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Title: The Virgins of the Rocks
Author: D'Annunzio, Gabriele
Language: English
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ROCKS ***
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
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and text in bold like =this=.
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has been kept.
Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.
* * * * *
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH
_Uniform with this Volume._
=Pall Mall Gazette.=--'A masterpiece. The story holds and haunts
one. Unequalled even by the great French contemporary whom, in his
realism, D’Annunzio most resembles, is the account of the pilgrimage
to the shrine of the Virgin by the sick, deformed, and afflicted. It
is a great prose poem, that of its kind cannot be surpassed. Every
detail of the scene is brought before us in a series of word-pictures
of wonderful power and vivid colouring, and the ever-recurring refrain,
'Viva Maria! Maria Evviva!’ rings in our ears as we lay down the book.
It is the work of a master, whose genius is beyond dispute.’
=Daily Telegraph.=--'The author gives us numerous delightful
pictures, pictures of Italian scenery, simple sketches, too, of
ordinary, commonplace, innocent lives. The range of his female portrait
gallery is almost as wide and varied as that of George Meredith. His
Ippolita, his Marie Ferrès, his Giuliana Hermil, live as strong and
vivid presentments of real and skilfully contrasted women. _The
Triumph of Death_ ends with a tragedy, as it also begins with one.
Between the two extremes are to be found many pages of poetry, of
tender appreciation of nature, of rare artistic skill, of subtle and
penetrative analysis.’
=Daily News.=--'The close of the tragedy is swift and haunting.
It is impossible to overpraise the art. Every page is enriched with
descriptive passages of effects of nature, of music, of art, that
arrest the imagination and linger in the memory. In his words seem
entangled the very breath and sunshine of Italy--its translucent
moonlight skies, its incomparable horizons. It is difficult by
quotation to do justice to the author’s power of giving the vivid
impression of a scene.’
=Daily Chronicle.=--'The little effects of landscape are
skilfully touched in and harmonised with the emotion of the moment.
The incidental pictures of peasant life are most interesting, and the
terrible pandemonium at the shrine of Casalbordino is described with
Zolaesque vigour.’
=Scotsman.=--'The imaginative and penetrative force, the eloquence
and the artistic skill, are beyond question.’
=Westminster Gazette.=--'For a vivid and searching description
of the Italian peasant on his religious side, written with knowledge
and understanding, these pages could hardly be surpassed. We see
their Paganism, and their poverty, and their squalor, yet also that
imaginative temper which lends a certain dignity to their existence.
The narrative is remorseless ... yet it is rich and full of atmosphere.
M. D’Annunzio has a tender eye for natural detail; the landscape of
Italy, its flowers and trees, kindle him to genuine poetry. We are left
at the close of his story with a feeling that something like genius is
at work. This book is one which will not yield to any simple test. It
is a work of singular power, which cannot be ignored, left unread when
once started, or easily banished from the mind when read.’
=The Morning Post.=--'It compels attention for its intense and
minute “realism” in the presentation of the relations of the man and
the woman, and equal intensity and minuteness in the description of
things in general.’
THE CHILD OF PLEASURE
_Uniform with this Volume._
=Literature.=--'For the work of a man of twenty-five, this book is
nothing less than marvellous. There is no stumbling or hesitation in
it. The command of language, the confidence of thought, the knowledge
of character and sensation, displayed by D’Annunzio, at an age when the
majority of novelists and poets have been groping in the dark for style
and substance, are ever awe-inspiring. D’Annunzio began his career as a
writer of verse; his prose is written with the delight in language, the
love of words, of a poet.’
=Manchester Guardian.=--'Wonderfully absorbing, for it is written
with a strange psychological intelligence, it is full of vivid
descriptions, vehement narrative, and contains pages of rare beauty
in which an ideal language really evokes the moods of the soul that
it interprets. There is in the novel some lovely verse which has been
rendered with rare felicity by Mr. Symons.’
=Daily Graphic.=--'The wonderful beauty of the descriptions,
the wealth of colour, and most of all the realisation of a certain
emotional pleasure which the contemplation of the beautiful produces in
some natures, this is all so finely given, that if only as a study of
human character the work would be interesting. But the greatest merit
of the book is the poetic beauty and richness of the language, which
makes it a glowing poem in prose.’
THE VICTIM
_Uniform with this Volume._
=The Pall Mall Gazette.=--'_The Victim_ will most certainly not lessen
the enthusiasm of the English cult of D’Annunzio; it will, and should,
attract new admirers. No word but genius will fit his analysis of the
mental history of the faithless husband.... The genius of D’Annunzio
is shown alike in the bold directness of the conception, and the
perfection with which he works out every mental detail that follows
therefrom, and compels every sentence to do its full share of the work
without effort. It is a gloomy, saddening book, but a great one.’
=The Daily Chronicle.=--'The book contains many descriptive passages
of rare beauty, passages which by themselves are lovely little prose
lyrics. It is a story of a terrible experience told by the man who had
endured it. It is therefore a self-revelation; the revelation of the
sort of self that D’Annunzio delineates with a skill and knowledge so
extraordinary. The soul of the man, raw, bruised, bleeding, is always
before us.’
=The Daily Mail.=--'The vivid imagination of D’Annunzio’s novels, their
power of analysis, their grip of human emotions, and their grim truth,
are beyond dispute. In _The Victim_ there is the same quality of genius
that was so readily recognisable in _The Triumph of Death_ and in _The
Child of Pleasure_, and in reading it one is impressed anew with the
young author’s precise knowledge of life, his skill in interpretation,
and his earnestness. The whole narrative is so hauntingly real, that
one cannot put it aside until the end is reached.’
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD ST.
The Virgins
of the Rocks
THE WORKS OF
Signor Gabriele D’Annunzio
I
The Romances of the Rose
THE CHILD OF PLEASURE. (Il Piacere.)
THE VICTIM. (L’Innocente.)
THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH. (Il Trionfo della Morte.)
II
The Romances of the Lily
THE VIRGINS OF THE ROCKS. (Le Vergini delle Rocce.)
THE PRODIGY. (La Grazia.)
THE ANNUNCIATION. (L’Annunziazione.)
III
The Romances of the Pomegranate
FERVOUR. (Il Fuoco.)
THE DICTATOR. (Il Donatore.)
THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. (Il Trionfo della Vita.)
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
The
Virgins of the Rocks
Translated from the Italian of
Gabriele D’Annunzio
By Agatha Hughes
'_Io farò una finzione, che significherà cose grandi._’
LEONARDO DA VINCI
[Illustration]
London
William Heinemann
1899
_All rights reserved_
PROLOGUE
“_Una cosa naturale vista in un grande specchio._”
LEONARDO DA VINCI.
With these mortal eyes I beheld within a brief space of time three
peerless souls unfold and blossom, and then wither away and perish one
by one: the most beautiful, most passionate, and most miserable souls
ever embodied in the latest descendants of a haughty race.
From the scenes where their desolation, their pride, and their grace
wandered every day, clear and terrible thoughts came to me, such as
the most ancient ruins of illustrious cities had never suggested. In
hopes of unravelling the mystery of their strange ascendency, I used
to explore the depths of the vast ancestral mirrors, where, often
unnoticed by themselves, their three figures were reflected bathed in
a pallor like that which heralds dissolution after death; and I gazed
long and earnestly at the old, worn-out things which they touched with
their chilled or fevered hands, using the same gestures perhaps as had
been used by other hands long since crumbled into dust.
Was it thus, indeed, that I knew them in the tedious monotony of daily
life, or are they only creations of my yearning desire and perplexity?
It was thus, indeed, that I knew them in the tedious monotony of
daily life, and yet they are also creations of my yearning desire and
perplexity.
That fragment of the web of my life, unconsciously woven by them, is
of such priceless value to me, that I would fain embalm it in the
strongest of spices to prevent it from becoming faded or destroyed in
me by Time.
Therefore I now try the power of art.
Ah! but what magic could impart the coherency of tangible and durable
matter to that spiritual texture which the three prisoners wove in the
barren monotony of their days, and embroidered little by little with
images of the noblest and most heart-rending things in which human
passion has ever been hopelessly reflected?
Unlike the three ancient sisters, because victims rather than daughters
of necessity, they seemed nevertheless, as they wove the richest
zone of my life, to be preparing the destiny of him who was to come.
Together they toiled, scarcely ever accompanying their labour with
a song, but less rarely shedding visible tears--tears in which the
essence of their unexhausted, cloistered souls was sublimated.
And because from the first hour that I knew them a dark cloud had
overhung them, a cruel decree had struck them to the heart, and left
them discouraged and gasping, and ready to die--all their attitudes
and gestures and lightest words seemed to me heavy with a meaning of
which they, in their profound unconsciousness, were ignorant.
Bending and breaking as they were beneath the weight of their own
maturity, like autumn trees overladen with bounteous fruit, they were
unable either to sound the depth of their misery or to give voice to
it. Their anguished lips revealed to me only a small portion of their
secrets. But I could understand the ineffable things spoken by the
blood flowing in the veins of their beautiful bare hands.
“_E il ricettacolo delle virtù sarà pieno di sogni e vane speranze._”
LEONARDO DA VINCI.
The hour which preceded my arrival in the ancestral garden, where they
awaited me, seems to me--as I see it in imagination--illuminated with a
light of unaccustomed poetry.
To him who knows what slow or sudden fertilisations, what unexpected
transfigurations, are possible to an intense soul communicating with
other souls in the vicissitudes of this most uncertain life--to him
for whom the whole dignity of existence lies in exerting or submitting
to a moral force, and who approaches his kind with a secret anxiety to
dominate or be dominated--to every man who is curious about the inner
mystery, who is ambitious of spiritual power, or feels the need of
slavery, no hour has such a charm as that in which he moves forward,
with a vague anticipation, to meet the living Unknown and Infinite, a
dim world which he will either conquer, or by which he will be absorbed.
I was about to enter an enclosed garden. There the three virgin
princesses were awaiting the friend who had been absent so long, him to
whom, as their contemporary in age, they were bound by recollections
of childhood and adolescence, him who was sole heir to a name no less
ancient and distinguished than their own. And thus they were awaiting
the return of an equal, of a sojourner in great cities, one who should
bring them a breath of that larger life which they had renounced.
And each one of them perhaps in her secret heart was awaiting the
Bridegroom.
* * * * *
This time of waiting appears to me vehement in its anxiety when I think
of the bare and gloomy solitude of the house in which, until that
day, they had languished, their beautiful hands overflowing with the
treasures of youth, surrounded by a phantom pomp of existence called up
by their mother’s delirium to people the emptiness of the vast mirrors.
There, as if in twilight pools, the raving soul of the mother was wont
to be immersed. On the infinite distance of those colourless expanses,
had not each one of the maidens beheld the apparition of the youthful,
ardent figure of the Bridegroom who was to tear her from this obscure
decay, and carry her away in a whirlwind of delight?
Thus each one waited anxiously within her enclosed garden for the
coming of him who was only after all to delude her, to watch her perish
without possessing her.
“Ah! which of us will be the elect?”
Never perhaps--so I think--were their beautiful dim eyes so
earnestly strained as at that hour; those eyes dimmed by melancholy
and weariness, the light of inquiry quenched in them by too long
familiarity with never-changing objects: eyes dimmed by mutual pity,
reflecting the forms of familiar things without mystery or variety, in
hard outlines and lifeless colouring.
And suddenly each of them perceived in the other a new creature, armed
for combat.
* * * * *
I know not if there be anything sadder than these lightning-like
revelations made to tender hearts by the desire for happiness. The
virtuous sisters breathed in the same circle of sorrow; the same
destiny weighed upon them; and during the evenings, heavy with anxiety,
one of them from time to time would lay her brow on the shoulder or the
breast of another, while the darkness effaced the diversity of their
faces, and fused their three souls in one. But when the prophesied
guest--to their waiting hearts already appearing with the gestures
of the lover who elects and who promises--was about to set foot on
their deserted threshold, they lifted up their heads with a thrill,
and loosed their clasped hands, and exchanged a look which had the
violence of a sudden flash of lightning. And while from the depth of
their troubled souls there welled up an unknown feeling which had none
of the old sweetness, that one look brought them consciousness at
last of all their waning grace, of the contrast between their three
figures coloured by the same blood, of the spirit of night lurking in
the mass of hair heaped up like a load on the nape of a white neck, of
the marvellous persuasion expressed by the curve of a silent mouth, of
the enchantment woven like a net by the ingenuous frequency of some
inimitable gesture, and of every other magic power.
And a dim instinct of strife dismayed them.
Thus do I picture to myself those who were waiting for me in that
glowing hour.
The first breath of spring, faintly warm, which had touched the dry
summits of the rocks, was caressing the brows of the anxious maidens.
Within the great cloister, carpeted with jonquils and violets, the
fountains repeated the melodious accompaniment which for centuries
the waters had made to the thoughts of voluptuousness and of wisdom
expressed in the leonine verses on the pediment. On certain trees and
on certain bushes the delicate leaves were shining as though coated
with gum or diaphanous wax. The ancient and immovable things of time
which could only decay were touched with an indefinable softness,
communicated to them by the things that had power to renew themselves.
“Ah, which of us will be the chosen one?”
The three sisters, who had secretly become rivals in face of this
deceptive offer of apparent life, composed their attitudes according to
the inward rhythm of their natural beauty, which time had already begun
to threaten. Perhaps not till that day had they understood that beauty
in its true sense; just as a sick person, hearing the unaccustomed
sound of the blood beating in the ear which presses the pillows, for
the first time understands the portentous music which sustains his
feeble frame.
But perhaps in them this rhythm had no words.
Nevertheless, I can now distinctly hear the words of that rhythm within
me, strengthening the pure outlines of those ideal figures.
“A boundless desire for slavery makes me suffer,” says Massimilla
silently, as she sits on the stone seat, her hands, with fingers
interwoven, clasped round her weary knee. “I have not the gift of
communicating happiness; but my whole being, more than any other
creature, more than any inanimate thing, is ready to become the perfect
and perpetual possession of a master.
“A boundless desire for slavery makes me suffer. I am devoured by an
unquenchable yearning to give myself up entirely, to belong to a higher
and stronger being, to dissolve myself in his will, to burn like a
holocaust in the fire of his great soul. I envy the frail things which
lose themselves, which are swallowed up in an abyss, or carried away
by a whirlwind; and I gaze often and long at the drops of water which
fall into the great basin, and hardly awake the slightest smile on its
surface.
“When a perfume envelopes me and vanishes, when a sound reaches me and
dies out, sometimes I feel myself grow pale and almost faint away, for
it seems to me that the aroma and the harmony of my life are tending to
the same evanescence. And yet sometimes my little soul is straitened
within me like a knot. Who shall untie it and absorb it?
“Ah me! perhaps I should not know how to console him in his sadness;
but my dumb and anxious face should be always turned towards his, quick
to perceive hope reviving in his secret heart. Perhaps I should not
know how to let fall on his silence those rare syllables, seeds of the
soul, which in a moment can generate a boundless dream; but no faith
in the world should surpass the ardour of my faith as I listened, even
when the things I heard were such as must remain inaccessible to my
intellect.
“I am she who listens, admires, and is silent.
“From my birth I bear on my forehead between my eyebrows the sign of
attention.
“I have learned from the calm and intensity of statues the immobility
of harmonious attitude. I can keep my eyes open and turned upwards for
a long time, because my eyelids are light.
“The shape of my lips forms the living and visible image of the word
'Amen.’”
* * * * *
“I suffer,” says Anatolia, “from a virtue within me which is wasting
itself uselessly. My strength is the last support of a solitary ruin,
whereas it might safely guide the current of a river full of all life’s
abundance from its source to the sea.
“My heart is inexhaustible. All the sorrows of the world could never
succeed in wearying its throbs; the fiercest violence of joy could
not break it, nor can it be weakened by this long and slow grief. A
vast multitude of thirsty creatures might drink of the well of its
tenderness without exhausting it.
“Ah! why should fate condemn me to this narrow duty, to this slow
torture? Why should she forbid me that sublime union for which my heart
yearns?
“I could guide the soul of a man up to that highest sphere where
the value of the act and the splendour of the dream converge to the
selfsame apex; from the depths of his unconsciousness I could extract
unseen energies which lie hidden like ore in the veins of rough stone.
“The most hesitating of men would feel secure by my side; he who had
strayed from the light would once more see a steady beacon at the end
of his path; he who had been buffeted about and maimed would become
healthy and whole again. My hands know how to bind up wounds, and how
to tear the bandages off heavy eyelids. When I stretch them out--my
purest heart’s-blood flows magnetically to the tips of my fingers.
“I possess the two supreme gifts which enrich life, and prolong it
beyond the illusion of death: I fear no suffering, and I feel the
imprint of eternity on my thoughts and acts.
“And therefore I am troubled by a desire to create--to become through
love her who propagates and perpetuates the ideal qualities of a race
favoured by Heaven. I could nourish the superhuman within me.
“Once in a dream I kept mysterious watch a whole night long over the
sleep of a child. While with deep-drawn breaths his body lay slumbering
I upheld his soul in my hands, and it was tangible like a globe of
crystal, and my breast swelled with marvellous premonitions.”
* * * * *
Violante says: “I am humbled. When I felt the mass of my hair weigh
upon my brow, I fancied myself to be wearing a crown, and beneath that
regal burden my thoughts wore a purple hue.
“My childhood’s memories are all lit up by visions of fire and
slaughter. Blood ran before my innocent eyes; my delicate nostrils
breathed the odour of unburied corpses. A young and eager queen, hunted
from her throne, took me in her arms before she departed into an
exile from which there was no return. From that time, therefore, the
splendour of great and tragic destinies hangs over my soul.
“In my dreams I have lived a thousand lives of magnificence; I have
passed through all sovereignties as safely as one who retraces a
well-known path; I have discovered in the aspect of the most dissimilar
things secret analogies with the aspect of my own form, and by hidden
arts have pointed them out for man to wonder at; and I have found out
how to compel light and shade, as truly as robes and jewels, to form
the divine and unforeseen adornment of my decline.
“Poets saw in me the ideal apparition in whose lineaments the highest
mystery of life is expressed--that mystery of beauty which has been
revealed in mortal flesh at intervals of long ages, through all the
imperfection of innumerable generations. And they thought: 'This is
doubtless the perfected image of that idea of which the peoples of
the earth have had an intuition from the beginning, and which artists
have unceasingly invoked in poems, in symphonies, on canvas, in clay.
Everything in her is expressive, everything is a symbol. The lines of
her form speak a language whose eternal truth would make him that could
understand it like unto a god; and her slightest movements produce
within the contours of her body ineffable music like the harmony of
midnight skies.’
“But now I am humbled--deprived of my kingdoms. The fire in my blood
is growing paler and dying out. I shall vanish away, less fortunate
than the statues which testified to the joy of life on the brows of the
cities of the past. For ever unknown, I shall dissolve away, whereas
they will endure in the safe keeping of mould and darkness among the
roots of the flowers, and some day, when unburied, they will seem to
the ecstatic soul of kneeling poets as great as the gifts of earth.
“I have now dreamed every dream, and my hair weighs heavier on my brow
than a hundred crowns. I have dazed myself with perfumes. I love to
linger near the fountains as they go on eternally telling the same
tale. Through the thick locks of hair which cover my ears I seem to
hear time ebbing away on the monotonous waters.”
* * * * *
Thus when I evoke them do the three princesses speak within my soul,
as they wait for the irrevocable hour. Thus, perhaps, believing that a
messenger of life had appeared at the gates of their closed garden, did
each one recognise her own charm, display her own seductiveness, revive
her own hope, quicken the dream within her which had almost died away.
O Hour! lit up by grand and solemn poetry! Most brilliant Hour in which
all possibilities emerged and shone on the inward heaven of the soul!
I
“_Non si può avere maggior signoria che quella di sè medesimo._”
LEONARDO DA VINCI
“_E se tu sarai solo, tu sarai tutto tuo._”
Ibid
After the inevitable tumult of early youth had been controlled, the
vehemence of conflicting desires defeated, and a barrier raised against
the confused and multifold overflow of sensations, I had sought
during the momentary silence that ensued on my consciousness to find
out whether life might not become something different from the usual
exercise of the faculties of adaptation to changing circumstances; that
is to say, whether my will might not be able, by means of selection and
exclusion, to build up some new and artistic work out of the elements
which life had already stored up within me.
I felt assured, after some self-examination, that my consciousness had
reached that arduous point when it becomes possible to appreciate this
too simple axiom: The world represents the sensibility and the thought
of a few superior men who created it, and in course of time have
enlarged and adorned it, and who in the future will continue to enlarge
and adorn it more and more. The world, as it appears to us to-day, is
a magnificent gift from the few to the many, from free men to slaves,
from those who think and feel to those who work. And then I recognised
my own highest ambition in the desire to bring some ornament, to add
some new value to this human world which is being eternally embellished
with beauty and sorrow.
Face to face with my own soul, I thought again of that dream which came
to Socrates several times over, each time taking a different form, but
always urging him to fulfil the same mission: “O Socrates, compose and
cultivate music.” Then I learned that the real duty of a man of worth
is to discover in the course of his existence a series of harmonies,
varied indeed, but controlled by one dominant motive, and bearing the
impress of one style. And so it appeared to me that the ancient sage,
who excelled in the art of raising the human soul to its utmost degree
of vigour, might teach a great and efficacious lesson to our own age.
By the study of himself and his neighbours, this man discovered what
inestimable benefits assiduous discipline bent always to a fixed
purpose can confer upon life. His supreme wisdom seems to me most
resplendent in this, that he did not place his Ideal out of the
reach of daily practice, beyond the sphere of necessary realities,
but that he made it the living centre of his being, and deduced his
own laws from it; and, in accordance with these laws, he developed
rhythmically throughout the course of years, exercising with calm pride
such rights as they permitted him, and separating--he a citizen of
Athens under the tyranny of the Thirty, and under the tyranny of the
plebeians--deliberately separating his moral existence from that of
the city. He desired, and he was able to preserve himself for himself
until death. “I will be obedient to God only,” meant, “I will be
obedient only to the laws of that genius to which, in order to fulfil
my conception of order and beauty, I have subjected my free nature.”
Far more subtle as an artist than Apelles or Protogenes, he was able to
trace with a firm hand the complete image of himself in one continuous
line. And the sublime joy of the last evening came to him, not from the
hope of that other life which he had spoken of in his discourses, but
rather from the vision of his own image, made one with death.
* * * * *
Ah, why cannot he live again on Latin soil, this Master who understood
with such profound and hidden art how to awaken and stimulate all the
energies of intellect and soul in those who approached to listen to him?
A strange melancholy used to fall over me in my youth when, reading
the Dialogues, I tried to picture to myself that circle of eager and
anxious disciples surrounding him. I used to admire the handsome ones,
those dressed in the richest garments, and on whom his round and
prominent eyes--those _new_ eyes of his, in which there was a look
_peculiar to himself_--rested oftenest. My imagination prolonged
the adventures of the strangers who came to him from afar, like the
Thracian Antisthenes, who travelled forty stadia a day to hear him,
and like Euclides, who--the Athenians having forbidden the citizens of
Megara to enter Athens, and decreed the worst of punishments for the
transgressors--dressed himself in woman’s clothes, and thus clothed and
veiled, left his own city towards evening, and made a long journey in
order to be present at the discourses of the Sage; then at dawn went on
his way again in the same disguise, his breast filled with unquenchable
enthusiasm. And I felt touched by the fate of the beautiful Elian
youth Phaedo, who, after having been made a prisoner of war in his own
country, and sold to the keeper of a house of ill-fame, escaped to
Socrates, and by his means obtained redemption and admission to the
feasts of pure thought.
It seemed to me, indeed, that this genial master surpassed the Nazarene
in generosity. Perhaps the Hebrew, if his enemies had not slain him
in the flower of his years, would at last have shaken off the weight
of his sadness, found new savour in the ripe fruits of his Galilee,
and pointed out a different ideal of good to his followers. The Greek
philosopher had always loved life; he loved it, and taught men to
love it. Nearly infallible as a prophet and seer, he welcomed all
souls in which his penetrating glance had discovered any force, and
in each one he developed and elevated that natural force, so that all
those inspired by his fire revealed themselves in the power of their
diversity. The highest value of his method was that very result of
which his enemies accused him: that from his school--where met honest
Crito and Plato, the follower of Urania, and the raving Apollodorus,
and the kindly Theætetus, who is like a noiseless river of oil--there
went forth also the luxurious Cyrenian, Aristippus, and Critias, the
most violent of the Thirty Tyrants, and the other tyrant Charicles, and
that marvellous breaker of laws, Alcibiades, who put no limit to his
premeditated violence. “My heart leaps when I hear his discourses far
more than at the sound of the Corybantes,” said the son of Clinia, like
a graceful wild animal crowned with ivy and violets, at the close of
a banquet where the guests had received from Silenus’ mouth the grand
initiation of Diotima. No fairer wreath of praise was ever woven to
deify any man upon earth.
* * * * *
Now, what were the energies stimulated in me by this master? What
harmonies did he lead me to find?
At first he captivated me by his singular faculty of feeling the
fascination even of evanescent beauty, of making, with a certain
restraint, distinctions among ordinary pleasures, and of recognising
the value which the idea of death confers upon the grace of earthly
things.
Pure and austere as he was in the act of speculation, he yet possessed
such exquisitely fine senses that they might almost be called the
skilled artists of his sensations.
No guest at any of the banquets--according to Alcibiades, an excellent
judge--knew so well how to enjoy them as he. At the beginning of the
banquet of Xenophon, he, with the others, contemplates the perfect
beauty of Autolycus in long silence, almost as if he recognised in it
some superhuman presence. Afterwards he discourses, with subtle taste,
of perfumes, dancing, and drinking, not without vivid images to adorn
his discourse, as becomes a sage and a poet.
