Chapter VII: Part 7

"How heavy the air is!" murmured Hippolyte, removing her gaze from the white sail, which still remained motionless in the infinite. "Does it not oppress you, too?"

She rose, took a few listless steps towards a willow seat, provided with cushions, and sank down as if dead with fatigue, sighing deeply, throwing back her head, half-closing her eyes, the curved lids of which trembled. She had suddenly become very beautiful again. Her beauty was rekindled, unexpectedly, like a torch.

"When will the mistral blow? Look at that sail. It is always in the same place. It's the first white sail since my arrival. It seems as if I dream it is there."

As George remained silent, she added:

"Have you seen any others?"

"No; it's the first I have seen, too!"

"From where did it come?"

"From Gargano, perhaps."

"And where is it going?"

"Perhaps to Ortona."

"What is her cargo?"

"Perhaps oranges."

She began to laugh; and even her laugh, enveloping her as if in a live wave of freshness, transfigured her anew.

"Look, look!" she cried, raising herself on one elbow and pointing to the horizon of the sea, where it appeared as if a curtain had fallen. "Five other sails, over there in file. Do you see them?"

"Yes, I see them."

"There are five?"

"Yes, five."

"More, more! Over there! Look, another file! What a number there are!"

The sails appeared at the extreme limit of the sea, red like little flames, motionless.

"The wind is changing. I feel that the wind is changing. Look there, how the water is beginning to ripple."

A sudden breeze assailed the tufts of the acacias, which, bending on their stems, shed several blossoms like dead butterflies. Then, before those light remains could touch the earth, all was at peace again. During the interval of silence, the low murmur of the water as it was dashed against the beach could be heard; and this murmur died away with the flight of the wave as it passed along the shore, and then ceased.

"Did you hear it?"

She had risen and leaned on the parapet, listening intently, in the attitude of a musician who is tuning his instrument.

"Here is the wave coming back," she cried again, pointing to the mobile rippling of the water, upon which the shower was advancing; and she waited, animated by impatience, ready to fill her lungs with the wind.

After a few seconds the acacias, assailed, once more bent on their stems, causing a shower of other flowers. And the strong gust bore as far as the loggia the saline odor mingled with the perfume of the withered bunches. A silvery sound, of singular harmony, filled with its kettledrum vibrations the concavity of the little bay between the two promontories.

"Do you hear?" said Hippolyte, in a low but exulting voice as if this music had penetrated as far as her soul, and that all her life were participating in the vicissitudes of the things around her.

George followed all her actions, all her gestures, all her movements, every word, with such intense attention that the rest was for him as if it had never existed. The preceding image no longer coincided with the actual appearance, though it still dominated his mind to the extent of maintaining the profound sensation of the moral detachment, and of preventing him from replacing this woman in her first frame, of not reestablishing her in her original state of being, of not reintegrating her. But from every one of these actions, from every one of these gestures, from every one of these movements, from every one of these words, emanated an inevitable power. All these physical manifestations seemed to compose a web which trapped him, and held him prisoner. It seemed that between this woman and himself there was formed a sort of corporeal bond, a sort of organic dependence, a correspondence by virtue of which the slightest gesture provoked in him an involuntary sensual modification, and that henceforth he would no longer be capable of living and feeling independently. How could he reconcile this evident affinity with the occult hate which he had just discovered at the bottom of his heart?

Hippolyte, through a spontaneous curiosity, through an instinctive desire to multiply her sensations and to make the surrounding neighborhood part of herself, was still absorbed in the spectacle. The facility she exhibited in entering into communication with every form of natural life and of finding a world of analogies between human expressions and the appearances of the most diverse things; this rapid and diffuse sympathy, which attached her not only to objects with which she was in daily contact, but also to foreign objects; that sort of imitative virtue which often permitted her to express by a single sign the distinctive character of an animate or inanimate being, of talking to the domestic animals and understanding their language--all these mimic faculties properly concurred in rendering more visible, in George's eyes, the predominance in her of the inferior life.

"What's that?" she said, surprised at noticing a sudden, mysterious rumbling. "Didn't you hear it?"

It was like a dull blow, which other blows followed in rapid succession--blows so strange that it could not be discerned if they came from near or far, in the air that became more and more limpid.

"Didn't you hear that?"

"It may be distant thunder."

"Oh, no!"

"What, then?"

They looked around them, perplexed. Every moment the sea was changing color in proportion as the sky became clearer; here and there it took on that shade of indefinable green, like unripe flax, as when the sun's oblique rays pass through the diaphanous stems in an April twilight.

"Ah! it's the sail flapping--that white sail, yonder," cried Hippolyte, happy at being the first to discover the mystery. "Look. She's caught the wind. She's off."

*CHAPTER II.*

With a few intervals of drowsy indolence, she felt a mad desire to wander off, to venture out in the heat of the sun, to scour the beach and surrounding country, to explore unfamiliar paths. She stimulated her companion; at times she carried him off almost by force; at times, too, she started off alone, and he joined her unexpectedly.

In order to climb a hill, they followed a small pathway bordered by thick hedges of violet flowers, among which blossomed the large and delicate calices of other snowy fragrant flowers with fine petals. On the other side of the hedges, ears of corn waved to and fro on their stems, yellowish-green in color, more or less ready to change into gold; and in other places the corn was so thick and high that it towered over the tops of the hedges, suggesting a beautiful, overflowing cup.

