Chapter II: Part 2

A gust of rain dashed against the window-panes. The little tree could be seen bending and twisting under the wind in an almost circular movement, as if some hand were attempting to uproot it. For several minutes they both watched the fury of the elements, which, in the bleakness, nakedness, and inert torpor of the surrounding country, took on a strange appearance of conscious life. Hippolyte felt almost compassion. The imaginary suffering of the tree placed them face to face with their own sufferings. They mentally considered the great solitude which lay all around the station, a miserable hut before which passed from time to time a train-load of divers travellers, each of whom carried in his own bosom a different inquietude. Sad images rapidly succeeded one another in their thoughts, suggested by the same things they had seen an hour before with joyous eyes. And when the images faded away, when their consciences, ceasing to be impressed, returned to themselves again, they both found, at the bottom of their being, a unique and inexpressible anguish--a regret for days irrevocably lost.

Their love had behind it a long _past_. It dragged behind it, through the years, an immense and obscure net, full of dead things.

"What's the matter?" asked Hippolyte, her voice slightly changed.

"What's the matter with you?" asked George, looking fixedly at her.

Neither replied to the question. They remained silent, and renewed their gaze through the windows. The heavens seemed to smile tearfully. A faint glimmer lit up a hillock, bathed it in a fugitive golden glow, died away. Other sun-rays tried to pierce the moisture-laden cloud-banks, then disappeared.

"Hippolyte Sanzio!" said George, pronouncing the name slowly, as if to enjoy its charm. "How my heart beat when I finally learned that was your name! How many things have I seen and felt in that name! It was the name of one of my sisters, who is dead. That beautiful name was familiar to me. With profound emotion, I immediately thought, 'Oh! if my lips could only resume their dear custom.' That day, from morning until night, the recollections of my dead sister mingled exquisitely with my secret dream. I did not go in search of you; I forbade myself such pursuit; I would never be importunate; yet, at heart, I had an inexplicable confidence. I was sure that, sooner or later, you would know me and love me. What delicious sensations were mine! I lived outside of the reality; my soul fed only on music and exalting books. One day it happened that I saw you at a concert given by Gian Sgambati; but I saw you only just as you were about to leave the hall. You gave me a glance. Another time, again, you looked at me--maybe you remember? It was when we met at the entrance to the Via del Babuino, opposite the Piale Library."

"Yes, I remember."

"You had a little girl with you."

"Yes; Cecilia--one of my nieces."

"I stopped on the sidewalk--so as to allow you to pass. I noticed that we were both of the same height. You were less pale than usual. A momentary feeling of pride flashed through me."

"You had guessed correctly," said Hippolyte.

"You remember? It was towards the end of March. I waited with growing confidence. I lived from day to day absorbed in thoughts of the great passion which I felt approaching. As I had seen you twice with a small bouquet of violets, I filled all my house with violets. Oh! that beginning of spring I shall never forget! And the morning slumbers, so light, so transparent! And those slow, dreamy awakenings, in which, while my eyes were becoming used to the light, my mind still delayed before resuming the sentiment of reality! I recall that certain childish artifices sufficed to throw me into a species of illusionary intoxication. I remember, one day, at a concert, while listening to a Beethoven sonata, in which a frequent and periodic return of a sublime and passionate phrase recurred, I exalted myself almost to a state of madness by the interior repetition of a poetical phrase in which your name occurred."

Hippolyte smiled; but, hearing him speak with an evident preference for all the first manifestations of his love, at the bottom of her heart she felt displeased. Did those days seem sweeter to him than the present--were those distant recollections his dearest recollections?

George went on: "All the disdain which I have for a commonplace existence would never have sufficed to inspire me with the dream of an asylum as fantastic and mysterious as the abandoned oratory of the Via Belsiana. Do you recall it? The door at the head of the steps, opening on the street, was shut, and had been for years perhaps. One passed through a side alley which reeked of wine, and in which there was the red sign of a cabaret, with a large cork. Do you remember it? The entrance was at the rear, and one had to pass through a sacristy scarcely large enough to hold a priest and sacristan. It was the entrance to the sanctuary of Wisdom. What curious-looking old men, and women, on all sides, in the worm-eaten stalls! Where had Alexander Memmi been, to procure his audience? Doubtless you did not know, dear one, that you personified Beauty in this council of the music-mad. Mr. Martlet, you see, is one of the most confirmed Buddhists of our epoch; and his wife has written a book on the _Philosophy of Music_. The lady seated near you was Margherita Traube Boll, a celebrated doctor who is carrying on her defunct husband's investigations into the visual functions. The necromancer, in the long greenish cloak, who entered on tiptoe, was a Jew--a German physician, Dr. Fleichl, a superb pianist, a fanatic on Bach. The priest seated beneath the cross was Count Castracane, an immortal botanist. Another botanist, a bacteriologist, a microscopist, named Cuboni, was sitting in front of him. And there was also Jacopo Moleschott, that unforgettable old man, frank, enormous; also Blaserna, the collaborator of Helmholtz in the theory of sound; and Mr. Davys, a philosophical painter, a Preraphaelite plunged into Brahmanism. The others, less numerous, were all superior people, rare minds given to the highest speculations of modern science, cold investigators of life and passionate adorers of dreams."

