Chapter VIII: Part 8

I advanced cautiously toward the sanctuary. I walked softly, in order not to disturb my mother, in case she were dozing. I parted the curtains, and, without crossing the threshold, I leaned forward and looked in. I heard, in fact, the breathing of a person sleeping; I saw my mother, who was sleeping in an arm-chair in a corner of the window; I saw Juliana's hair above the back of another arm-chair. I entered.

They were seated facing each other, and between them was a low table bearing a basket full of miniature bonnets. My mother still held between her fingers one of these caps in which glittered a needle. Slumber had overtaken her during the activity of her work. She was sleeping, her chin on her bosom; perhaps she was dreaming. The needle was only half-full of white cotton; but, in her dream, perhaps she was sewing with a more precious thread.

Juliana was sleeping also; but her head had fallen back on the chair, and her arms were stretched out on the supports. In the gentleness of her slumber her features were relaxed; but her mouth retained a line of distress, a shadow of affliction; half closed, it permitted a glimpse of her bloodless gums; but at the beginning of the nose, between the eyebrows, there was a small furrow, deepened by great sorrow. And her forehead was moist; a drop of perspiration slowly rolled down her temple. And her hands, whiter than the muslin from under which they extended, seemed, by their position alone, to indicate an immense lassitude. What struck me most was less her moral expression than the appearance of her person. I meditated without considering this expression, and even Juliana herself had no part in my thoughts; and, anew, I felt only the little creature living beside me, as if, at that moment, no other creature existed around me. And, again, this was not an illusory sensation, but a real and profound one. Fear ran through every fibre of my being.

I averted my eyes; and I again saw between her fingers the bonnet in which glittered the needle, I again saw all those light laces in the basket, all those rose-colored and blue ribbons that trembled at the breath of the breeze. My heart was so strongly oppressed that I thought I should faint. What tendernesses the hands of my mother, lost in her dream, revealed, those hands placed on the pretty, white thing destined to cover the head of the child who was not my own!

I remained there several minutes. This place was the true sanctuary of the house, the Holy of Holies. On one wall hung my father's portrait, whom Federico greatly resembled; on another that of Constance, who resembled Maria a little. The two faces, living in that superior existence in which the recollections of those who have loved them have placed them, had magnetic eyes, eyes that seemed to see everywhere. Other relics of the two dead loved ones sanctified this retreat. In one corner, on a pedestal, closed in between plates of glass and covered with black crape, there was the death mask moulded on the corpse of the man whom my mother had loved with a passion stronger than death. And yet this room had nothing lugubrious about it. There reigned in it a sovereign peace, that, from thence, seemed to propagate through the entire house, as life propagates from the heart, by a rhythmic expansion.

*XXIX.*

I recall the walk I made to the Lilacs, with Maria, Natalia, and Miss Edith, on a rather misty morning. And the recollection of it is also rather misty, veiled, indistinct like that of a long dream, torturing yet sweet.

The garden no longer had its myriad of bluish grapes nor its exquisite forest of flowers, nor its triple perfume, harmonious as music, nor its gayety, nor the continuous cries of its swallows. It was enlivened only by the voices and gambols of the two innocent girls. Already many of the swallows had departed, and the rest were about to go. We had arrived in time to see the last flock.

All the nests were abandoned, deserted, lifeless. Many were broken, and on the clayey debris trembled poor little feathers. The last flock, gathered on the roof, in the gutters, were still waiting for a few dispersed companions. The emigrants stood on a row on the edge of the eaves-board, some presenting the beak and others the back, so that the little forked tails and the white breasts alternated. And while waiting, they filled the silent air with their calls. And, from minute to minute, by twos, by threes, the laggards arrived. The hour of departure was at hand. The calls ceased. The fading sunlight fell on the closed house, on the empty nests. Nothing could be sadder than those poor little dead feathers which, here and there, fluttered, held prisoners in the clay.

As if raised up by a sudden gust of wind, by a storm the flock rose up with a great fluttering of wings, ascended into the air like a water-spout, remained for a moment directly above the house; then, without hesitation, as if they had before them a clearly traced path, they took their way in a compact mass, flew off, melted away in the sky, and finally disappeared.

Maria and Natalia, mounted on a bench, stood up on tiptoe to watch the fugitives as long as possible, and, stretching out their arms, they cried:

"Good-by, good-by, good-by, little swallows!"

Of all the rest I retain only an indistinct recollection, like that of a dream.

Maria wished to enter the house. I opened the door myself. It was here, on these three steps, that Juliana had followed me, furtively, light as a shadow, and had embraced me, and had whispered: "Go in, go in!" In the vestibule, the nest still hung among the grotesques of the ceiling. "Now I am yours, altogether, entirely!" she had murmured, without releasing my neck; and by a sinuous movement she had thrown herself on my breast and had met my mouth. The vestibule was silent--the staircases were silent; silence reigned throughout the house. It was here that I had heard the low and distant hum, like that retained by certain shells in the depths of their folds. But now, the silence resembled that of a tomb. And this place was the sepulchre of my happiness.

Maria and Natalia prattled on without cease, did not stop asking me questions, showed themselves curious about everything, went and opened the drawers of the dressing-table, the closets. Miss Edith followed them, watchful.

"Look, see what I have found," cried Maria, running toward me.