Thus, while contending with Critobulus in jest for the palm of beauty,
he uttered these words: “Since my lips are thicker, thinkest thou not
that my kiss must be softer than thine?” He advised the Syracusan,
who gave a performance there of dancing, in which a flute-player, a
marvellous dancing-girl, and a boy harpist took part, not to force the
three young bodies to unnatural efforts and into dangerous postures,
which give no pleasure to the spectator, but to leave it to their
youthful freshness, accompanied by the sound of the flute, to fall into
such attitudes as belong to the Nymphs, the Graces, or the Hours as
they are commonly painted. And so to the disorder which only amazes he
opposes the order which pleases, and stands revealed once again as a
cultivator of music and a master of style.
That which in days gone by touched me more than anything else were his
last words to a beautiful frail creature whom he loved. They touch
me still, for my soul loves now and then to slacken its tension in
the voluptuous sadness and passionate perplexity which the sense of
continual change, continual passing away, continual decay, is apt to
produce in a life adorned by the noblest culture.
In the dialogue of the last evening I am not so much moved by the
scene where Crito, charged by him who was to administer the hemlock,
interrupts the condemned man’s discourse, and admonishes him not to
heat himself if he wishes the poison to take rapid effect, and the
brave man smiles and goes on with his inquiry; nor is the musical
simile of the swan magicians and their harmonious joy so dear to me;
nor am I so amazed by those last moments, when in brief actions and
brief sayings this man fulfils his ideal of perfection so clearly, and,
like an artist who has given the finishing touch to his work, gazes
contentedly at his own image--a miracle of style--destined for ever to
remain immortal upon earth; I am not touched by any of these as I am
by that unexpected pause which follows the doubts opposed by Cebes and
Simmias to the certainty displayed by the eloquent master.
It was a profound pause, during which all those souls were suddenly
blinded and cast, as it were, into an abyss after the ray of light
thrown upon the great Mystery by him who was about to enter it had
suddenly died out.
The master guessed the sadness produced among his faithful followers
by this sudden gloom, and the wings of his thought soon spread again.
Reality appeared to him through the medium of the senses, and held him
back for a while in the field of the finite and the perceptible. He
felt time fly, life flow on. Perhaps his ears caught some sound from
the stately city, perhaps his nostrils inhaled the perfume of the early
summer just approaching as his eyes rested on Phaedo with the beautiful
hair.
Seated on his bed, with Phaedo beside him on a low stool, he laid his
hand on the head of his disciple, and caressed him and stroked the
hair on his neck, for it was a habit of his thus to let his fingers
stray playfully in that thick young forest. Still he did not speak, so
intense was his emotion, and so chequered with delight. Through this
beautiful and ephemeral living being he was communicating once more
with that earthly life in which he had attained his perfection, in
which he had realised his ideal of virtue; and perhaps he felt that
there was nothing beyond, that this finished existence of his was
sufficient to itself, that its prolongation in eternity was only--like
the halo of a star--an illusion produced by the extraordinary radiance
of his humanity. Never had the locks of the young Elian been so
sublimely precious to him. He was enjoying them for the last time, for
he had to die; indeed, he knew that next day those locks would be cut
off in sign of mourning. At last he said--and his disciples had never
known such a tone in his voice before--he said: “To-morrow, oh Phaedo,
thou wilt cut off these beautiful locks.” And the youth answered: “So
it seems, oh Socrates.”
* * * * *
This sentiment--which I at once absorbed and exalted within me as I
read the episode for the first time in the Platonic dialogue--became
afterwards by means of analogy so complex and so familiar to my mind,
that I made it the open or concealed theme of that music to which I
wished to hearken.
In this way the Ancient Sage taught me the commemoration of death in
a manner conformable to my nature, that I might find a rarer value
and a graver significance in things near at hand. And he taught me
to seek and discover in my own nature genuine virtues and genuine
defects, that I might arrange both in accordance with a premeditated
design, striving with patient care to give a seemly appearance to the
latter, and to raise the former upwards towards the supreme perfection.
And he taught me to exclude everything which was discordant with my
ruling idea, everything which could alter the lines of my design,
which could slacken or interrupt the rhythmical development of my
thought. And he taught me to discern with sure intuition those souls
over whom to exercise benevolence or mastery, or from whom to obtain
some extraordinary revelation. And at last he communicated to me also
his faith in the _dæmon_, which was none other than the mysteriously
significant power of Style, inviolable by any, even by himself in his
own person.
Full of this teaching and quite alone, I set to work, with the hope of
succeeding, in tracing with precise and strong outlines that effigy
of myself, to whose existence so many remote causes had contributed,
operating from time immemorial through an infinite number of
generations. That virtue of race, which in Socrates’ country was called
_eugeneia_, came out stronger and stronger as my discipline became more
severe; and my pride increased with my satisfaction as I thought how
only too many other souls would have sooner or later revealed their
vulgar essence under the ordeal of that fire. But sometimes from the
very roots of my being--where the indestructible soul of ancestors
slumbers--such positive and vehement fountains of energy would spring
up, that I felt sad as I recognised their uselessness in an epoch when
public life is only a miserable spectacle of meanness and dishonour.
“It is marvellous indeed,” the _dæmon_ used to say to me, “that these
ancient barbaric energies should have been preserved in thee with
all their freshness. They are still beautiful even though they be
inopportune. In another age they would assist in performing the duty
worthy of such as thee; that is to say, the duty of the leader who
points out a certain goal, and guides his followers towards it. As that
day seems far off, do thou now attempt, by condensing these energies,
to transform them into living poetry.”
Very distant indeed that day appeared; for even the arrogance of the
populace was not so great as the cowardice of those who tolerated
and supported it. Living in Rome as I did, I was witness of the most
ignominious breaches of faith, of the most obscene connections which
ever dishonoured a sacred spot. Evil-doers gathered together within the
fatal circle of the divine city as within the precincts of an infamous
forest, and it seemed as though only some magnificent power armed with
ideas more brilliant than past memories could be able nowadays to raise
its head above the monstrous phantoms of empire. Like the overflow
of sewers, the flood of base desires was invading the market-place
and the cross-roads, a flood perpetually swelling and growing more
putrid, never even illuminated by any flame of crooked but titanic
ambition, never even bursting out in a flash of magnificent crime. The
lonely dome on the distant side of the Tiber, inhabited by a soul,
which although senile, yet stood firm in the consciousness of its own
aims, was still the most prominent landmark, contrasted as it was with
another unnecessarily exalted dwelling-place, where a king of warlike
race showed a wonderful example of patience in the fulfilment of the
humble and fatiguing office assigned to him by the decree of the people.
One evening in September, as I stood on that acropolis of the Quirinal
guarded by the twin Tindarides, while a dense crowd was commemorating
with bestial howls a conquest, the frightful extent of which they
could not understand (Rome was looking terrible as a crater under a
conflagration of clouds), I thought to myself: “What visions might
not these conflagrations of the Latin sky kindle in the great heart
of a king? Such a vision that under its weight the gigantic horses of
Praxiteles would bend like twigs. Ah, who will ever be able to embrace
the great Mother and fertilise her with his all-powerful idea? To her
alone--within her womb of stone, which for ages has been the pillow of
Death--to her alone it is given to generate such abundance of life that
the world may be renewed with it again.”
And behind the glittering windows of the royal balcony I saw in
imagination a pale contracted brow, carved like the brow of the
Corsican with the mark of a superhuman destiny.
* * * * *
But what signified this turbid seething of servile passions, seen
through that silence which surrounds Rome with its nine circles like
a river of Tartarus? I was consoled for all my disappointment by this
sublime spectacle of the Campagna strewn with great dead things, where
nothing ever springs up save blades of grass, germs of fever, and
terrible thoughts. “Is there a new nation struggling within the walls
of the city? Ere long a few ashes will be borne to me on the wind. My
barrenness is made of a layer of ashes, some precious and some ignoble.
And the iron for the plough which shall furrow me has not yet been
drawn from the mountain.” This is what the sepulchre of the nations
signified to me.
And yet, though the sight of that voracious desert be a sinister
warning to an unprofitable nation, it can inspire the solitary man
with the wildest intoxication of which the soul is capable. From the
crevices of that soil a feverish vapour ascends like smoke, and works
like a magic philtre in the blood of some men, producing a form of
madness unlike any other.
The young men of the Garibaldian troops, I thought, must have felt
themselves possessed by this madness as they entered the Campagna. They
were suddenly transfigured by a flame which consumed them like dry
wood. And in one here and there that fever magnified his own inward
vision in such a way that he ceased to form part of a compact and
unanimous band, and assumed an individuality of his own, a singularly
warlike aspect, consecrated to a new onward movement. Fair and noble
of race like a virgin hero of the time of Ajax, the type of the old
warlike ideal, strengthened by a spirit of unexampled ardour, which
came to him from the soil he trod, seemed to be renewed in such an one
as he fell.
I envied him that happy fate which was denied to me. Several times
after these inspiring reflections, a furious desire to prove my valour
consumed me, and I would put my horse at some very high piece of ruined
wall, and, the useless danger overcome, I would feel that always and
everywhere I should have known how to die.
I remember as one of the most intense periods in my life an autumn
passed in daily communion with the Latian desert.
Over that theatre, where a drama of races unfolded itself before my
mental vision, there passed a perpetual variety of clouds whose great
fleeting shadows made the commentary on my inward musings. Sometimes
the silence became so heavy, and the odour of death wafted up in my
face from the grass so suffocating, that instinctively I clung closer
to my horse, as though I wished to feel a share in his impetuous
vitality. Then the fine powerful animal would spring forward with
feline agility, and the inextinguishable fire burning in his pure blood
would seem to communicate itself to me. Then for a few minutes I tasted
intoxication. As I followed the line in which I was carried by the
impetus of the gallop and the thoughts in my mind, a line parallel to
the vast skeletons of the aqueducts which crowded the horizon, I felt
the birth and growth within me of an indescribable spirit of fervour--a
mixture of physical impulse, of intellectual pride and of confused
hopes; and my energies were stimulated and multiplied by the presence
of those works of man, of those human witnesses outliving total death,
of those terrible reddened arches which for centuries have risen
unconquered in procession against the menaces of heaven.
Alone, without near relations, without any ordinary ties, independent
of any domestic authority, absolute master of myself and of my goods,
I felt most profoundly in that solitude--more than at any other time
or place--the sense of my progressive and voluntary evolution towards
an ideal Latin type. Day after day I felt my whole nature grow, under
the rigorous discipline of meditation, selection, and exclusion; and
its special characteristics, its distinct peculiarities, become more
marked. The aspect of the country, precise and sober in form and
colour, was a continual example and a continual stimulus to me; it had
an efficacy for my intellect like that of dogmatic teaching. Each group
of lines seemed indeed to be inscribed on the heavens with the pithy
significance of an incisive axiom and the unvarying character of a
single style.
But the marvellous virtue of this teaching was, that although it drove
me to order my inner life with the exactness of a ruled design, it did
not dry up the spontaneous springs of emotion and imagination, indeed
it only stimulated them to greater activity. Of a sudden, some single
thought would become so intense and so ardent within me that it would
possess me almost to delirium, like a phantom created by an illusion;
and by it my whole world would be strewn with shadows and new lights.
A jet of poetry would burst from my inner being, filling my whole soul
with music and ineffable freshness, and causing desires and hopes
to burn higher in a happy flame. Thus sometimes on the Campagna the
autumn sunset would pour out the impalpable lava of its eruption; long
sulphur-coloured streams furrowed the uneven plain; the hollows were
filled with darkness like abysses just opened; the aqueducts caught
fire from base to summit; the whole country seemed to have returned to
its volcanic origin in the dawn of time. Thus sometimes in the morning
the larks would start suddenly out of the soft sparkling grass, singing
as they made their dizzy ascent, like spirits of joy rapt higher and
higher from mortal sight into the purest heaven of blue, and to my
wondering soul the whole dome of heaven seemed to be echoing with their
intoxicating music.
And so this solitude more than any other was able to inspire the degree
of enthusiasm and reasonableness necessary for an ambitious ascetic:
an ascetic in the original meaning of the austere word, desiring, like
the ancient antagonists, to prepare himself by rigid discipline for the
struggles and the conquests of the earth.
“What pillar of fire, what burning desert, what lonely mountain top,
what bottomless cave, what malarious pool, what solitary, barren, or
tragic spot can be surpassed by this place, in the power of kindling
the sacred spark of madness in one who believes himself destined to
engrave on new tables of stone new laws for the religious guidance of
the people?” Thus I used to think while presentiments of forms yet
uncreated arose within me, fostered by that same silence in which so
many extinct forms of our humanity were gathered together. Everything
there is dead, but everything might suddenly come to life again in some
spirit with enough superfluity of strength and heat to accomplish the
prodigy. It is difficult to imagine the grandeur and terror of such
a resurrection. He within whose consciousness it could be realised
would appear to himself and others to be possessed by a mysterious
and incalculable force greater far than that which used to assail the
Pythia of old. Instead of the fury of a god present on the tripod, his
mouth would express that very genius of the races which is the funereal
guardian of innumerable destinies long ago fulfilled. His oracle would
not be merely a chink opened into a world above the senses, but the
sum of all human wisdom mingled with the breath of Earth, that highest
of prophetesses, according to the message of Æschylus. And once again
the multitudes would bend before the divine aspect of his madness; not
as at Delphi, to implore the dark utterances of the ambiguous God, but
to receive the clear answer given by previous existences, that answer
which the Nazarene never gave. He was too illiterate, and the desert
beneath the mountains of Judea on the western bank of the Dead Sea,
in which he chose to find his revelation, was too stony: a place of
rocks and precipices, destitute of foot-prints, blind to all thought.
The solitary youth felt no fear of famishing jackals, but he feared
thought. His pale hand had power to tame savage beasts, but thoughts
as fiery and masterful as those which wander over the Latian desert
would have devoured him. When the bad angel drove him to the top of
the mountain and showed him the fertile land below, and pointed out
the position of the different countries of the world and the deep and
whirling currents of human desire, he closed his eyelids: he would not
see, he would not know. But the great Revealer must extend the horizon
of his consciousness beyond all limits, and embrace within it days and
years, centuries and millenniums. The truth he sets forth must be the
outcome of the whole life lived by men up to the present hour. It must
be a fire in which the ascending powers of many generations may be
absorbed; so that thus harmonised and multiplied, they may move onward
in greater unison and with greater certainty towards an ever purer
ideal.
Sometimes, too, I was haunted by the phantom of him, whom one day
believed to have created King of Rome. “There was lacking,” I used to
think, “even in this most admirable inspirer of heroic feeling, in
this joyful revenger of youthful blood, there was lacking the ascetic
discipline of the sepulchre of the nations. Had he been able even for
a time to turn aside his spirit from the things which pressed upon him
and bend it towards immutable things, he might have discovered some
idea greater than his own mortal person, and might have chosen it to be
ruler of his actions. Then his dream of Latin empire would have grown
closer and weightier and more tenacious, so that the force of events
and himself combined could not have finally dissipated and destroyed it
as they did. But his idea, which was too much bound up with daily life,
too human in fact, was to die with him. He never attained knowledge
of the secret by which man prolongs the efficacy of his action into
all time. The impulses given by the man were as vehement as they
could be, but their propagation was brief and uncertain, because they
originated in a centre of spontaneous powers which were not subject to
any superior conception evolved from a severe order of meditation. And
so his work was not higher than himself, and lasted no longer than the
work of destruction. His destiny was controlled by the old oracles.
The answer given by the Pythia as to the fate of Corinth might, after
thousands of years, serve for him also:--_An eagle has conceived by a
rock, and shall give birth to a fierce lion, greedy for human flesh,
which shall work great slaughter._--He did but obey the prediction,
like the petty tyrant Cypselus. And the King of Rome faded away into
space like a column of smoke.”
Such was the colour of the thoughts awakened in me by the aspect of
a place which--according to Dante’s words--seemed formed by nature
herself for universal empire: _ad universaliter principandum_. And
while Dante’s arguments to prove the divine right of the Roman power
recurred to my memory, the summit of my intellect was occupied by that
motto which the Latin races, if they wish to be born again, would do
well to adopt in its exact and rigid form as the rule of their vital
institutions:--_Maxima nobile, maxima præesse convenit._ It is meet
that the noblest should also be the greatest.
And in the company of that great and tyrannical spirit I used to
think: “Oh, venerable father of our language, thou hadst faith in
the necessity of hierarchies and differences between men; thou didst
believe in the superiority of the virtue transmitted through heredity
in the blood; thou didst firmly believe in a virtue of race which
can by degrees, by one selection after another, elevate man to the
highest splendour of his moral beauty. When thou didst expound the
genealogy of Æneas, thou sawest a manner of divine predestination in
the concourse of blood.” Now, what mysterious concourse of blood, what
vast experience of culture, what propitious harmony of circumstances
shall give birth to the new King of Rome? _Natura ordinatus ad
imperandum_--ordained by nature unto empire--but, unlike any other
monarch, his task will not be to reconfirm or raise the value
which--under the influence of various teachings--the nations have been
used to set upon the things of life; it will rather be to abolish or
invert them. Conscious of the whole significance of those events which
compose man’s history, and familiar with the essence of all the supreme
wills which have directed important movements, he will be capable of
the work of construction, and of throwing out towards the future that
ideal bridge by which the privileged races will at last be able to
cross the abyss now apparently separating them from the power of which
they are ambitious.
And among all the images which the sacred soil suggested to my soul,
this image of the king was the most vivid. Sometimes he almost seemed
to me a created form; and I used to gaze on him eagerly, while sudden
ideas of indescribable beauty flashed across my intellect and faded
away, never perhaps to appear again.
* * * * *
Thus the Roman Campagna with its severe teaching strengthened me
to follow out the perfection of my manhood, to assert my inward
sovereignty, to trace with a firm hand that “line of circumference
from which human beauty is generated,” according to Leonardo’s saying.
And at the close of each day I asked myself: “By what new thoughts
has my treasure been enriched? What new energies have been developed
from my being? What new possibilities have I caught sight of?” And
I wished that every day should bear the impress of my style, should
be distinguished by some sign of vigorous art, by some proud emblem
of victory. My familiarity with Thucydides set before me the example
of those strategists of his, who are constantly making fine, pithy
harangues to their soldiers, then fighting with all their might, and
finally raising a trophy on the field.
_Cui bono?_--was the cry which came from far and wide out of the
mouths of a twilight crowd with voices not unlike eunuchs’.--What
is the meaning, what is the value of life? Why live? Why strive?
All efforts are useless, all is vanity and sorrow. We ought to kill
off our passions one after another, and then extirpate to the very
roots the hope and desire which are the cause of life. Renunciation,
complete unconsciousness, the vanishing away of dreams, absolute
annihilation--that is the final liberation.
They were a miserable race stricken with leprosy reiterating their
dreary complaint. The ancient Persians, as the ever-fresh Herodotus
narrates, used to attribute this foul infirmity to offences committed
_against the Sun_. And these slavish people had indeed offended against
the Sun.
A certain number of them, hoping to be cleansed, had bathed in great
fonts of piety, where they softened and anointed themselves with great
contrition. But the sight of these was quite as repugnant.
I turned away my eyes and ears elsewhere; and my heart-strings throbbed
with proud joy, because my eyes were undimmed by tears, and could
perceive all lines and all colours, because my healthy, watchful ears
could hear all sounds and all rhythms, because my spirit could rejoice
boundlessly in fugitive appearances and know how to cultivate within
itself very different forms of melancholy, how to find the sweetest
value of life in the rapidity of its metamorphoses and in the denseness
of its mysteries. “Oh manifold Beauty of the World,” I used then to
pray, “not to thee alone do my praises ascend; not to thee alone, but
also to my forefathers, to those also who, remote ages ago, understood
how to enjoy thee, and transmitted their fervid and rich blood to me.
Praised be they now and for ever, for the beautiful wounds which they
inflicted, for the beautiful fires they kindled, for the beautiful
goblets they emptied, for the beautiful garments which clothed them,
for the beautiful palfreys they caressed, for the beautiful women
they enjoyed, for all their slaughter, their intoxication, their
magnificence, their luxury, let them be praised; because thus did they
form in me those senses in which thou canst widely and deeply reflect
thyself, oh Beauty of the World, as in five wide and deep seas!”
* * * * *
In the meantime, the poets, discouraged and erring, having exhausted
their store of rhymes in evoking images of other days, in weeping over
their own dead illusions, and in counting the colours of the dying
leaves, were asking, some ironically, some seriously: “What can be our
function now? Are we to exalt universal suffrage in senile rhymes? Are
we to hasten with the breathlessness of hexameters the fall of the
king, the advent of republics, the accession of the people to power?
Is there no demagogue Cleophontes who manufactures _lire_ in Rome, as
in Athens of old? For a modest sum we might persuade the incredulous,
on his very instruments tuned by himself, that power, right, thought,
wisdom, light, are to be found in the masses....”
But not one among them, more generous and more eager than the rest,
arose to answer: “Defend Beauty! That is your only function. Defend the
vision that is within you. Since mortals have now ceased to bear honour
and reverence to the singer scholars of the Muse that favours them,
as Odysseus said, defend yourselves with all your weapons, even with
jests, if such are of more use than invectives. Be careful to sharpen
the point of your scorn with the bitterest poison. Let your sarcasm
have such corrosive strength that it may reach to the very marrow and
destroy it. Brand to the very bone the stupid brows of those who would
put an exact mark on each soul, as on a household utensil, and would
make human heads alike as the heads of nails under the blow of the
hammer. Let your frenzied laughter rise to the very heaven, when you
hear the stablemen of the Great Beast vociferating in the Assembly.
For the sake of the glory of Mind proclaim and demonstrate that their
sayings are not less ignoble than the groans of the flatulent peasant.
Proclaim and demonstrate that their hands--to which your father Dante
would give the same epithet as he gave to the nails of Thais--may be
fit to gather manure, but are not worthy of being raised to sanction a
law in the Assembly. Defend the Thought which they threaten, the Beauty
which they outrage! A day will come when they will attempt to burn the
books, shatter the statues, rip up the canvases. Defend the ancient
generous work of your masters and the future work of your disciples
against the rage of these drunken slaves. Do not despair because ye
are few. Ye possess the supreme knowledge and the supreme power of the
world--the Word. Words may have more murderous power than a chemical
formula. Oppose destruction resolutely with destruction.”
And the patricians, stripped of their authority in the name of
equality, and looked upon as ghosts from a world which has disappeared
for ever; unfaithful, the greater part of them at least, to their
lineage, and ignorant or forgetful of the art of mastery professed
by their forefathers, were also asking: “What can be our function
now? Are we to deceive the age and ourselves by attempting to revive
some slender hope among faded memories of the past, under those
vaulted roofs storied with sanguine mythology, which are too vast for
our restricted breathing? Or must we recognise the great dogma of
Eighty-nine, and open the porticoes of our courts to popular applause,
illuminate our travertine balconies for State festivals, associate with
Jewish bankers, exercise our small share of sovereignty by filling
up the voting ticket with the names of men of the middle classes, of
our tailors, our hatters, our bootmakers, our money-lenders, and our
lawyers?”
A few among them--ill-inclined for peaceful renunciation, elegant
boredom, and barren irony--answered: “Train yourselves as you train
your race-horses, and wait for the opportunity. Learn the method of
asserting yourselves and strengthening your own persons, as you have
learned that of winning on the turf. By strength of will force all
your energies, even your stormiest passions and darkest vices, into a
straight line and towards a definite aim. Be assured that the essence
of personality far exceeds all accessory attributes in value, and that
inward sovereignty is the chief mark of the aristocrat. Believe only
in force tempered by long discipline. Force is the first law of nature;
it is indestructible, not to be abolished. Discipline is the supreme
virtue of the freeman. The world can be based only on force, as truly
in civilised ages as in the epochs of barbarism. If all the races of
the earth were destroyed by another deluge, and new generations were
to arise from the stones, as in the old fable, men would begin to
fight amongst themselves as soon as they had issued from their mother
earth, until one of them the strongest, should succeed in mastering the
others. Wait, therefore, and prepare for your opportunity. Fortunately,
the State built on foundations of popular suffrage and equality,
cemented by fear, is not only an ignoble, but also a precarious
structure. The State ought to be nothing less than an institution
perfectly adapted to promote the gradual elevation of a privileged
class towards an ideal form of existence. Therefore, upon the economic
and political equality to which democracy aspires, you must go on
forming a new oligarchy, a new realm of force; and before long, sooner
or later, you will succeed in taking the reins into your own hands
again, so as to rule the multitude for your own profit. Indeed, you
will have little difficulty in bringing back the common herd to its
obedience. The masses always remain slaves; they have a natural impulse
to stretch out their wrists to the fetters. The sense of liberty will
never to the end of time exist in them. Do not be deceived by their
vociferations and their hideous contortions; but always remember that
the soul of the Multitude is in the power of Panic. It will be your
policy, therefore, when the opportunity comes, to provide yourselves
with cutting whips, to assume an imperious mien, to plan some humorous
stratagem. When the cunning Ulysses was ranging the field to call in
every one to the council, if he came across a noisy plebeian, he used
to chastise him with his sceptre, scolding him thus: 'Silence, silence,
coward, pusillanimous one, thing of naught in the council.’ The noble
demagogue Alcibiades, who was more versed than any in the government
of the Great Beast, began one of his orations on the expedition into
Sicily thus: 'This command, oh Athenians--this command belongs to me
rather than to any one else, and I hold myself worthy of this command.’