Nothing escaped Hippolyte's vigilant eye. Every minute she stooped to blow away certain spheres of down, very fragile, at the tips of their long, slender peduncles. Every minute she stopped to observe the small spiders climbing by an invisible thread from a flower situated low down to a branch above.

On the hill, in a narrow, sunny circle, there was a small field of flax already dry. The yellowish stems bore at their summits a ball of gold, and here and there the gold seemed tarnished by an ironlike rust. The highest stems were waving almost imperceptibly. And, because of this extreme lightness, the whole gave the idea of some delicate piece of gold-work.

"Look, it is just like filigree!" said Hippolyte.

The furze was commencing to shed its flowers. A few feet away hung a sort of white foam in flakes; on others crawled large black and brown caterpillars, soft to the touch as velvet. Hippolyte took up one whose delicate down was streaked with vermilion, and she kept it calmly on the palm of her hand.

"It is more beautiful than a flower," she said.

George remarked, and it was not the first time, that she was almost totally devoid of instinctive repugnance towards insects, and that, in general, she did not feel that keen and invincible repulsion which he himself felt for a host of things considered unclean.

"Throw it away, I beg of you!"

She began to laugh, and stretched out her hand as if to put the caterpillar on his neck. He gave a cry and sprang back, which made her laugh all the more.

"Oh, what a brave man!"

In a spirit of mischief, she started to pursue him between the trunks of the young oaks, through the narrow paths that formed a sort of mountainous labyrinth. Her peals of laughter started from between the gray stones flocks of wild sparrows.

"Stop! Stop! You frighten the sheep."

A small flock of frightened sheep dispersed, dragging behind them up the rocky incline a bundle of bluish rags.

"Stop. I have it no longer. See."

And she showed the runaway her empty hands.

"Let us help the Mute."

And she ran towards the woman in rags, who was making ineffectual efforts to hold back the sheep attached to the long cords of twisted osier. Hippolyte seized the bunch of cords, and braced her feet against a stone in order to have more resisting power. She panted, her face purple; and in this violent attitude she was very beautiful. Her beauty lighted up, unexpectedly, like a torch.

"Come, George, come you too!" she cried to George, communicating to him her frank and childish joy.

The sheep stopped in a clump of furze. There were six of them, three black and three white, and bore the osier cords around their woolly necks. The woman who looked after them, emaciated, poorly covered by her bluish rags, gesticulated while giving vent, from her toothless mouth, to an incomprehensible grumbling. Her little greenish eyes, without eyelashes, bleary, tearful and congested, had a malignant look.

When Hippolyte gave her alms, she kissed the pieces of money. Then, letting go the cords, she removed from her head a rag which no longer had either form or color, stooped to the ground, and slowly, with greatest care, tied up the pieces of money in a multiplicity of knots.

"I am tired," said Hippolyte. "Let us sit down here for a moment."

They sat down. George then perceived that the spot was near the great furze field where, on that May morning, the five virgins had plucked the flowers to strew the path of the beautiful Roman. That morning already seemed very far off, lost in dreamy haze. He said:

"Do you see, over yonder, those bushes which are now almost flowerless? Well, it was there that we filled the baskets to strew flowers on your path when you arrived. Oh, what a day! Do you remember?"

She smiled, and in a transport of sudden tenderness took one of his hands, which she kept pressed in her own; and she leaned her cheek on the shoulder of the loved one, burying herself in the sweetness of that memory, of that solitude, of that peace, of that poesy.

From time to time a breath of wind passed through the tops of the oaks; and below, farther on, in the gray of the olive-trees, passed, from time to time, a clear wave of silver. The Mute moved away slowly behind the feeding sheep; and she seemed to leave something fantastic in her traces, as if a reflect of the legends in which malignant fairies transform themselves into toads at every turn of the path.

"Aren't you happy now?" murmured Hippolyte.

George thought: "It is already two weeks, and there has been no change in me. Still the same anxiety, the same inquietude, the same discontent! We are hardly at the beginning, and I already foresee the end. What shall we do to enjoy the passing hour?" Certain phrases of a letter from Hippolyte recurred to him: "Oh! when will it be given me to be near you during entire days, to live your life? You will see, I shall no longer be the same woman. I will be your mistress, your friend, your sister; and if you think me worthy, I will be also your adviser.... In me you should find nothing but sweetness and repose.... It will be a life of love such as has never before been seen." ...

He thought: "For the past two weeks our whole existence has been composed of petty, material incidents, like those of to-day. It is true; I have already seen in her _another woman_! She is commencing to change, even in appearance. It is unbelievable how rapidly she is gaining in health. One would say that every breath is a gain; that, for her, every fruit turns into blood; that the healthfulness of the air penetrates her every pore. She was made for this life of idleness, of liberty, of physical enjoyment, of carelessness. Up to now, she has not uttered a single thoughtful word which revealed preoccupation of the soul. Her intervals of silence and immobility are caused only by muscular fatigue, just as at the present moment."

"Of what are you thinking?" she demanded.

"Of nothing. I am happy."

After a pause, she added:

"We'll go on now, shall we?"

They rose. She bestowed upon his mouth a sonorous kiss. She was gay and restless. Every few minutes she darted away from him to run down an incline free from rocks; and when she wished to check her speed, she grasped the trunk of a young oak, which groaned and bent beneath the shock.

She gathered a violet flower and sucked it.

"It's honey."

She gathered another, and placed it on her lover's lips.

"Taste it!"

And it seemed as if she enjoyed the savor for the second time, at seeing the motions of his mouth.