At the bottom of a drawer she had found a bouquet of lavender and a glove. It was one of Juliana's gloves, spotted with black at the finger-tips; on the inside, near the hem, it bore the following still visible inscription: "_The Mulberries, January 27, 1880. Souvenir_!" Like a flash, my memory represented clearly to me the episode of the mulberries, one of the happiest episodes of our first felicity, a fragment of the idyll.

"Is it one of mamma's gloves?" asked Maria. "Give it to me, give it to me. I want to take it to her myself."

Of all the rest I have but an indistinct recollection, like a dream.

Calisto, the old care-taker, came to speak to me. He told me a thousand things, and I understood almost nothing of what he said. Several times he repeated the wish:

"A boy, a fine boy, and may God bless him! A fine boy!"

When we were outside, Calisto closed the doors.

"And those nests, those happy nests?" he said, shaking his handsome white head.

"They must not be touched, Calisto."

Every nest was deserted, empty, lifeless. Their last habitants had left them. A languorous kiss from the setting sun touched the closed house, the solitary nests, and there could be nothing sadder than those poor little dead feathers that, here and there, trembled, prisoners in the clay.

*XXX.*

The term approached. The first half of October had passed. Doctor Vebesti had been notified.

My anxiety increased hourly, became intolerable. I was frequently assailed by attacks of madness similar to that which had seized me on the banks of the Assoro. I fled far from the Badiola, remained long hours on horseback, I compelled Orlando to jump hedges and trenches, I forced him into perilous paths at a gallop. Then the poor animal and I returned, streaming, tired, but always safely.

Doctor Vebesti arrived. Everybody at the Badiola breathed a sigh of relief. Confidence and hope reappeared. Juliana alone was unnerved, and more than once I detected in her eyes the passage of a sinister thought, the sombre light of a fixed idea, the horror of a lugubrious presentiment.

The pains of childbirth began; they lasted an entire day, with a few periods of suspension, at times stronger, sometimes weaker, at times bearable, and sometimes agonizing. She remained standing, leaning on a table, her back against a closet, clenching her teeth so as not to cry out; or else she sat in an arm-chair and remained in it, almost motionless, her face buried in her hands, uttering at times a suppressed groan; or else she ceaselessly changed her place, going from one corner to another, stopping here and there to convulsively twist between her fingers the first object at hand. The sight of her suffering tortured me. I could not stand it. I left the room, went out for a few minutes; then I returned, almost in spite of myself, as if drawn by a magnetic attraction; and I forced myself to watch her suffering, without power to speak one comforting word to her.

"Tullio, Tullio! What a horrible thing! Oh! what a horrible thing. I have never suffered so much, never, never!"

Night fell. My mother, Miss Edith, and the doctor had gone down to the dining-room. Juliana and I were alone. The lamps had not yet been brought in. October's purplish twilight entered the room; from time to time the wind shook the windows.

"Help me, Tullio, help me!" she cried, in the bewilderment of the spasm, her arms stretched toward me, looking at me with dilated eyes, whose whites were of an extraordinary whiteness in the darkness that made her face livid.

"Tell me, tell me, what can I do to help you?" I stammered, distracted, not knowing what to do, caressing the hair on her temples with a gesture in which I would have liked to impart a supernatural power. "Tell me, tell me, what shall I do?"

She stopped complaining; she looked at me, listened to me, as if forgetful of her pain, as if seized by surprise, stupefied, no doubt, by the sound of my voice, by the expression of my bewilderment and anguish, by the trembling of my fingers on her hair, by the distressed tenderness of that inefficacious gesture.

"You love me, don't you?" she said, without ceasing to look at me, as if not to lose the slightest sign of my emotion. "You forgive everything?"

And, becoming exalted again, she cried:

"You must love me! You must love me very much now, because to-morrow I shall not be here, because I shall die to-night; to-night, perhaps, I shall be dead. And you would be sorry for not having loved me, for not having pardoned me. Oh! yes, you would be sorry."

She seemed so sure of dying that a sudden terror froze me.

"You must love me! Perhaps you do not believe what I told you one night; perhaps you do not believe me yet; but you will surely believe me when I am gone. Then the light will enter your soul, then you will understand the truth; and you will repent not having loved me enough, not having forgiven me."

Sobs choked her utterance.

"Do you know why I'm sorry to die? Because I die without your knowing how much I have loved you, how much I loved you _after_, especially-- Oh! what a punishment! Do I deserve such an end?"

She hid her face in her hands. But immediately uncovered it, and, very pale, looked at me. An idea still more terrible seemed to have crushed her.

"Suppose I died," she stammered; "and while dying _gave life_----"

"Hush!"

"You understand----"

"Be silent, Juliana!"

I was more affected than she. Terror had overwhelmed me, and left me without even the power to emit a single word of consolation, to combat these imaginations of death with a single vivifying word. I, too, was sure of the atrocious end. In the violet darkness my eyes met Juliana's; and on that poor drawn face I thought I noticed symptoms of the death agony, symptoms of a dissolution that had already begun and that was inevitable. She could not repress a sort of shriek that resembled nothing human, and she clutched my arm convulsively.

"Help me, Tullio, help me!"

She clasped me hard, very hard, yet not hard enough. I should have liked to feel her nails penetrate my flesh, from a furious desire for physical torture that would put me in touch with her torture. Her forehead pressed against my shoulder, she continued to moan. Its note was that which renders the voice unrecognizable in the excess of corporeal suffering, the note that brings suffering man to the level of the suffering beast--the instinctive lamentation of all flesh in pain, whether animal or human.