He interrupted himself in order to conjure up the picture, and then went on:

"These savants listened to the music with religious enthusiasm; one assumed an inspired attitude; others made unconscious gestures, in imitation of the chapel-master; others, in low tones, joined in chant with the choir. The choir, of men and women, occupied the rostrum, the painted wood of which still showed traces of gilding. In front the young girls formed a group, with their partitions kept on a level with their faces. Below, on the roughly made stands of the violinists, burned candles, spots of gold on a dark blue background. Here and there their small flames were reflected by the varnished body of an instrument, put a luminous point on the tip of a bow. Alexander Memmi, somewhat stiff, bald, with a short black beard and gold spectacles, kept time with severe and sober gestures. At the close of every piece a murmur arose in the chapel, and laughs, badly suppressed, descended from the gallery, amidst the rustling of music-pages being turned. When the sky brightened, the candle-flames grew pale; and a cross very high up, which had figured in former years in solemn processions, a cross all ornamented with golden olives and foliage, seemed as if detached from the wall, in a burst of light. The white and bald heads of the auditors shone on the oaken backs. Then all at once, by a new change in the sky, the shadow again began to creep among these things, like a light mist. A scarcely perceptible wave of some subtle odor--incense or benzoin?--invaded the nave.

"On the single altar, in glass vases, two bouquets of violets, somewhat faded, exhaled the breath of spring; and this double-fading perfume was like the poesy of dreams which the music evoked in the souls of the old men, while close by, in quite different souls, there developed another dream: like an aurora on melting snows."

It pleased him to reconstruct this scene, to render it poetical--to warm it again with lyric breath.

"Is it not preposterous, unbelievable?" he cried. "At Rome, in the city of intellectual inertia, a master of music, a Buddhist who has published two volumes of essays on the philosophy of Schopenhauer, indulges in the luxury of having a mass by Sebastian Bach executed for his own pleasure, in a mysterious chapel before an audience of great music-mad savants, whose daughters sing in the chorus. Is it not a page from Hoffmann? On an afternoon of a somewhat gray but warm spring--these old philosophers quit their laboratories, where they have obstinately striven to wrest from life one of its secrets; and they assemble in a hidden oratory in order to satisfy, almost to intoxication, the passion that has drawn together their hearts, to leave their earthly bodies, and live ideally in dreams. And, in the midst of this old men's gathering, an exquisite musical idyll unfolds between the cousin of the Buddhist and the friend of the Buddhist, ideally speaking. And when the mass is finished, the Buddhist, suspecting nothing, presents the future lover to the divine Hippolyte Sanzio."

He began to laugh, and then arose. "I have made, it seems to me, a commemoration according to rule."

For an instant Hippolyte remained somewhat absorbed, then she said: "Do you remember, it was on a Saturday, the eve of Palm Sunday?"

She also arose, approached George, and kissed his cheek.

"Shall we go now? It is no longer raining."

They went out and strolled along the wet pavement, which reflected the subdued sunlight. The cold air made them shiver. Roundabout, the undulating hills were covered with verdure and furrowed with luminous streaks; here an there large pools of water reflected the pale image of a sky whose deep azure spread out between the flaky clouds. The little tree, dripping with rain, was illumined at intervals.

"That little tree will remain as one of our remembrances," said Hippolyte, stopping to look at it. "It is so lonely, so lonely."

The bell announced the approach of the train, it was a quarter past four. A railway employee offered to get their tickets. "When shall we arrive at Albano?" George asked.

"About seven o'clock."

"It will be night," said Hippolyte.

As she felt rather cold, she took George's arm; and she was pleased to think that they would arrive at a strange hotel this chilly evening, and that they would dine alone before a bright fire.

George perceived that she trembled, and asked: "Do you wish to go in again?"

"No," she replied. "You see, the sun's coming out. I shall warm up."

An indefinable desire for intimacy had seized her. She pressed closely to him, became suddenly caressing, and her voice, look, contact, gestures--and all her being--were full of seduction. She wished to shed over the loved one the most feminine of her charms; she wished to intoxicate him, to dazzle him with a display of present happiness capable of eclipsing the reflection of bygone happiness. She wished to appear to him more amiable, more adorable, more desirable than ever before. A fear assailed her--an atrocious fear--that he might regret the woman of long ago, sigh for the vanished delights, believe that then only had he attained the height of intoxication. "His recollections," she thought, "have filled my soul with so much melancholy! I have restrained my tears with difficulty. And he too, perhaps, is sad at heart. How heavily the past hangs over our love! Perhaps he is tired of me? Perhaps he is unaware of this weariness, and does not avow it to himself, willing to live under the illusion? But he is perhaps incapable now of finding any happiness in me. If I am still dear to him, it is perhaps only because he recognizes in me an object for his dear sorrows. Alas! I too, when with him, taste true happiness only at rare intervals; I suffer too, and yet I love him, and I love my suffering, and my only desire is to please him, and I cannot imagine life without this love. Why then are we so sad, since we love one another?"

She leaned heavily on her lover's arm, gazing at him with eyes to which the shadow of her thoughts imparted an expression of profound tenderness.