But truly there is no teaching more profound and more suitable for you
than that given by Herodotus in the beginning of the book of Melpomene.
Here it is: 'The Scythians, having spent twenty-eight years away from
their own country in ruling over Upper Asia, and desirous, after such a
long interval, to return home, found that to do so involved hardships
no less great than those they had suffered in the Median war. A great
and hostile army barred their entrance. And this came to pass because
the Scythian women, having been left so long without men of their own
race, had given themselves to their slaves. And from the slaves and
the women had sprung a generation of young men who, conscious of their
origin, had set themselves against those who were returning from Media;
and in order to hold the pass, had first of all made an entrenchment
stretching from the mountains of Taurus to the Mæotian marsh, which
is very wide. They then proceeded to repulse the attempted assault of
the Scythians, defending themselves with many deeds of valour; and as,
after various conflicts, the Scythians found they could make no advance
by fighting, one of them began to speak thus: Oh Scythians, why do we
labour thus? By fighting against our slaves we weaken ourselves by the
number of our deaths, and by killing them we only reduce the number of
our future subjects. Wherefore it seems to me fitting that we should
put aside our spears and darts, and that each of us should be armed
only with his horsewhip, and thus we should confront these slaves.
Because up till now, seeing us march against them in arms, they have
no doubt thought themselves our equals, and sons of equals; but when
they see us coming against them wielding whips instead of arms, they
will feel at once that they are our slaves, and they will not dare to
resist us any longer. The Scythians followed this advice; and their
adversaries, thunderstruck by the change, ceased fighting and took to
flight. Thus did the Scythians win back their country.’ Oh ye masters
without mastery, think upon it.”
* * * * *
Perhaps in my busy solitude--although I feared neither sickness, nor
madness, nor death, having within me that tutelary flame of pride, of
thought, and of faith--perhaps there lay hidden beneath my melancholy
a real need for communion with some kindred spirit as yet unknown, or
with some circle of minds disposed to care sincerely and passionately
for those things for which I so passionately cared. It seemed to me
that this need was betrayed by a mental habit I had of casting my
theory of ideas and images into a concrete oratorical or lyrical form,
almost as if for an imaginary audience. Warm bursts of eloquence and
poetry would suddenly flood my being, and silence was at times a burden
to my overflowing soul.
Then, to comfort my solitude, I thought of giving corporeal form to
that _dæmon_ in whom, according to my first master’s teaching, I
believed as the infallible pledge which was to lead me to achieve
the integrity of my moral being. I thought of committing to a noble,
masterful mouth, red with the same blood as mine, the duty of repeating
to me, “Oh thou, be what thou oughtest to be.”
Among the figures of my ancestors one above all others is most dear
to me, and sacred as a votive image. He is the noblest and the most
brilliant flower of my race, represented by the brush of a divine
artist. It is the portrait of Alessandro Cantelmo, Count of Volturara,
painted by Da Vinci between the years 1493 and 1494, at Milan, where
Alessandro, attracted by the unheard-of magnificence of that Sforza
who wished to turn the Lombard city into a _New Athens_, had taken up
his abode with a company of men-at-arms.
There is nothing in the world that I prize so much, nor was treasure
ever guarded with more passionate jealousy. I am never weary of
thanking fortune for having caused such a noble figure to brighten
my life, and for having granted me the incomparable luxury of such
a secret. “If thou possess a beautiful object, remember that every
glance cast on it by another is a usurpation of thy possession. The
joy of possession is diminished when it is divided, therefore do thou
refuse to share it. They say that some one declined to enter a public
museum lest his glance should be mingled with that of strangers. Now,
if thou do indeed possess a beautiful object, enclose it within seven
doors, and cover it with seven veils.” And a veil hangs over the
magnetic face; but the dream in it is so profound, the fire in it is so
powerful, that at times the woven stuff trembles with the vehemence of
the breathing.
And so I gave my _dæmon_ the form of this familiar genius, and in my
solitude I felt him alive with a life far more intense than my own. Had
I not before me by means of the lasting miracle of one of the world’s
greatest revealers--had I not before me an heroic spirit, sprung from
my own stock, and constituted of all the distinctive characteristics of
that lineage which I was so eagerly striving to manifest in myself, and
which in him appeared in such fierce relief as to be almost terrible?
There he is still before me, always the same, yet always new! Such a
body is not the prison of the soul, but its faithful semblance. All
the lines of the beardless face are as precise and firm as those of a
deeply-chiselled bronze; the dark pallor of the skin conceals tough
muscles, wont in moments of anger and desire to stand out clearly with
a fierce tremor; the straight, rigid nose, the bony, narrow chin,
the curved but energetically-locked lips express the boldness of the
will; and his glance is like the flash of a beautiful sword coming
from beneath the shadow of thick and heavy hair, violet-black in hue
like the bunches of grapes on a branch in the burning sun. He stands
immovable, visible from the knees upwards; but the imagination pictures
at once how the strong, flexible legs will start when the enemy
appears, giving a formidable impetus to the beautiful frame. “_Cave,
adsum_”--well does the old device apply to him. He is dressed in very
light armour, evidently inlaid by a most accomplished workman, and his
hands are bare; pale, sensitive hands, yet with something tyrannical,
almost homicidal, about their clear outlines: the left hand is resting
on the Gorgon’s head on his sword-hilt, the right on the corner of a
table covered with dark velvet, of which a fold is visible. Lying on
the table beside the gauntlets and helmet are a statuette of Pallas and
a pomegranate, whose pointed leaf and brilliant flower are growing on
the same stalk as the fruit. Through the opening of a window behind his
head is seen a bare landscape ending in a group of hills, over which
rises a peak, standing solitary as a proud thought; and on a scroll
beneath is this verse--
“Frons viridis ramo antiquo et flos igneus uno tempore (prodigium)
fructus et uber inest.”
Where and by what chance did Alessandro first meet with the Florentine
master, who was at that time attaining the supreme splendour of his
manhood? Perhaps at one of Ludovico’s feasts, full of the marvels
created by the occult arts of the Magician? Or perhaps rather at the
palace of Cecilia Gallerani, where military men discussed the science
of war, musicians sang, architects and painters drew, philosophers
argued about natural science, and poets recited compositions of their
own and of others “in the presence of this heroine,” as Bandello
relates. It is here that I like to imagine their first meeting, about
the time when the favourite of the Moor was already beginning to love
Alessandro secretly.
What a fire of audacious intelligence and of masterful will must
have been apparent in the youth, for Leonardo to be so taken with
him from that very day! Perhaps Alessandro discussed with him, apart
from the others, “the methods of destroying any rock or fortress not
founded on stone,” and grew eager to know the formidable secrets of
this fascinating creator of Madonnas, who surpassed all masters and
makers of instruments of war in the novelty of his ideas. Perhaps in
the course of the argument Leonardo may have uttered one of those deep
sayings of his about the art of life; and looking into the eyes of the
youth on whom silence had fallen, recognised in him a spirit determined
to take everything that can be got out of life, an ambitious man
disposed, instead of following his fate blindly, to attain the mastery
for himself with the help of that science which multiplies the energies
of him who possesses it and concentrates them on the attainment of his
aim. And perhaps the man who was a few years later to become Cæsar
Borgia’s military architect, who was invoking and waiting for some
magnanimous prince to offer him unlimited means of carrying out his
innumerable designs, may have perceived in this curly-headed patrician
the future founder of a royal dynasty, and loved him and placed his
proudest hopes in him.
I like to think that a brief entry in the commentaries of Da Vinci
(who was then busy with studies for the equestrian statue of Francesco
Sforza) refers to the evening of this first meeting: “The penultimate
day of April 1492. Messer Alessandro Cantelmo’s fine jennet: has a good
neck and a very beautiful head.”
After leaving Cecilia’s palace together, they both paused for awhile
in the street, still arguing; and when Leonardo noticed the jennet,
he went up to look at it. As he stroked the beautiful neck, some
involuntary expression escaped him regarding the terrible labour his
insatiable spirit underwent in researches for the monument which
the Moor desired to erect in honour of the fame of his father, the
conqueror of the duchy and the vanquisher of Genoa. With a wide sweep
the creative hand of the artist traced the outline of the Colossus in
the air, making it visible to the youth’s inner vision. The day was
sinking; the hour of spring twilight was trembling on the pinnacles of
the glorious city; a company of musicians passed by singing; and the
horse neighed with impatience. Then the soul of Alessandro swelled with
an heroic sentiment which made him seem like a phantom of the great
captain. “Ah, to set out on my conquests!” he thought, as he vaulted
into the saddle. And then seeing that in reality he was only setting
out on some common affair of daily life, he said suddenly, with a
bitter impulse: “Seemeth it to you, Master Leonardo, that life can be
of any worth to a man of my station?” And Leonardo, who did not marvel
at these unexpected words: “It is everything that the eagle should take
his first flight.” And perhaps the beardless horseman riding away among
his men-at-arms may have seemed to him destined to be a king, “like him
who in the bee-hive is born leader of the bees.”
The following morning a servant brought the jennet to the sculptor as a
gift, with compliments from his master.
Thus do I imagine the beginning of their mutual liberality. The
master rewarded his disciple with the true riches, since “that cannot
be called riches which it is possible to lose.” Like Socrates, he
preferred to have for his disciples those who had beautiful hair
and were richly clothed. Like Socrates, he excelled in the art of
elevating the human soul to its supreme degree of vigour. Certainly
Alessandro was for a time the chosen one in that _Academia Leonardo
Vincii_, where a noble spiritual lineage was developed little by
little under teaching which drew its warmth from the central truth as
from a sun which cannot be darkened. “Nothing can be loved or hated,
unless first there be knowledge of that thing. The love of anything is
child to the knowledge of it. The more certain the knowledge, the more
fervent the love.”
* * * * *
Here and there in Leonardo’s interrupted memoirs one comes across
signs of the passionate curiosity with which the indefatigable
experimentalist used to watch over the precious soul of his young
friend. He had no secrets from him, for he desired to contribute by
all the means in his power towards increasing the accumulated forces
of his soul so as to render its future action in a wider field more
efficacious. He noted down for remembrance: “Speak to Volturara about
a certain way of shooting a dart.” And again: “Show Volturara ways
of raising and letting down bridges, ways of burning and destroying
those of the enemy, and the ways of placing mortar pieces by day and
by night.” Or: “Messer Alessandro wishes to give me Valturio’s _De re
militari_, and the _Décades_, and Lucretius’ _Delle cose naturali_.”
He used to be struck by the terse, proud sayings of the young man, and
noted down some of them: “Messer Alessandro says one must grasp fortune
firmly from the front, since behind she is bald.” And again: “As I
was working at the book on dividing rivers into numerous branches,
and making them fordable, Volturara said boldly: Truly, Cyrus son of
Cambyses understood all that when he chastised a river in that very way
for carrying away a white horse of his.”
One day--so I imagine--they had both been invited to the magnificent
house of Cecilia Gallerani; and Leonardo had transported the souls of
all present by his performance on a new lyre of his own manufacture,
made almost entirely of silver, in the shape of a horse’s skull. During
the pause which followed the applause, the second Sappho ordered a
beautiful little casket, richly inlaid with enamel and gems, the Duke’s
gift, to be brought to her; and she showed it to those present, and
asked them what object was, in their opinion, sufficiently precious to
deserve to be kept in it. Every one expressed a different opinion. “And
you, Messer Alessandro?” asked Madonna Cecilia, with a soft glance.
And he replied audaciously: “Alexander of old chose the most precious
casket among all the treasures of Darius, that which was richer than
aught that eyes had ever beheld, as a shrine for Homer’s _Iliad_.”
Da Vinci immediately noted down this answer in his memoirs, and added:
“One can see that he feeds on the marrow and nerves of lions.”
Another day they had both been invited by the same hostess to her
garden; and Alessandro, after an argument with some of those “famous
spirits,” drew apart, to follow out some new thought which the heat of
the discussion had generated in that pregnant intellect. The beautiful
Bergamese Countess called him several times, but it was long ere he
turned round, for it was long ere he heard the call. Met by a gracious
reproof, or perhaps a stinging remark, he answered, smiling: “He who is
fixed to a star does not look round.”
In the evening Da Vinci noted down this answer also in his memoirs, and
to it added his prophecy: “Soon he will take his first flight, fill the
universe with wonder, fill all writings with his renown, and confer
eternal glory on the place of his birth.”
Perhaps it was that very evening, as he meditated on the intensity and
versatility of that youthful temperament, that his mind, ever inclined
to the mysterious significations of emblems and allegories, hit upon
that beautiful symbol of the pomegranate, including and bearing upon
one stalk the fruit, the pointed leaf, and the flaming flower.
But on the 9th of July in the year 1495, three days after the battle
of Fornovo, he noted down: “Volturara died on the field, as was meet
for one like him. Never did blind steel cut off a brighter hope for the
world.”
Thus lived and died the young hero in whom the purest essence of my
warlike race had seemed to be concentrated. Thus fully was he revealed
to me in the faithful likeness handed down to his distant heir by an
artist who might be called Prometheus.
“O thou,” he seemed to say to me, as with his magnetic glance he took
possession of my soul, “be what thou oughtest to be.”
“For thy sake,” I used to say to him, “for thy sake I will be what
I ought to be; because I love thee, O brilliant flower of my race;
because I desire to place all my pride in obeying thy law, O master.
Thou didst bear within thyself strength sufficient to subjugate the
earth, but thy royal destiny was not to be fulfilled in the age wherein
thou didst first appear. In that age thou wast but the herald and
forerunner of thyself, for thou wast destined to reappear higher up
thy ancient stem in the maturity of future ages, on the threshold of a
world not explored by the warriors, but promised by the wise men: to
reappear as the messenger, the interpreter, and the lord of a new life.
Therefore didst thou suddenly disappear like a demi-god by the banks of
a swollen river, amid the roar of battle and storm, just as the sun was
entering the sign of the Lion. Death did not cut off thy great promise,
but fate willed to alter its marvellous fulfilment. Thy virtue, which
could not then be manifested to the earth by triumphant actions, must
necessarily revive some day in thy still surviving lineage. And may
it be to-morrow! May thy equal be begotten by me! I invoke and await
and prepare the renewal of thy genius with unfailing faith, the while
adoring thy living image, O conqueror and sage, thou who didst lay the
blade of thy beautiful naked sword as a mark in the books of wisdom.”
Thus I used to address him. And under his glance and inspired by him,
not only were my actual energies multiplied, but my task lay clear
before me in definite outlines. “Thou, therefore, shalt labour to carry
out thy own destiny and that of thy race. Thou shalt have before thy
eyes at the same time the premeditated plan of thy existence and the
vision of an existence superior to thine own. Thou shalt live in the
idea that each life being the sumtotal of past lives is the condition
of future lives. Thou shalt not, therefore, look upon thyself only as
the beginning, aim, and end of thy own destiny, but thou shalt feel the
whole value and the whole weight of the inheritance received from thy
ancestors, which thou must transmit to thy descendant countersigned
with the stamp of thy most vigorous characteristics. Let the supreme
conception of thy dignity be founded on the certainty, so sure in
thee, that thou art the preserving link of a multifold energy which
to-morrow, or after the lapse of a century, or at some indefinite time,
may reassert itself in a sublime manifestation. But hope that it may be
to-morrow! Triple, therefore, is thy task, for thou dost possess the
gift of poetry, and must study to acquire the science of words. Triple
is thy task:--by direct methods to conduct thy being to attain the
perfect integrity of the Latin type; to concentrate the purest essence
of thy spirit, and to reproduce in a single and supreme work of art thy
deepest vision of the universe; to preserve the ideal riches of thy
race and thine own individual conquests in a son, who, under paternal
instruction, shall recognise and co-ordinate them in himself, and
shall thus feel worthy of aspiring to the realisation of ever higher
possibilities.”
* * * * *
Then, with the tables of my laws thus clearly set before me, there
came over me not only the sadness of doubt, but an anxiety akin to
fear--a new and horrible anxiety. “If some blind, unforeseen violence
from exterior forces were to shake, or deform, or crush my work! If I
should have to bend and submit to some brutal injury of chance. If one
of those destructive gusts which burst suddenly out of the darkness
should cause the fall of my edifice before its completion.” This fear
came over me during a strange hour of agitation and depression, and
I felt my faith failing me. But soon after I felt ashamed when my
monitor said to me: “Judging from the quality of thy thoughts, thou
seemest to me like one contaminated by the crowd, or in the power of
a woman. See, even passing through the crowd which was gazing at thee
has lessened thee in thine own eyes. Seest thou not that those men
who frequent it become unfruitful as mules? The gaze of the crowd is
worse than a splash of mud; the breath of it is poisonous. Go afar off
while the sewer discharges itself. Go afar off and ponder on that which
thou hast gathered up. Thy hour will come. What fearest thou? Of what
worth would be all this discipline, did it not make thee stronger than
circumstances? Even by this it is sometimes possible to create by
force of will. Therefore go afar off while the sewer discharges itself.
Delay not; let not thyself be contaminated by the crowd, or fall into
the power of a woman. It is true thou wilt have to form an alliance in
order to accomplish one part of the task thou hast assigned to thyself.
But better is it for thee to wait and remain alone; better even to slay
thy hope than to submit body and spirit to unworthy fetters. If the
thing loved is contemptible, the lover is contemptible. Thou must never
forget this saying of thy Leonardo, that, like Castruccio, thou mayest
always be able proudly to reply: 'I have chosen her; she did not choose
me.’”
Justly did this admonition come to me at that time. And without delay I
made ready to depart from the tainted city.
It was a time when the active zeal of destroyers and builders was
raging feverishly over the soil of Rome. With the clouds of dust
a species of madness for lucre seemed to spread like a poisonous
whirlwind, taking hold not only of the men of the labouring classes,
the familiar spirits of lime and bricks, but also of the proudest
heirs of papal families, who till then had looked scornfully at
all intruders from the windows of travertine palaces, which stood
obdurately firm under the crust of ages. One by one these magnificent
families--founded, carried on, strengthened by nepotism and civil
wars--sank lower, slid down into the new mire, went under and
disappeared. Famous fortunes accumulated by centuries of successful
rapine and Mæcenatic luxury were exposed to the risks of the Stock
Exchange.
The laurels and roses of the Villa Sciarra, whose praises had been
sung by the nightingales for such a long succession of nights, were
being cut down to the ground, or survived in a humble position inside
the gates of little gardens surrounding new villas built for grocers.
The gigantic Ludovisi cypresses, those of the Aurora, the very same
which had once spread the solemnity of their ancient mystery over
the Olympian head of Goethe, lay on the ground (I see them always
in imagination as my eyes saw them one November afternoon) side by
side in a row, with the smoke from their naked roots rising up to the
pale heaven above, with their black roots all laid bare, and seeming
still to hold prisoner within their vast intricacies the phantom
of omnipotent life. And those lordly meadows all round, where only
one spring ago violets more numerous than the blades of grass were
springing up for the last time, were now ghastly with white lime-pits,
red heaps of bricks, the creaking of cart-wheels loaded with stones;
while the shouts of the master builders alternated with the hoarse
cries of the carters, and the brutal work which was to occupy places so
long sacred to Beauty and Visions went on rapidly.
It seemed as though a blast of barbarism were blowing over Rome, and
threatening to tear away that radiant crown of patrician villas,
incomparable in the world of memories and poetry. The menace of the
barbarians hung over the very box-trees of the Villa Albani, though
they had seemed as immortal as the Caryatids and the solitude.
The contagion was spreading rapidly everywhere. In the midst of the
incessant current of business, of the ferocious fury of appetites and
passions, of the disordered and exclusive exercise of utilitarian
activity, all sense of decorum had been lost, all respect for the
Past laid aside. The battle for gain was being fought with unbridled,
implacable violence. The arms used were the pickaxe, the trowel, and
bad faith. And from week to week, with almost chimerical rapidity,
enormous empty cages, pierced with rectangular holes, their artificial
cornices coated with shameful stucco, were rising on foundations filled
with heaps of ruins. A species of huge whitish tumour was rising out of
the side of the ancient city and sucking away its life.
And then day after day at sunset--as the quarrelsome bands of workmen
were dispersing to fill the taverns of the Via Salaria and Via
Nomentana--down the princely avenues of the Villa Borghese they drove
in shining carriages, these new favourites of fortune, the stamp of
whose ignoble origin neither hairdresser, nor tailor, nor bootmaker had
been able to remove. One saw them passing to and fro, to the resounding
trot of their bay or their black horses, easily recognisable by the
insolent awkwardness of their attitudes, the embarrassed look of their
rapacious hands imprisoned in gloves always either too large or too
small for them. And they seemed to be saying: “We are the new masters
of Rome. Bow down to us!”
Such, indeed, were the masters of that Rome which seers and prophets,
drunk with the burning fumes of all the Latin blood that has been
shed, have compared to the bow of Ulysses--“One must bend it or die.”
But these very seers, who for so long had shone as stars in the
heroic heaven of their country, before her liberation, had now become
“sordid charcoal, only fit to trace an ugly figure or an unseemly word
upon the wall,” according to the atrocious simile of an indignant
rhetorician. They, too, gave themselves up to selling and bartering, to
legal quibbling and setting of snares, and no one alluded any more to
the destroying bow. And there seemed in truth no prospect of the cry
suddenly arising to terrify them: “O suitors, devourers of other men’s
substance, beware! Ulysses is at hand in Ithaca!”
* * * * *
The best thing to do was to withdraw from the scene for a while. And I
left with my horses and my household gods without taking farewell of
anybody.
For my dwelling-place I had chosen Rebursa, my favourite among my
hereditary estates, as it had been my father’s favourite before me;
it was a suitable retreat for a healthy soul, a country with a rocky
backbone, peculiarly sober in outline and vigorous in style; fit to
welcome and nurse the lordly dream of my ambition, as it had welcomed
and nursed my father’s lofty melancholy after the fall of his king, and
the death of him who, when living, had seemed to be the light of our
house, our surest possession.
Besides, not far from there--at Trigento--I had friends, not forgotten
although not seen for many years, friends to whom I was bound by
grateful memories of childhood and youth. And the thought of seeing
them again cheered my spirit.
At Trigento, in the old baronial palace, surrounded by a garden almost
as vast as a park, lived the Capea Montaga, one of the most illustrious
and magnificent families in the two Sicilies, a family ruined by ten
years’ devotion to the fortunes of their exiled king, and obliged now
to live a retired life on the only estate left to them, in the heart of
the silent province. The old Prince of Castromitrano--who had enjoyed
the highest honours at the Courts of Ferdinand and Francis, and who
had faithfully followed the exile to Rome and across the Alps without
ever renouncing the pomp of happier times--had been dreaming in the
shade for years, and for years waiting in vain for the Restoration;
he was now sinking into the grave with premature old age, while his
children were fading away in the lifeless monotony of their existence.
The madness of the Princess Aldoina alone disturbed this long agony
by throwing over it gleams of the fantastic splendour of the Past.
And nothing could equal the desolation of the contrast between the
miserable reality and the pompous phantoms which issued from the brain
of the mad woman.
This great and dying race added a kind of funereal beauty to the rocky
country for my soul, which was already seeking to absorb all the soul
enclosed within that stony cloister. Already a mysterious presentiment
had arisen from the depths of my being that my destiny was approaching
and mingling with that lonely destiny. And the names of the three
maiden princesses resounded in my memory with a faint magical music:
Massimilla, Anatolia, Violante--names in which there seemed to me to be
something vaguely visible, like a pale portrait behind a clouded glass;
names expressive as faces full of light and shade, in which an infinity
of grace, passion, and sorrow was already apparent to me.
II
“_Grandissima grazia d’ombre e di lumi s’aggiunge ai visi di quelli che
seggono sulle porte di quelle abitazioni che sono oscure...._”
LEONARDO DA VINCI.
I was sincerely glad when I recognised on the road to Rebursa, Oddo
and Antonello Montaga, who had found out the hour of my arrival and
had come to meet me. Both of them embraced me with effusion, delivered
messages of welcome from Trigento, and asked me a thousand questions
at the same moment; they seemed delighted to see me, and still more
delighted when I spoke of my intention of remaining some time in the
country.
“You are going to stay with us!” exclaimed Antonello, as he pressed my
hand almost beside himself with joy. “Then you are sent by God....”
“You must come this very day to Trigento,” said Oddo, interrupting his
brother. “They are all expecting you there. You must come to-day....”
They both seemed to me overcome by a strange, almost feverish
agitation; their gestures were wild and convulsive, their speech rapid
and anxious; they were like two feeble prisoners just set free from an
imprisonment which seems like a terrible dream, whom the first contact
with outward life has disturbed and confused, making them almost dizzy.
The more I looked at them, the more clearly I noticed these strange
signs about their persons; and I began to feel anxious and distressed
about them.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “I don’t know if I can come to-day. I am
weary after so many hours of travelling. But to-morrow....”
I felt a vague desire to be alone, to collect myself, to taste the
quality of the strange melancholy that had suddenly fallen upon me. A
flood of memories rolled towards me from the things around, and the
presence of those two unfortunate beings prevented my receiving it.
“Then,” said Oddo, “you will come to luncheon with us to-morrow. Do you
consent?”
“Yes, I will come.”
“You cannot imagine how eagerly they are expecting you over there.”
“Then you had not forgotten me?”
“Oh, no! It is you who had forgotten us.”
“You had forgotten us,” repeated Antonello with a somewhat distorted
smile. “You were right. We are buried.”