From time to time she recovered her speech sufficiently to repeat:

"Help me!"

And she imparted to me the violent shocks of her great pain. A flood of hate mounted from the deepest roots of my being, rose even to my hands in a homicidal impulse. That impulse came before its time; but the vision of the crime already consummated lit up my inner consciousness like a flash. "You shall not live!"

"Ah! Tullio, Tullio! Suffocate me! Kill me! I cannot stand it, I cannot stand it, you hear; no, I cannot stand it, I do not want to suffer any longer."

She cried savagely, looking around her wildly as if seeking something or someone from whom she could obtain the aid I was powerless to render her.

"Calm yourself, Juliana; calm yourself. Perhaps the time has come! Be brave! Take this chair. Be brave, my dear soul! A little more patience! See, I am near you. Do not be afraid."

I ran to the bell. "The doctor! the doctor! Tell him to come immediately."

Juliana ceased her lamentations. All at once she seemed to cease suffering, or at least to be unconscious of her condition, in the abstraction of other thoughts. It was evident that she was meditating something. I scarcely had time to remark this instantaneous change.

"Listen, Tullio. Suppose I become delirious...."

"What do you mean?"

"Suppose later, when fever sets in, I become delirious; suppose I die raving----"

"Well?"

Her voice had such accents of terror, her reticences were so sad, that I began to tremble like a leaf, seized by a sort of panic, still without understanding what she meant.

"Well?"

"They will be all there; they will be around me.... You understand? You understand? One word would be enough. One never knows what one says when delirious. You should..."

At that moment my mother, the doctor, and the midwife arrived.

"Ah! doctor," sighed Juliana, "I thought I was dying."

"Nonsense!" said the doctor in a reassuring voice. "There is no danger. Everything will be all right."

And he looked at me.

"Your husband," he went on, smiling, "looks worse than you do."

And he showed me the door, saying:

"Go! You can be of no assistance here."

I glanced at my mother's eyes. She seemed restless, anxious, compassionate.

"Yes, Tullio," she said. "It will be better for you to go. Federico is downstairs waiting for you."

I looked at Juliana. Without concerning herself with the others present, she fixed on me her large eyes, which were animated with an extraordinary brilliancy. They expressed all the passion of a despairing soul.

"I will not leave the adjoining room," I declared resolutely, without removing my gaze from Juliana.

As I turned to go out I noticed the midwife disposing the pillows on the bed of pain, on the bed of misery, and I shuddered as if from a breath of death.

*XXXI.*

It was between four and five o'clock in the morning. The pains had lasted until then, with a few intermissions of relief. I was lying on the lounge in the adjoining room, and about three o'clock sleep had overcome me unexpectedly. Cristina awoke me; she told me that Juliana wished to see me.

My eyes still heavy from sleep, I started to my feet.

"Was I asleep? What has happened?"

"Do not be alarmed, signor. Nothing has happened. The pains are easier. Come and see her."

I entered, and my eyes immediately sought Juliana.

She was supported by pillows, pale as her night-dress, almost lifeless. Her eyes at once met mine, because they were turned toward the door, in the expectation of my coming. Her eyes appeared larger, deeper, hollower, surrounded by a wider, dark shadow.

"You see," she said in an exhausted voice, "it is still the same."

Her gaze did not leave me. Her eyes spoke, like those of the Princess Lisa: "I hoped you would help me; but you do not help me, either."

"Where is the doctor?" I asked my mother, who seemed sad and preoccupied.

She pointed to a door. I opened it, and passed through. I saw the doctor near a table busy with his preparations.

"Well," I asked him abruptly, "how is it?"

"Nothing serious so far."

"And all these preparations?"

"To be on the safe side."

"But how long will it last?"

"It is nearly over."

"Please speak frankly. Do you expect any complication?"

"At present there are no serious symptoms. Have confidence in me, and be calm. I have noticed that your presence greatly excites your wife. During the short period of the final pains, she needs all the strength she has. It is absolutely necessary that you go away. Promise me to do this. You may return when I call you."

A moan reached us.

"The pains are beginning again," he said. "The crisis has come. So be calm."

He went toward the door. I followed him. We both went up to Juliana. She seized my arm, and her clutch was like a bite. Had she so much strength left?

"Be brave! be brave! This is the last. All will be well. Is it not so, doctor?" I stammered.

"Yes, yes. There is no time to lose. Let your husband leave the room, signora."

She looked at the doctor and me with dilated eyes. She released my arm.

"Courage!" I repeated, choking.

I kissed her forehead, moist with perspiration, and turned to leave.

"Ah! Tullio!" she cried, behind me.

That heart-breaking cry signified: "I shall never see you again."

I made a movement as if about to return to her.

"Leave the room!" ordered the doctor imperiously.

I obeyed him. Some one shut the door behind me. I remained several minutes outside, listening; but my knees trembled; the beating of my heart dominated every other sound. I threw myself on the sofa, put my handkerchief between my teeth, buried my face in a cushion. I, too, suffered physical torture, similar to what an amputation, slowly and badly done, must be.