"With all these flowers, and all these bees, there must certainly be a hive near by," she went on. "One of these mornings, while you are asleep, I must come here and search for it.... I'll bring you a honeycomb."

She prattled at a great rate about this adventure, which tickled her fancy; and in her words appeared, with the vivacity of an actual sensation, the freshness of the morning, the mystery of the woods, the impatience of the search, the joy of the discovery, the pale color and wild fragrance of honey.

They halted half-way up the hill, at the border of the woody region, charmed by the melancholy which ascended from the sea.

The sea was delicately colored, between a blue and a green, in which the green had a progressive tendency to dominate; but the sky, of a leaden azure at the zenith, and streaked here and there by clouds, was rose-colored in the curve toward Ortono. This light was reflected in pale tints on the surface of the water, and recalled deflowered roses floating. Against the maritime background were arranged in steps, in harmonious degrees, first the two large oaks with their dark foliage, then the silvery olive-trees, then the fig-trees with their bright foliage and violet branches. The moon, orange-colored, enormous, almost at its full, rose up above the ring of the horizon, like a globe of crystal through whose transparency could be seen a chimerical country figured in bas-relief on a massive disk of gold.

One heard the warbling of birds, near and far. One heard the lowing of an ox; then a bleating; then the wailing of a child. There was a pause during which all these voices were silent, and only this single wail was heard.

It was a wail, not violent or interrupted, but shrill, continuous, almost feeble. And it attracted the soul, detached it from all the rest, snatched it from the seduction of the twilight, to oppress it with a veritable anguish which responded to the suffering of the unknown creature, of the little, invisible being.

"Do you hear?" said Hippolyte, whose voice, already changed by compassion, became involuntarily lower. "I know who the child is that's crying."

"You know?" asked George, to whom his mistress's voice and appearance had given a strange shock.

"Yes."

She was again listening intently to the lamentable moaning, which now seemed to fill the whole place. She added: "It's the infant that the Ghouls are sucking."

She had pronounced these words without the shadow of a smile, as if she herself were beneath the empire of the superstition.

"It lives over there, in that tumble-down cottage. Candia told me."

After a slight hesitation, during which they listened to the wails and had a fantastic vision of the dying child, Hippolyte suggested:

"Shall we go and see it? It's not far."

George was perplexed, dreading the sadness of the spectacle, and the contact of the distressed and coarse people.

"Shall we?" repeated Hippolyte, whose curiosity became irresistible. "It is over there, in that old cottage, beneath the pine. I know the way."

"Let's go!"

She went straight ahead, hastening her steps, across a sloping field. Both were silent; both heard only the infantile wail which served them as a guide. And, step by step, their anguish became more poignant and in proportion as the wailing became more distinct and indicated better the poor, bloodless body from which pain forced it.

They traversed a copse of odorous orange-trees, treading on the flowers scattered on the ground. On the threshold of a cottage close to the one they sought an enormously stout woman was seated; and on her monstrous body was a small round head, with soft eyes, white teeth, a placid smile.

"Where are you going, signora?" asked the woman, without rising.

"We are going to see the child whom the Ghouls are sucking."

"What's the use? You'd better stay here, and take a rest. I do not lack children, either. Look!"

Three or four naked children, who had also such large stomachs that one would have believed them to be dropsical, dragged themselves along on the ground, grunting and tumbling over, putting in their mouths everything that fell into their hands. And the woman held in her arms a fifth child, all covered with brownish scabs, from the midst of which shone out a pair of large clear blue eyes, like miraculous flowers.

"You see that I have plenty of them too, and that this one, here, is sick. Stay here a bit."

She smiled, soliciting with her eyes the strangers' generosity. And, with an expression in which one guessed the desire to dissuade the curiosity of the woman by the vague presentiment of a peril:

"What's the good of going there?" she repeated. "See how ill this one is."

And again she showed the afflicted child, but without simulating any sorrow, as if she simply offered to the passer-by a nearer object of compassion in exchange for a more distant one--as if she wished to say: "Since you desire to be compassionate, have compassion for the one before you." George examined, with deep pain, the poor, spotted face, whose large, bright, and clear eyes seemed to drink in all the light shed on this June evening.

"What is he suffering from?" he asked.

"Ah! signor, who ever knows?" answered the fat woman, always with the same placidity. "He has what God wishes."

Hippolyte gave her some money; and they resumed their way towards the other cottage, bearing with them the nauseous odor emanating from that door full of shadow.

They did not speak. They felt a contraction of their hearts, a disgust in their mouths, a weakness in their limbs. They heard the shrill wailing, mingled with other voices, other sounds; and they were stupefied at having been able to hear this single sound so far away, and so distinctly. But what attracted their eyes was the tall and straight pine whose robust trunk stood out black against the diffused light of the twilight, sustaining a melodious summit filled with sparrows.

At their approach, a whisper passed among the women gathered around the victim.

"Here are the gentlefolk--Candia's strangers."

"Come, come!"

And the women opened their circle to permit the arrivals to draw nearer. One of them, an old woman, with wrinkled skin, of the color of parched earth, expressionless eyes, whitish and as if vitrified in the depths of their hollow orbits, said, addressing Hippolyte, and touching her arm:

"Look, signora! Look! The Ghouls are sucking it, poor creature! Look at the state they've reduced it to! May God protect your children!"

Her voice was so dry that it appeared artificial, and resembled the sounds articulated by an automaton.