"Two years ago, about the same hour, we left the chapel together; and he spoke to me of things in no way connected with love, in a voice which moved my heart, which touched my soul as if with a caress of the lips; and this ideal caress I enjoyed like a long kiss. I trembled, I trembled incessantly, because I felt an unknown feeling born in me. Oh! it was a divine hour! We have reached our second anniversary to-day, and we still love one another. Just now he spoke; and if his voice affected me differently than it used to do, it still moves me to the bottom of my soul. We have before us a delightful evening. Why regret the days that are gone? Our liberty, our present intimacy, are they not worth the incertitude and hesitations of that time? Even our memories, so numerous, do they not add a new charm to our love? I love him--I give myself up to him entirely; in the presence of his desire I no longer know modesty. In two years he has transformed me; he has made of me another woman; he has given me new senses, a new soul, a new intelligence. I am creation. He can intoxicate himself through me as he would through one of his own thoughts. I belong entirely to him, now and forever."

Then, passionately pressing her form against his, she asked, "Are you not happy?"

The tone in which she spoke moved him; and, as if suddenly enveloped by a warm breath, he experienced a thrill of real happiness.

"Yes, I am happy," he answered.

And when the locomotive whistle was heard, their hearts had the same palpitation.

At last they were alone in their compartment. She closed all the windows, waited until the train was again in motion; they fell into each other's arms, kissed each other, and repeated all the caressing names which their tenderness of the last two years had used.

Then they sat still, side by side, a vague smile on their lips and in their eyes, and with the sensation that, little by little, the rapid coursing of their blood was abating. Through the windows they watched the monotonous country as it rushed by and disappeared into the violet-colored fog.

"Rest your head on my knees, and lie down," said Hippolyte.

He laid his head on her knee. She said: "The wind has disarranged your mustache." With her finger-tips she raised several of the light hairs which had fallen on his mouth. He kissed her finger-tips. She passed her hand through his hair. She said: "You, too, have very long eyelashes."

To admire his lashes, she closed his eyes. Then she caressed his brow and temples; she made him kiss once more each one of her fingers, one after the other, her head bent over George. And from beneath, George saw her mouth open with infinite slowness, saw unfold the snowy whiteness of her teeth. She closed her mouth, then again slowly opened it, with an almost insensible movement--like a flower with two petals; and a pearly whiteness shone from within. This delightful sport threw them into a state of languor; they forgot everything--they were happy. The monotonous motion of the train soothed them. In low tones they exchanged terms of adoration.

"This is our first journey together," she said, smiling. "It is the first time we are alone in a train."

She took delight in repeating that this was a new experience for them.

George, who had already felt the spur of desire, became more animated. He raised himself up, he kissed her on the neck, just on the Twins; he whispered something in her ear. An inexpressible light lit up Hippolyte's eyes, but she answered with vivacity: "No, no, we must be good until this evening. We must wait."

Once more she saw a vision of the silent hotel, of the furnished chamber, of the large bed hidden beneath a white mosquito curtain.

"At this season of the year," she said, in order to distract her lover's attention, "there will scarcely be anyone at Albano. How nice it will be, all alone in an empty hotel. We shall be taken for a young couple."

She wrapped herself in her mantle with a thrill, and leaned against George's shoulder.

"It is cold to-day, isn't it? When we arrive we'll light a big fire, and we'll take a cup of tea."

For them it was an acute pleasure to imagine the approaching intoxication. They spoke in low tones, communicating the ardor of their blood, exchanging burning promises. But, as they talked of future voluptuousness, their present desire grew, became irresistible. They lapsed into silence, they united their lips; they heard nothing more but the tumultuous beating of their arteries.

* * * * *

Afterwards, it seemed to them both as if a veil had been torn from before their eyes, that an internal mist was being dissipated--that the enchantment was broken. The fire in the imaginary chamber went out; the bed seemed icy, and the silence of the empty hotel became heavy. Hippolyte leaned her head against the back of the seat, watching the vast, monotonous country disappearing in the darkness.

At her side, George had again fallen beneath the empire of his perfidious thoughts. A horrible vision tortured him, against which it was impossible for him to contend, because he saw it with the eyes of his soul, those eyes, pupil-less, that no force of will can shut.

"Of what are you thinking?" asked Hippolyte, uneasy.

"Of you."

He thought of her, of her wedding-trip--of the ways in which the newly married generally act. "Without the least doubt, she found herself alone with her husband just as she is now with me. And it is perhaps this remembrance which causes her sadness." He thought also of the rapid adventures between two stations, of the sudden disquietude caused by a look--of the seizures of sensuality during the suffocating length of an afternoon during the dog-days. "What horror! What horror!" He started violently, a particular kind of start that Hippolyte knew too well to be a sure symptom of the malady which afflicted her lover. She took his hand in hers and asked:

"Are you in pain?"

He nodded, looking at her with an unhappy smile. But she had not the courage to push her questioning further, because she feared a bitter and heart-breaking answer. She preferred to remain silent; but she kissed him on his forehead--a long kiss, as usual, in the hope of unloosening the tangle of cruel reflections.

"Here we are at Cecchina!" she cried with relief, as she heard the whistle announcing their arrival. "Quick--quick, love, we must get down."

In order to amuse him, she affected gayety. She lowered the window and looked out.

"The evening is cold, but beautiful. Make haste, love. This is our anniversary. We must be happy."

The sound of her strong and tender voice drove away his gloominess. On alighting in the fresh air, he felt himself restored to serenity.