I could not make a step. Several minutes passed--an incalculable time. Thoughts and images furrowed my brain like sudden flashes. "Is he born? Suppose she is dead? Suppose they are both dead, mother and child? No, no! It is certain that she is dead and that he lives. But I hear no wailing. Why?" I conquered the terror that held me, and sprang to the door. I opened it and entered.

I immediately heard the doctor's voice shouting at me roughly:

"Do not come in! Do not disturb her! Do you want to kill her?"

Juliana looked like a dead woman. She was whiter than her pillow and motionless. My mother bent over her to place a compress in position. The doctor, calmly and methodically, was preparing an internal lotion. His face looked anxious, but his hands did not tremble. A basin of boiling water was steaming in a corner. Cristina was pouring water from a pitcher into a second basin, in which she held a thermometer. Another woman carried into an adjoining room a package of cotton. In the air was an odor of ammonia and of vinegar.

The slightest details of that scene, taken in at one glance, were impressed on me indelibly.

"Fifty degrees, mind," said the doctor, turning toward Cristina.

As I heard no wailing I looked about me. _Some one_ was missing in the room.

"Where's the baby?" I asked, trembling.

"He's there, in the other room," replied the doctor. "Go and see him, and stay there."

I pointed to Juliana with a gesture of despair.

"Have no fear. Hand me the water, Cristina."

I entered the other room. My ears caught a feeble wail, scarcely perceptible. I saw on a layer of cotton a reddish-looking little body, violet-colored in spots, and whose back and the soles of the feet were being rubbed by the midwife's dry hands.

"Come here, signor, come and see him," said the midwife, continuing the friction. "Come and see what a fine boy he is. He did not breathe at first, but now all danger is passed. Look at the fine boy!"

She turned the baby round, putting him on his back.

"Look!"

She raised the baby and shook him up and down. The wailing became a little stronger.

But in my eyes was a strange sparkle that prevented me from seeing well. In all my being I felt some strange obtuse feeling, that removed from me the exact perception of all these real and coarse things.

"Look!" repeated the midwife again, replacing the wailing child on the cotton.

He was crying vigorously now. He breathed, he lived! I bent over that little palpitating body. I stooped to see him better, to examine him, to recognize the odious resemblance. But the little puffed-up face, still somewhat livid, with protruding eyeballs, swollen mouth, wandering chin--that deformed visage had almost nothing human about it, and inspired me with nothing but disgust.

"He wasn't breathing when he was born, did you say?"

I stammered.

"No, signor. A slight apoplexy."

She spoke without any intermission of the cares she was giving the infant.

"Julia, give me the linen."

And, while swathing the infant, she added:

"There is nothing to fear on his account. God bless him!"

Her expert hands took hold of the little soft head as if to mould it. The infant's wails increased in strength. He cried louder and louder, as if to prove that he was really alive, as if to provoke me and exasperate me.

"He is living, he is living. But the mother?"

Abruptly I re-entered the other room, beside myself.

"Tullio!"

It was Juliana's voice, as feeble as that of a dying woman.

*XXXII.*

The patient was now lying on her bed in the alcove. It was broad daylight.

I was seated at her bedside. I looked at her silently, sorrowfully. She was not asleep, but extreme weakness prevented all movement, removed all expression of life, made her seem inanimate. I made an instinctive movement to touch her, because I thought she had become cold as ice. But I was restrained by the fear of disturbing her. More than once during my continuous contemplation, beneath the shock of some sudden fear, I made a movement to rise and fetch the doctor. As I meditated I rolled between my fingers a little tuft of cotton which I carefully picked apart, and, from time to time, impelled by an invincible restlessness, I placed it with infinite precautions near Juliana's lips. The waving of the threads showed me the strength of her respiration.

She was stretched on her back, and a low pillow supported her head. In the frame formed by her chestnut hair, which was loosely caught up, the lines of her face seemed more refined than usual; showed more perfectly the waxy tones. Her night-dress was fastened at the neck and tight at her wrists, and her hands lay flat on the cover, so white that they were only distinguished from the linen by the azure of their veins. A supernatural goodness emanated from this poor creature, so pallid and motionless--a goodness that penetrated all my being, that filled my heart. And one would have thought that she was still repeating: "What have you done to me?" Her colorless mouth, with its depressed angles, revealing a mortal lassitude; that arid mouth, twisted by so many convulsions, martyrized by so many cries, seemed constantly repeating: "What have you done to me?"

I examined the emaciation of her body, that scarcely formed a relief on the surface of the bed. Since the event had taken place, since finally the _other life_ had been separated from her life forever, I no longer felt rise in me the least instinctive movement of repulsion, not the least sudden shade of anger, nothing that could affect my tenderness and pity. I no longer felt, on seeing her, anything but an effusion of immense tenderness and pity for the best and most unfortunate of human creatures. All my soul now hung on those poor lips which, from one moment to another, might render up their last sigh. As I looked at her pale face I thought with profound sincerity: "How happy I should be could I transfuse half of my own blood into her veins!"

I heard the light ticking of a clock placed on the night-table; I felt that fugitive time was slipping by, and I thought: "He is alive!" The flight of time caused me singular anxiety, very different from that which I had felt on other occasions--indefinable.