The tone of his voice struck me more than his words. His tones,
gestures, looks, and all his actions had a singular intensity, like
those of a man stricken by a mysterious disease or tormented by a
continual hallucination, living in the midst of apparitions invisible
to the eyes of others. It did not escape my notice that he was making
an effort to break through some atmosphere that surrounded him, and to
communicate more directly with me. This effort imparted a contracted
and convulsed look to his whole person. My anxiety and distress grew
greater.
“You will see our house,” he added with the same smile.
Involuntarily I asked--
“How is Donna Aldoina?”
Both the brothers hung their heads and did not answer.
They were like each other; in fact, they were twins. Both were tall and
thin, and a little bent. They had the same light-coloured eyes, the
same small silky beards, the same pale, restless, nervous hands, the
hands of hysterical subjects. But in Antonello these marks of weakness
and disorder were deeper and more irreparable. He was doomed.
During the pause that followed, I vainly sought for words to express
myself. I was in bondage to a kind of melancholy stupor; it seemed as
if the whole weight of my weary body had fallen on my soul. The road
skirted a line of cliffs, and the horses’ trot as it resounded on the
hard ground awoke echoes in the lonely hollows. At a turn of the road
the river came in sight in the valley, its innumerable windings shining
in the sun. A mass of white ruins was visible, enclosed like an island
within one of these curves.
“Is not that Linturno over there?” I asked, as I recognised the dead
city.
“Yes, that is Linturno,” replied Oddo. “Do you remember? We once went
there together....”
“I remember.”
“What a long time ago it is!”
“What a long time!”
“Now there is not much difference between Linturno and Trigento,” said
Antonello, stroking his beard hesitatingly with slender fingers, while
his eyes seemed to have lost consciousness of outward things. “You will
see to-morrow.”
“You are disheartening him!” interrupted Oddo with some irritation. “He
won’t come to-morrow.”
“Yes, yes, I will come,” I assured them, but I had to force myself to
smile and shake off my own overpowering melancholy. “I will come, and
shall find some way of cheering you up. You seem to me a little ill
from loneliness, a little depressed.”
Antonello, who was sitting opposite me, laid his hand on my knee and
leant forward to look into my eyes with an indefinable expression of
fear and anxiety written in his face, as though he had perceived some
terrible meaning in my words, and wished to question me about it. And
once more his white face close to my own seemed even in the daylight
to belong to a different world, where it existed alone; and brought
to my mind those emaciated, spiritual faces that stand out from the
mysterious backgrounds of sacred pictures darkened by time and the
smoke of candles.
It was only for a moment. He drew back again without speaking.
“I have brought my horses with me,” I added, controlling my agitation;
“we shall go for long rides every day. You must take exercise and shake
off the idleness and ennui. How do you pass the hours?”
“In counting them,” said Oddo.
“And your sisters?”
“Oh, poor things!” murmured Oddo with tremulous tenderness in his
voice. “Massimilla prays; Violante stifles herself with the perfumes
sent her by the Queen; Anatolia--Anatolia is the one who keeps us
alive, she is our soul, she lives entirely for us.”
“And the prince?”
“He has aged very much; he is quite white now.”
“And Don Ottavio?”
“He hardly ever leaves his rooms. We have almost forgotten the sound of
his voice.”
“And Donna Aldoina?” I was just going to ask again, but I restrained
myself and was silent.
We were now in the undulating valley of the Saurgo, in a warm hollow.
“How early the spring is here!” I exclaimed, with a desire to console
these wretched beings and myself as well. “In February the first
flowers come out. Is not that in itself a privilege? You do not know
how to enjoy the things life offers you. You convert a garden into a
prison and torture yourselves within it.”
“Where are the flowers?” asked Antonello with his painful smile.
We all three began to look out for flowers. The ground was tawny
and rugged as a lion’s skin; it seemed made to nourish this dry and
harassed but in reality fruitful vegetation. “There they are!” I cried
with a keen feeling of pleasure, as I pointed out a row of almond trees
on a long billowy-looking mound.
“They are on your property,” said Oddo.
We had indeed reached the neighbourhood of Rebursa. The rocky chain
of hills with its broken outlines and sharp peaks, and the winding
Saurgo lapping at its foot, stretched out on the right, and rose step
by step up to the highest summit, Mount Corace, which glittered in the
sun like a helmet. To the left of the road the ground sloped away in
undulations, like a wide stretch of sandy shore, and further away it
rose into brown lumpy hills like the humps of camels in the desert.
“Look! look! There are some more up there!” I cried as I noticed
another pale silvery cloud of blossom. “Don’t you see, Antonello?”
He looked less at the almond blossom than at me, a timorous smile of
amazement hovering on his lips, wondering perhaps at the childish
joy which the sight of the early flowers had awaked in me. “But what
fairer welcome could the land beloved of my father have given me? What
brighter festal decorations could this hardy country with its backbone
of rock have worn?”
“If Anatolia, Violante, and Massimilla were only here!” exclaimed Oddo,
who began to share my unexpected enthusiasm. “Ah, if they were only
here!” and regret was expressed in his voice.
“We must bring them here among the flowers,” said Antonello softly.
“See what a quantity!” I continued, giving myself up to the novel
pleasure with the more confidence that I felt able to transfer some
share of it to these poor pent-up souls. “I am glad they belong to me,
Oddo.”
“We must bring them here among the flowers,” repeated Antonello softly,
as if in a dream.
It seemed to me that his feverish eyes were refreshed by the sight of
these pure blossoms, and that in his gentle words they were fused with
the vague outlines of his three sisters: “Massimilla prays; Violante
stifles herself with perfumes; Anatolia is our life and soul.”
“Stop!” I rose and said to the coachman, for a sudden idea had struck
me, and filled me with singular delight. “Let us get out; let us go
into the fields. I want you to carry home some branches. It will be a
treat for them down there.”
Oddo and Antonello looked at each other with rather a puzzled air, half
smiling, half shy, as if the idea were something unforeseen and strange
which at once scared them and gave them a delicious sensation. They had
shown me their malady, they had revealed to me their sorrow, they had
spoken to me of the gloomy prison from which they had come, and were
now about to enter again; and here was I, on the high road, asking them
to acknowledge and celebrate the feast of spring: of that spring which
they had forgotten, and which they appeared to be seeing for the first
time after long years, gazing on it with mingled fear and joy as if it
were a miracle.
“Let us get out!”
I was tired no longer, for I felt within me the abundance of life,
and that exaltation which spontaneous acts of generosity give to the
spirit. I was liberal of myself to these two needy souls; I warmed
them at my fire, I slaked their thirst with my wine. I read in their
eyes (and they were continually looking at me) a kind of submission
and faithful surrender. Already they both belonged to me; so I could
exert my benevolence and my power over them without fear of failure.
“What are you waiting for? Won’t you get out?” I asked Antonello, who
was standing with his foot on the step, hesitating as if some danger
threatened him.
The contracted smile was still on his face. He was making a visible
effort as he put his foot to the ground; he staggered as though he had
miscalculated the height, and his first steps were jerky and uncertain.
I helped him up the path. As he felt the soft earth sink under his
footsteps he paused; and with face turned towards the blossoming trees,
he breathed hard, drank in the beautiful sight with his pale eyes, and
appeared to be almost dazzled.
I touched his arm and said--
“You didn’t remember these things.”
Oddo, who had already entered the orchard, exclaimed in a kind of
intoxication--
“Ah! if Violante were only here! This perfume is worth far more than
the essences sent her by Maria Sophia.”
Antonello repeated softly--
“We must bring them here among the flowers.”
It seemed as though the sound of these words had fascinated his ear
from the first, like a musical cadence. His voice kept the same
inflections as he repeated them. And as I heard the words again I felt
strangely disturbed, almost as if he had addressed them to me. Again
the desire to cut some of the branches arose within me. It had died out
at the sight of so much living beauty. And vaguely I pictured to myself
the great gift of spring arriving at the gloomy palace in the twilight.
“Is there no one about?” I asked impatiently. A peasant came running
up. Breathlessly he bent his head, and began to kiss my hand
passionately.
“Cut some of the finest branches,” I ordered him.
He was a magnificent example of his species, a worthy inhabitant of
this rugged flint-strewn land. He seemed to me like a survivor of
Deucalion’s ancient race, sprung from the pebbles. He brandished his
bill-hook, and with clean, rapid strokes began to mutilate the joyous
vegetable creation. Each stroke sent down a shower of loose petals,
which lay like snow on the ground.
“Look,” I said to Antonello, showing him a branch; “did you ever see
anything so delicate and so fresh?”
He raised his weak, effeminate hand and touched a flower with the tips
of his fingers. It was the gesture of the invalid or convalescent, who
touches a living thing with the dim notion that the contact will leave
some small part of its vitality with him, just as butterflies leave
behind the ephemeral dust of their wings. He turned to his brother with
almost tender melancholy in his painful smile.
“Do you see, Oddo? We had forgotten, we did not know ...”
“But don’t you live in a garden?” I asked, marvelling at the amazement
and emotion caused by a simple branch of almond blossom, as though
it were an unheard-of novelty. “Don’t you pass your whole time among
leaves and flowers?”
“Yes, that is true,” answered Antonello; “but somehow I had ceased to
notice them. Besides, these are, or seem to me, _quite different_. I
can’t explain the impression they make on me. You would not understand.”
The ringing sound of the bill-hook went on, and he turned towards the
almond tree, which was trembling under the blows. The man was sitting
up in the tree, with the trunk in the grip of his muscular legs, and
above his head, which was dark as a mulatto’s, hung the fresh silvery
cloud, quivering at the glitter of the hooked steel.
“Tell him to stop,” begged Antonello. “We shall not be able to carry
all those branches.”
“The carriage shall take you to Trigento with your burden.”
And I lingered on, picturing the arrival of the springlike gift at the
gates of the park where the three sisters were waiting. Their faces
came before me indistinctly, yet with some trace of the features
associated with memories of childhood and youth. And the desire to see
them again, to hear their voices, to recall those memories in their
presence, to know their troubles, and to take part in their unknown
life, grew stronger and stronger within me, till it began to take the
acuteness of anxiety.
Following out my own line of thought and feeling (the carriage had
already begun to roll towards Rebursa), I said--
“Long ago the park of Trigento used to be full of jonquils and violets.”
“So it is still,” said Oddo.
“There were great hedges of box.”
“So there are still.”
“I remember so well the year you came back from Monaco. Massimilla was
very ill. I used to come over to Trigento nearly every day with my
mother ...”
We were immersed in spring. The carriage was crammed with almond
blossom; it was piled behind our backs and on our knees. Antonello’s
white face looked more wasted than ever in the midst of that fragrant
whiteness, and the melancholy of his feverish eyes, contrasted with
that living expression of youth eternally renewed, went to my heart.
“What a pity you are not coming to Trigento to-day!” said Oddo, with
deep regret in his voice. “I don’t like leaving you.”
“Yes, indeed,” added Antonello. “We have seen you to-day for the first
time after years and years of silence and oblivion, and now it seems
impossible to do without you.”
They spoke these affectionate words with that simplicity and candour
which belong to solitary men, not accustomed to the affectations of
ordinary life. I felt already that they cared for me and I for them;
that the great gap made by the years was already bridged over; and that
their fate was about to be bound up irrevocably with mine. Why did my
soul incline so specially towards these two prostrate beings? why did
it yearn with such infinite desire over graces and sorrows of which
it had only caught a glimpse? why was it so impatient to pour out its
riches over this poverty? Was it true, then, that the long and hard
discipline I had undergone had not dried up the springs of emotion
and imagination, but had made them deeper and more fervent? On that
February afternoon, warmed by the breath of early spring, a vapour of
poetry rose around me. The babbling flow of the Saurgo at the foot of
rocks fashioned by fire; the dead city in the marshy river; the peak
of Corace, glittering like a helmet on a threatening brow; the brown
fields, strewn with flints full of dormant life; the vines and olives,
contorted with the huge effort of producing such rich fruit from such
meagre limbs; the whole aspect of the country around was symbolical of
the power of thoughts nourished in secret, of the tragic mystery of
destinies fulfilled, of painful energy, tyrannical constraint, proud
passion, of every harsh and rigid virtue peculiar to lonely scenery
or lonely man. And yet the softest of spring airs breathed over the
austere land; silver almond blossom crowned the hills, as foam crowns
the waves; under the slanting rays the slopes here and there wore the
look of soft velvet; the rocky peaks were turned to rosy gold against
a sky fading into delicate green. And so the influence of the season
and the magic of the hour were able to soften the severe genius of the
place, clothe its harshness with tenderness, temper its violence, and
throw a gentle enchantment over that rocky basin, fashioned by fire
at the terrible bidding of an ancient volcano; afterwards continually
invaded and corroded by the greed, or enriched by the liberality, of an
ancient river.
“We shall see each other very often,” I said, after a pause, in reply
to their kind words. “From Rebursa to Trigento is a short distance; and
I know that in you I have found two brothers----”
They both started as a mountain keeper passed us at a gallop,
discharging his carbine in the air to give the signal for the salute of
welcome and joy. Rebursa rose before me with its four towers of stone,
still strong and fair, still bearing intact the impress of its former
pride, casting the shadow of its power over a vigorous race, among whom
obedience and fidelity were transmitted from father to son as a portion
of their inheritance.
But anguish such as I had not felt for long came over my soul as I set
foot on the threshold, strewn with myrtle and laurel, where there was
no beloved voice to bid me welcome and call me by name. The figures of
my dead appeared to me at the foot of the staircase, and fixed their
colourless eyes on me without a movement, without a sign, without a
smile.
A little later I followed the carriage with my eyes for a long, long
way on the road to Trigento, as it bore away the two sad invalids,
nearly buried under flowers. And my soul was there before them at the
park gates, where the three sisters were waiting--Anatolia, Violante,
Massimilla!--and I caught a glimpse of them as they received the fresh
gift of spring in their outstretched arms; and I tried to recognise
their noble faces through the fragrant thicket, and to discern the
brow of her whom my soul would have elected for the desired union. The
gathering twilight heightened this strange and sudden agitation caused
by the desire for love. Blue shadows filled the valley of the Saurgo,
hid the dead city, crept slowly up the steep terraces of rock; and when
stars began to twinkle in the sky, down below festal bonfires were lit;
they flared up, multiplied, formed large wreaths. Lonely and lofty,
far apart from these signs of life below, the pinnacles of rock still
shone, withdrawn almost into the remoteness of a myth, into the sphere
of a supernatural atmosphere. And all of a sudden they blazed like
fireworks with an extraordinary light, which only lasted a few moments;
then they grew paler, turned violet, faded away, and went out. The
lofty peak of Corace was the last to remain aflame; its point clove the
sky sharply, like the cry of hopeless passion; then, with the rapidity
of a lightning flash, it faded away also, and entered the universal
night.
“If the severity of thy discipline should have no other reward than
the divine emotion that has overwhelmed thee since yesterday, thou
mightest still rejoice over the result of thy efforts,” said the
_dæmon_ to me, as we rode slowly towards the walled garden. “Now at
last thou hast reached maturity! Until yesterday thou knewest not
what a degree of maturity and completeness thy soul had attained. The
happy revelation comes to thee from the desire thou hast suddenly
felt to pour out thy riches, to spread them, to spend them without
stint. Thou dost feel thyself inexhaustible, capable of nourishing a
thousand lives. This is indeed the prize of thy diligent efforts; thou
possessest now the ready fertility of deeply cultivated land. Therefore
enjoy thy spring; leave thyself open to all influences; welcome the
unknown and unforeseen, and anything else that fate may bring thee;
abolish all prohibitions. The first part of thy task is completed.
Thou hast given integrity and intensity to thy nature; let it now
be sacred to thee. Respect the slightest motions of thy thought and
sentiment, because thy nature alone produces them. Since this nature is
entirely thy own, thou mayest yield to it and enjoy it without limits.
From henceforth everything is permitted to thee, even that which thou
didst hate and despise in others, because everything becomes ennobled
after passing through the ordeal of fire. Fear not to be merciful,
thou who art strong and able to dominate and chastise. Be not ashamed
of thy perplexity and thy languor, thou who hast made thyself a will
tempered as hard as beaten swords. Repel not the tenderness which
overwhelms thee, the illusion which enfolds thee, the melancholy which
attracts thee, all the new indefinable feelings which now approach thy
astonished soul. They are but the dim shapes of vapour which escape
from the life fermenting in the depths of thy fertile nature. Therefore
welcome them without suspicion, for they are not foreign to thee, nor
will they diminish or corrupt thy nature. Perhaps on the morrow they
will appear to thee as heralds of that new birth which is thy desire.”
Never since then have I passed an hour at once so delicious and so
painful. I know not if the trees laden with blossom had as keen a sense
of their vital power as I had of mine on that clear morning; but they
certainly could not feel my vast bewildering perplexity, innumerable
feelings, and innumerable thoughts. In order to prolong both pain and
delight, I kept my horse at a walk, and lingered on the way, as if that
hour were to close for ever a phase of my intimate life, and on my
arrival at the fated spot a new and unforeseen phase were to open, the
dim presentiment of which was to be found in my increasing uneasiness.
From time to time the breath of spring, with its whispering warmth
around me, seemed to waft me up into an ether of dreams, to efface in
me for a few seconds the consciousness of real personality, and to
breathe into me the virgin ardent soul of one of those hero lovers in
fairy tales who ride to find Sleeping Beauties in the Wood. Was not I
riding towards the maiden princesses imprisoned in a walled garden?
And was not each one of them perhaps in her secret heart expecting the
Bridegroom?
Already they appeared before me as pictured by my desire, and already
my desire met its first perplexity in the triple image. I asked myself:
“Which will be the chosen one?” for within my soul I felt at the same
moment the nuptial joy of the one, and the sepulchral sadness of
the other two; I felt all the germs of future trouble, and already
perceived regret hidden under hope. And again that fear crossed my
spirit which once before had disturbed me in the midst of my voluntary
discipline: the fear of those blind forces of fate against which the
strongest will may struggle in vain; the fear of that sudden whirlwind
which in a second may seize the boldest and most tenacious of men, and
carry him far away from the promised goal.
I drew up my horse. The road at that point was quite deserted; the
groom was following me at a distance. Over the grand, lonely scenery
reigned the deepest silence, only broken at intervals by the whispering
olives; a steady light shone equally over everything; and in the
light and the silence, all things from small leaves to gigantic rocks
appeared with a clearness of outline that was almost crude. I felt more
strongly than ever the ambiguous something which had entered into me.
And I thought: “Was not my soul till yesterday filled with the same
clear daylight which now reveals every line of scenery to my attentive
sight? And does not this new uncertainty cover some great peril? What
if a dangerously large store of poetry has accumulated within me
during my solitude, and now requires unlimited expansion? But if I
give myself up to the rushing torrent, where will it carry me? Perhaps
watchful guard against extraneous life may yet avail; perhaps it may
yet avail to refuse to enter the circle which is suddenly opening
before me, and will enclose me like a magic ring.” And the _dæmon_
repeated with unhesitating voice: “Fear not! Welcome the unknown
and unforeseen and whatever else fate may bring thee; abolish all
prohibitions; go onwards safe and free; have no anxiety save to live.
Thy fate can only be fulfilled in the abundance of life.”
I urged my horse into a trot, vehemently, as if at that point a great
act had been resolved upon. And Trigento appeared on the slope of the
hill with its stone houses clustering against the parent rock. At the
summit appeared the ancient palace with its walled garden stretching
down the opposite slope to the plain. It produced the effect of a great
cloister full of forgotten or dead things.
* * * * *
As I dismounted at the gate I heard the voice of Oddo, who was looking
out for me.
“Welcome, Claudio!”
He ran to meet me with outstretched arms, as much delighted as the
first time.
“I thought you would have come earlier,” he said in a reproachful tone;
“I have been waiting for you here for the last two hours.”
“I lingered on the way,” I answered. “I wanted to renew acquaintance
with every tree and stone.”
With one of those strange sudden movements of his, in which curiosity
and timidity were mingled, he went up to my horse and stroked his neck.
“How beautiful he is!” he murmured, and the animal’s sensitive neck
quivered under the touch of his slender white hand.
“You can ride him whenever you like,” I said to him, “either this one
or another.”
“I hardly think I could sit in the saddle now,” he answered; “I believe
I should be nervous.... But come! Come! You are expected.”
And he led me up a path enclosed within walls of box-wood, feeble with
age, and broken here and there by deep gaps, from which a fresh scent
of invisible violets seemed to issue, strange as the breath of youth
out of a decrepit mouth.
“Yesterday evening,” said Oddo rather uneasily, “yesterday evening we
brought back joy with your almond blossom. You don’t know what we felt,
alone in that carriage, buried under the flowers! Antonello was like a
child. I never saw him like that before.”
At intervals the green walls opened out into archways, and I caught
sight of grassy glades where some long slanting ray of sun pierced the
shadow with a sharp outline.
“I never saw him like that before; I never heard him talk so much
nonsense.”
Stone vases deep and round alternated with statues almost clothed with
lichen, maimed or headless statues whose attitudes seemed eloquent to
me. And a few daffodils were flowering round their pedestals.
“When we arrived here, we could not get out for the branches. The
sisters came to set us free. How happy they were! They went away laden.
We heard them laughing up the stairs. All such things are new to us,
Claudio.”
A whispered splash reached my ear; the vague sound of a hidden
fountain. An indefinable anxiety weighed upon my heart.
“We talked about you the whole evening, and remembered many things of
long ago, and perhaps made some air-castles for the future. Who would
ever have thought of your coming back? But none of us can believe yet
that you will stay.... We feel as if after a few days you would escape
us. It is not easy to bear this life of ours. Massimilla, you see,
prefers a convent.... Did you not know that Massimilla is just going to
leave us?”
As I walked up the path, brushing against the walls of vegetation, a
strong, bitter odour reached my nostrils from the little, fresh box
leaves which shone like beryls among the thick green.
“Ah! here is Violante!” exclaimed Oddo, touching my arm.
At the sudden apparition my heart gave a great bound, and I felt the
colour rise in my face.
She was sitting under a lofty arch of box, with her feet upon the
grass; a strip of meadow seen through the opening lay behind her,
streaked with gold.
She smiled without rising, waiting till we came near; and she seemed
to be offering her whole beauty to my astonished gaze in that calm
attitude, as she sat on the green sward where perhaps her fingers had
gathered the numerous violets ornamenting her girdle. As she stretched
out her hand to me, she looked me full in the face, and said in a voice
which was the perfect musical expression of the form it came from--
“You are welcome. We were expecting you yesterday. Oddo and Antonello
brought us your gift instead, and it was no less acceptable.”
I said: “After many years I am once again entering your grounds, where
I used long ago to accompany my mother, and already I begin to regret
having stayed so long away. On leaving Rome I knew that I should find
an empty house at Rebursa, but I did not know how richly Trigento would
compensate for it. I owe you much gratitude.”
“We shall owe you gratitude,” she interrupted, “if you do not find our
society wearisome. You know that this place is destitute of joy.”
“Even sadness has its benefit for him who understands how to taste it,
has it not?”
“Perhaps.”
“Besides, I assure you, since I passed the gate I have experienced none
but exquisite sensations here. This great garden seems to me delicious.
It is impossible not to feel the poetry of its antiquity! Yesterday
when I saw Oddo and Antonello in raptures over that almond blossom, as
if they had never seen a flowering tree before, I thought everything
here must be withered and dead. Instead of which I find within your
gates a more enchanting display of spring than that which I left
outside. Aren’t you tired with gathering violets in the grass? Your
girdle is full of them.”
She smiled and looked down towards her waist, and with her bare fingers
caressed the violets which adorned it.
“You come from the city,” she said. Her voice was musical but rather
veiled, and the richness of its tone was a little exhausted, as if very
slightly cracked; “you come from the city, and the country is offering
you her firstfruits.”
“I don’t know how it is, but certain things always seem new.”
“We see these things no longer, and love them no longer,” said Oddo,
with some melancholy. “Probably Violante cannot smell the scent of the
flowers she picks.”
“Is that true?” I asked, turning to her. My eyes were struck by the
profile of marble under her abundant hair and the motionless attitude,
which reminded one of immortal statues.
“What were you saying?” she asked, like one returning from far off; she
had not heard her brother’s words.
“Oddo says you cannot smell the scent of the flowers you pick. Is it
true?”
A faint touch of red coloured her cheeks.
“Oh, no!” she answered, with a vivacity quite in contrast with the slow
rhythm to which her life seemed set. “Don’t believe Oddo. He says that
because I am fond of strong scents; but I can smell the faintest also,
even those of the stones.”
“Of the stones?” said Oddo, laughing.
“What do you know about it, Oddo? Be quiet.”
We were walking up the great flight of steps covered with trellises
leading in symmetrical order to the palace; she went up slowly between
us, step by step. The stairs were very wide, and she made a step
forward on each, and then each time paused an instant before putting
her foot on the next, and this movement caused her always to lift
the same foot. Wearied by the frequent repetition of the movement,
she sometimes relaxed her body a little as she stood with bended
knee and slackened the proud will which kept her figure as erect as
a perfect stalk. An unexpected softness then came over her superb
form; a new rhythm revealed what I should call the docile graces, the
pliant qualities of love. So strong was the power emanating from this
beautiful being, that I could not take my eyes off her movements; and I
lingered behind so that my entire gaze should encircle her. She seemed
to drive my spirit back into the marvellous epoch when artists drew
from dormant matter those perfect forms which men regarded as the only
truths worthy of worship on earth. And I thought as I looked at her and
ascended behind her: “It is right she should remain untouched. Only by
a god could she be possessed without shame.” And as her queenly head
passed onwards in the light--her native element--I felt that her beauty
was on the verge of its perfect maturity, of its highest effort, and
I thanked fortune for having permitted me such a sight. “Ah, I shall
worship her, but I shall not dare to love her; I shall not dare to look
into her soul and surprise its secrets. Yet her every movement reveals
that she was made for love; but it was for barren love, not for the
love that creates. Her body will never bear the disfiguring burden; the
flood of milk will never mar the pure outline of her bosom.”