A sky, limpid as a diamond, curved like a vault over the country drenched with water. In the transparent atmosphere there still flitted beams of crepuscular light. The stars came out one by one, as if shaken on the staffs of invisible lamp-bearers.

"We must be happy." George heard internally the echo of Hippolyte's remark; and his soul swelled with indefinite aspirations. On this solemn and pure night the quiet chamber, the flaming hearth, the bed with its white-gauze draperies, appeared to him to be elements too humble for happiness. "It is our anniversary--we must be happy." Of what had he thought--what was he doing, at this same hour two years ago? He had wandered aimlessly through the streets, pressed on by an instinctive desire to seek more deserted spots, yet attracted nevertheless towards the populous quarters, where his pride and joy seemed to grow by contrast with the common life; where the ambient noises of the city sounded in his ears only like a distant murmur.

*CHAPTER V.*

The old hotel of Ludovico Togni, with the walls of its long vestibule done in stucco and painted to imitate marble, with its landing-places with green doors, decorated all over with commemorative stones, gave an immediate impression of quasi-conventional peace. All the furniture had an aspect of being heirlooms. The beds, the chairs, the sofas, the couches, the chests of drawers, had the style of another age, now fallen into disuse. The delicately colored ceilings, bright yellow and sky-blue, were decorated at their centres with garlands of roses or other usual symbols, such as a lyre, a torch, or a quiver. On the paper-hangings and woollen carpet the bouquets of flowers had faded, and had become almost invisible; the window curtains, white and modest, hung from poles from which the gilt had worn off; the _rococo_ mirrors, while reflecting these antique images in a dull mist, imparted to them that air of melancholy, and almost of unreality, which solitary pools sometimes give at their edges.

"How pleased I am to be here!" cried Hippolyte, penetrated by the charm of this peaceful spot. "I wish I could stay here forever."

And she drew herself up in the great armchair, her head leaning against the back, which was decorated with a crescent, a modest crochet-work in white cotton.

She thought once more of her dead aunt Jane and of her distant infancy.

"Poor aunt!" she said; "she had, I recall, a house like this--a house in which, for a century, the furniture had not been moved from its place. I always recollect her unhappiness when I broke one of those glass globes beneath which artificial flowers are preserved, you know. I remember she cried over it. Poor old aunt! I can see her black-lace cap, with her white curls which hung down her cheeks."

She spoke slowly, pausing from time to time, her gaze fixed on the fire which flamed in the fireplace; and, every now and then, so as to smile at George, she raised her eyes, which were somewhat downcast and surrounded by dark violet rings; while from the street arose the monotonous and regular noise of pavers beating the pavement.

"In the house, I can recall, there was a large hay-loft with two or three windows, where we kept the pigeons. You reached the loft by means of a small, straight stairway, against the wall of which hung, heaven knows since when, skins of hares, hairless and dried, stretched from two ends of crossed reeds. Every day I carried food to the pigeons. As soon as they heard me coming, they clustered around the door. When I entered, it was a veritable assault. Then I would sit on the floor and scatter the barley all around me. The pigeons surrounded me; they were all white, and I watched them pecking up their food. The sound of a flute stole in from a neighboring house; always the same air at the same hour. This music seemed delicious to me. I listened, my head raised to the window, my mouth wide open, as if to drink in the notes which showered. From time to time a belated pigeon arrived, beating her wings on my head, and filling my hair with white feathers. And the invisible flute went on playing. The air still rings in my ears; I could hum it. That is how I acquired a passion for music, in a dovecote, when a child."

And she repeated mentally the air of the ancient flute of Albano; she enjoyed its sweetness with a melancholy comparable to that of the wife who, after many years, discovers a forgotten sugar-plum at the bottom of her wedding-box. There was an interval of silence. A bell sounded in the corridor of the peaceful residence.

"I remember. A lame turtle-dove hopped into the room; and it was one of my aunt's greatest favorites.

"One day a little girl of the neighborhood came to play with me--a pretty little blond girl named Clarisse. My aunt was confined to bed by a cold. We amused ourselves on the terrace, to the great damage of the vases of pinks. The turtle-dove appeared on the sill, looked at us without suspicion, and squatted down in a corner to enjoy the sunshine. Scarcely had Clarisse perceived it, however, when she started forward to seize it. The poor little creature tried to escape by hopping away, but it limped so comically that we could not control our laughter. Clarisse caught it; she was a cruel child. From laughing, we were both as drunk. The turtle-dove trembled with fear in our hands.

"Clarisse plucked one of its feathers; then (I shudder still when I think of it) she plucked the dove almost entirely, before my eyes, with peals of laughter which made me laugh too. One could have believed that she was intoxicated. The poor creature, despoiled of its feathers, bleeding, escaped into the house as soon as it was liberated. We started to pursue it, but, almost at the same moment, we heard the tinkle of the bell, and the calls of my aunt who was coughing in her bed. Clarisse escaped rapidly by the stairway; I hid myself behind the curtains. The turtle-dove died that same night. My aunt sent me to Rome, convinced that I was guilty of this barbarity. Alas! I never saw Aunt Jane again. How I have wept! My remorse will last forever."

She spoke slowly, pausing from time to time, fixing her dilated eyes on the flaming hearth, which almost magnetized her, which began to overcome her with a hypnotic torpor, while from the street arose the monotonous and regular noise of pavers beating the pavement.