I thought: "He lives, and has a tenacious hold on life. At the time of his birth he was not breathing. When I saw him he still had the signs of asphyxia all over his body. If the care of the midwife had not saved him he would be now nothing but a little, livid cadaver, a harmless, negligible, and perhaps forgettable thing. I should only have Juliana's cure to think of, and I would not leave this room again. I would be the most assiduous and most gentle of nurses. I would succeed in realizing the transfusion of life, in accomplishing the miracle by the power of love. It would be impossible for her not to get well. She would resuscitate gradually, be regenerated with new blood. She would appear a new creature, freed from all impurity. We would both feel purified, worthy of each other, after so long and so painful an expiation. The illness, the convalescence would relegate the sad memories to an indefinite distance. And I would try to efface from her soul even the shadow of remembrance; I would try to procure for her perfect oblivion in love. After this great trial, every other human love would seem frivolous by comparison with ours." I exalted myself in the almost mystic splendor of this dream of the future, whilst, beneath my fixed gaze, Juliana's visage took on a sort of immateriality, an expression of supernatural goodness; as if she were already removed from the world; as if the presence of death had left behind in her being only a pure, spiritual essence. The mute question no longer struck me like a wound, no longer seemed terrifying to me: "What have you done to me?" I replied: "Have you not become, through my instrumentality, _the sister of Pain_? Has not suffering elevated your soul to a vertiginous height, from which it has been given you to see the world in an extraordinary light? Do you not owe to me the revelation of the supreme truth? What matters our errors, our falls, our sins, if we have succeeded in tearing the veil from our eyes, if we have succeeded in setting at liberty what there is lowest in our miserable substance? We will obtain the highest joy to which the elect of earth can aspire--the consciousness of a re-birth."

I became exalted. The alcove was silent, the darkness full of mystery. Juliana's face acquired for me a superhuman aspect, and there was a solemnity in my contemplation, for I felt in the air the presence of invisible death. All my soul was suspended on those pallid lips, which, from one moment to another, might render their last breath. And those lips were contracted, emitted a groan. The painful contraction changed the lines of the face, persisted for several moments. The wrinkles in the forehead deepened, the skin of the eyelids trembled lightly, a white line appeared between the lashes.

I bent over the invalid. She opened her eyes, and immediately closed them. She did not appear to see me; her eyes showed no sign of recognition. One would have thought she was blind. Had an anemic amaurosis supervened? Had she been suddenly struck by blindness?

I heard some one enter the room. God grant it is the doctor. I left the alcove, and saw the doctor, my mother, and the midwife, who had entered quietly. Cristina followed them.

"Is she quiet?" inquired the doctor in a low voice.

"She's moaning. Who knows what she is still suffering?"

"Has she spoken?"

"No."

"She must not be disturbed in the least; remember that."

"Just now she opened her eyes for a moment. She did not seem to see anything."

The doctor entered the alcove, after having made a sign for us to remain where we were. My mother said to me:

"Come. It is time to renew the compresses. Come quickly. Let us go and see little Raymond. Federico is downstairs."

She took my hand. I let myself be led.

"He has fallen asleep," she continued. "He sleeps quietly. The wet-nurse will arrive this evening."

However sad and anxious she was when speaking of Juliana, she had a smile in her eyes when speaking of the infant. Her entire face was lit up by tenderness.

By the doctor's orders, a room distant from that occupied by the invalid had been selected for Raymond--a large, airy room, containing a thousand souvenirs of our childhood. Directly I entered I saw Federico, Maria, and Natalia grouped around the cradle and attentively contemplating the little sleeper. Federico turned and asked:

"How is Juliana?"

"Bad."

"Isn't she resting?"

"She is suffering."

In spite of myself, I answered almost harshly. A sort of aridity had suddenly invaded my soul. My only sensation was an indomitable aversion against the intruder, an impatience of the torture which people inflicted on me without knowing it. In spite of my efforts, I could not feint. Thus, we were all around the cradle--I, my mother, Federico, Maria, and Natalia--contemplating Raymond's slumber.

He was bound in the swaddling-clothes, and his head was covered with a cap trimmed with laces and ribbons. His face appeared less swollen, but still red, and the cheeks shone like the skin of a wound recently healed. A little saliva rolled from the corners of the closed mouth; the eyelids, without lashes, puffed up at the edges, covered the projecting eyeballs; the root of the nose, yet formless, was marked by a bruise.

"Whom does he resemble?" said my mother. "I cannot find any resemblance."

"He is too young," said Federico. "We must wait a few days."

Two or three times my mother looked at me and then looked at the infant, as if to compare the faces.

"No," she said. "I think he resembles Juliana most."

"At present," I interrupted, "he resembles no one. He is horrible."

"Horrible? How can you say so? He is perfectly beautiful. Look at that mass of hair."

With her fingers she gently raised the cap, disclosing the still soft skull, on which were seen several brown hairs.

"Let me touch them, grandmamma," begged Maria, stretching out her hand toward her brother's head.

"No, no. Do you wish to wake him?"

The skull had the appearance of wax somewhat softened by heat, and it seemed as if the slightest touch would leave a mark on it. My mother covered it again, and then bent over to kiss the forehead with infinite gentleness.

"Me, too, grandmother!" begged Maria.

"Yes, but gently."

The cradle was too high.

"Lift me," said Maria to Federico.

Federico raised her up in his arms, and I saw the beautiful rosy mouth of my daughter get ready to kiss before she succeeded in touching the forehead. I saw her long locks play on the whiteness of the clothes.

Federico looked at me. But I did not smile.

"Me, too! Me, too!"