She stopped, impatient at the effort, and a little out of breath, and
said--
“How tiring these stairs are! Let us take a rest here, if you don’t
mind.”
“Here are Antonello and Anatolia coming down,” remarked Oddo, who had
seen the two, through the open bars of the trellises, descending the
first flight of steps. “Let us wait for them.”
Moving towards us came she who had been represented to me as the giver
of strength, the beneficent powerful maiden, the rich and generous
soul. She appeared from the first as a support, for Antonello was
leaning on her arm, and setting his hesitating steps to the measure of
her firm ones.
“Which of us,” asked Violante suddenly, but so lightly as to remove
all indiscretion from the question, “which of us do you remember least
indistinctly?”
“I really don’t know,” I answered vaguely, for my ears were listening
to the rustle of Anatolia’s dress.
“But certainly the figures I remember have hardly anything in common
with the present reality. Since the day I went away we have passed
through that period of life when transformations are most rapid and
most deep.”
The two others had come up. Anatolia also put out her hand, saying--
“You are welcome.”
Her actions had a kind of manly frankness, and the contact of her hand
gave me an impression of generous strength and genuine kindness; it
seemed to inspire me suddenly with brotherly confidence.
It was a hand unadorned with rings, not too white nor too slim,
but robust in its pure shape, ready to clasp and to give support,
flexible and firm at the same time. There was an impress of pride on
its surface, varied as it was by the low relief of the joints and the
intricacy of the veins, and there were lines of softness in the hollow
warmth of the palm, where a radiant fire of feeling seemed to glow.
“You are welcome,” said the warm, cordial voice. “You have brought us
spring and sunshine from Rome----”
“Oh no!” I interrupted. “I found them both here. In Rome I left nothing
but mist and other gloomy things. I have just been saying how much I
regret having stayed away from here so long.”
“You must make amends to us for your forgetfulness,” said Antonello
with his painful smile.
“What do you think of Trigento?” asked Anatolia. “It is hardly changed
at all, is it? You used to come here with your mother. You remember,
don’t you? We have never forgotten her, nor ever shall. Among the
things which have remained unchanged here, you will find the memory of
that saintly soul and her wonderful kindness.”
A grave silence followed these words of recollection. For a few moments
the sense of death which fell upon my filial heart threw an aspect of
unreality on all the persons and things present. For a few moments
everything seemed to become as far away and empty as the sky whose
fading colour I could see through the bare vine branches of the trellis
as if through a ragged net. But as the brief illusion vanished, I felt
myself nearer to her who had produced it, and I could not waste time
again in idle words. I wanted to penetrate into the heart of their
sadness.
“And Donna Aldoina?” I asked in a low voice, turning to Anatolia, and
speaking now to her alone.
Was she not probably the real guardian of the gloomy dwelling? By
calling up the memory of death had she not herself raised the image of
the lunatic?
“She is still just the same,” she replied, also in a low voice. “It is
better you should not see her, to-day at least. It would be too painful
for you. And imagine what it is for us! It is a daily torture, a
torture that has lasted for years without pause, to the wearing of our
souls....” Her eyes cast a momentary furtive look towards Antonello,
and I read in them the secret terror that she felt for the poor
invalid who was trembling on the precipice.
“We have never had the courage to separate her from us, to send her
away,” she added, “for she is not violent; in fact, she is quite
gentle. Sometimes she seems cured; we almost believe that a miracle has
come to pass; she calls us by our names, remembers some little thing
that happened long ago, and smiles calmly. Although we know that it is
all an illusion, every time we tremble with hope, every time we choke
with anxiety. You understand....”
Her voice lost its tone in her sorrow, like a loose musical string.
“It is impossible to confine her to her rooms, to keep her shut up; it
is impossible. And we have not the heart to avoid her when she appears,
when she comes to meet us, when she speaks to us. So she is continually
at our side; she is mingled with our existence....”
“Some days,” interrupted Antonello suddenly, with a kind of
impetuosity, as if driven on by uncontrollable excitement, “some days
the whole house is full of her. We breathe her madness. One or other of
us stays by her for hours and hours while she talks on; sits opposite
her with hands imprisoned in those trembling hands of hers. Do you
understand?”
A new and still more oppressive silence fell upon us all. And every one
of us was suffering, as he acknowledged in his soul the reality of the
sorrow which the slender blue shadows of the trellis, mingled with the
gentle gold of the sun, seemed to wrap in a veil of dreams. Through
the silence the sound of a light footfall was heard coming up the lower
flight of steps. At regular intervals came a faint bubbling sound as
if a fountain was overflowing its basin. A mysterious quiver seemed to
shake the lonely garden below. And I understood how a gloomy and feeble
mind might construct an unreal life out of these phantoms, and nourish
it till overcome by it.
Thus the torture to which destiny had condemned these last survivors
of a fallen race was suddenly revealed to me in all its horrors; and
the vision called up by the words of one who was certainly to become
a victim appeared to me magnified by a tragic light. In imagination I
could see the mad old princess sitting in the shadow of her distant
apartment, and one of her children leaning over her, with hands
imprisoned in hers. The attitude of this mournful enchantress seemed to
me fatal and inexorable. I felt as if she were unconsciously drawing
all the children of her blood one after the other into the circle of
her madness, and as if not one of them would be able to escape that
blind and cruel force. Like an ancestral Erinnys, she was presiding
over the dissolution of her race.
Then through the bare branches of the trellis I gazed up at the silent
palace, which till that day had harboured in its grim depths such
desperate anguish, and hidden so many useless tears--tears falling from
pure and eager eyes, worthy of reflecting the most glorious sights of
the world, and of pouring joy into the soul of poets and rulers.
“Eyes of Beauty!” I thought, gazing again at the motionless Violante.
“What earthly misery can veil the splendour of the truth that shines
forth from you? What afflicted soul can fail to acknowledge the
consoling power that flows from you?” The pain I had been feeling
ceased suddenly, as if balm had been applied; the troublous images
faded away like a mournful vapour.
She was seated motionless on a stone plinth which had once supported an
urn. Her elbow rested on her knee, her chin in her hand; in this simple
attitude her whole figure expressed that succession of mute harmonies
which is the secret of supreme art. She seemed to be present with us,
and yet apart. Upon her low forehead was visible the reflection of the
ideal crown that she wore upon her thoughts; and her hair, gathered
up in a great knot on her neck, seemed to have obeyed the same rhythm
which regulates the repose of the sea.
“Massimilla,” said Oddo, introducing the third sister.
I turned, and found she was already close to us. She was ascending the
last steps with her light tread. Her face and her whole person bore
traces of the dream in which she had been plunged, of the intimate
poetry of the hour just past, spent with a faithful book in the
solitude of the nook known to her alone.
“Where have you been?” asked Oddo before she reached us.
She smiled shyly, and a faint colour tinged her thin cheeks.
“Down there,” she answered, “reading.”
Her voice sounded liquid and silvery as it came through the delicate
lips. There was a blade of grass as a marker in the pages of her book.
As I bowed she gave me her hand, still with the same shy smile. And
something of the tender compassion I used to feel long ago for the
little invalid my mother visited awoke again in my soul; for her hand
was so slight and soft, that it reminded me of those slender flowers
called day lilies, which bloom for one day only in the hot sand.
She did not speak, and neither could I find words delicate enough to be
appropriate to her timid grace.
“Shall we go up?” said Anatolia, turning to me, her clear voice at once
breaking through the kind of spell which the unutterable melancholy of
our thoughts had cast over us as we sat in the warmth under the trellis.
“Our father wants so much to see you again,” and we all began to ascend
the steps towards the palace.
The three sisters went first, a little apart from each other, Anatolia
first, Massimilla last. They said a few words now and then in turn,
for the silence of things around demanded the sound of their voices,
and perhaps they hoped to chase away the sadness of that silence from
over the head of their guest. Those short sonorous cadences flowing
from unseen lips grew fainter as I advanced; and I ascended with the
voices and the shadows of the maidens round me, feeling as amazed
and perplexed as if I were in enchantment. But though the three
rhythms alternated in my ear, to my sight they appeared simultaneous
and continuous, so that from time to time my spirit would listen
attentively to seize the difference, or would take a concave form, so
to speak, that therein they might melt into one deep harmony. And like
those episodes which in a fugue fill up the silence of the theme, the
aspect of the things we passed, or the peculiarities of the forms,
entered into me, and enriched my musical sense without ruffling it.
Marks of decay and neglect were strewn over the ancient steps, here and
there still encumbered with the spoils of the previous autumn. There
was the statue of a recumbent nymph, with the head bent in a painful
position, for the moss-stained brow was deprived of the support of the
arm. In a long vase of reddish clay, like a sarcophagus, common grass
was growing, and in the midst of this hostile invasion a single plant
of daffodils was flowering feebly and tremulously. Under a bit of
broken parapet thrown down by the penetrating roots of the ivy appeared
an inner channel like a broken artery; and one saw the sparkle and
heard the murmur of the water as it flowed to fill the heart of the
weeping fountain. Marks of decay and neglect were strewn on our path.
The statue, the flower, and the water spoke to me of the same truth.
And Violante, and Massimilla, and Anatolia were transfigured in my mind
by means of mysterious analogies.
“Oh, beautiful souls,” I thought, as I measured the rhythm of their
visible existence, “is not the perfection of human love perhaps to be
found in your trinity? You are the triple form which appeared to my
desire in the hour of the great harmony. In you all the highest needs
of my flesh and spirit might be satisfied; and you might become the
miraculous instruments of my will and of my fate in the fulfilment of
the work I have to do. Are you not such as I myself would have created
to adorn with sublime beauty and sorrow, the mysterious world of which
I am the creator? To-day, I know nothing of you beyond the outward
appearance and a few passing words; but I feel that ere long each one
of you in her entire being will correspond to the image which breathes
and throbs within me.”
Thus did the three sisters ascend in my aspirations and my prayers,
each one obedient to the secret music that was guiding her life towards
an unknown end. And their figures threw great shadows on the stone.
When I set foot on the threshold, the fantastic image of the mad woman
took hold of my mind so vividly and fiercely that I gave a secret
shudder. The whole place seemed to me to be under her sinister sway,
saddened and cast down by her perpetual presence. I thought I read
the same uneasiness in the faces of her children. And I felt as if we
should find her awaiting us at the top of the stairs.
Anatolia guessed my thoughts, and softly said to reassure me--
“Don’t be afraid.... You won’t see her.... I have arranged that you
should not see her, just now at any rate.... Try not to think of her,
so that our hospitality may not seem too gloomy.”
Antonello was looking up through the glass of the loggia which
surrounded the court, and watching with those anxious eyes and
trembling eyelids of his.
“Do you see the grass?” exclaimed Oddo, pointing out to me the long
blades of green growing along the walls and in the interstices of the
paving-stones.
“It is the token and augury of peace,” I said, trying to shake off the
oppression and be cheerful. “I was sorry not to find it yesterday in
my own courtyard. They had taken it away, but I should have preferred
it to all the festive leaves of myrtle and laurel. Grass ought to be
allowed to grow, especially in very large houses. It is a living thing
the more.”
The courtyard resounded like the nave of a church, and the echoes were
quick to catch up even the words spoken lowest. As I looked at the
silent fountain, I thought of the mysterious music with which the water
might have invited those attentive and favourable echoes.
“Why is the fountain dumb?” I asked, wishing to take every opportunity
of supporting the cause of life in that cloister filled with forgotten
or dead things. “Further down on the steps, I heard the sound of water.”
“You must apply to Antonello,” said Violante. “It is he who imposed
silence on it.”
The face of the unfortunate invalid coloured slightly, and his eyes
grew troubled, as though he were going to yield to an impulse of anger.
It seemed almost as if Violante’s harmless accusation had made him
ashamed and sorrowful, or as if a dispute already closed had been
reopened. He contained himself, but annoyance altered his voice.
“Fancy, Claudio, my rooms are up there,” he said, pointing to one side
of the loggia, “and from there one can hear the fountain roaring like a
waterfall. Just think! The noise is distracting, something incredible.
Don’t you hear what an echo the voice has here? And in the daytime too!”
His whole tall, thin body quivered with aversion to noise, with the
nervous horror, the uncontrollable abhorrence of which he had shown
signs the day before when he started at the shots from the carbine and
the shouts of the men.
“But I wish you could hear it at night,” he continued excitedly. “I
wish you could hear it! The water is water no longer; it is a lost
soul, howling, laughing, sobbing, stammering, jeering, calling,
commanding. It is something incredible! Sometimes as I have lain awake
listening, I have forgotten that it was water; and I have not been able
to remember.... Do you understand?”
He stopped suddenly, evidently trying to control himself, and he looked
distractedly at Anatolia. The pain in her face disappeared under that
look; it was hidden and controlled. And she, as if to disperse the
uneasiness we all felt, said almost gaily: “Indeed, Antonello is not
exaggerating. Shall we call up the lost soul? Nothing is easier.”
We were all there round the dry fountain. The unexpected halt, the
words and the look of the unhappy man, the solemnity of the enclosed
court, the silvery coldness of the light that rained down from above,
and the approaching metamorphosis, seemed to confer something of the
mystery of a work of magic on that ancient, lifeless thing. The mass of
marble--a pompous composition of Neptune’s horses, tritons, dolphins,
and shells in triple order--rose before our eyes, covered with a
greyish crust of dried-up lichens, glittering white here and there like
an aspen stem; and all the human and animal mouths seemed still in
their silence to preserve the same attitudes in which but lately liquid
voices had flowed from their lips.
“Stand back,” added Anatolia, as she stooped down over a bronze disc
that covered a round aperture in the pavement near the edge of the
lower basin. “I am going to turn on the water.”
And she put her finger through the ring in the middle of the disc, and
tried to lift its weight; but she could not, and rose up with her face
scarlet from the exertion. I came to her assistance, and when it was
open, she stooped again and found the secret spring with her hand. We
both stood back in mutual agreement, and now the bubbling water was to
be heard rising in the veins of the empty fountain.
And there was a moment of anxious expectation, as if the mouths of the
monsters were about to give answer. Involuntarily I pictured the joy of
the stone as the fresh liquid life invaded it, and imagined to myself
the impossible shudders it must feel.
The tritons were blowing their trumpets, the dolphins’ throats were
gurgling. From the top a jet of water sprang up hissing, clear and
quick as a sword-thrust sent into the blue; it broke, retired,
hesitated, rose again straighter and stronger than ever; it hung in
the air, turned adamant, shot up like a stalk, and seemed to burst
into flower. First a short, sharp sound like the crack of a whip
echoed through the court, then came something like a burst of Homeric
laughter, then a thunder of applause, then a shower of rain. Every
mouth sent out a jet of water, and each jet curved into an arch to fill
the shell beneath. Here and there the stone was sprinkled with dark
stains, and the smooth parts shone, and the rivulets grew more and more
numerous; at last every part of it rejoiced at the touch of the water;
it seemed to open all its pores to the countless drops, and revive like
a tree refreshed by a cloud. Rapidly the slightest hollows filled up,
overflowed, and took the shape of silver crowns, continually destroyed
and as continually renewed. Every instant as the play was multiplied
by the variety of the sculpture, the continuous sounds grew louder
and formed a deeper and deeper music in the great echo of the walls.
Above the voluble symphony of water falling into water rose the mighty
bubbling and gushing of the central jet, as it dashed the marvellous
flowers that came out from moment to moment at the top of its stalk
against the necks of the Tritons.
“Do you hear?” exclaimed Antonello, as he looked at this triumph with
eyes of enmity. “Do you think this racket would be tolerable for long?”
“Ah, I could stay here for hours and days listening to it,” I thought I
heard Violante saying, in a voice more veiled than ever. “There is no
music I love so well.”
She had stayed so near the fountain that she was sprinkled all over
with drops, and her hair was strewn with sparkling dust. The power
of her beauty again excluded any other thought, any discordant image
from my mind. Again she seemed to me isolated and unapproachable,
outside of the sphere of ordinary life, more like a vision of art than
a creature of our own species. Everything round her acknowledged the
sovereignty of her presence, for everything referred to, and submitted
to, and harmonised with, her beauty. Like the great arch of green that
bent over her when first she appeared to me, like the ancient plinth
on which she had rested, this musical fountain open to the sky seemed
created for her alone; it seemed to correspond perfectly with that
ideal harmony expressed in her simple attitude. Secret and inexplicable
affinities united the most diverse things to her being, and brought
back all surrounding mysteries to the mystery of herself. Since nature
in this human form had revealed one of her supreme ideas of perfection,
it seemed to me that all other ideas in all other mortal shapes should
by nature serve to lead the spirit of the beholder to contemplate that
one supreme idea.
And so it came about, that as I watched the maiden by the fountain I
discovered and treasured up a pure truth: “When Beauty reveals herself,
all the elements of life converge towards her as towards a centre, and
so she has for her tribute the entire Universe.”
“One of our troubles,” said Oddo, as we walked up the wide balustraded
staircase, upon whose silent walls the sixteenth century decorations
of streamers and clouds imitated the fury of a tempest, “one of our
troubles is the vastness of the house; it gives us a feeling of being
astray, a humiliating feeling of our own littleness.”
The building was, in fact, a great deal too spacious and too empty. It
had been restored in the seventeenth century, and transformed from a
feudal fortress into a country villa, and all the formidable hugeness
of its walls and vaults remained, although successive epochs had left
the impress of art and of luxury, sometimes on their surface, and
sometimes in contrast to them. The enormous number of mirrors with
which whole walls were covered multiplied the space into infinity. And
nothing was more mournful than those pale, delusive abysses, which
seemed to open into a supernatural world, and to promise at every
moment to show the living beholder visions of the dead.
“Claudio, my boy!” exclaimed Prince Luzio in a voice full of emotion,
coming forward as soon as he saw me. “Dear, dear boy!”
I felt his old worn body tremble as he embraced me and kissed me on
the forehead in a fatherly way. With his hand still on my shoulder,
he gazed long into my face as if in a dream, while a wave of memories,
sorrows, and complaints passed across the ashy blue of his feeble eyes.
“How like you are to your father!” he added, in a still more
affectionate voice, and his emotion took possession of me also. “It is
a marvellous likeness. I feel as though I beheld Massenzio again in his
youth, when we were companions in the Life Guards.... He seems to have
come to life again. How like him you are, my boy!”
He took me by the hand and led me to the window, as if he wished to
withdraw with me into the contemplation of long past things.
“How like him you are!” he repeated when he saw my face in the full
light. “Oh, if that blessed soul were only living still. He ought not
to have died, my God, he ought not to have died.”
He shook his head in token of regret over the phantom of that beautiful
life so early cut off. And the sincerity of his affection was so great,
that I was touched to the bottom of my soul, and I could no longer
feel a stranger in that house where the memory of my dead was kept
so reverently fresh. “Look,” added the Prince, stroking the point of
his white beard, and smiling a smile in which I caught glimpses of
Anatolia’s noble sweetness; “look how old I have grown!”
His whole figure betrayed a painful feebleness, but the radiance of his
premature white hair gave his head a look of venerable majesty, and his
brow still bore the hereditary stamp of his lordly race. His hands had
escaped almost by a miracle from any injury by sickness and old age;
there was no aged deformity about them. They were still strong and fair
as if embalmed; those liberal hands of the munificent noble who had
lavished his riches on the path of the exile, only that the eyes of his
king might shine awhile longer with the reflection of fallen royalty.
And as a kind of memorial of the treasures so prodigally spent there
shone a cameo in his signet ring.
Those hands with their slow movements seemed, as the sluggish blood
revived with the heat of memories, to be drawing some remnant of a
vanished world out of a sphere of shadow, and this faculty gave them
a singular meaning in my eyes. When the old man sat down and laid his
hands on the arms of the chair, they seemed to me like relics, and I
looked at them with a strange feeling of almost superstitious respect.
They made me feel, very strongly, as if I were living at that moment in
my own world of poetry, and not in the world of fact.
Seeing my eyes fixed on the carved gem, the prince smiled and said: “It
is Violante’s portrait.”
He took off the ring and handed it to me.
The delicate work was by some ancient artist not unworthy of Pirgotelus
or Dioscuridas; but the divine features of the Medusa, relieved against
the blood-red background of sardonyx, corresponded so perfectly to the
likeness of the proud creature, that I thought: “Truly then did she
illuminate the art of bygone days, and from time immemorial bestowed
upon durable matter the privilege of perpetuating the Idea of which she
is to-day the Incarnation.”
“Her mother used to wear this ring just before she was born,” added the
prince with the same gentle smile, “and she was always looking at it.”
* * * * *
In such a manner, and at every moment, the conformity of things raised
my spirit into an ideal state, which resembled a state of reverie and
second-sight without actually attaining to it, and this same conformity
furnished harmonious material to my sensibility and imagination. And I
watched the continuous generation of a higher life within myself, which
transfigured everything as if by the virtue of a magic glass.
The three elect beings seemed mutually to throw light and shade on each
other, and the lights and shades had the significance of a language
which I was already able to interpret as clearly as if it had been
familiar to me for long. And so I stood not only bewildered by the
reflection of the rock, but struck by the lightning flashes of my
thoughts, when Violante went up to an open window, pointed out a view
which she seemed to have called up with a wave of her hand, and said--
“Look.”
It was a window facing north, on the opposite side of the palace from
the garden, and it looked out over a precipice. As I leant out an
impetuous shudder ran through me, and raised me suddenly to a sentiment
of appreciation of this silent and terrible grandeur.
“Is this your secret?” I asked the enchantress, but I did not put my
question into words, for at her side silence itself seemed eloquent.
The rock descended abruptly from the massive buttresses which supported
the northern wall, till at the bottom it ended in a hard white river
bed, whose very dryness seemed ominous of the ruinous anger of a
torrent. With that same atrocious, desperate violence which the lava
streams have as they rush down to the Sicilian Sea, and rebound and
rise up and twist themselves into black and red masses, screaming,
roaring, hissing at the first contact with the water; with that same
violence the rock at the bottom of the river-bed rose and flung itself
heavenwards, and towered opposite the great wall built by man, with
a kind of dumb fury animating its gigantic mass. All the wildest
convulsions and contortions of bodies possessed by demoniac power or
deadly spasms seemed petrified for ever in that terrible form, terrible
as the cliff whence Dante caught sight of fresh horrors on his way to
the river of blood guarded by the Centaurs. All the shapes of which
pliable metal and scoriæ are capable were there contrasted with the
hard stone; ringlets of rebellious hair, coils of angry serpents,
intricacies of roots laid bare, sheaves of muscles, circles of the
whirlpool, folds of draperies, twists of rope. This vision of frenzied
turbulence rose perfectly motionless in the blaze of the midday sun,
without a line of shadow. The throbbing of a high fever seemed hidden
beneath the lifeless crust.
“Is this your secret?” I repeated to the enchantress, still without
words, for my inward agitation would not allow me to select or control
the accents of my voice.
She stood beside me, silent also; and I did not look at her, nor did
she look at me. But as we leant out towards the many shaped rock, we
were united to each other by the same fascination which draws together
those who read out of the same book. We were both reading out of the
same fascinating, dangerous book.
She said, as she raised her head with a slight start--
“Do you hear the hawks?”
And we both searched the summits with dazzled eyes.
“Listen.”
The rock rose to heaven bristling with points and stained a reddish
colour like rust or clotted blood; and the screams of the birds of prey
heightened the impression of its savage pride.
Then a sudden giddiness overwhelmed me--a sort of horror of too vast
ambitions and desires. Perhaps in the very depths of my being the
primitive feelings of early forefathers awoke; for my indescribable
agitation took the form of a lightning-like succession of flashing
visions, in which I saw men like myself pouring into vanquished cities,
leaping over heaps of corpses and ruins, with untiring gestures,
thrusting their swords into men’s bodies, carrying half-naked women on
their saddle-bows through the innumerable flames of a conflagration,
while their horses, lithe cruel animals like leopards, waded up to
their bellies in blood.
“Ah, I should have known how to possess thee in the midst of slaughter
under a canopy of fire, overshadowed by the wing of death!” said the
soul of my ancestors to her who stood by my side. “My will would have
urged my body to the performance of prodigies of valour; and though
I had had to clamber up the smooth sides of this wall, defended by a
thousand bowmen, yet I should have borne thee away alive.”
Filled with the glow from this magnificent and tremendous desolation
reaching to the heavens, my eyes fell on the maiden’s face, and saw it
so strongly lit up by the reflection, that an almost painful joy swept
over me. And I felt a mad desire to take that head in my hands, turn it
back, bring it close to my lips, gaze on it more closely, impress every
line of it in my thought--a feeling not unlike his who finds under the
barren soil some sublime fragment which will reveal to the world the
glory of an idea for long nearly extinct.
She was like a statue placed in full view of the rising sun; her
perfection did not fear the light. In her bodily form I saw the impress
of the eternal type, and at the same moment I recognised the fragility
of the flesh, which bore no immunity from human fate. She was like a
delicious fruit at the highest point of its maturity, beyond which
point corruption sets in. The skin of her face had the wonderful
transparency of the blossom which to-morrow will fade.
