a wide and
comfortable way perhaps, but it does not lead to the goal, though very
near it. Love approached in this way lacks its chief characteristic:
the subjection of the female. The male sets about his task idly, and
this inertia may spread to all his senses, including those of sight and
hearing.
I took flowers every day to each of the three girls, and regaled them
with my eccentricities; above all I was guilty of inconceivable levity
in telling them the story of my life.
Everyone remembers his past with greater vividness as the present
becomes more important. Dying men in their last delirium are supposed
to see their whole life spread out before them. My past clutched at me
now with the violence of a last farewell, because I had the feeling
that I was leaving it far behind me. And I was always telling the
sisters about this past, encouraged by the eager attention of Augusta
and Alberta, which covered up, I fancy, Ada’s indifference, though of
this I am not quite sure. Augusta, who was of a sweet disposition,
was easily moved, and Alberta listened to the recital of my student
scrapes with cheeks flushed with desire to take part herself in similar
adventures.
It was long afterwards that Augusta told me that none of them had
believed my stories to be true. Augusta liked them all the more on
that account for, as my invention, they seemed to her to belong to me
more than if fate had actually inflicted them on me. Alberta delighted
in the parts she thought untrue because they seemed to her to contain
excellent suggestions. The only one who was really outraged by my lies
was the serious Ada. With all my efforts I only succeeded in doing as
the famous marksman, who really did hit the centre of the bullseye, but
only of the target next to the one he was aiming at.
And yet my anecdotes were for the most part true. I don’t quite
remember in which part, for I told them to so many other girls before
Malfenti’s daughters that without any conscious alteration on my part
they constantly suffered slight modifications tending to make them more
interesting. They began to be true from the moment when it would have
been impossible for me to tell the story differently. I am no longer
interested in proving their truth. I should be sorry to undeceive
Augusta who likes to believe that I invented them. As for Ada, I
believe she has now changed her opinion and believes them to be true.
My entire failure with Ada became clear the moment I made up my mind to
speak openly to her. I was very surprised and at first incredulous. She
had never said a single word which might have revealed her dislike, and
I shut my eyes to all those small acts which could not be interpreted
as showing sympathy. And then I had never spoken the necessary word,
and was thus able to persuade myself that Ada did not know that I was
there all ready to marry her, and might suppose that I, the eccentric
and unscrupulous student, was after something quite different.
The misunderstanding continued because of my too definitely matrimonial
intentions. I had come by now to desire Ada with my whole heart; my
fancy had made her cheek still smoother, her hands and feet still
smaller and her waist still more slender; I desired her as my wife and
as my mistress. But one’s first step in approaching a woman is the
decisive one.
On three consecutive days I found myself received only by the other two
girls. Ada’s absence was explained the first time by a duty visit, the
second by her not feeling well; and on the third occasion no excuse was
given at all, until in some alarm I asked for one. Augusta, to whom I
happened to have addressed myself, made no reply. Alberta, whom she had
looked at, as if invoking her help, answered for her: Ada had gone to
see an aunt.
My breath failed me for a moment. It was clear that Ada wanted to
avoid me. Till the day before I had borne her absence patiently, and
had even prolonged my visit in the hope that perhaps she would come
in. But on this last day I stayed a short while longer, unable to
say a single word; till at last, pleading a sudden headache, I got
up to go. It is curious that my first feeling, on becoming conscious
of Ada’s determination to avoid me, was one of anger and contempt. I
even thought of appealing to Giovanni to call his daughter to order. A
man who is bent on marrying can even stoop to such an action as that,
reverting to the customs of his ancestors.
Ada’s third absence was to become still more significant. I discovered
by chance that she was in the house, but shut up in her room.