Natalia now clung to the edge of the cradle.

"Gently!"

Federico raised her too. And again I saw the long locks play on the whiteness of the bed linen, in the movement she made in bending over. This spectacle had petrified me, and my look certainly expressed my emotion. These kisses from lips so dear to me had not removed from the intruder his repugnant aspect; they had, on the contrary, rendered him more odious to me. I felt it would be impossible for me to touch that strange flesh, to make any gesture resembling paternal love. My mother observed me with uneasiness.

"You do not kiss him?" she asked.

"No, mother, no. He has done too much harm to Juliana. I cannot forgive him...."

I recoiled with an instinctive movement, a movement of manifest disgust. My mother remained for a moment stupefied, speechless.

"What are you saying, Tullio? Is it this poor baby's fault? Be just!"

Assuredly my mother had remarked the sincerity of my aversion. I could not succeed in restraining myself. All my nerves rebelled.

"Impossible now! Impossible! Let me be, mother. It will pass."

My tone was resolute. I trembled all over. There was a lump in my throat; the muscles of my face contracted. After so many hours of violent tension my entire being required relaxation. I believe that a great burst of sobs would have done me good, but the lump in my throat was too firm.

"You grieve me greatly, Tullio," said my mother.

"So you exact that I kiss him?" I burst out, beside myself.

And I approached the cradle, bent over the infant and kissed him.

The child awoke. He began to wail, feebly at first, then with increasing fury. I observed that the skin of his face took on a more reddish tint and wrinkled beneath the effort, while his whitish tongue trembled in his wide-open mouth. Although I was at the height of exasperation, I recognized the error committed. I felt the gaze of Federico, Maria, and Natalia fixed upon me.

"Forgive me, mother," I stammered. "I no longer know what I am doing; I am not in my right senses. Forgive me."

She had taken the infant from the cradle, and held it in her arms, without succeeding in quieting it. The wails went through me, overwhelmed me.

"Let us go out, Federico."

I left hastily. Federico followed me.

"Juliana is very ill. I cannot understand how any one can think of anything else but her now," I said, as if to justify myself. "You have not seen her. She looks as if she were dying."

*XXXIII.*

For several days Juliana hovered between life and death. Her weakness was so great that the slightest effort was followed by exhaustion. She was compelled to remain constantly on her back, without the slightest movement. The least attempt to raise herself provoked symptoms of cerebral anemia. Nothing could be found to overcome the nauseas that seized her, to lift the weight that crushed down on her chest, to remove the buzzing that she heard without cease.

I remained day and night at her bedside, always on the watch, sustained by an indefatigable energy that surprised even myself. I employed all the strength of my own life in sustaining that life which was threatened with extinction. It seemed to me that, from the other side of the bed, death was watching, ready to profit by an opportune moment to ravish his prey. At times I had the real sensation that I was becoming transfused in the debilitated body of the invalid, that I communicated to her a little of my strength, that I imparted an impulse to her exhausted heart. Never did the miseries of illness inspire in me the least repugnance, the slightest disgust; never did any material object offend the delicacy of my senses. My senses, overexcited, were attentive only in perceiving the least changes in the condition of the invalid. Before she spoke a word, before she made a sign, I divined her desires, her wants, the degree of her suffering. By divination, without the physician having to make any suggestion, I had succeeded in being able to discover new and ingenious means of relieving one of her pains, of calming one of her attacks. I alone could persuade her to eat and to sleep. I resorted to every stratagem, to prayers and caresses to make her swallow her medicine. I pressed her so much that finally, incapable of further resistance, she had to submit to a salutary effort to triumph over the nausea. And there was nothing sweeter to me than the imperceptible smile with which she submitted to my will. Her slightest acts of obedience put my heart into a profound commotion. When she said, in her feeble voice: "Is this right? Am I good?" I felt my throat choke, my eyes become veiled.

She often complained of a painful and incessant throbbing at the temples. Then I would pass my finger-tips over her brow to appease the pain. I caressed her hair very softly to lull her to sleep. When I perceived that she was asleep her respiration gave me the illusory sensation that I was solaced, as if the benefit of the slumber were extended even to me. In presence of this slumber I felt a sort of religious emotion. I was invaded by a vague fervor. I felt a desire to believe in the existence of some superior being, omnispective, omnipotent, in order to address my Prayers to him. There arose spontaneously from the depths of my soul the preludes of prayer according to the Christian formula. Sometimes the inner eloquence exalted me even to the summit of the true faith. Within me there awoke all the mystic tendencies transmitted to me by a long line of Catholic ancestors.

While my inner orisons were unfolding I contemplated the sleeper. She was still as pale as her night-dress. The transparency of her skin would have enabled me to count the veins on her cheeks, on her chin, on her neck. I watched her as if I had had the hope of seeing the beneficial effects of that repose, the slow diffusion of new blood engendered by the nourishment, the first premonitory signs of cure. I would have liked, by some supernatural faculty, to be present at the mysterious restorative elaboration which was taking place in that enfeebled body. And I persisted in hoping: "When she awakes she will feel stronger."

She seemed to feel a great relief when she held my hand in her own icy hands. Sometimes she took my hand and put it on the pillow, pressed her cheek against it with a childlike gesture, and gradually dozed off in that position. So as not to awaken her, I exerted all my strength to keep for a long, long time my arm in this one position, which was torture.