“Who shall deliver thee from the sacrilege of Time the destroyer? Who
shall slay thee with a mortal dart at the summit of thy perfection
when the miserable signs of decay begin to appear?” The dark saying of
her brother came back to my mind: “Violante is killing herself with
perfumes.” ... And silently I worshipped her, with a religious desire
to praise her in her every movement. “Oh sovereign being, feeling thou
art perfect, thou dost also feel the necessity of death; thou dost
know that only death can preserve thee from all base injury; and since
everything in thee is noble, thou dost purpose to offer to that solemn
custody a body royally embalmed in perfumes.”
* * * * *
After such draughts of balmy wine, how could the meal to which we sat
down have any savour?
Yet the vague and colourless things that surrounded my musings composed
themselves into a kind of quiet harmony, which little by little soothed
the passion that had been kindled in my soul by the volcanic rock.
The walls were covered with mirrors, symmetrically divided all
round into compartments by little gilt pillars, while the surface
of each compartment was painted with festoons and clusters of roses
alternately, and the mirrors were tarnished and green as the waters
of lonely pools, and the little pillars were delicately twisted like
the fair locks of girls, and the roses were faint and languid as
the garlands which crown the waxen martyrs in sanctuaries. But in
honour perhaps of the guest who was the donor, the long branches of
almond blossom had been ingeniously wreathed among the sconces of the
candelabra. They spread their still fresh and living blossoms over the
ancient mirrors, and multiplied reflections in the green pallor seemed
to create the semblance of a far-off watery springtime.
There was a kind of quiet charm about all these things which seemed to
descend and mingle with Massimilla’s grace; so much so, that I felt
as if the maiden already promised to Jesus shared their nature. She
seemed already to wear the appearance of a being “who has departed from
this present age,” like Beatrice in the vision of the Vita Nuova, as
if, with her meek air, she were saying also: “I am about to behold the
beginning of peace.”
She sat opposite me, and I looked at her, till this fancy of mine grew
so strong that I began to imagine her absent and her place empty for
a few moments. And immediately the empty space was filled with a deep
shadow resembling the mouth of a pit into which all the kindred were to
be cast, one after another. And thus I was able to attain a unique and
tragic vision of all these living beings, in the extraordinarily clear
relief afforded by that background of shadow.
They were eating a meal round the accustomed table; they made the
ordinary movements demanded by natural necessity; from time to time
they said a few simple words. But their tones and actions seemed
accompanied by a mystery which at times endowed them with an almost
terrible significance or again at times made them almost as laughable
as the play of automatons. One contrast was cruelly clear, that between
the manner of vital functions they were fulfilling and the signs of
inevitable destruction which were being fulfilled in them. Seated on
the right of Massimilla, Antonello displayed in his whole behaviour
a sort of repressed impatience, as if he were compelled to use his
hands to feed, not himself, but a stranger. And as I gazed at him,
an intuition flashed through me of the horror that strangled him as
he realised the presence of a stranger within him, a presence dimly
felt as yet, but still certain. And my eyes, passing instinctively to
Oddo, who sat on Massimilla’s left, noticed in his attitude something
like a feeble reflection of his brother’s discomfort. Nothing seemed
to me sweeter than that virginal figure sitting calm amidst their
restlessness, like a statue of prayer.
A strange odour of honey from the almond blossom filled the warm air.
Sometimes a petal, rosier than the others, dropped down the mirror and
fell as into silent water. And I remembered our stay in the orchard.
Ah, indeed, how could those wretched eyes, tormented by phantoms,
perceive pure and beautiful things? What was I doing there myself
except holding a commemoration of the dead? Everything round me
grew dim like the walls, and seemed to recede into a distant past;
everything assumed an antiquated and faded look, and appeared to be
covered with dust. The two servants moved slowly and dreamily about in
their blue liveries and long white stockings; they looked as if they
had come out of an old wardrobe of the last century;--melancholy ruins
of former luxury. When they withdrew they seemed to vanish like shadows
into the delusive distance of the mirrors, and to re-enter their
inanimate world.
* * * * *
But the spell was broken by the voice of the prince, a voice which
called up old memories. Every one kept a respectful silence while he
was speaking; and no sound was heard but that of his deep aged voice,
which at times became hoarse with repressed anger, or trembled with
heartfelt sorrow and regret.
It chanced to be a disastrous day for the old man; it was the
anniversary of the king’s flight to Gaeta; it completed the
twenty-first year of exile.
“Well,” he said, as he turned to me with a glance kindling with faith,
looking, with his white beard, almost like one of the ancient prophets,
“well, Claudio, when a king falls as Francis of Bourbon fell at Gaeta,
that is to say, like a martyr and a hero, it is impossible not to
believe that God will raise him up again and restore his kingdom. Mark
my words, son of Massenzio Cantelmo, and do not forget them. And God
grant that this come to pass before my eyes are closed! That is my only
desire.”
He was preparing an apotheosis of fire and blood on the ruins of the
strong city for the pale ghost of royalty.
“Wonderful faith!” I thought, as I saw what sparks could still glow
in the ashy blue of those feeble eyes. “Wonderful and vain faith!
The power of the Bourbons slumbers at San Dionigi.” And as the old
man’s words called up the gleaming vision of the Bavarian heroine,
my contempt increased for that king of twenty-three, on whom Fortune
had bestowed the very horse which carried Henry of Navarre to Paris,
and who was cowardly enough, like the miserable Philip V., to have no
ambition to ride anything more substantial than the imaginary horses of
the tapestries that lined his walls.
“What a magnificent enterprise lay before that Bourbon prince when
he departed from the palace at Caserta, where the doctors were busy
embalming the corpse of his murdered father as it lay pierced with
innumerable wounds!” I thought, in the eager spirit which the warlike
images evoked by the venerable old man had kindled in me. “Nothing was
wanting to incite him, not even the corruption and odour of corpses,
which are powerful to inspire thoughts of greatness. In very truth,
everything was his: the lordly power of an ancient name, youth, which
attracts and carries men away, kingship over three fair seas accustomed
to tyranny, a rich kingdom in sight of a curved bay sonorous as a lyre,
a passionate companion, who seemed to draw in through her delicate
nostrils the atmosphere of heroic ambitions, a temperament capable of
trembling with the voluptuousness of power, and full of the electric
current which directs the hurricane. All these were his to enjoy and to
defend; and still, as exiled husband on the farthest shore of another
sea, his ear was filled with the clamour of his faithful people,
although another kind of clamour reached him also; and the opportunity
was offered to him of a splendid struggle beyond the limits of his
dominions, on fields already watered with blood, and smoking with the
strength of their fermentation--fields open to the strongest thought,
the noblest word, the swiftest sword. In very truth, everything was
his, save the lion’s nature. Why was it Fortune’s will to heap the
burden of such favours upon a feeble, lamb-like nature? Never did
blood so cowardly flow in youthful veins, never was there a more
torpid sensuality. The very beauty of his lawful kingdom, the divine
outlines of the shore, the balmy air, the mystery of the nights, all
the enchantments of the dying summer, ought at least to have touched
the senses of the youth, to have awaked in him the deep desire for
possession, to have communicated to him the savage rage for living.
Ah, that last evening in the almost deserted palace, forsaken by the
courtiers, with the strong breath of the sea wind blowing through the
empty halls, and bringing with it September perfumes, and the supreme
sweetness of the gulf, while the closed curtains waved mysteriously and
spread a vague terror, while the lights flickered and went out on the
tables, still strewn with the shameful letters announcing the flight
of those the prince had counted as most devoted. And the desolation of
that departure in the twilight, in the small ship commanded by a man
of the people, one of the few who remained faithful; and the silent
encounter with the warships, already gone over to the enemy, and full
of treachery; and the long, sleepless night passed on deck in vain
regrets, while the weary queen slept under the stars, exposed to the
chill night air; and at last, at sunrise, the rock of Gaeta, the final
refuge, fated to be the final ruin, where the royal dignity was to be
forced to come to terms with a bragging soldier!”
“Treason was everywhere, like the smoke and smell of gunpowder,”
continued the prince. He grew more and more troubled by these
sanguinary recollections, and from time to time a gesture from the
white hand on which the cameo gleamed gave animation to his words.
“The most terrible day of the siege was the fifth of February; and the
powder magazine of the Sant’ Antonio battery was blown up by treachery.”
“Ah! what an atrocious thing it was!” exclaimed Violante, with a
shudder and an instinctive movement as if to cover her ears with her
hands. “How terrible!”
“You can still remember it,” her father said, looking at her with
softer eyes.
“I always shall.”
“Violante was with us at Gaeta,” he added, turning to me. “She was
scarcely five years old, and was a great pet of the queen’s. The others
had started for Civita Vecchia on the _Volcano_ with the Contessa di
Trapani. We were staying in the artillery quarters beneath the shore
batteries....”
“I can remember it all!” interrupted Violante, seized by a sudden
emotion, which seemed to sweep over her from that great purple light
which lit up her far-off infancy. “Everything--everything seems as
distinct as if it had happened yesterday! The room was divided by two
partitions, made of flags sewn together. I can see the colours quite
clearly; they were signalling flags, blue, yellow, and red. It was
three or four in the afternoon when the explosion happened. Nina Rizzo,
the queen’s lady-in-waiting, had just gone out. I was holding in my
hand a cup of milk which the sisters at the hospital had sent me....”
She spoke on thus, in short sentences, in a somewhat muffled voice,
with a fixed look, describing all these little details, one after the
other, as if she were seeing them in a series of flashes. And the
scenes called up by her words, as she sat looking into the past, stood
out with an extraordinary force against the confused background of the
actual scene.
The old man and the maiden, as each in turn they commemorated the
ruin and slaughter of other days, seemed to annihilate all the vague,
colourless surroundings, and create a kind of fiery atmosphere, in
which my soul for a moment gasped painfully. The siege went on with
all its horrors, in the city crowded with soldiers, horses, and mules,
short of provisions and money, badly or insufficiently armed, scourged
with typhus and villainy. Rain came down in torrents, filling the
streets with black mire, in the midst of which the starving horses
wandering about sank down and perished. The iron hailstones riddled the
city, dismantled it, laid it low, set fire to it, and grew ever thicker
and noisier, never ceasing save for the brief intervals appointed for
the burial of the decaying corpses. In the churches divine service was
celebrated, the Invincible Patroness was invoked, and all the while
the stones were being torn from the walls, the windows were crashing
in, and out of the distance came the groans of the wounded as they
were carried away on stretchers. The sick men in the hospital raised
themselves in their beds when a shell pierced through the passage
walls, and expecting death, cried as the shell burst, “Long live the
King!” All on a sudden a powder magazine exploded, shaking the city
to its very foundations, and leaving it suffocated with smoke and
with terror, while in the open cavity bastions, cannons, palisades,
batteries, houses, and hundreds and hundreds of men were engulfed.
But from time to time, on very sunny days, a kind of heroic madness
seized the besieged, a kind of intoxication of death drove them into
danger, and made them seek out the batteries where the fire was
fiercest. In sight of the enemy the artillerymen sang and danced in
a kind of frenzy to the sound of the bugles. A great shout of joy and
affection greeted the queen’s appearance under the hail of bullets
on the esplanades. She moved with a bold step, in the easy grace of
her nineteen years, dressed in a shining bodice like a breastplate,
her face smiling under the plumes of her felt hat. Without moving an
eyelash as the bullets whistled by, she turned her encouraging eyes
on the soldiers; they inspired them like the waving of banners, and
beneath that gaze pride seemed to magnify its wounds, while those who
were unscathed seemed to long for the glory of a crimson stain. From
time to time men with eyes burning fiercely in blackened faces, with
their clothes torn to tatters, as though the jaws of a wild beast had
rent them--men covered with blood and powder rushed up to her from the
cannons, called her by name, and kissed the hem of her skirt.
“Ah, how beautiful she was, and how worthy of her throne!” exclaimed
the prince, and his voice assumed its manliest tones to celebrate her
prowess. “Her presence had a magnetic power over the soldiers. When she
was there, they all fought like lions. The twenty-second of January
was the most glorious day of the siege, because she remained on the
batteries till nightfall.”
A pause followed, a moment of meditation, in which each of us seemed to
be contemplating the ideal figure of the heroine on a field of ruin and
corpses.
“Tears were strange to her eyes!” said Violante slowly, absorbed in
her far-away memories. “When at the last hour I saw her weep, I was
overcome with terror and surprise, as if some unexpected and almost
incredible thing had occurred. As she kissed me, she watered my face
with her tears.” After another pause, she added--
“She wore a little green feather in her hat.”
She added again--
“She had a great emerald at her throat.”
She was sitting at my side, and a new emotion swept over me as with
an involuntary movement I leant slightly towards her, and breathed
the perfume which I thought was growing stronger, and overpowering
the honeyed fragrance of the flowers. A sudden aversion for all the
people and things present came over me; they gave me a feeling of
impatience and annoyance that was almost an aversion; they seemed at
that moment to be weighing on me and oppressing me in quite a peculiar
way. I looked across with instinctive hostility at the prince’s
cousin, Ottavio Montaga, who sat at one end of the table, a taciturn
individual with something of the sinister look of a mask, the symbol of
a mysterious prohibition not to be transgressed. I felt all the health,
strength, and passion in me rise in hatred against the sickness, the
sadness, against the mortal dulness by which this wonderful creature
was being consumed without a chance of escape. The uneasiness which
had troubled my spirit after the successive apparitions of the three
different figures was now subdued, and I believed myself to have set
my choice on her whom all the glory and solemnity of the past seemed
uniting to ennoble. Once more, it was she alone who stirred my being as
she had stirred it before when she lifted her head at the cry of the
hawk.
The prince said to me--
“It is singular, is it not, Claudio, that Violante should be able to
remember that time so clearly? Don’t you think it very strange?”
Then, smiling with his previous gentle smile--
“Maria Sophia has never ceased to show partiality for her. Knowing that
she is passionately fond of scent, she sends her quantities of essences
every year for her birthday. And she has never missed once, all the
time we have been here!”
He turned tenderly to his daughter--
“And now you could not get on without them, could you?”
And to me he said, with a shade of sadness--
“She lives on them. You see, Claudio, how white she is!”
I fancied that Anatolia whispered--
“She is dying of them.”
* * * * *
When we rose from table, Anatolia proposed going down to the garden.
“Let us go and bask in the sun a little more!” she suggested, pointing
to a shaft of sunbeams which shot down from the highest pane of a
window where the faded curtains were not drawn. “Who will come?”
By the movement her hand was lit up, turned golden down to her wrist,
and the rays slid through her fingers like docile hair. “We will all
come,” I replied.
Don Ottavio begged to be excused, and retired (he seemed like an
intruder among us); but the prince laid his arm in Anatolia’s, as
Antonello had done before on the steps, and said--
“I will come down to the quadrangle with you.”
As we passed through the vast reception hall, now reduced to a disused
anteroom, I noticed an old sedan chair with the two poles still in it,
as if a lady had just descended from it, or was about to enter.
“Who uses the sedan chair?” I asked, as I stopped to look at it.
“None of us,” answered Anatolia after a moment’s hesitation, during
which a shade of agitation passed over every face.
“It is of the time of Charles III.,” said the prince, concealing his
melancholy thoughts under a smile. “It belonged to the Duchess of
Cublana, Donna Raimondetta Montaga, who was the most beautiful lady of
the court, and was praised as the greatest beauty of the kingdom.”
“The design is excellent,” I remarked, approaching it, for I was
attracted by this piece of antiquity, which seemed hardly yet dead, and
to which the memory of Donna Raimondetta gave a tender interest and
grace, so that I almost imagined as I looked that she was alive again
within it. “It is an exquisite work of art, and wonderfully preserved.”
But I noticed a strange feeling of uneasiness among my hosts, and
that this uneasiness was caused by the object I was looking at. And by
virtue of this mystery, I felt more strongly than before the imaginary
life dwelling within the precious wood.
“Perhaps the soul of Donna Raimondetta lives inside,” I said lightly,
and I could not resist the desire to open the pane of glass. “It could
not have a more delicate casket. Let us see.”
As I opened it, a subtle odour reached my nostrils, and I put my head
inside, so as to breathe it better.
“What a scent!” I exclaimed, delighted with the unexpected sensation.
“Is it the Duchess of Cublana’s perfume?”
And for a few seconds my imagination hovered in the soft atmosphere
created by the enchantment of the ancient dame, picturing a little
round mouth like a strawberry, a powdered head-dress, and a brocade
dress stiffened by a hoop.
The sedan chair was scented like a bridal chest; it was lined inside
with willow-green velvet, and decorated with a little oval mirror on
each side; without, it was all gilded and painted in the most refined
taste, the ceiling and jointings were enriched with delicate carving,
all the more harmonious and pleasing to the eye from the veil thrown
over them by the hand of time; the whole was the work of a graceful
imagination and a skilled hand.
“Or perhaps it is you, Donna Violante,” I added, “who have poured out
one of your phials on this soft velvet, as a homage to your famous
ancestress?”
“No, it is not I,” she said, almost indifferently, as if she had
fallen back into her usual apathy, and was again far away.
“Let us go now,” begged Anatolia, drawing on her father, whose arm
still rested in hers. “It is always so cold in this room.”
“Let us go,” repeated Antonello, shivering.
From the top of the staircase we could already hear the sound of the
water; at first it sounded hoarse, then gradually clearer and louder.
“Has the fountain been turned on?” asked the prince.
“We turned it on just now,” said Anatolia, “in honour of our guest.”
“Did you notice the play of the echo in the quadrangle, Claudio?” Don
Luzio inquired. “It is extraordinary.”
“Truly extraordinary,” I replied. “It is a wonderful effect of sound.
It is like a musician’s trick. I think an attentive harmonist might
discover the secret of unknown chords and discords in it. It would be
an incomparable training for a delicate ear. Is it not true, Donna
Violante? You are on the fountain’s side, against Antonello.”
“Yes,” she said simply, “I love and understand water.”
“_Laudato si, mi Signore, per sor acqua._” (Praised be Thou, O Lord,
for sister water.) “Do you remember the canticle of St. Francis, Donna
Massimilla?”
“Certainly,” replied the betrothed of Christ, with her faint smile,
colouring slightly. “I belong to the Poor Clares.”
Her father’s look was a melancholy caress.
“_Suor Acqua_” (Sister Water), Anatolia called her, caressing the soft
bands of hair on her forehead with her fingers. “Take that name.”
“It would be presumptuous,” replied the Poor Clare with laughing
humility.
She recalled to me with only a slight variation the saying of the
saint: _Symphonialis est aqua_.
We were all there close to the rushing fountain. Each of the mouths was
pouring out its voice through a glass pipe like a curved flute. The
lower shell was quite full already, and the four sea-horses were up to
their bellies in water.
“The design is by Algardi, the Bolognese,” said the prince, “the
architect of Innocent X.; but the sculpture was done by the Neapolitan
Domenico Guidi, the same who executed the greater part of the relief of
Attila at St. Peter’s.”
Violante had drawn near the edge of the basin again, and I gazed at the
reflection of her figure in the liquid element, whose continual tremor
melted the features as it rippled away round the horses’ hoofs.
“There is a tragic story in connection with this fountain,” added the
prince, “a story which has become the source of some superstitious
ideas. Don’t you know it?”
“No, I don’t,” I replied, “but tell it me, if you will.”
And I looked at Antonello, thinking of the lost soul which tormented
and terrified him at night. He also was now looking intently at
Violante’s reflection as it trembled in the depths of the water.
“Here in this fountain Pantea Montaga was drowned,” began Don Luzio.
“In the time of the Viceroy Peter of Aragon----”
But he interrupted himself--
“I will tell you the story another time.”
I saw that he shrank from calling up these memories in presence of his
daughters, and I did not press him.
But shortly after, in the outer portico, as we paced slowly up and down
with his arm in mine, he returned to the story; and all the time the
sun blazed on the series of terraces from which the tall white statues
of the Seasons looked over the tawny valley of the Saurgo.
It was a mysterious secret drama of passion and death, worthy of the
weird stone cloister which had fostered and exalted its violence in
rapid alternation. To me it signified the power which the genius of
places can exercise over the responsive soul, a power by which every
genuine feeling of the soul must concentrate itself to the utmost
degree of intensity possible to human nature, in order to express its
whole force in a definite act with a certain result.
As I listened to the prince’s imperfect account, I mentally
reconstructed that hour of intense life which produced the death of
Pantea; and the midnight crime appeared to me clothed in a beauty which
was the harbinger of profound thoughts.
At the close of the story Prince Luzio took leave of me, saying: “I
hope from this day you will treat this house as your own. Whenever you
like to come, you will be welcome, dear boy. So do not stay away too
long.”
It made me sad to see him enter the desolate palace alone, so I went
back a little way with him, talking affectionately. We stopped again
before the fountain; and he made a motion of his hand towards the
basin, and in the chill, clear water I saw the fatal beauty of Pantea
and her curved white hands floating in the water, like two magnolia
petals, and her soft hair fluttering under the horses’ hoofs.
“A legend grew up years afterwards,” said the prince, smiling. “On
moonless nights Pantea’s soul sings on the summit of the fountain,
while that of her lover groans within the jaws of the stone beasts
until the dawn breaks.”
* * * * *
The troublous joy of spring rose up in our faces as we leant over the
balustrade towards the sloping garden. A kind of quivering atmosphere
enveloped us with the swiftness of a fever poison, and the sensation
was so strong as to paralyse the nerves. The pupils of our eyes became
fixed, our eyelids were lowered as if sleep were gliding over us. My
soul within me was heavy like a cloud.
Anatolia remarked upon our mutual silence--
“Happiness is passing by.”
These sudden words of hers revealed to us the secret of the anguish
within us; she had expressed the spirit of intense melancholy which
pervaded the earth awaiting the renewal of spring. “Happiness is
passing by!”
“Whose hands may arrest her?” I asked myself sharply, in the blind
agitation of my longing for love, in the confused revolt of my deepest
instincts.
The three sisters were leaning their elbows on the stone parapet, their
bare hands without rings stretched out in the sun as in a golden bath:
Massimilla with fingers interlaced; Anatolia with one hand crossed in
the other so that her thumbs were uppermost; Violante, pressing in hers
some of the fading violets out of her belt, and then letting them fall
into space.
“Whose hands may arrest her?”
Anatolia’s looked the strongest and the most sensitive. The firm
outlines of the muscles and tendons supporting the thumbs were clearly
visible beneath the skin. The tips of the thumbs wore rosy nails for
gems, with a half moon of white at the root like a double onyx.
Had they not communicated a sense of their generous power and practical
kindness when first I touched them? Had I not already felt a reviving
warmth in the hollow of her palm?
But Massimilla’s hands were like uncreated things, like dream-shapes
rather, so slender were they; and so white, that the golden sunbeams
failed to gild them; and so symbolically familiar, that in the broad
daylight I could see again the dim shadows of the dusky apse where
first they appeared to me, and see them hovering around the altar, last
relics of a form sunk back again into mystery, and yet fitted--they
alone--to enchant and caress souls. Now with the interlacing of the
clasped fingers they symbolised the fetters of voluntary slavery. “Here
am I, thine own, bound by a tie stronger than any chain. I will open
my arms only when it shall be thy good pleasure to release me. Mine be
it only to worship and obey, to obey and worship,” was the confession
which by these tokens the devout maiden made to her ideal lord. And I
imagined her hands loosed and long scrolls of living silence floating
from them; just as from the hands of the angels painted above and
around altars there float long streamers eloquently inscribed with
verses, and containing history within the mystic sense of the written
words. “Thus, oh Worshipper, mayest thou encircle my wandering spirit
within the living silence of thy love! And I shall become unfaithful
to earth’s solitudes, to the solemn mountains, the musical woods, the
peaceful rivers, even to the starry skies; for no sight on earth can
elevate a man’s spirit like the presence of a beautiful and submissive
soul. It is this which gives to the walls of a narrow room the feeling
of boundless space, like the votive lamp which only increases the vast
darkness of a cathedral. And for this, I should desire to have thee
with me, sweet slave. He who meditates, surrounded by silent adoration,
feels the divinity of his own thoughts and the creative power of a god.”
But the sublime hands of Violante, as they pressed the essence out
of the tender flowers and let them fall crushed to the ground, were
fulfilling an act which corresponded most perfectly, as a symbol,
to the characteristics of my ideal style: they extracted the supreme
flavour of life out of things, took from them the utmost they could
give, and then left them exhausted. Was not this one of the most
important elements in my art of living?
And so Violante appeared to me as a divine and incomparable instrument
of my art. “Relation with her is necessary to me that I may know and
exhaust the innumerable things which lie hidden in the depths of
the human senses, those things of which eternal desire is the only
revelation. The tangible body encloses infinite mysteries which only
the touch of another body can reveal to him that is gifted by Nature to
understand them and religiously celebrate them. And has not her body
the sanctity and magnificence of a temple? Does not her beauty promise
the highest revelations to my senses?”
Thus as before, when we ascended the steps, I felt within me the
attraction of the three complete types, which promised to all my
energies the joy of manifesting themselves and of satisfying themselves
to the uttermost in perfect harmony. One of them--in my dream--watched,
her pure brow radiant with prophecy, over the son of my soul and my
body; another, like the salamander in the alchemist’s furnace, lived
within the fiery circle of my thoughts; and the third called me back to
the devout worship of the body and invited me to learn in mysterious
ceremonies how to live again the life of the ancient gods. They all
three seemed born to serve my ideal of perfection on earth. And the
duty of separating one from the other was as distasteful to me as
destroying some symmetry; it irritated me, it seemed an injustice
done by prejudice and habit. “Why may I not take them all to my home
on a single day and adorn my solitude with their threefold grace? My
love and my art should weave a different spell round each, build a
throne for each, and offer to each the sceptre of an ideal kingdom
peopled with shadows, where she would find her immortal characteristics
transfigured in their different aspects. And since brevity is the most
fitting attribute of ambitious dreams and beautiful life, my love and
my art will be able to bring to these blessed ones (but not to thee,
Anatolia, who art fated to watch for a long time) a harmonious death at
the seasonable hour----”
These thoughts of mine, burning like a soft delirium in the early heat
of the spring sun, were raining down without ceasing on the hands
of the maidens, when Violante let the last of her crushed flowers
fall, and leant over to catch hold of the tips of the long creepers
which grew from the terrace below up to the balustrade, and wreathed
themselves round it. She managed to break off a twig, and examined its
fibres to see if the spring sap had reached it yet.