*CHAPTER VI.*

One day the lovers came back from Lake Nemi somewhat fatigued. They had dined at the Cesarini Villa, beneath showy camellias in bloom. Alone, with the emotion felt only by him who contemplates the most secret of secret things, they had contemplated the Mirror of Diana, as cold, as impenetrable to the view as the deep blue of a glacier.

As usual, they ordered tea. Hippolyte, who was looking for something in a valise, turned suddenly towards George, showing him a packet tied with a ribbon.

"You see, these are your letters. They never leave me."

George, with visible satisfaction, cried: "All? have you kept all?"

"Yes, all. I have even the notes--even the telegrams. The only one missing is the little note which I threw into the fire to prevent its falling into my husband's hands. But I saved the burnt fragments; you can still read a few words."

"Let me see, will you?" said George.

But, with a jealous movement, she hid the package. Then, as George advanced towards her with a smile, she fled into the adjoining room.

"No, no; you shall see nothing. I won't let you."

She refused, partly in jest, partly too because, having always guarded them preciously as a hidden treasure, with pride and fear, it was repugnant to her to show them even to him who had written them.

"Let me see them, I beg of you. I am so curious to reread my letters of two years ago. What did I write you?"

"Words of fire."

"Please let me see them."

She finally consented, laughing, vanquished by her friend's persuasive caresses.

"Let us wait at least until the tea is brought; then we will reread them together. Shall I light a fire for you?"

"No," he replied, "it is almost hot to-day."

It was a cloudless day, with silvery reflections diffused through the inert atmosphere. The waning day was softened in its passage through the gauze curtains. Fragrant violets, gathered at the Villa Cesarini, had already perfumed the entire chamber. Someone knocked at the door.

"Here is Pancrazio," said Hippolyte.

The worthy domestic, Pancrazio, brought in his inexhaustible tea, and his inextinguishable smile. He placed the tea-things on the table, promised something good for dinner, and withdrew with light and elastic steps. All bald as he was, he preserved a juvenile air. Extraordinarily obliging, he had, like certain Japanese gods, eyes that were laughing, long, narrow, and somewhat oblique.

"Pancrazio is more amusing than his tea," said George.

In fact, the tea had no aroma, but the accessories lent it a strange taste. The sugar-bowl and cups had a form and capacity never before seen; the tea-service was decorated with the history of an amorous pastoral; the plate, garnished with small slices of lemon, bore on its centre a rhymed enigma, done in black letters.

Hippolyte poured out the tea, and the cups steamed like censers. Then she untied the package! The letters appeared, properly classified, divided into small bundles.

"What a quantity!" cried George.

"There are not so many; only two hundred and ninety-four. And in two years, dear one, there are seven hundred and thirty days."

They both smiled, sat down side by side near a table, and began to read. In the presence of these documents of his love, George felt come over him a strange emotion--an emotion delicate yet strong. The first letters perplexed him.

Such or such an extreme state of mind, of which the letters bore the imprint, at first seemed to him incomprehensible. The lyric flight of such and such a phrase filled him almost with stupor. The violence and tumult of his early passion caused in him a sort of terror, by contrast with the calm which possessed him now, in this modest and quiet house.

One of the letters said: "How my heart sighed for you that night! A gloomy anguish overwhelmed me, even during the short intervals of slumber; and I reopened my eyes in order to escape the phantoms which rose from the depths of my soul. I have now but one thought--only one thought, which tortures me--that you might go far away from me. Never, no, never, has this possibility pierced my soul with a more maddening pain and terror. At this moment I have the _certitude_, the positive, clear, evident certitude, that without you life for me is an impossibility. When I think that I might lose you, the day becomes suddenly dark--the sunlight becomes odious to me, the earth appears to me like a bottomless tomb, I enter a state of death." Another letter, written after Hippolyte's departure, read: "I make an enormous effort to hold my pen. I have no more energy, no will. I succumb to such discouragement that the only sensation which remains to me of my external existence is an insupportable loathing of life. The day is gray, suffocating, heavy as lead; a day to kill in, so to speak. The hours pass with inexorable slowness, and my misery grows, second by second, always more horrible and more savage. It seems to me that at the bottom of my being are pools of stagnant water, dead, and deadly. Is this a physical or moral suffering? I do not know. I live on, stupid and inert beneath a burden which crushes me, without killing me." Another letter read: "At last, to-day, at four o'clock, when almost hopeless, I have received your reply. I have read and reread it a thousand times, to find between your words the inexpressible--what you could not express--your soul's secret, something more alive and sweeter than the words written on the soulless paper. I am possessed with a terrible desire for you."

So the love-letters cried and groaned, on the table covered with a table-cloth, and loaded with rustic cups in which an innocent infusion peacefully steamed.

"You remember," said Hippolyte. "It was the first time that I left Rome, and only for fifteen days."

George was absorbed in the memories of his mad infatuation; he sought to revive it within him, and to understand it. But the environing comfort was unfavorable for internal effort.

The sensation of this comfort imprisoned his soul, enveloping it loosely. The veiled sunlight, the hot drink, the perfume of the violets, the contact of Hippolyte, benumbed him. "Am I, then, so far from the ardor of former days?" he thought. "No, because during her last absence my anguish was not less cruel." But he did not succeed in filling the interval between the _I_ of long ago and the _I_ of to-day.