"Cross yourself, signora!" she added again.

The advice seemed lugubrious in that lifeless mouth, in which the voice lost its human character and became a dead thing. Hippolyte made the sign of the cross, and looked at her companion.

In the space before the door of the hut the women ere in a circle as around a spectacle, making; from time to time some mechanical sign of condolence. And the circle was unceasingly renewed; some, already tired of looking, went away; others arrived from neighboring houses. And almost all, at the sight of this slow death, repeated the same gesture, repeated the same words.

The child reposed in a little cradle, of rough pine boards, like a small, lidless coffin. The poor creature, naked, sickly, emaciated, greenish, was wailing continuously and waving its debilitated arms and legs, which had nothing more than skin and bone, as if asking for help. And the mother, seated at the foot of the cradle, bent in two, her head so low that it almost touched her knees, seemed to hear nothing. It seemed as if some terrible weight rested on her neck and prevented her from rising. At times, mechanically, she placed on the edge of the cradle a coarse, callous hand, burnt by the sun; and she made the gesture of rocking without altering her attitude or breaking the silence. Then the holy images, the talismans, and the relics, with which the pine cradle was almost entirely covered, undulated and tinkled, during a momentary pause in the wail.

"Liberata! Liberata!" cried one of the women, shaking her. "Look, Liberata! The lady has come--the lady is in your house! Look!"

The mother slowly raised her head and looked around her, with a bewildered air; then she fixed on her visitor her dry and mournful eyes, in whose depths there was less of fatigued sorrow than inert and shadowy terror--the terror of nocturnal witchcraft against which no exorcism prevailed, the terror of those insatiable beings who now had the house in their power, and who would not abandon it perhaps but with the last corpse.

"Speak! Speak!" insisted one of the women, shaking her again by the arm. "Speak! Ask the lady to send you to the Madonna of the Miracles."

The others surrounded Hippolyte with supplications.

"Yes, signora. Be charitable to her! Send her to the Madonna. Send her to the Madonna!"

The child cried louder. In the tops of the pine-tree the sparrows were emitting heart-rending cries. In the neighborhood, between the deformed trunks of the olive-trees, a dog barked. The moon was beginning to cast its shadows. "Yes," stammered Hippolyte, incapable of sustaining longer the fixed gaze of the silent mother. "Yes, yes, we will send her--to-morrow."

"No, not to-morrow; Saturday, signora."

"Saturday is the Vigil."

"Let her buy him a candle."

"A fine candle."

"A ten-pound candle."

"Do you hear, Liberata? Do you hear?"

"The lady will send you to the Madonna!"

"The Madonna will pity you."

"Speak! Speak!"

"She's become dumb, signora."

"She hasn't spoken for three days."

In the midst of the confused cries of the women, the child cried still louder.

"Do you hear how he cries?"

"He always cries loudest, signora, at nightfall."

"Perhaps it's coming soon."

"Perhaps the child has seen----"

"Make the sign of the cross, signora."

"It's getting dark."

"Do you hear how he cries?"

"Isn't that the bell tolling?"

"No; one can't hear it here."

"Silence!"

"One can't hear it here."

"But I hear it."

"I hear it, too."

"_Ave Maria!_"

All were silent, made the sign of the cross, and bowed. It seemed as if several sonorous waves, scarcely perceptible, arrived from the distant market-town; but the child's wail filled every listener's ear. Once more, only this single wail could be heard. The mother had fallen on her knees at the foot of the cradle, prostrated to the earth. Hippolyte, her head bowed, was praying with fervor.

"Look, there, in the doorway!" whispered one of the women to her neighbor.

George, watchful and uneasy, turned his head. The doorway was full of shadow.

"Look, there, in the doorway! Don't you see something?"

"Yes, I see," replied the other, uncertain, a little frightened.

"What is it? What do you see?" asked a third.

"What is it?" demanded a fourth.

"What is it?"

Suddenly curiosity and fright seized them all. They looked toward the door. The child cried. The mother rose, and she, too, began to fix her dilated eyes on the door which the shadows rendered mysterious. The dog barked among the olive-trees.

"What is it?" said George, in a low voice, but not without requiring some effort to shake off the increasing uneasiness of his imagination. "What do you see?"

None of the women dared to answer. All, in the shadow, saw the outlines of a vague form.

Then he advanced toward the door. When he crossed the threshold, a furnace-like heat and a repugnant stench cut short his breath. He turned round, went out.

"It's a scythe," he said.

In fact, it was a scythe hanging on the wall.

"Ah! a scythe."

And the voices recommenced.

"Liberata! Liberata!"

"Are you mad?"

"She is mad."

"It's getting dark. Let us go."

"He's not crying any more."

"Poor creature! Is he asleep?"

"He has stopped crying."

"Take in the cradle; the evening is damp. We will help you, Liberata."

"Poor creature! Is he asleep?"

"One would think he were dead. He no longer moves."

"Take in the cradle, won't you? Don't you hear us, Liberata?"

"She is mad."

"Where is the lamp? Joseph will soon return. Have you no lamp? Joseph will soon return from the lime-kiln."

"She is mad. She doesn't speak any more."

"We are going. God be with you!"

"Poor tormented flesh! Is he sleeping?"

"He's sleeping, he's sleeping.... He's not in pain now."

"Oh, Lord Jesus, save him!"

"Protect us, O Lord!"

"Farewell, farewell! Good night!"

"Good night!"

"Good night!"