“They are still asleep,” she said.
And so we bent over the sleep transparent already of those pale
sheaths, in which one of the greatest of earth’s miracles was about to
be worked, called up before us by a word.
“You will see in a few months,” said Anatolia to me, “they will all be
covered with a green mantle; all the trellises will throw shade.”
These plants were not the mothers of the grape, but a kind of leafy
vine with innumerable flying tendrils, which spread like a piece of
netting over the wide surface of the wall and the trellises down the
steps. They looked more like worn-out ropes than plants, torn as they
were by the rain, shrivelled by the sun, fragile as gossamer to behold.
And yet the approaching change made them appear as mystical as the huge
trunks of mountain forest trees. Myriads of young leaves were about to
burst miraculously from the fibres of that lifeless rope.
“In autumn,” said Violante, “everything turns red, a glorious red, and
sometimes on sunny October days the walls and steps seem to be hung
with purple. Then, indeed, the garden has its hour of beauty. If you
are here then, you will see----”
“He won’t be here,” interrupted Antonello, shaking his head.
“Why do you always say that?” I asked him with gentle reproof; “who
knows?”
“No one ever knows anything,” murmured Oddo in that muffled voice of
his, which I could only distinguish from his brother’s by the movement
of the lips. “Who knows what may happen to us between this and the
autumn? Massimilla is the only one who is safe; she has found her
refuge.”
Perhaps there was a tiny drop of bitterness in the last words.
“Massimilla is going to pray for us,” said Anatolia gravely.
The novice bent her head over her clasped hands, and we were silent for
a space, while a flood of vague but overpowering feeling swept over us.
The clearness of the early spring afternoon paled before that
illuminating vision of the autumn purple as we went down the steps,
where a few hours before the three princesses had appeared, as at the
beginning of a fairy tale, with a new-born smile on their lips after a
night of interminable anguish. That morning hour already seemed as far
away as the autumn was near, to which--a dim presentiment told me--a
fate was leading me swift as lightning. And when I pictured the purple
foliage on the bare branches, I also foresaw a shadow of deep mourning
fall on the faces of the three sisters.
And once more the sentiment of death impassioned and elevated my soul
till all things were reflected in it transfigured by poetry. And
in the splendour of the spring air these frail beings seemed to me
“marvellously sad,” like the women in the vision of the Vita Nuova,
which Massimilla had recalled to my memory among the almond blossom and
the ancient mirrors. And I felt as if the ardent spirit possessed me
that burns in the pages of that book, where the youthful Dante shows
how his soul could be shaken to its very foundations, and exalted to
the height of sorrowful madness by imagining the death of Beatrice, and
gazing on her face through the funeral shroud. “Weeping,” I said within
myself. “Certainly it must sometime come to pass that the very gentle
Beatrice will die.... And a great fear fell upon me, and I imagined
that some friend should come to me and say: 'Dost thou not know? Thy
marvellous lady has departed from this world....’ Then my heart that
was so full of love said unto me: 'It is true that our lady lieth dead’
... and so strong was this idle imagining that it made me to behold my
lady in death....” Did not the force of this ineffable inner beauty
come to me from a similar fancy?
A splendid nobility flowed from every action of these maidens, doomed
to die. It lit up the outward things among which they moved. And never
again perhaps did I see them in so much light and shade.
* * * * *
When we had reached the foot of the steps, and entered a glade
surrounded by the green ruins of a box-wood bower, Anatolia paused and
asked me--
“Would you like to see the whole garden? Perhaps you might find some
memories in it.”
As if she wanted to proclaim her power, Violante said--
“As you enjoy the music of the water, I will take you to see my seven
fountains.”
And Massimilla, with her shy gentleness--
“In return for the almond blossom, I will show you a white hawthorn
which came out last night over there.”
I felt as though they were speaking of their most intimate
possessions, and, like the virgin of Fontebranda, intended to say: “We
are ourselves a garden.”
As I could not express what I felt, I said only empty words.
“Show me the way, then,” I said; “I am sure to come across some
memories, at any rate of my early reading, which used to be fairy
tales.”
“Poor fairies without wands!” observed Oddo, taking Anatolia’s hand
with a caressing gesture.
And in the eyes of the maidens were smiles full of despair.
Then Violante led us through a labyrinth.
We walked among evergreens, among ancient box-trees, laurels, myrtles,
whose wild old age had forgotten its early discipline. In a few places
here and there there was some trace of the symmetrical shapes carved
once upon a time by the gardener’s shears; and with a melancholy not
unlike his who searches on marble tombstones for the effigies of the
forgotten dead, I noted carefully among the silent plants those traces
of humanity not altogether obliterated. A bitter-sweet odour hung round
our path, and from time to time one of us, as if wishing to weave
afresh an unravelled web, would reconstruct some memory of our far-off
childhood. And now the shadow of my mother rose pure and clear before
me, and seemed to feed upon all the things which our hearts exhaled in
the broken silences, and she never left Anatolia’s side, thus showing
me her preference. And a bitter-sweet odour hung over our melancholy.
Violante stopped and asked me, almost with the same look and in the
same tone as when she spoke to me at the window--
“Do you hear?”
“Now we are in your kingdom,” I said to her, “because you are the queen
of the fountains.”
The hoarse song of the water came to us through a high myrtle hedge as
we stood in a little meadow strewn with daffodils, and guarded by a
statue of Pan green with moss. A delicious softness seemed to spring in
my veins from the soft turf my feet pressed, and once again the sudden
joy of living took away my breath. At the same time, the presence
of the two brothers oppressed me, and pity for them grew stronger.
“Ah, how I could stir your sealed-up souls to the very depths!” I
thought, as I looked at the three prisoners. “How I could quicken into
anguish the troubled feelings within you!” And I pictured the delight
of enjoying these fresh souls full of the sap of life, rare fruits
which had slowly ripened in the garden of self-knowledge, and were
here still intact to slake my thirst. And my regret was the greater,
because I knew that never again could I renew that unique charm of
first acquaintance between beings whose destinies are fated to be
united; that unique and fleeting charm, in which are mingled marvel,
and expectation, and presentiment, and hope, and a thousand indefinable
things which partake of the nature of dreams, vain things indeed, yet
issuing from the most sacred depths of life.
Everything looked soft and rich through the transparency of the amber
air, and everywhere thoughts of beauty worthy of being gathered sprang
into flower, and the noblest flowered at the feet of the desolate
princesses, where I imagined myself stooping to gather them. And I
imagined the delight of caressing and troubling those souls while
wandering through the cloistered garden, over whom the phantoms of
the ancient seasons seemed to be weaving a veil of poetry--a veil
into which were woven with almost invisible threads strange figures
of unknown beings laughing and weeping in the alternations of joy and
sorrow.
In every one of these fountains was there not a Pantea singing, the
pure victim of a wicked and sublime passion? Certainly an extraordinary
feeling came over me when Violante led me beyond the myrtles into
the long alley enclosed between the shrubbery and the eastern wall.
Here reigned that mysterious spirit which fills such lonely spots
as tradition tells us were wont to be the meeting-place of lovers,
celebrated for the tragic splendour of their fate. The statues, the
pillars, the very trunks of the trees wore the aspect of things which
have been witnesses and accomplices of a great human passion, and
perpetuate the memory of it to all time. The deep injuries of devouring
time and the inclement seasons had given to the outlines of the stone
that expression, I might almost say that eloquence, which ruins alone
possess. Noble thoughts seem to rise from the broken lines.
And I imagined the delight of disclosing my magnificent dream here
to the three _blessed ones_ who alone could transform it into living
harmony; I imagined the delight of talking of love in that very place
where the virtue of so many symbols united to raise the soul above the
common griefs of humanity and expand it in the supreme heaven of beauty.
* * * * *
We were walking slowly, pausing from time to time, and speaking to hide
the uneasiness which troubled us; Oddo and Antonello seemed tired, they
lingered a few steps behind and were gloomily silent. And I felt as
though the shadows of sickness and death were behind me.
My fervour had cooled. I felt the crudeness of the contrast between
my impetuous eagerness and the miserable necessity which clung fast
to my side, and was around me everywhere in that great cloister full
of forgotten and perishing things. I felt that each one of those
beings who in that very same hour had been so often illuminated by
my intellect and transfigured by my passion, still kept her secret
intact, and that the language of her form could not reveal it to me. As
I looked at them, I saw each far away from the other, each a stranger
to the other, each with an unfathomed thought between her brows, each
with an unfathomed sentiment in her heart. I was about to go away and
return to my solitude; our day was near its end. What new things had
that first intercourse aroused in their souls, weary with the long
monotony of sorrow, which had ceased perhaps to be brightened by any
ray of hope in the unforeseen? Under what aspect had I appeared to
each? Had their longing for love and happiness yearned towards me with
an uncontrollable impulse, or did a suspicious incredulity like that of
their two brothers hinder them from trusting me?
They were walking thoughtfully by my side, and even when they spoke
they seemed so deeply absorbed, that more than once I was on the point
of asking: “What are you thinking about?” And a violent desire arose
in me to extort from them the secret they were holding so close; and
the bold words which can suddenly unlock a closed heart, and surprise
the most secret pain and force it to confession, rose to my lips. But
at the same time a pitiful tenderness moved me almost to ask their
pardon for the pain they might be suffering at my hand, and for a
sharper pain which they were to suffer in the future. The necessity of
choice presented itself to me as a cruel trial, a cause of sorrow and
inevitable sacrifices. Did I not feel a vehement anxiety filling up the
pauses in our restless conversation?
“Oh, when summer comes!” sighed Violante, lifting up her eyes to the
spreading umbrella pines. “In summer I spend the whole day here alone
with my fountains. And it is the time of the tuberoses!”
Gigantic pines with straight round stems like the masts of a vessel
grew at equal distances in a row along the wall of the cloister and
protected it with their thick cupolas. Between stem and stem, like the
spaces between columns, were niches hollowed in the wall and inhabited
by nude statues or robed figures in calm attitudes, their blind
divinity calling up visions of the past. At equal distances the seven
fountains projected in the shape of little temples; each one composed
of a wide basin in which deities sitting on the brink or leaning on the
urn of water gazed at their own reflection framed between the two pairs
of columns which supported a pediment carved with a couplet. Opposite
them rose the great myrtle hedge, a mass of green only broken by the
white pensive statues. And the damp ground was almost entirely covered
with moss as soft as velvet, which rendered our steps noiseless and
heightened the sweetness of the mystery.
“Can you read the verses?” asked Violante, as she saw me intent on
deciphering the letters cut in the stone, and effaced here and there by
mould and cracks. “I once knew what they meant.”
They said: “Hasten, hasten! Weave garlands of fair roses to girdle the
passing hours.”
PRÆCIPITATE MORAS, VOLUCRES CINGATIS UT HORAS
NECTITE FORMOSAS, MOLLIA SERTA, ROSAS.
It was only the ancient precept, sweetened by rhyme, which for
centuries has incited men to enjoy the pleasures of our brief life,
has kindled the kisses on lovers’ lips, and multiplied the number of
goblets at the banquet. It was the old voluptuous melody, modulated on
the new instrument which an industrious monk had fashioned in the shape
of a dove’s wing out of the various reeds left in the forsaken garden
of Pan, and bound together with the wax of votive lights and the
threads of old altar linen.
“The fountain gleams and babbles; and saith to thee in its splendour:
'Rejoice!’ and in its murmur speaks of Love.”
FONS LUCET, PLAUDE, ELOQUITUR FONS LUMINE: GAUDE.
FONS SONAT, ADCLAMA, MURMURE DICIT: AMA.
The rugged rhymes with their eternal commentary of running water threw
a vague spell over my spirit. I could hear in those echoes the veiled
accents of the melancholy which adds an indefinable grace to pleasure,
and by troubling it gives it greater depth. No less soft and sad were
the divine youthful figures that stretched their bare limbs over the
margin in curves as graceful as those of the mirror into which they had
so long been gazing.
“Weep here, ye lovers who come to slake your thirst. Too sweet is the
water. Season it with the salt of your tears.”
FLETE HIC OPTANTES, NIMIS EST AQUA DULCIS, AMANTES
SALSUS, UT APTA VEHAM, TEMPERET HUMOR EAM.
Thus the gentle fountain, envying the savour of tears, pointed out
to the joyous the subtle art of imparting a touch of bitterness to
the fullest enjoyment. “It is well to mix among the roses some dewy
flower of the deadly hellebore, scarcely distinguishable from the rest
of the garland, so that thus redeemed the head may from time to time
be bent.” It seemed as if step by step, on that long Way of Love,
enjoyment became more collected, wiser, and yet more passionate. The
liquid mirrors invited lovers to lay down heads heavy with dreams, and
to gaze at their own reflections, until, having at last attained to
perceiving in them only symbols of unknown beings risen into the light
from an inaccessible world, they may better realise the presence of the
unspeakably strange and remote in their own lives. “Lean over to your
reflections that your kisses may be doubled by the mirror.”
OSCULA JUCUNDA UT DUPLICENTUR IMAGINE IN UNDA
VULTUS HIC VERO CERNITE FONTE MERO.
Was not that simple action a token revealing a hidden thing? The two
lovers bending over the reflection of their caress unconsciously
figured the mystic power of voluptuous enjoyment, which consists in
banishing for a few moments from our souls the unknown man whom we all
carry hidden within us, and thus rendering him as remote and strange
as a phantom. Does not the dim vagueness of such a sentiment perhaps
increase the delirium and produce the terror of lovers who in the
mirrors of deep alcoves admire the reflection of their mutual caresses
repeated by figures in their own likeness, yet immeasurably unlike and
remote in their supernatural silence? With a confused consciousness of
the extraordinary alienation taking place within them, they think they
have found an enlightening symbol of it in those outward images, which
analogy leads them no longer to consider as visible objects, but as
inexplicable forms of life, and finally as visions of death.
This was the vision called up by the last of the musical fountains, as
Violante’s face bent over it and the shadow of the pines fell slowly
like a dark blue veil. “Here did Pleasure and Death admire their united
reflection, and their two faces were fused into one.”
SPECTARUNT NUPTAS HIC SE MORS ATQUE VOLUPTAS
UNUS [FAMA FERAT] QUUM DUO, VULTUS ERAT.
A soft white cloud passed by and veiled the sun, and the air became
softer still; it was like transparent milk into which some perfume had
been emptied. And the cadence of the Latin couplets rang in my ears as
we walked through enclosed meadows yellow with daffodils, where one
could imagine the scenes of a pastoral _fête_ held under tents wreathed
with garlands. On the base of a statue of a nymph who had lost both her
arms was carved the emblem of the Arcadian Academy: the fountain with
seven pipes within a laurel wreath.
“Were you not here this morning?” I said to Violante, as I recognised
her close by the box-wood arch under which she had first appeared to me.
She smiled, and I thought a momentary flash of colour passed over her
cheeks. Only a few hours had passed, and I was amazed to find how the
exact notion of time had escaped me. That short interval seemed full of
confused events which gave it, to my consciousness, a deceptive length
without any fixed limits. I was not yet able to sound the gravity of
the life I had lived since the moment I had put foot in the cloister;
but I felt that some dim change, fraught with incalculable results, was
being worked within me quite apart from my own will; and I thought
that, after all, the presentiment of the morning on the lonely road had
not been vain.
“Why shouldn’t we sit down?” asked Antonello almost entreatingly. “Are
you not tired yet?”
“Yes, let us sit down,” assented Anatolia, with her usual gentle
condescension. “I am a little tired too. It is the spring air.... What
a smell of violets!”
“But where is your white hawthorn?” I exclaimed, turning to Massimilla
to show her that I had not forgotten her offer.
“It is a long way off still,” she replied.
“Where?”
“Down there.”
“Massimilla has her hiding-places,” said Anatolia, laughing. “When she
hides no one can find her.”
“Like a little ferret,” I added.
“And then,” she continued playfully, “she alludes every now and then to
some small wonder known to herself alone, but she does it cautiously,
keeping her secret to herself, without giving in the least bit to our
curiosity. To-day with her white hawthorn she has made you the object
of special favour.”
The novice kept her eyes turned downwards, but laughter quivered on her
eyelashes and lit up her whole face.
“Some day,” the kind sister went on, pleased to have called up the
unwonted ray, “some day I will tell you the story of the hedgehog and
the four little blind hedgehogs.”
Then Massimilla burst into such clear youthful laughter, which clothed
her in such unusual freshness, that I stood amazed as if a miracle of
grace had taken place.
“Ah, don’t listen to Anatolia!” she said, without looking at me. “She
is laughing at me.”
“The story of the hedgehog and the four little blind hedgehogs!” I
said, drinking in with delight this sudden vein of gaiety which crossed
our melancholy. “But you are a very pattern of Franciscan perfection!
We must add another little flower to the _Fioretti_: 'How Sister Water
tamed the wild hedgehog and gave it a nest that it might multiply,
according to the command of our Creator!’ Tell me, tell me the story.”
The Clare laughed with her dear Anatolia, and the subtle feeling of joy
spread to Violante also and to the two brothers, and for the first time
that day we were conscious of our youth.
What words can express the sweet strangeness of sudden laughter
unlocking the lips and shining in the eyes of the sorrow-stricken? The
first amazement of it lingered in my soul and seemed to cover all the
rest with a veil. The unusual emotion which had stirred Massimilla’s
slender breast took possession of me and disturbed the outlines of
previous impressions or melted them away altogether. The half-closed
mouth of the ecstatic saint was suddenly filled with a silvery rush of
sound, just as she was about to let scrolls of silence fall from the
motionless palms of her hands.
Nothing save the sound of that laughter could have conveyed to me the
depth of the unapproachable mystery which each of the virgins bore
within herself. Was it not a chance sign of that instinctive life
lying dormant like a heaped-up treasure in the very roots of their
physical existence? And did not that hidden tenacious life, weighed
down and yet not crushed by the knowledge of so much sorrow, contain
within it the germs of numberless energies? As a spring pours on
the dry rock the tokens of secret moisture underground, even so the
beautiful sudden laugh seemed to rise from that fount of natural joy
which the most miserable being still preserves in the depths of his
own unconsciousness. And thus above my emotion rose a proud and loving
thought: “I could make thee a creature of joy.”
And then my eyes armed themselves with new curiosity; and I was
assailed by an anxious desire to look, to gaze at, and observe the
three princesses more attentively, as if I had not seen them truly
before. And once more it struck me what a complicated enigma of lines
every feminine form is, and how difficult it is _to see_, not only the
soul but the body. Those hands, for instance, on whose long, slender
fingers I had placed my subtlest dreams like invisible rings, already
seemed different to me, and appeared as the receptacles of infinite
nameless forces from which marvellous generations of new things might
arise. And some strange analogy led me to imagine the anxiety and
horror which filled that young prince, who, imprisoned in a dark
place and obliged to choose his own destiny at the hands of silent
messengers, passed the whole night in feeling the fatal hands which
were stretched out to him in the darkness. Hands in the darkness--what
more fearful image of mystery can there be?
The bare hands of the three princesses rested in the light; and looking
at them, I thought of the infinite number of uncreated gestures
contained in them, and of the myriads of leaves bursting out in the
garden.
Anatolia smiled as she saw my intent look.
“Why are you looking so attentively at our hands? Are you a palmist?”
“Yes, I am a palmist,” I answered in jest.
“Then tell us our fortunes.”
“Show me your left hand.”
She held out her palm, and her sisters did the same. And I bent
over them, pretending to explore the lines of life, of fate, and of
happiness in each. “What are your fortunes?” I thought meanwhile as
I looked at these three fair hands stretched out as if to receive or
offer, and in the pause my trouble was fed by the thousand unexpressed
and inexplicable things generated by the silence. “Possibly even the
iron magnet of fate may be subject to those sudden changes which affect
the pointing of the magnetic needle in the compass. Possibly all the
energies of will that I feel within me, both clear and confused, are
already exercising their transforming power; and the deviating fortunes
may be tending towards a final event which shall work out my good. But
possibly also I may be the sport of an illusion born of my pride and
confidence, and my present state may be only that of a prisoner among
prisoners.”
Great was the silence during this pause; it was such that the
perception of the immensity of the voiceless things embraced by it
terrified me. The sun was still under a veil. Suddenly Antonello
started and turned quickly towards the palace as if some one had
called him. We all looked at him anxiously, and he looked at us with a
wandering gaze. The sisters laid down their hands.
“Well?” Anatolia asked me, with a shadow of preoccupation on her brow.
“What have you read?”
“I have read,” I replied, “but I cannot reveal.”
“Why?” she said, recovering her smile. “Is what you know so terrible?”
“It is not terrible,” I said; “indeed, it is joyful.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“For all of us or only for one?”
I hesitated an instant. Did she not penetrate into my perplexity with
her question and remind me of the necessary choice.
“You won’t answer!” she added.
“For all of you,” I replied.
“Even for me?” asked Massimilla dreamily.
“Even for you. Are you not going to take the veil by your own choice?
And are you not sure of attaining the blessedness which compensates for
total renunciation?”
As I looked straight into her eyes, she flushed with colour that
seemed almost violent contrasted with her pallor.
“'Be thou, be thou that fragrant flower which thou oughtest to be,
spreading its fragrance abroad in the sweet presence of God!’ Saint
Catherine wrote that for you.”
“You know Saint Catherine!” said the little novice, her eyes shining
with wonder through her blushes.
“She is my favourite saint,” I added, glad to see her astonishment,
and tempted by the pleasure of disturbing and dazzling her soul, which
seemed to me to be eager and easily shaken. “I love her for her purple
hue. In the Garden of self-knowledge she is like a rose of fire.”
The betrothed of Jesus looked at me almost incredulously; but the
desire of questioning and listening was painted in her face, and the
line of attention cast already a faint shadow on her brow.
“The book I had with me this morning,” she said, with a little tremble
in her voice as if she were revealing some intimate confidence, “was a
volume of her letters.”
“I noticed that like a good Franciscan you put a blade of grass in your
page for a mark. But that book contains another mark. The grass in it
burns on the edge of a furnace. The essence of her soul is all in those
words of hers: 'Fire and blood united by love!’ Do you remember them?”
“Oh, Massimilla,” interrupted Oddo, laughing, “you may dismiss your
spiritual father. Now you have found the true guide to the way of
perfection!”
We were sitting on the edge of an empty tank which had no doubt been
an ancient fish-pond; now it was almost entirely filled with soil, and
taken possession of by wild plants, among which violets were hidden--in
great numbers, to judge by their great fragrance. Close by was the
broken-down wall of box-wood, breathing out the same aroma from its
depths as had met me on my first entrance into the garden. I could see
the deserted alley with its mutilated statues and widowed urns through
the thin parts of the shrubs and through the arches.
“Is the day yet fixed for you to enter the convent?” I asked Massimilla.
“Not yet,” she replied, “but it is almost sure to be before Easter.”
“Very soon then. Too soon!”
Antonello got up, suddenly seized by unbearable agitation. We all
turned towards him. He looked at Anatolia with vague terror in his pale
eyes. Then he sat down again. An indefinable anxiety crept over us; it
seemed as if Antonello had imparted some of his distress to us.
“This time yesterday we were in the orchard among the almond blossom,”
said Oddo, with a shade of regret for a past pleasure in his voice.
Antonello’s words rose spontaneously in my mind: “We must bring them
here among the flowers.”
“We must all go back there some day,” I broke out cheerfully, to
destroy that strange atmosphere of fear and anxiety which, for some
unknown cause, was increasing over our minds. “We must make the most
of this beautiful springtime. In a week the whole valley will be in
flower. I propose to go all over it, up to Corace, to visit Scultro,
Secli, Linturno.... How happy I should be if I might have your company!
Would you not like to come? Won’t you set a good example, Donna
Anatolia?”
“Certainly,” she said. “You offer us just what we wish.”
“And you too, Donna Massimilla, will be allowed the recreation. Saint
Francis, as you know, composed the canticle of the Sun in the cell of
boughs which Saint Clara had made for him in the monastery garden.
According to the ancient rule, the woods, the rivers, the mountains,
and the hills must be your brothers and sisters. Travelling among them
is like making a votive pilgrimage.... And then in the deserted city
at Linturno there is the nave of a church still standing; and a great
Madonna in mosaic, standing solitary under the canopy of the apse....
I always remember it. It is a thing one cannot forget. Do you remember
it, Antonello?”
Antonello started at the sound of his name.
“What did you say?” he stammered in a confused voice.
And his poor drawn face expressed such suffering that I could not speak.
“Yes, yes, let us go, let us go,” he added, pretending to have heard;
and he rose, a prey to evident agitation. He had the air of a maniac,
he was so pale and tottering. “Let us go away from here! Anatolia, get
up....”
He spoke quite low, as if he feared to be overheard by some one in the
neighbourhood. His tone filled us with dread.
“Get up, Claudio. Let us go.”
Anatolia ran to him and took his hands.
“Here she is, here she comes!” he stammered, quite beside himself,
turning his pale eyes, diluted by the hallucination, towards the alley.
“Here she is! Do you hear?”