I must say that there was one other person in the house whom I had not
succeeded in winning over: and this was little Anna. She no longer
attacked me when the others were there, because they had taken her
severely to task for it. Sometimes she even came in with her sisters
and stayed listening to my stories. When I was going away she would
join me at the door and ask me prettily to bend down to her; then,
rising on the tips of her toes, she would put her mouth right up to my
ear and say in a whisper, so that nobody else could hear:
“But you’re mad, you are quite mad!”
The comic part is that when the others were there the little hypocrite
treated me very politely. If Signora Malfenti was in the room she would
climb up on to her knee, and her mother would say, caressing her:
“How good my little Anna has become, hasn’t she?”
I did not contradict her and the good little Anna went on calling me
mad. I smiled a sickly smile which might have been interpreted as
gratitude. I hoped the child would not dare to tell her elders how rude
she had been to me, and nothing would have induced me to tell Ada what
her sister thought of me. In the end that child quite embarrassed me.
If my eye caught hers while I was talking to the others I at once tried
to look somewhere else, and it was difficult to do it naturally. I know
I blushed; I felt the child’s innocent judgment might do me harm. I
took her presents, but could not succeed in taming her. She must have
been conscious of her own power and of my weakness, and when anyone
else was there she would scrutinise me impertinently. I think we all
have delicate spots in our conscience as we do in our bodies, which we
keep covered and prefer not to think about. We do not know exactly what
they are, but we know they are there. I was obliged to look away from
that infant’s penetrating gaze.
But on this particular day, when I was leaving the house alone and
quite cast down, and she ran after me as usual and wanted me to bend
down and listen to the familiar compliment, I turned on her a face
of such genuine madness, and clutched the air with such threatening
fingers that she ran away screaming and crying.
And that was how I came to see Ada, for it was she who ran out when she
heard the child screaming. The little girl explained between her sobs
that I had threatened her because she said I was mad:
“But he _is_ mad, and I am going to say so. What harm is there in it?”
I paid no attention to the child, I was so taken aback to see that Ada
was in the house. So her sisters had lied, or rather Alberta had, for
Augusta had only done it vicariously through her. During the second in
which I guessed the truth, I saw everything quite clearly. I said to
Ada:
“I am glad to see you. I understood you had gone to see your aunt.”
She did not reply at once, because she was bending over the weeping
child. Her delay in giving me the explanation I felt I deserved made
the blood rise violently to my head. I could not find a single word. I
took a step forward as if to go out at the front door, and if Ada had
not spoken I should have gone away and never come back again. I was so
angry that it seemed to me the easiest thing in the world to give up
the dream I had cherished for so long.
But before I could get out she stopped me and said, blushing, that she
had just come back as her aunt was not at home.
It sufficed to calm me. How sweet she looked, bending in such a
motherly way over the child who still went on crying! Her body was so
flexible that it seemed to become smaller in order to fit the child’s
small body. I stood gazing at her, and again considered her entirely
mine.
I felt so much at peace that I wanted to make her forget the resentment
I had shown just now, and I was infinitely polite both to her and Anna;
I laughed and said:
“She so often calls me mad that I wanted to let her see what a madman
really looks like. Please forgive me. And you mustn’t be frightened,
Anna dear, for I am quite a kind madman.”
Ada was very polite too. When the child still went on crying she
scolded her and asked me to forgive her. If Anna had got cross and run
away I should probably have proposed; I should have uttered a phrase,
which is doubtless to be found in some grammars of a foreign language,
so well adapted is it for simplifying one’s life, if one happens to be
living in a foreign country and does not know the language: “May I ask
your father for your hand?” It was the first time I had wanted to get
married, so that I was really in quite an unknown country. Hitherto
my way of approach to the women I had had to do with had been quite
different. I had put my hands on them at once without asking anyone’s
permission.
But I could not bring myself even to pronounce those few words. They
ought to take a certain time to say, and they ought to be accompanied
by an appealing expression of the face which it would be difficult to
assume after my encounter with Anna, and one might say with Ada too;
besides I could hear Signora Malfenti approaching from the far end of
the passage, attracted by the child’s screams.