*CHAPTER III.*

The dog continued to bark in the olive-groves, while George and Hippolyte came back by the path towards Candia's house. When the animal recognized the guests of the house, he stopped barking, and came to meet them joyfully.

"Why, it's Giardino!" cried Hippolyte. And she stooped to caress the poor beast, with whom she had already become friends. "He was calling us. It's getting late."

The moon rose in the silence of the sky, slowly, preceded by a luminous wave which gradually covered the azure. All the sounds of the surrounding fields died away beneath this pacific light. And the unexpected cessation of every noise seemed almost supernatural to George, whom an inexplicable fright kept alert.

"Stop a moment," he said, holding Hippolyte back.

And he listened intently.

"What are you listening to?"

"It seemed to me----"

And both looked back in the direction of the barn, which the olive-trees concealed from view. But they heard nothing except the even and rocking rhythm of the sea in the curve of the little gulf. Over their heads a cricket clove the air in its flight with a grating sound like that of a diamond on a pane of glass.

"Don't you think the child is dead?" asked George, without dissimulating his emotion. "He stopped crying."

"That's true!" said Hippolyte. "And you believe he's dead?"

George did not reply. And they resumed their way back beneath the silvery olive-groves.

"Did you notice the mother well?" he asked at last, after a silence, possessed internally by the sombre image.

"My God! My God!"

"And that old woman who touched your elbow! What a voice! What eyes!"

His words betrayed the strange fright which dominated him, as if the recent spectacle had been a frightful revelation to him, as if life had suddenly been made manifest to him under a mysterious and savage aspect, bruising and stamping him with an indelible sign.

"You know, when I entered the house, on the ground behind the door there was the corpse of some beast--already half-decomposed. The smell was simply choking."

"What do you mean?"

"It was either a cat or a dog. I could not distinguish very well. It was difficult to see well inside."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, yes. Without any doubt there was a dead animal. The stench----"

A shudder of disgust ran through him as he thought of it.

"What could it be?" said Hippolyte, who felt herself becoming infected by the contagion of fear and disgust.

"How can I know?"

The dog gave a bark to announce their coming. They had arrived. Candia was waiting for them, and the table was already spread beneath the oak.

"How late you are, signora!" cried the affable hostess, with a smile. "Where have you been? What will you give me if I guess? Well, you have been to see the child of Liberata Maunella. May Jesus guard us from the Cunning One!"

When the lovers were at table, she approached, curious, to speak and question.

"Did you see him, signora? He gets no better; he's just as bad. Yet his father and mother have done everything to save him."

What had they not done! Candia related all the remedies attempted, all the exorcisms. The priest had been there, and, after having covered the child's head with the edge of his stole, had read verses from the Bible. The mother had suspended from the lintel of the door a waxen cross, blessed on Ascension Day; she had sprinkled with holy water the hinges of the imposts, and recited aloud the _Credo_, thrice in succession; she had put a handful of salt in a piece of linen, which afterwards she had knotted and hung around the neck of her dying son. The father _had done the seven nights_; for seven consecutive nights he had watched in the dark, before a lighted lantern covered with a pot, attentive to the slightest sound, ready to assail and seize the Ghoul. A single pin-prick would have sufficed to render it visible to human eyes. But the seven vigils had gone by without result. The child wasted away, and was consumed hour by hour, hopelessly. Finally, on the advice of a witch, the despairing father had killed a dog and put the body behind the door. This prevented the Ghoul entering before having counted all the hairs of the dead beast.

"Do you hear?" said George to Hippolyte.

They did not eat, their hearts oppressed with pity, struck with terror at the sudden apparition of these phantoms of an obscure and atrocious life, which environed the leisures of their useless love.

"May Jesus protect us from the Cunning One!" repeated Candia; and piously, with her open hand, she indicated the place where lay the living fruit. "May God protect your children, signora!"

Then she added:

"You're not eating this evening! You've no appetite. That innocent soul distresses your hearts. And your husband isn't eating, either. Look!"

Hippolyte said:

"Do many die--like that?"

"Oh!" went on Candia, "this is a bad district. The cursed brood swarms hereabouts. One is never safe. May Jesus protect us from the Cunning One!"

She repeated the conjuration, then added, pointing to a plate on the table:

"Do you see those fish? They are from the Trabocco; they were brought by Turchin."

And she lowered her voice.

"Do you want to know? For nearly a year, Turcum and all his family have been in the power of some witchcraft from which he has not yet been able to free himself."

"Who is Turchin?" asked George, listening breathlessly to the woman's words, fascinated by the mystery of these things. "The man from the Trabocco?"

And he recalled that earthy visage, almost chinless scarcely larger than a fist, with a long nose, prominent and pointed like the snout of a pike, between two small, glittering eyes.

"Yes, signor. Look over there. If your sight is good you can see him. To-night he is fishing by moonlight."

And Candia pointed out on the rocks the great fishing machine--that collection of trunks freed from their bark, planks and cables, whose strange whiteness resembled the colossal skeleton of some antediluvian amphibian. In the calm air was heard the creaking of the capstan. As the tide was low and the rocks were uncovered, the odor of the algae came up victorious from the beach, stronger and fresher than the effluvia from the fertile hill.

Hippolyte breathed in the intoxicating odor, already entirely occupied by that intense sensation which made her nostrils quiver and her eyes half-close. She murmured:

"Oh, how delicious! Don't you smell it, George?"