In spite of all, he could no longer identify himself with the same man of whom those written phrases attested such consternation and despair; he felt that these effusions of his love had become strangers to him, and he also felt all the emptiness of the words. These letters resembled the epitaphs which one reads in cemeteries. Just as the epitaphs give a coarse, false idea of the dead, so these letters represented inaccurately the divers conditions of the soul through which his love had passed. He knew well the singular fever which seizes a lover when writing a love-letter. In the heat of this fever, all the different waves of sentiment are agitated and mixed in a confused turmoil. The lover does not know precisely what he wishes to express, and he is embarrassed by the material insufficiency of the terms of endearment; so he gives up trying to describe his internal passion such as it is, and attempts to express its intensity by the exaggeration of the phrases and by the employment of vulgar rhetorical effects. This is the reason why all amorous correspondences resemble each other, and why the language of the most exalted passion is almost as poor as jargon.

"In these letters," thought George, "all is violence, excess, convulsion. But where are my delicate feelings? Where my exquisite and complex melancholies? Where my profound and sinuous sorrows, in which my soul went astray as in an inextricable labyrinth?" He now had the regret to perceive that his letters lacked the rarest qualities of his mind--those which he had always cultivated with the greatest care. In the course of his reading, he began to skip the long passages of pure eloquence, and sought instead the indication of particulars--the details of events that had occurred--the allusions to memorable episodes.

He found in one letter: "Towards six o'clock I entered mechanically the usual place, the Morteo Garden, where I had seen you so many evenings. The thirty-five minutes that preceded the exact hour of your departure were a torture for me. You left, yes, you left without my having been able to bid you good-by, to cover your face with kisses, to repeat to you once more, 'Don't forget! don't forget!' Towards eleven o'clock a kind of instinct made me turn round. Your husband entered with his friend, and the lady who usually accompanies them. Without any doubt, they had come back from seeing you home. I had then such a cruel spasm of pain that I was soon forced to rise and go out. The presence of these three persons, who spoke and laughed as on other evenings, as if nothing new had happened, exasperated me. Their presence was for me the visible and indubitable proof that you were gone, irremissibly gone."

He thought over more of the summer evenings, when he had seen Hippolyte seated at a table, between her husband and a captain of infantry, opposite to a little, insignificant woman. He did not know any of these three persons, but he suffered at each of their gestures, at each of their attitudes, and at all that was vulgar in their appearance; and in imagination he pictured to himself the imbecility of the talk to which his refined mistress appeared to pay sustained attention.

In another letter he found: "I am in doubt. To-day I feel hostile towards you; I am filled with a dull anger."

"That," said Hippolyte, "was the time when I was at Rimini: August and September--what tempestuous months they were! Do you remember when you finally arrived on the _Don Juan_?"

"Here is a letter written on board ship: 'To-day at two o'clock we have anchored at Ancona, having sailed from Porto San Giorgio. Your prayers and wishes have sent us a favorable wind. Marvellous sailing, which I will recount to you. At the break of day we shall again make the offing. The _Don Juan_ is the king of coasters. Your flag floats from the mast-head. Addio--maybe till to-morrow. September 2d.'"

"We saw one another again; but what days of suffering! Do you remember? We were watched incessantly. Oh, that good sister! Do you recall our visit to the Temple of the Malatestas? Do you remember our pilgrimage to the Church of San Giuliano, the evening before your departure?"

"Here is another from Venice."

They read it together, with equal palpitation.

"Since the ninth, I am at Venice, sadder than ever. Venice stupefies me. The most radiant of dreams does not equal in magnificence this dream of marble which emerges from the waves and blossoms in an illusionary sky. I am dying of melancholy and desire. Why are you not here? Oh! if you had come! If you had only executed your former project! Maybe we should have been able to steal one hour from espionage; and in the treasury of our souvenirs we should have counted one more, the most divine amongst them all." On another leaf they read again: "I have a strange thought, which, from time to time, pierces my soul like a lightning flash, and disturbs my whole being; a foolish thought--a dream. I think that you could come here, suddenly, alone, to be entirely mine!" Further on again: "The beauty of Venice is the natural frame of your beauty. The colors of your complexion, so rich and warm--all pale amber and dull gold, in which are mixed possibly several shades of drooping rose--are the ideal colors which harmonize the most happily with the Venetian air. I do not know how Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, looked; but, I do not know why, I imagine she resembled you."

"You see," said Hippolyte, "it was a continual seduction, refined and irresistible. I suffered more than you can imagine. Instead of sleeping, I passed nights in seeking a means of going out alone, without awakening the suspicions of my guests. I was a prodigy of cleverness. I no longer know what I did. When I found myself alone with you in the gondola, on the Grand Canal, that September dawn, I did not believe that it was real. Do you recollect? I burst into sobs, unable to say a word to you."

"But I--I was waiting for you. I was sure that you would come, at any cost."

"And that was the first of our great imprudences."

"It is true."

"What does it matter?" murmured the young woman. "Was it not better so? Was it not better so, now that I belong to you entirely? For my part, I regret nothing."

George kissed her on the temple. She spoke for a long time of this episode, which was one of the most pleasant and extraordinary among their souvenirs. They lived over again, minute by minute, the two days of their secret stay at the Hotel Danieli--two days of oblivion, supreme intoxication, in which it seemed as if they had both lost all notion of the world, and all consciousness of their previous being.