Once she said:

"Why don't you sleep here with me? You never sleep."

And she forced me to lay my head on her pillow.

"Let us go to sleep!"

I pretended I was going to sleep, to set her a good example. But when I opened my eyes I encountered hers wide open and fixed on me.

"Well!" I cried. "What are you doing?"

"And you?" she replied.

In her eyes there was an expression of such tender goodness that I felt my heart melt. I extended my mouth and kissed her eyelids.

She wished to kiss me the same way. Then she repeated:

"Let us go to sleep now!"

Thus, a veil of oblivion sometimes descended over our misfortune.

Often her poor feet were frozen. I felt them beneath the covers, and they seemed to me like marble. She herself said:

"They are dead."

They were so emaciated and so small that I could almost hold them in my hand. They inspired me with a great pity. I warmed some linen at the fire to put on them, and did not tire of giving them attention. I would have liked to warm them with my breath, to cover them with kisses. With this new pity there mingled the distant recollections of love--recollections of the happy time when, by a habit that almost resembled a vow, I reserved for myself exclusively the privilege of putting on her shoes in the morning and taking them off at night with my own hands, while on my knees before her.

One day, after long vigils, I was so fatigued that an irresistible slumber seized me just at the moment when I had my hands beneath the cover holding the little dead feet in the warm cloth. My head sank forward, and I went to sleep in that attitude.

When I awoke I saw my mother, my brother, and the doctor, who were smiling. I was embarrassed.

"Poor boy! He is tired out," said my mother, stroking my hair with one of her most tender gestures.

Juliana said:

"Take him away, mother! Take him away, Federico!"

"No, no, I am not tired," I repeated; "I am not tired."

The doctor announced his departure. He declared that the invalid was out of danger and on the road to recovery. But it was necessary, by all means possible, to continue to excite the regeneration of blood. His colleague, Jemma de Tussi, with whom he had consulted and found of the same opinion, would continue the same treatment. He had less confidence in remedies than in the rigorous observation of the various hygienic rules and of diet that he had prescribed.

"In truth," he added, pointing to me, "I could not wish for a more intelligent, more vigilant, or more devoted nurse. He has done miracles, and he will do more. I shall go away perfectly easy."

It seemed to me that my heart leaped into my throat and was suffocating me. The unexpected praise of that serious man, in my mother's and brother's presence, caused me profound emotion. It was an extraordinary reward for me.

I looked at Juliana, and I saw that her eyes were full of tears. And beneath my look she burst out all at once into sobs. I made a superhuman effort to contain myself, but could not succeed. It seemed to me that my soul was melted. In my bosom I felt all the virtues in the world collected together in that unforgettable hour.

*XXXIV.*

Juliana regained strength day by day, but slowly. My assiduity did not wane. I even took advantage of the remarks made by Dr. Vebesti to redouble my vigilance, to permit no one to replace me, to oppose my mother and brother, who advised me to rest. My body from now on became accustomed to the severe discipline, and scarcely ever felt fatigue. My entire life was enclosed between the walls of that room, in the intimacy of that alcove, in the circle where the invalid breathed.

As she required absolute quiet, as she was ordered to speak little so as to avoid fatigue, I exercised my ingenuity in keeping from her bedside even the members of her family. The alcove remained therefore isolated from the rest of the house. For hours and hours we--Juliana and I--were alone. And, crushed as she was by her illness, attentive as I was in my pious duty, we were at times able to forget our misfortune, to lose the sense of reality, to retain no other consciousness but that of our immense love. At times it seemed to me that beyond the curtains nothing existed any longer, so great was the concentration of my entire being on the invalid. Nothing occurred to recall the frightful thing to me. I saw before me a suffering sister, and my sole care was to relieve her pain.

Too often these veils of forgetfulness were brutally rent asunder. My mother spoke of Raymond. The curtains opened to give passage to the intruder.

My mother carried him in her arms. I was present, and I felt that I must have become pale, as all my blood flowed back to my heart. And Juliana, what sensation did she feel?

I looked at that reddish face, the size of a man's fist, half hidden by the bonnet trimmings, and with a fierce aversion that annihilated every other emotion in my soul, I thought: "What shall I do to deliver myself of you? Why were you not born dead?" My hate was boundless. It was instinctive, blind, invincible--I might say, carnal; for it seemed to me that it had its seat in my flesh, that it surged through all my fibres, through all my nerves, through all my veins. Nothing could conquer it, nothing could destroy it. It sufficed that the intruder were present, at no matter what hour, no matter under what circumstances, for there to be immediately induced in me a sort of annihilating rage, for me to fall beneath the empire of a single and unique passion: my hate against him.

My mother said to Juliana:

"Look! How he has already changed in a few days! He resembles you more than Tullio, but he bears very little resemblance to either of you. He is still too little. We shall see later. Do you want to kiss him?"

She put the child's forehead to the invalid's lips. What sensation did Juliana feel?

The infant began to cry. I had the courage to say to my mother without bitterness:

"Take him away, please. Juliana needs quiet, and these shocks do her great harm."

My mother left the alcove. The wails died away, but continued to cause me the same sensation of painful laceration, the same desire to run and strangle him so as not to hear them. We heard them for some time while he was being carried away. When they finally ceased, the silence seemed horrible to me; it fell on me like an avalanche, it crushed me. But, instead of dwelling on my pain, I thought immediately that Juliana required assistance.