He, on his part, was very attentive to Candia's words, and saw in imagination the silent drama suspended over the sea. To the phantoms evoked by this simple woman in the serene night his soul, inclined to mystery and naturally superstitious, gave limitless life and tragic horror. For the first time he had a vast and confused vision of that race unknown to him, of all that miserable flesh, full of animal instincts and of bestial afflictions, bent and sweating on the glebe or buried in the depths of the cottages, beneath the perpetual menace of those dark powers. Amidst the sweet richness of the country which he had selected as the theatre of his love, he discovered a violent human agitation; and it was as if he had discovered a swarm of insects in the masses of magnificent hair impregnated with aroma. He felt the same shudder, already felt before this, at the contact with brutally revealed life: "recently, at the sight of his relatives, of his father, of his brother, of the poor, bigoted glutton." All at once, he felt as if he were no longer alone with his mistress amidst the benign growths, under the bark of which he had one day believed he had surprised a new emotion. He felt himself, on the contrary, environed and almost jostled by an unknown crowd, which, bearing in itself the same vitality which the trunks of trees possess, blind, tenacious, and unconquerable, adhered to him by the bond of the species and could immediately communicate to him its suffering, by a look, a gesture, a sigh, a sob, a groan, a cry.

"Ah! this district is bad," repeated Candia, shaking her head. "But the Messiah of Chapelles will come to purify the earth."[*]

{*} The episode of the Messiah of Chapelles is historical. Oreste de Amicis born in 1824 at Chapelles, played precisely the role assigned to him here by the novelist. He died in 1889. Antonio de Nino has collected and published curious documents concerning this personage.

"The Messiah?"

"Father," cried Candia, in the direction of the house, "when is the Messiah to be here?"

The old man appeared upon the threshold.

"One of these days," he replied.

And, turning toward the beach, which in the dim light cast by the half-moon disappeared to view in the direction of Ortona, he signified with a vague gesture the mystery of that new deliverer in whom the country people had placed their hope and faith.

"One of these days--very soon."

And the old man, who wanted to talk, approached the table, looked at his guests with an uncertain smile, and asked:

"Don't you know who it is?"

"Perhaps it is Semplice," said George in whose memory revived a distant and indistinct recollection of that Semplice di Sulmone who fell into an ecstasy, his eyes fixed on the sun.

"No, signor; Sembri is dead. The new Messiah is Oreste of Chapelles."

And the old man, in fervent and vividly colored language, related the new legend, such as it had been conceived by the rural population.

Oreste, being a capuchin monk, had known Semplice at Sulmone, and had learned from him the art of reading the future on the face of the rising sun. Then he began to travel all over the world: he had gone to Rome, and had spoken with the Pope; in another place he had spoken with the king. On his return to Chapelles, his birthplace, he had passed seven years in the cemetery in the company of skeletons, wearing a hair shirt, flagellating himself night and day, according to discipline. He had preached in the parish church, and had drawn tears and cries from the fishers. Then he had started once more on a pilgrimage to all the sanctuaries; he had remained thirty days on the mountain of Ancona; he had remained twelve days on Mount St. Bernard; he had climbed the highest peaks, struggling through the snow, his head bared. Returned again to Chapelles, he had recommenced to preach in his church. But, shortly afterwards, persecuted and driven away by his enemies, he had sought refuge in the Island of Corsica; and there he had made himself an apostle, resolved to traverse all Italy and to write the name of the Virgin in his blood on the gate of every city. As an apostle, he had returned to his native place, announcing that he had seen a star in the midst of a thicket of trees, and that from it he had received the Word. And, finally, by the inspiration of the Eternal Father, he had taken the great name of the New Messiah.

He was now making his pilgrimage through the rural districts dressed in a red tunic and a blue mantle, with long hair down to his shoulders, and his beard trimmed like Christ's. His apostles accompanied him--men who had abandoned the spade and plough to devote themselves to the triumph of the new faith. In Pantaleoni Donadio revived the spirit of Saint Matthew; in Antonio Secamiglio revived the spirit of Saint Peter; in Giuseppe Scurti, that of Maximin; in Maria Clara, that of Saint Elizabeth; and Vincent di Giambattista, who represented the archangel Saint Michael, was the messenger of the Messiah.

All these men had tilled the soil, mown the wheat, pruned the vines, pressed the olives; they had led the cattle to the fair and disputed over the prices; they had led a woman to the altar, and procreated children, and seen these children grow, flourish, die; in short, they had lived the ordinary life of country people amidst their equals. And now they passed, followers of the Messiah, considered as divine personages by the same people with whom, the previous week, they had argued concerning a measure of wheat. They passed transfigured, participating in the divinity of Oreste, invested with his grace. Whether in the fields or in the house, they had heard _a voice_, they had all at once felt pure souls enter into their sinful flesh. The spirit of Saint John was in Giuseppe Coppa; that of Saint Zacharias, in Pascal Basilico. The women, also, had received the sign. A woman of Senegallia, married to a certain Augustinone, a tailor at Chapelles, in order to demonstrate to the Messiah the ardor of her faith, had wanted to renew the sacrifice of Abraham, by setting fire to a mattress on which slept her children. Other women had given other proofs.

And the Elect now wandered through the country with his escort of Apostles and of Marys. From the most distant places of the coast and mountain, multitudes flocked to see him pass. At daybreak, when he appeared at the door of the house in which he had lodged, he always saw a great crowd kneeling in expectation. Erect on the threshold, he delivered the Word, received confessions, administered communion with pieces of bread. For his nourishment, he preferred eggs prepared with elder flowers, or with the tips of wild asparagus; he also ate a mixture of honey, nuts, and almonds, which he called _manna_, to recall the manna of the desert.