Those days had marked the commencement of Hippolyte's ruin. The letters which followed alluded to her first trials. "When I think that I am the initial cause of your sufferings and of all your domestic troubles, an inexpressible remorse torments me; and in order to obtain pardon for the ill of which I am the cause, I want you to know the entire depth of my passion. Do you know my passion? Are you sure that my love will be able to repay you for your long anguish? Are you sure of it--certain--deeply convinced of it?" The ardor went on increasing page by page. Then, from April to July, there was an obscure interval without documents. It was during these four months that the catastrophe happened. The husband, too weak, not having found any means of conquering Hippolyte's open and obstinate rebellion, had, so to say, taken flight, and left behind him very much involved business affairs, in which he had sunk the greater part of his fortune. Hippolyte had sought refuge with her mother, then with her sister at Caronno, in a country-house. And then a terrible malady from which she had already suffered in her infancy--a nervous malady analogous to epilepsy--seized upon her. The letters dated in August spoke of it: "No, you could never conceive the fright that my mind is in. What tortures me above all is the implacable lucidity of my imaginary vision. I _see_ you writhing--I _see_ your face become distorted and pallid--I _see_ your eyes roll hopelessly beneath their lids; I see your hands shrivelled and shrunk, and between your fingers the curl of torn-out hair; and, whatever effort I make, I cannot succeed in dispelling the terrible vision. And then, I _hear_ you call me; I have actually in my ears the sound of your voice--a hoarse and lamentable sound--the voice of a person who calls for help without the hope of being helped." A little way further on: "You write me: 'If this illness should seize me when I am in your arms! No, no, I will not see you again! I do not wish to see you again!' Were you mad when you wrote that? Did you think of what you wrote? It is as if you had taken my life, as if I could no longer breathe. Quick, another letter! Tell me you will recover, that you still hope, that you want to see me again. _You must_ recover. Do you hear, Hippolyte? _You must_ recover."

During the convalescence, the letters were gentle and playful. "I send you a flower gathered on the sands. It is a species of wild lily, marvellous when growing, and of an odor so penetrating that I often find at the bottom of the chalice an insect in a swoon of intoxication. The whole coast is covered with these passionate lilies, which, beneath the torrid sun, on the broiling sand, flower in one minute, and only live a few hours. See how charming this flower is, even when dead! See how delicate it is, and fine, and feminine!"

Up to the month of November the letters followed one another without interruption; but, little by little, they became bitter, full of suspicions, doubts, reproaches.

"How far you have gone from me! I am tortured by something else than the chagrin of mere material separation. It seems to me that your soul has also left and abandoned me. Your fragrance makes others happy. To look at you, to hear you, is not that--to enjoy you? Write to me; tell me that you belong entirely to me, in all your acts, in all your thoughts, and that you desire me, and that you regret me, and that, separated from me, you find no beauty in any instant of life." Further on: "I think, I think, and my thought goads me; and the sting of this thought causes in me an abominable suffering. At times I am seized with a frenzied desire to pluck from my throbbing temples this impalpable thing, which is, however, stronger and more inflexible than a dart. To breathe is an insupportable fatigue for me, and the throbbing of my arteries goes through me as would the sound of hammer blows that I might be condemned to hear. Is that love? Oh, no. It is a kind of monstrous infirmity which can blossom only in me, for my joy and my martyrdom. I please myself by believing that no other human creature has ever felt as I do." Further on: "Never, no, never, shall I have complete peace and complete security. I could be content only on one condition--that I absorbed all, all your being; that you and I no longer were more than a single being; that I lived your life; that I thought your thoughts. Or, at least, I would wish that your senses were closed to all sensations that did not originate in me. I am a poor, ill patient. My days are but a long agony. I have rarely desired them to end, as much as I desire and pray for it now. The sun is about to set, and the night which descends on my soul envelops me in a thousand horrors. The shadows issue from every corner of my room and advance towards me as would a live person whose footsteps and breathing I could hear, whose hostile attitude I 'could see.'"

To await Hippolyte's return, George had returned to Rome in the first days of November; and the letters dated at that time alluded to a very unhappy and dismal episode. "You wrote me: 'I have had great difficulty in remaining true to you!' What do you mean by that? What were the _terrible events_ which have upset you? My God! How you are changed! It makes me suffer inexpressibly, and my pride is irritated at my suffering. Between my eyebrows is a furrow, deep as the cleft of a wound, in which is heaped my repressed anger, in which gathers all the bitterness of my doubts, my suspicions, my disgusts. I believe that even your kisses would not suffice to rid me of it. Your letters, trembling with desires, disturb me. I am not grateful to you for them. For two or three days, I have something _against you_ in my heart. I do not know what it is. Perhaps a presentiment? Perhaps a divination?"

While he read, George suffered as from a wound reopened. Hippolyte would have liked to stop him from continuing. She remembered that evening when her husband had called unexpectedly at the house in Caronno, with a cold, calm face, but with the look of a madman, declaring that he had come to take her back; she recalled the moment when she was alone with him, face to face, in an out-of-the-way room, the window curtains of which were blown about by the wind--in which the light abruptly flared up and then decreased--to which the moaning of the trees was borne up from below; she remembered the silent, savage fight sustained then against that man who had suddenly clasped her--horror!--in order to take her by force.