"Ah! Tullio, Tullio, it is not possible..."

"Be silent, Juliana! Be silent, if you love me! I beseech you, be silent!"

My voice, my gesture, was supplicating. All the irritation of my hate had fallen. I suffered only on account of her suffering; I feared only the distress caused the invalid, the shock she had received from that fragile life.

"If you love me you must think of nothing but your cure. Look at me! I think only of you; I suffer only for you. You must not torment yourself. You must abandon yourself entirely to my tenderness, in order to get well..."

In her feeble and trembling voice she answered:

"But who knows what you secretly feel in your heart? Poor soul!"

"No, no, Juliana, do not torment yourself! I suffer only for you and because I see you suffer. I forget all when I see you smile. When you feel well, I am happy. You must get well therefore if you love me; you must be quiet, obedient, patient. When you are well, when you are stronger, then ... _who knows_? God is good."

She murmured:

"My God! have pity on us!"

"In what manner?" I thought. "In causing the Intruder to die?" So, then, we both wished his death. The mother herself saw no other alternative than the destruction of her child. Yes, that was the only alternative. And my memory recalled the brief dialogue that, on one now distant evening, we had had beneath the elms; it recalled the painful confession. "But does she still hate him, now he is born? Can she feel a sincere aversion against the flesh of her flesh? Does she pray God sincerely to take from her the fruit of her own entrails?" I again recalled the wild hope that I had conceived, as if in a flash, on the tragic night. "Suppose the idea of crime should occur to her and gradually become strong enough to influence her."

And I looked at her hands stretched out on the cloth, so pale that they were distinguishable from the sheets only by the azure of their veins.

*XXXV.*

Now that the invalid's condition was improving daily, a strange sorrow oppressed me. At the bottom of my heart, I did not see the sad days of the alcove pass by without a vague regret. Those mornings, those evenings, those nights, however desolate they were, had their grave sweetness. Every day my labor of charity seemed more beautiful. An abundance of love inundated my soul and submerged at times my sombre thoughts, procured for me at times forgetfulness of the frightful thing, awoke in me some consolatory illusion, some indefinite dream. Shut up in that alcove, I felt at times a sensation similar to that felt in the shadows of lonely chapels: I felt as if in a refuge from the violences of life, from opportunities for sinning. At times it seemed to me that the light curtains separated me from an abyss. I was assailed by sudden and unknown fears. Around me, in the night, I heard the silence of the entire house, and with the eyes of my soul I saw, in the corner of a distant room, by the side of a lighted lamp, the cradle in which slept the intruder, my mother's joy--my heir. A great shudder of horror ran through me, and I remained for a long time influenced by fright, under the sinister light of this single thought. The curtains separated me from an abyss.

But, now that Juliana's condition improved daily, excuses failed me for prolonging her isolation, and by degrees the routine of domestic life invaded the peaceful room. My mother, my brother, Maria, Natalia, Miss Edith, entered more frequently, remained longer. Raymond imposed himself upon the maternal tenderness. It was no longer possible to avoid it, either for Juliana or for me. We had to be lavish with kisses and smiles. We had to feint and artfully dissimulate, to endure the refined cruelties that chance brought to us, to be tortured by slow fire.

Nourished with healthy and substantial milk, surrounded by infinite care, Raymond gradually lost his first repulsive appearance and commenced to grow. He grew whiter, acquired a more clearly defined form, and now kept his gray eyes wide open. But all his movements were odious to me, from the sucking of his lips when applied to the breast to the uncertain movements of his little hands. I could never discover anything attractive in him. I never had a thought of him that was not hateful. When I was obliged to touch him, when my mother brought him to me for a kiss, there ran over my entire skin the same thrill of horror which contact with an unclean animal would have caused me. Every fibre in me revolted, and the violence that I did myself threw me into despair.

Every day brought its new torture, and my mother was my grand inquisitor. Once, on unexpectedly entering the room, and parting the curtains of the alcove, I perceived the infant lying on the bed by Juliana's side. Nobody was present. We three were there together without witnesses. The infant slept peacefully, bound up in its swaddling-clothes.

"It was mother who left him here," stammered Juliana.

I fled like a madman.

Another time Cristina called me. I followed her into the room containing the cradle. My mother was there, with the baby on her knees.

The child was moving its limbs and arms, turning its eyes from one side to the other, burying its fingers in its gaping mouth. At the wrists, at the ankles, behind the knees on the lower abdomen, the flesh swelled out in little cushions and was covered with rice powder. My mother's hands caressed the little members with delight, pointing out to me every detail, expatiating on the skin which a recent bath had polished and made lustrous. The infant seemed to be enjoying it.

"Feel here, feel how solid he is already!" she said, inviting me to touch him.

I was obliged to touch him.

"See how heavy he is!"

I was obliged to lift him, to feel that warm and flaccid little body palpitate between my hands, which were seized by a trembling that was not due to tenderness.

"The love, the love, the love of his grandmother!" repeated my mother, tickling the chin of the infant, who did not yet know how to laugh.

The dear gray head, that had already bent over two blessed cradles before for the same caresses, and much whiter now, bent unconsciously over another's child, over the intruder. I imagined that she had not shown herself as tender toward Maria, toward Natalia, toward the true creatures of my blood.

She wished to swathe him herself. She made the sign of the cross on the abdomen.