His miracles could no longer be counted. By the simple virtue of the thumb, index and middle fingers, raised in the air, he delivered the possessed, cured the infirm, resurrected the dead. If anyone went to consult him, he did not even give him time to open his mouth, and immediately told him the names of his parents, explained his family affairs, and revealed to him the most obscure secrets. He also gave news of the souls of the dead; he indicated places where treasures were hidden; with certain scapularies in the form of a triangle, he delivered hearts from melancholies.

"It's Jesus come back to earth," concluded Colas di Sciampagne, with a voice fervent with faith. "He will pass near here, too. Didn't you see how high the wheat is? Have you not noticed how the olive-trees are flourishing? Didn't you notice how the vines are laden with grapes?"

Respectful of the old man's beliefs, George asked gravely:

"And where is he now?"

"He is at Piomba," replied the old man.

And he pointed to the distant shores on the other side of Ortono, evoking in his guest's mind the vision of that corner of the province of Teramo bathed by the sea--an almost mystic vision of fertile lands watered by little, sinuous rivers, where, beneath the endless shivering of the poplars, a stream of water ran over a bed of polished sand.

After an interval of silence, Colas added:

"At Piomba, one word from him sufficed to stop the train on the railroad! My son saw it. Didn't Vito tell us that, Candia?"

Candia confirmed the old man's words, and gave the details of the wonderful event. The Messiah, attired in his red tunic, had advanced to meet the train, walking calmly between the two rails.

While speaking, Candia and the old man incessantly directed their gaze, as well as their gestures, towards the distance, as if the sacred person of the expected arrival were already visible to them.

"Listen!" interrupted Hippolyte, pulling the arm of George, who was absorbed in an inner view more and more vast and distinct. "Don't you hear something?"

She rose, crossed the court, went close to the parapet under the acacias. He followed her. They listened.

"It's a procession going on a pilgrimage to the Madonna of Casalbordino," said Candia.

In the peaceful moonlight a religious chant swelled its slow and monotonous rhythm, with an alternation of masculine and feminine voices at equal intervals. One of these half-choirs chanted a strophe in a low tone; the other half-choir chanted a refrain in a higher key, indefinitely prolonging the cadence. It was like the approach of a wave continuously rising and falling.

The procession approached with a rapidity which contrasted with the slowness of the rhythm. Already the first pilgrims appeared at the turn of the path, near the bridge of the Trabocco.

"Here they are," exclaimed Hippolyte, moved by the novelty of the scene and sounds. "Here they are. What a number of them!"

They advanced in a compact mass. And the opposition of the measure between their march and their chant was so strange that it gave them an almost fantastic appearance. It seemed as if a supernatural force impelled them on, unconscious, towards the goal, while the words emitted from their mouths remained suspended in the luminous air and continued to vibrate after their passage.

_Viva Maria!_
_Viva Maria!_

They passed with a heavy trampling, exhaling a sour, herdlike odor, so jammed one to the other that nothing emerged from their mass except the long sticks fashioned like a cross. The men marched in front, and the women, more numerous, behind, with the glittering of golden ornaments underneath their white bandelets.

_Viva Maria!_
_Viva her Creator!_

Near by, at every repetition, their chant had the vehemence of a cry; then it diminished in vigor, betraying fatigue, surmounted by a continual and unanimous effort, the initiative of which, in the two half-choirs, almost always started in a single and more powerful voice. And this voice dominated not only the others when it intoned the measure; but often, in the midst of the musical wave, it was maintained high and recognizable during the entire duration of the strophe or refrain, denoting a more imperious faith, a singular and dominating soul among that indistinct crowd.

George remarked it, and, very attentive, followed it as it waned in the distance, as long as his ear could recognize it. And that gave rise in him to an extraordinary sentiment of the mystic power which lay at the roots of the great indigenous race from which he himself had sprung.

The procession disappeared in the curve of the coast; then reappeared on the summit of the promontory, in the light; then disappeared again. And the chant, through the distant night, became veiled, softened; became so light that the slow and uniform modulation of the calm sea almost drowned it.

Seated on the parapet, her shoulders leaning against the trunk of an acacia, Hippolyte remained silent, motionless, not daring to disturb the religious meditations in which her lover seemed plunged.