"Enough! enough!" she said, drawing George's head to her. "Enough! Don't let us read any more."

But he wanted to continue. "I cannot understand the reappearance of that man, and I cannot prevent a feeling of anger which is directed even at you, too. But, to spare you pain, I will abstain from writing you my thoughts on this subject. They are bitter and gloomy thoughts. I feel that my affection is poisoned for some time. It were better, I think, if you never saw me again. If you wish to avoid useless pain, do not return now. Now I am not in a good frame of mind. My soul loves you to adoration; but my thought rends and sullies you. It is a contrast which recommences incessantly, and which will never end." In the next day's letter he wrote: "A pain, an atrocious pain, intolerable, never felt before! O Hippolyte, come back! come back! I want to see you, to speak to you, to caress you. I love you more than ever. Yet, spare me the sight of your bruises. I am incapable of thinking of them without fear and without anger. I feel that, if I saw the marks impressed in your flesh by the hands of that man, my heart would break. It is horrible!"

"Enough, George! don't let us read anymore!" begged Hippolyte again, taking the loved one's head between her hands, and kissing his eyes. "Please, George!"

She succeeded in drawing him away from the table. He smiled that indefinable smile, which sometimes invalids have when they yield to the entreaties of others, knowing full well that the remedy is late and useless.

*CHAPTER VII.*

On Good Friday evening they started on their return to Rome.

Before their departure, about five o'clock, they took tea. They were taciturn. The simple existence they had led in this old house appeared extraordinarily beautiful and desirable to them, now it was about to end. The intimacy of the modest lodging seemed sweeter and more profound to them. The places where they had promenaded their melancholy and their tenderness were illuminated by ideal lights. It was, then, still another fragment of their love and of their being that fell, annihilated, into the abyss of time.

"That, too, is past," said George.

"What can I do?" said Hippolyte. "It seems to me as if I could no longer sleep anywhere than on your heart!"

They looked into each other's eyes, communicating each other's emotion, feeling the rising wave choking their throats. They remained silent; they listened to the regular and monotonous sound made by the pavers beating the pavement. But the irritating noise augmented their uneasiness.

"That is insupportable," said George, rising.

The measured blows revived in him the sentiment of the flight of time, which he had already so strongly felt; they inspired in him that sort of anxious terror which he had already often experienced when listening to the oscillations of a pendulum. And yet, on the preceding days, had not the same noise lulled him into a vague state of comfort? He thought: "In two or three hours we shall separate. I shall recommence my usual life, which is only a series of petty miseries. My habitual illness will inevitably seize upon me again. Moreover, I know the troubles that Spring revives in me. I shall suffer without cease. And I have already a premonition that one of my most pitiless tormentors will be the idea that Exili has put in my head. If Hippolyte wished to cure me, could she? Maybe, at least partly. Why should she not come with me to some lonely place, not for a week, but for a very long time? She is adorable in intimacy, full of trifling kind attentions and of childish graces. Maybe, by her constant presence, she would succeed in curing me, or at least in making me take life more lightly."

He stopped before Hippolyte, took her two hands in his, and asked: "Have you been very happy during these few days? Answer me."

His voice was agitated and persuasive. "I was never so happy before," she replied.

Feeling a deep sincerity in this answer, George pressed her hands with force, and continued: "Will it be possible for you to go back to your every-day existence?"

"I do not know," she answered; "I do not look before me. You know all is lost."

She lowered her eyes. George seized her in his arms, passionately.

"You love me, do you not? I am the only aim of your existence; you see only me in your future."

With an unexpected smile, which raised her long eyelashes, she said: "Yes, you know it."

He added once more in a low voice, his face bowed down: "You know my malady."

She seemed to have guessed her lover's thought. As if in confidence, in a whispering voice which seemed to draw closer the circle in which they breathed and palpitated together, she asked, "What can I do to cure you?"

They were silent, clasped in each other's arms. But in the silence their two souls dwelt and decided upon the same thing.

"Come with me," he cried, at length. "Let us go to some unknown country; let us stay there all Spring, all Summer, as long as we can--that will cure me."

Without hesitation she replied: "I am ready. I belong to you."

They disengaged themselves, comforted. The hour of departure had come; they strapped the last valise. Hippolyte gathered all her flowers, already withered in the glasses: the violets of the Villa Cesarini, the cyclamens, the anemones, and the periwinkles of the Chigi Park, the simple roses of the Castel-Gandolfo, a branch of an almond-tree gathered in the neighborhood of Diana's Baths, on their way home from the Emissary. These flowers could have told all their idylls. Oh, the frolicsome course in the park, in descending a steep incline, on the dry leaves in which their feet sank to the ankles! She shouted and laughed, pricked on the legs by the sharp nettles through the fine stockings: and then, before her, George beat down the sharp stems with blows of his cane, so that she could trample upon them without danger. Very green and innumerable nettles adorned the Diana's Baths, the mysterious cave in which favorable echoes were transformed into the music of slowly dropping water. And, from the depths of the humid shadow, they saw the country all covered with almond-trees and silver-and-pink peach trees, infinitely delightful beneath the light-green pallor of the limpid waters. So many flowers, so many souvenirs!

"See," she said, showing George a ticket, "it is the ticket for Segni-Paliano! I shall keep it."