What could the beams of the brightest sunlight reveal to George, that this simple chant in the night had not already revealed to him? All the scattered images, recent and ancient, those still vibrating with the keen sensation which had given birth to them and those buried in the deepest recesses of his memory, all these were bound together internally, and composed for him an ideal spectacle which carried him over the most vast and most august reality. His land and his race appeared to him transfigured, uplifted from time, with a legendary and formidable aspect, weighty with mysterious, eternal, and nameless things. A mountain, like unto an enormous primeval stump, reared up in the centre in the form of a breast, perpetually covered with snows; and the sloping sides, the promontories devoted to the olive-trees, were bathed there by an inconstant and sad sea, on which the sails bore the colors of mourning and flame. Roads wide as rivers, green with grass, and sown with bare rocks, with gigantic vestiges scattered here and there, descended from the heights to conduct to the plains the migrations of the herds. The rites of dead and forgotten religions survived; incomprehensible symbols of powers fallen since centuries subsisted there intact; the usages of primitive peoples, gone forever, persisted there, transmitted without change from generation to generation; the rich fashions, strange and useless, were retained there as witnesses of the nobility and the beauty of an anterior life. Long strings of horses laden with wheat-corn passed there; and the devotees rode on the loads, their heads crowned with ears of corn, with belts of paste, and deposited at the foot of a statue the cereal offerings. The young girls, with baskets of wheat on their heads, led along the roads a she-ass bearing a still larger basket on its crupper, and, with their offering, they went towards the altar, singing. The men and boys, crowned with roses and with dewy berries, climbed in their pilgrimage on a rock on which was impressed a footprint of Sampson. A white bullock, fattened for a year on a rich pasturage, covered by a vermilion _gualdrape_ and ridden by a child, advanced with pomp among the standards and candles; it knelt on the threshold of the temple, in the midst of the applause of the people; then, arrived at the centre of the nave, it voided its excrements, and the devotees drew from this steaming matter presages as to their agriculture. On feast days the fluvial populations bound their heads with bryony and, at night, they crossed the water with songs and music, bearing in their hands branches full of leaves. At daybreak, in the fields, the virgins washed their hands, feet, and faces in the fresh dew, to accomplish a vow. On the mountains, on the plains, the first sun of the spring was saluted by ancient hymns, by the clash of crashing metals, by cries and dances. Throughout the entire district the men, women, and children sought the first serpents emerged from their lethargy, seized them alive, and wound them around their necks and arms, so as to present themselves thus ornamented before their Saint, who would render them proof against venomous bites. On the inclines of the sun-bathed hills the young toilers, with their yoked oxen, in presence of their old men, rivalled one another as to who should trace the straightest furrow from the hill-top to the plain; and the judges awarded the prize to the conqueror, while the father, in tears, opened his arms to his well-deserving son. And so, in all the ceremonies, in all the pomps, in all the labors, in all the games, in the births, in the loves, in the marriages, funerals, everywhere was present and visible a georgic symbol, everywhere was represented and venerated the great producer Earth, from whose womb gushed forth the sources of all that was good and joyful. The women of the family gathered at the house of the newly married, bearing on their heads a basket of wheat-corn, on the wheat a loaf of bread, and on the loaf a flower; they entered one by one, and sprinkled a handful of that augural grain on the head of the happy wife. At the foot of a dying man's bed, when the death-agony was prolonged, two kinsmen deposited a ploughshare, which had the virtue of interrupting the horrors and of hastening death. The tool and the fruit thus assumed superior significance and power. A profound sentiment and continual desire for mystery gave to all these environing things an active soul, benign or malignant, of good or evil augury, that participated in every vicissitude of fortune, by a manifest or occult action. A vesicating leaf pressed on the bared arm revealed love or indifference; the hearth-chain; thrown in the road exorcised the menacing hurricane; a mortar placed on the edge of the window recalled the lost pigeons; the swallowed heart of a sparrow communicated wisdom. Mystery intervened in every event, envelopes and bound every existence; and the supernatural life dominated, concealed, and absorbed the ordinary life by creating innumerable and indestructible phantoms, which peopled the fields, inhabited the houses, encumbered the heavens, troubled the eyes.

Mystery and rhythm, those two essential elements of every cult were scattered everywhere. Men and women continually expressed their soul in song, accompanied by song all their labors under roof and heaven, celebrated by song both life and death. Around the cradles and around the biers, music was shed, slow and persistent, very ancient, as ancient, perhaps, as the race whose profound sorrows they manifested. Sad, grave, fixed in immutable rhythm, they seemed the fragments of hymns that had belonged to the immemorial liturgies which had survived the destruction of some great primordial myth. They were few in number, but so dominating that the new songs could not displace them or diminish their hold. They were transmitted from generation to generation like an inner heritage, inherent in the corporeal substance; and each one, on awaking in this life, heard them resound in himself like an innate language to which the voice gave a visible form. Just as well as the mountains, the valleys, and the rivers; just as well as the customs, the vices, the virtues and beliefs, they termed a part of the structure of the country and of the race. They were as immortal as the glebe and as the blood.

Such was the country, such was the race, visited by this New Messiah, of whom the old peasant had related the life and miracles. Who was this man? An ascetic, ingenuous and innocent as Semplice, the worshipper of the sun? A cunning and covetous charlatan, who was trying to play upon the credulity of his devotees for his own profit? Who, really, was this man who, from the border of a small river, could gather, by his name alone, multitudes from both near and far, induce mothers to desert their children, awaken in the souls of the most ignorant the visions and the voices of another world?

And, once more, George evoked the figure of Oreste, attired in his red tunic, going up the little, sinuous river, where, beneath the endless shivering of the poplars, a stream of water ran over a bed of polished sand.

"Who knows," he thought, "if this unexpected revelation will not be my salvation? In order that I should be myself again, in order that I should recognize my true essence, do I not need to put myself in immediate contact with the race from which I have sprung? In burying again the roots of my being in the natal soil, shall I not suck up a pure and revivifying sap, which will have the power to expel all that is false and heterogeneous in me, all that I have consciously and unconsciously received by a thousand contagions? Just now, I do not seek the truth; I seek only to recuperate my own substance, to replace in myself the characters of my race, so as to strengthen them and render them as intense as possible. In thus harmonizing my soul with the diffused soul, I shall recover that equilibrium which I lack. For the intellectual man, the secret of equilibrium is to know how to transport the instincts, the wants, the tendencies, and the fundamental sentiments of his race to a superior order."