Perplexed and troubled as I was, I thought at first that he was
terrified by some phantom called up by his madness. But the sound of
approaching steps reached my ears also; and all at once I understood as
I saw the sedan chair appear between the walls of box.
There we stood, dumb, motionless, holding our breath as the strange
convoy passed along. In the icy silence which had fallen on us, like
that surrounding a bier, one could distinctly hear the poles carried by
the two servants creaking slightly in their places.
Then through the open window of the chair, against the background
of green velvet, I saw the face of the mad princess; it was
unrecognisable, disfigured, and swollen and bloodless, like a mask of
snow; the hair was piled on her brow like a diadem. Her great black
eyes blazed out of the opaque whiteness of her skin from beneath the
commanding arched eyebrows, their extraordinary splendour maintained
perhaps by the continual hallucination of fantastic pomp and luxury.
Her double chin hung down over the necklace round her throat. And this
pale inert mass suggested to my imagination the dream-figure of some
Byzantine empress of the time of a Nicephorus or a Basil, lying in her
golden litter.
“There, she sees us; she is stopping, she is getting out, and coming
towards us,” I fancied with growing uneasiness, half expecting some
proof of the reality of what seemed to me an unreal apparition on the
point of vanishing and of entering the void again like a dream when
one wakes. “There, she is calling some one, speaking to them, asking
who I am, questioning me....” In the silence I heard in imagination
the sound of her voice, the dialogue between the children doomed to
an inhuman sacrifice, and the mother whose madness had transported
her into another world; a world into which she was inevitably drawing
them all, one after the other. And in my horror I understood the deep
shudder of instinctive repugnance that had passed over Antonello as she
approached, something like the shudder which runs through the folded
flock at the approach of the wild beast who is going to devour them.
But she passed by without noticing us, without moving an eyelid, and
vanished among the ancient box-trees. Two maids, dressed in grey like
Béguines, pale with weariness, silent and sad, walked close behind the
sedan chair; their arms hung at their sides, and swung at every step
like the rosaries hanging from their waists, cold and inanimate.
As I rode back to Rebursa alone, I could see before me the pale swollen
face of the Princess Aldoina, and the gloomy fatigue of the servants,
and the two grey shadows following the chair, and all the details of
the strange procession. Some essential part of me had been left behind
in the great cloister, but still I felt in my inmost being the joy of
being alone again.
I recalled once more to my mind the gestures of farewell at the gate,
the marvellous depth in the eyes of the prisoners, and the dreamlike
view of the garden vanishing away behind the three beautiful forms. And
at the same time all the other phantoms of the intense life I had lived
in those few hours crowded into my soul like a store of varied and
disordered riches, gathered up that they might be rearranged for the
adornment of my secret kingdom.
“What opulence!” said the Dæmon, appearing to me, not without joy and
pride. “What magnificence in a single day! Thou couldest not have
better served thine end, which is to give life to everything, to
extract life from the most barren things. Now, dost thou acknowledge
the wisdom of my morning admonition? Dost thou not bless the sternness
of thy long restraint, since it now yields thee this intoxicating
fruit? Thy power of poetry, like thy will, has no limit. Everything
that is born and exists around thee is born and exists by reason of the
breath of thy will and thy poetry. And thou art nevertheless living in
a very real order of things, because nothing is more true in the world
than the things of poetry.”
The day was sinking over the undulating valley of the Saurgo, and the
slanting rays turned the brown fields into gold, while the light clouds
sat in a circle on peaks of rock resembling the highest seats in an
amphitheatre. They sat there in feminine attitudes, waiting for the
evening to robe them with purple.
“Now, thou couldest make even salt bear fruit,” said the Dæmon to me.
“Wherever thy spirit turns, abundance springs up. But thou hast with
thee also the favour of fortune; thou hast entered the unknown and
unforeseen not as one feeling his way and exploring with hesitation,
but as one who is expected and called to gather in the harvest on a
field where the richest fruit awaits him--fruit still intact, and ready
to fall into his hands whenever in sunshine or in shadow he pleases to
stretch them out. Thou hast entered a cloistered garden, delicious and
terrifying as the garden of the Hesperides. Happiness has smiled to
thee in three shapes, standing between madness and death, like statues
of pure white marble between two black columns. Is there not some
meaning for thee in that symbol?”
“Oh despot,” I replied, “there is surely some hidden meaning in the
symbol thou declarest to me, and I shall discover it. But since the
perfection of that trinity attracts me, and since it is necessary for
my purpose that I should choose, I am perplexed in spirit, and not
without fear of being deluded like a common mortal.”
And the Dæmon: “Not thy fears of the morning alone, but those of the
evening also are vain! Nor is that thy only error; for before now,
in the presence of the blessed ones, after having composed beautiful
music out of the beauty of their bare hands thou didst regret that
thou couldest not carry them all away at once to thy home; thou didst
rebel against the injuries of prejudice and custom. Now, in thus doing,
thou didst humble thyself, not only to own the power of the laws of
others, but also to disown the power of thy own ideal, which alone
is sacred. Why dost thou aspire to the legitimate possession of the
body when the ideal figures already adorn the house of thy dreams with
their triple grace? Thou couldest not remove the three prisoners from
their dungeon without breaking the enchantment which transfigures them.
Countless mysterious waves of affinity flow between the depths of those
lives and the silent places where they have suffered and awaited thee.
Their grace, their desolation, and their pride draw the fascination
which enthralled thee from the hidden virtue of innumerable elements.
Even so, noble plants, with their long roots subdivided into myriads
of fibres, absorb from the very bosom of the earth those immortal
energies which are pressed towards the light by the rising force in the
stalk, and are crowned in the miracle of the flower and the perfume.
Canst thou, oh Poet, imagine Eglae, Arethusa, or Iperthusa chased from
their garden? When Heracles, clothed with stars, penetrated into the
western paradise to rob its golden apples, he forbore to carry away the
daughters of Night, for even his brutal soul felt that he would have
defaced, and perhaps destroyed, the heavenly mystery of their beauty.”
“Oh despot,” I said then, “I am thinking of Him who is to come.”
And the Dæmon: “It is well that this should be always the sum of thy
thoughts. But once before, the necessity of choice appeared to thee
as a cruel trial, a source of sorrow and inevitable sacrifice, and
thy heart shrank from it. Reflect that there is no goddess so worthy
of being called upon to preside at a birth as Sorrow. Nothing in the
world is lost, and wonderful things may sometimes be born of tears.
Reflect that the highest power of will does not manifest itself in the
readiness to choose from many things offered, nor in the firmness which
resists various impulses, but rather in the art of giving the clearness
and dignity of acknowledged and directed powers to the instinctive
motions of nature. Reflect that there is always some way of being equal
to the event in all the chances of this most uncertain life. There was
once a man who, beside a tyrant able by one sign of his hand to condemn
him to death, wore such a look, that bystanders doubted which of the
two was the master. Be thou like unto him, and handle the events of
life in a royal spirit.”
The dome of heaven was tinged with pale hyacinthine blue, and the
olive-trees reflected its calm on their silver locks, which concealed
the painful contortions of their black trunks. The clouds on the rocky
peaks were not yet clothed in purple, but in robes of more delicate
hue, making them droop; yet one here and there raised a proud head
among her companions and aspired to a crown of stars.
“In the meantime compose thy music,” pursued the Dæmon, “out of the
wonderful things which are born of affinity, and of the relations
between three perfect forms contemplated sincerely. In their unison
and surroundings there is a wonderful language which is already as
comprehensible to thee as if thou hadst created it. Out of any one of
their outlines thou canst make the axis of a world. They seem to impart
to thee the joy of continual creation and continual discovery, to
help thee to complete thy harmony with a part of thyself unexpectedly
revealed. They seem to pour into thee again the life which ages ago
they received from thee. Hadst thou not enjoyed them even before they
smiled on thee? As thou stoodest in silence beside them, was not thy
soul within thee heavy as a cloud?”
“Oh despot,” I said, and felt my soul yearn with infinite desire
towards the garden from which the harmonious twilight was bearing me
away. “Oh despot, it is true; as I stood in silence beside them, I
felt stronger emotion than if I had loosed their hair, or pressed my
lips on their beautiful necks, and I am still full of it. Yet, as the
shadows fall, I would fain return there secretly; and invisible to the
eye, I would lean my head on those virginal bosoms and tarry there a
long while, because I think that from those bosoms there would flow
over me in the cool shadow a great sweetness and a great sorrow which I
shall never know.”
III
“... _A sedere, con le dita delle mani insieme tessute, tenendovi
dentro il ginocchio stanco._”
LEONARDO DA VINCI
“_Dov è più sentimento, li è più martirio._”
Ibid
And I led them among the flowers.
They listened with visible emotion to the infinite melodies of
springtime, bending or turning sometimes towards their own shadows,
which preceded or followed them like blue figures prostrated to kiss
the earth. A confused feeling of the joy of liberty and hope shone at
times in their dazzled eyes; a voiceless word at times unclosed their
lips, and likened them to the brims of overflowing goblets. And when
they paused, I thought with inward intoxication of the fulness of life
which was suffocating them.
The things that we said to each other from time to time must have
seemed futile to them also; but they were enough to make us feel the
depth of our true life. A passing glance, a bend of the head, a short
pause, sufficed to stir to their depths those abysses which the faint
light of ordinary consciousness rarely penetrates, while that which we
were saying seemed as far away to us as the deepest roots of trees are
far from the murmur of the uppermost branches.
Nothing could have equalled the strange beauty of that stern country
in full blossom. On the tawny ground, shaggy as a lion’s mane, the
pink-and-white flowers suggested pictures of maidens lying trembling on
the vast hairy bosoms of legendary giants. The rays of the sun played
round the transparent petals and gave them the dancing splendour of
precious stones. Here and there the polished ploughshares with which
the land had been turned up glittered in dual radiance.
We realised the depth of our real life. And little by little, by common
consent, we forbore to utter those empty words which had only served
to break the solemnity of the silence, and to disperse the heavy cloud
of dreams and thoughts which hung over us. We were united by a clearer
and more intimate communion; an atmosphere of divination such as the
mystics breathe sprang up around us, and without speaking we exchanged
the profoundest secrets. Sometimes we were so steeped in delight
that it surged from our eyes in a glance, and our slightest gestures
expressed, without actual contact, all that is conveyed by the most
lingering caress. The petals which fell at our feet from the almost
motionless boughs, moved us strangely, like a confession of languor
on the part of the trees, and of a delight in relieving themselves.
The vines, all ready to bud, bending over the earth in contorted,
struggling shapes, stimulated us with the example of a painful effort
about to be changed into an intoxicating gift. And in the frail petal
and slight tendril we felt the ideal virtue of the fragrant almond-oil
and the flame of oblivion given by the grape.
A sudden agitation seized me one day when I saw a drop of blood on
Violante’s hand, which had been pricked by a thorn among the flowers
of a snowy hedge. Smiling, she withdrew the beautiful hand on which
the drop was rising; and as we chanced to be at some distance from
her sisters, and perhaps unobserved, I felt a wild desire to press my
lips upon the blood and taste its sweetness. And the effort I made to
restrain myself was so great that I trembled.
“Do you dislike the sight of blood?” she asked me in a voice which
dissimulation was not able to steady or to make playful.
And as her eyes looked into mine I felt myself turning pale, for I had
an indefinable feeling within me which can only be vaguely compared
to an immense wheel revolving with lightning-like speed and suddenly
brought to a standstill. Something great was being resolved upon
in that moment by each of us; and although we preserved a composed
attitude with regard to each other, our inward attitude was one of
extreme tension preceding an irrepressible outburst. Our two lives
yearned towards each other with their whole force.
Ah, shall I ever forget that burning silence trembling with the
invisible flight of a messenger bearing the unspoken word? What power
of oblivion will ever be able to efface from my memory that hand
beaded with blood, and that hill slope covered with blossom?
Anatolia’s voice called to us in the distance, and we moved on side by
side. A sudden bodily weariness and sadness had fallen upon us, as if
we had just passed from a long night of pleasure.
But there were moments also when my soul inclined rather towards her
who had called us, and towards her who was about to depart. I rejoiced
in these changes of love, which did not dissipate my energies, but
stimulated them as wind fans the flame. I seemed to have discovered
a new set of perceptions; the strangest and most diverse ones seemed
to combine spontaneously within me. Sometimes they gave birth to
such novel and beautiful music that I felt on the point of being
transfigured, and I thought that my desire to become like unto the gods
was about to be realised.
I thought: “If ever there was a god who loved to sit in the springtime
beneath the flowering trees and entice the hamadryads from their
hiding-places to caress them in his arms, he certainly never
experienced greater enjoyment than I feel in gathering up the essential
beauty of these delicious beings, and mingling it together with the
same ease with which he might weave the diverse obedient locks of his
tree nymphs into a golden harmony.”
Thus at times I felt as though I were living in a myth which the youth
of the human soul created under the skies of Hellas. The ancient spirit
of deity was abroad upon the earth, as it was when the daughter of
Rhea gave to Triptolemus the gift of ears of corn that he might sow
them in the furrows, and that all men by him might enjoy the divine
benefit. The immortal energies which flowed through visible things
seemed always conscious of the old transfiguring spirit that used to
convert them into great symbols of beauty for the enjoyment of men.
Three in number, like the Graces, the Gorgons, and the Fates, were the
maidens who moved with me through this mysterious springtime. And I
loved to compare myself to the youth pictured on the vase of Ruvo, who
is enticing a winged genius across the threshold of a myrtle grove.
Over his head is written the name Happiness, and three maidens surround
him; one bears in her hands a dish heaped up with fruit, another is
wrapped in a starry mantle, and the third has the thread of Lachesis in
her nimble fingers.
One day we came by chance on a piece of enclosed ground, which the
peasant cultivators had, according to the old heathen custom, dedicated
to an oak-tree struck by lightning.
“What a beautiful death!” exclaimed Violante, as she leant over the
oblong wooden fence which protected it.
The lonely place was full of almost terrible solemnity. The aspect of
the altar which the Latin priests consecrated with the sacrifice of a
white lamb must have been something like this.
“You are committing sacrilege,” I said to Violante. “This sacred
enclosure cannot be touched without profanation. Heaven punishes the
transgressor with madness....”
“With madness?...” she said, and drew away with a kind of instinctive
superstition; her action gave an unexpected seriousness to my allusion
to the pagan belief.
In one flash I saw the pale, swollen face of her mad mother, and
Antonello’s wandering eyes, and I heard again the tragic cry: “We are
breathing her madness”; and an icy sensation of fatality ran through me.
“No, no, don’t be afraid!” I said involuntarily, only deepening the
shadow, perhaps, by thus clearly expressing my regret for the remark
which must have seemed like a gloomy omen or a cruel presentiment.
“I am not afraid,” she replied, without smiling, as she leant over the
fence again.
Thus from an idle word was born a great shadow.
The stricken tree rose before us, hard and black as basalt, its stony
trunk torn open to the roots by a rent which testified to the awfulness
of vindictive force. Its torn side was bare of branches, but there
were a few left at the top of the other side, flinging the implacable
despair of their gestures up to the sun. At each corner of the
enclosure was fixed a ram’s skull with curved horns, bleached by the
sun and rain of numberless seasons. Everything was motionless, dead,
and sacred, and primeval in appearance.
From time to time the cries of the hawks pierced the blue sky.
* * * * *
The days passed by rapidly; they were days of farewell to her who was
about to depart.
“Gaze at the springtime with the whole strength of your eyes,” I used
to say to her, “for you will never see it again, never again!”
I said also to her--
“Warm your hands in the sun, bathe them in the sun, poor hands, for
soon you will have to keep them crossed on your breast, or hidden in
the shade under the brown woollen habit.” I would say as I showed her a
flower--
“Here is a miracle for which you ought to thank Heaven. Think of the
thousand legends contained in the silver network of this blossom,
of the hidden relation between the number of petals and stamens, of
the slender threads which support the lobes of the pistils, of this
transparent robe, this web, these valves and membranes covered with
almost invisible down, which enclose the mysterious agitation of the
seed vessels. Think of all the divine art revealed in the structure
of this living creation, gifted in its fragility with infinite powers
of love and fertility. See the moving tracery of shadow which the
trembling leaves cast on the earth, and the same tracery painted on the
wall, to cheer your melancholy, in rays now blue and now golden; and
the little, white fingers at the tips of the pine branches; and the
drops of dew hanging from the beard of the oats; and the delicate veins
in the wings of the bee; and the dazzling green of the dragon-fly; and
the iridescent colours on the dove’s neck; and the strange shapes of
lichen stains; and the holes in tree-trunks; and the composition of
crystals.... Store away all these marvels under those eyelids of yours,
which will have to be lowered for so long before Christ crucified. I
don’t think there are any gardens in the old monastery of Queen Sancia,
only stone cloisters.”
“Why do you tempt me?” she used to ask. “Why do you enjoy disturbing my
weak will? Have you been sent by God to try me?”
“I don’t wish to disturb your will,” I replied, “but only to give you
brotherly advice, which may help you to suffer less. I think that
after you are buried, when you cannot look out of the grated windows
without hurting your cheek against the bars--I think that you who have
grown up in a garden will have to pass through a few weeks of furious
impatience, when all the visions of the open air will pass before your
memory. Then it will be inexpressible torture to you if you cannot
recall the exact details of the tiny black and yellow speckles on the
lizard’s back, or the tender downy leaf which buds on the branch of
an apple-tree. I know the madness of such belated curiosity. Once I
was passionately fond of a great Scotch deerhound my father had given
me. He was a magnificent beast, very graceful, and extraordinarily
well bred. When he died I was in the greatest misery; and it used to
torment me strangely that I could not exactly recall the precise shape
of the specks of gold in his brown eyes, and the grey marks in his
beautiful rosy mouth when one caught a glimpse of it in a yawn or a
bark. We ought, therefore, to look with attentive eyes at everything,
especially at the creatures we love. Do you not love the things I was
speaking to you about just now? and are you not about to leave them?
Are you not about to place a kind of death between them and you?”
She sat, the fingers of her hands clasped together, holding within
them the weary knee. Her delicate grace was a little disturbed by
the trouble she felt at the ambiguity of my words, half serious and
half playful, half deceptive and half sincere. And speaking in this
way gave me the same pleasure as I should have felt in ruffling the
smooth bands of that hair over which the silver scissors of the tonsure
were hanging. “_Tondeantur in rotundum...._” Still clear in my memory
was the fresh ring of the youthful laugh rippling from her mouth
at the closing hour of that first day, and filling me with wonder.
And it pleased my fancy to group the pictures of all these slight,
many-coloured things around the novice, who, in that already far-away
February afternoon, had showed me as a secret miracle the nightly
blossoming of her white hawthorn.
* * * * *
I used to seek her as one seeks some good thing which one knows to be
ephemeral. She attracted me like a pure figure of youth, turning to me
with a tearful smile on the threshold of a gloomy door, through which
she was about to pass, and be lost to sight. I should like to have said
to her sisters: “Let me love her as long as she is of this world; let
me pour spices over her little feet!” During my long visits it often
happened that I was alone with her, and could enter into spiritual
converse with her docile soul, ever anxious to obey. From time to time
Anatolia would disappear, when one or other of the two grey maids came
to summon her with a look. There were some days when Violante scarcely
appeared at all. She seemed to avoid my society, to look upon me with
indifference, to have fallen back into her usual apathy. The two
brothers could not stand the full light of the open air for very long,
and so I often found myself alone with the little novice, sitting on a
marble seat beneath the statue of Summer in the outer court, or in the
shadow of the already verdant trellises over the steps, or on the edge
of the dried-up fish pond. I would say to her--
“Perhaps you may have deceived yourself in the choice of your
Bridegroom, sweet sister. When you hear the bishop saying, '_Ecce
sponsus venit_,’ you will tremble in your secret heart, and will expect
a fair, strong hand to be stretched out to you, and to gather you up
entirely, like water in the hollow of a palm; for this is the sweet,
powerful attitude which you expect of your conqueror, and which is
best suited to your flexibility, sweet sister. But perhaps you may be
deluded at the very foot of the altar. And if you dare to lift your
eyes, you will see, amid the burning candles, the promised Bridegroom
motionless, with His pierced hands, and His head crowned with thorns.
You will feel obliged, sweet sister, to draw out those cruel nails,
driven in so deep. And terrible strength will seem to be required to
fulfil such an action. And then the wounds will have to be dressed with
infinite patience, and with balsams made of herbs only to be gathered
on certain giddy heights, where the air is too rarefied to breathe. And
the wounds once closed, the blood bursting from the veins will have
to be forced back into its proper channels. And after the toilsome
work has been completed, perhaps the newly-healed hands will withdraw
altogether. To very few brides is it granted to see them perfectly
restored again; and even among the elect there is scarcely one to whom
on some mystic evening is vouchsafed the supreme joy of feeling herself
altogether possessed, altogether folded within the constraining clasp,
as you desire to be....”
The submissive maiden murmured--
“God grant that I may be that one!”
“Ah, sweet sister,” I said to her, “only think what immense strength
that one must possess to revive a dead hand and to draw it so ardently
to herself!”
“I have not any strength, but I will ask it of the Lord.”
“The Lord can only give you back the strength you have given to Him,
Massimilla.”
“Be silent, please!” she implored. “I am afraid your words are impious.”
“They are not impious; you need not fear listening to them. Do you not
remember the first lines of the Commentary of St. Theresa? She speaks
there of a God imprisoned. Think what power is required to enchain
the Lord! You see, Sister Water, what unceasing acts of strength are
required of the Bride who is sung in the Antiphons and Responses.
That is why, as I have a brotherly anxiety for you, I want at least
to prepare your soul for the bitterness of disillusion. Do not lull
it too much with the promises of the Psalms! There is, I think, some
magnificent joyous promise in the verses you have learned, '_Veni,
Electa mea...._’ 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For
lo! the winter is past ... the voice of the turtle is heard in our
land ... the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell.’ Ah, the
Latin of the Psalms is incomparable in producing a picture of the
intoxication of love sinking under suffocating wealth. Some of the
verses seem to drop with fragrant oil like the hair of slaves, or to
be heavy and glittering as nuggets of gold. When the bishop places the
crown of virginal merit on your head, your lips will have to pronounce
wonderful words--words in which I see and feel some mysterious weight
and splendour. '_Et immensis monilibus ornavit me._’ Wonderful words!
Are they not?”
She was looking at me now with such passion that all her little soul
trembled like a tear on her eyelashes, and by merely bending forward I
could have drunk it.
“Perhaps I may be hurting you a little,” I went on. “But I see such
dreams burning in the depths of your eyes that I am afraid for you,
sweet sister; for the life for which you are preparing yourself cannot
be in accordance with your dreams or with your nature. What is awaiting
you is a monotonous life, always the same, almost torpid, all mapped
out by the unchangeable Rule, in the old convent of Queen Sancia,
which has been the grave of more than one Montaga, and of more than
one Cantelma. There is a picture in my memory of those Poor Clares
one Ash Wednesday. When I was in Naples, the Angevin Church of Santa
Chiara had an attraction for me, not only because some of my ancestors
lie there, not only because there one may envy the Duke of Rodi his
sleep in the pagan sarcophagus of Protesilaus and Laodamia, but also
because there with closed eyes one can absorb the poetry diffused by
the beautiful names of dead women. There is Maria, Duchess of Durazzo
and Empress of Constantinople, there is the Princess Clemenza, there
is Isotta d’Altamura, and Isabella di Soleto, and Beatrice di Caserta,
and that delicious Antonia Gaudino, who is very like you, as she softly
sleeps in marble under a veil which Giovanni da Nola must have borrowed
from the youngest of the Graces. I have a picture in my memory of the
Poor Clares on Ash Wednesday. Behind the high altar there is a great
black grating, all covered with spikes, enclosing the convent choir;
and through it one can see the rows of stalls where the sisters sit,
while on this side of the barrier the bishop, served by a Capuchin,
is seated with a silver basin full of ashes in his hands. A shutter
is opened in the grating, and one by one the Clares come and kneel at
it. The bishop thrusts his feeble arm through the hole and marks their
foreheads one by one with the sign of the cross. As each has been
signed she rises and returns to her stall like a ghost, brushing the
pavement with silent feet shod in felt. It all goes on in silence, and
it is all icy like the ashes. Ah, sweet sister, when you too have been
frozen like that, who will there be to warm your little soul?”
“Who warmed the soul of St. Clara and made it glow?” objected the
novice, rousing herself to escape defeat, while the colour rose in her
cheeks.
“A man: St. Francis of Assisi. You cannot think of the Sister of St.
Damian except on her knees at the feet of Francis. A religious painter
has pictured her in the act of exchanging a kiss with the seraphic
father. And think of the long idyll woven between the hermitage of St.
Damian and the Portiuncula; think of that week of passion, sorrow, and
pity passed in the convent garden, under the shadow of the olives,
during a summer of great drought, when Clara used to drink the tears
from the almost blind eyes of Francis; think of the converse between
the two mystical lovers which preceded that ecstasy whence the Song
of the Creatures burst like a flash of light. You have the _Fioretti_
beside you. Very well, read over the chapter in which it tells 'How St.
Clara ate with St. Francis.’ Never was wedding banquet lit up by more
radiant torches of love. Here it is: 'The men of Assisi and Beltona,
and of all the country round about, saw that Santa Maria degli Angeli,
and the whole place, and the forest round about it, were burning
brightly, and it seemed as if a great fire were devouring the church
and the place and the forest together; whereupon the men of Assisi
ran thither with great haste to put out the fire, believing that in
very truth everything was burning. But when they reached the place and
found no fire at all, they entered in and found St. Francis with St.
Clara.’ You see now, sweet sister, how the patroness of your order was
able to take shelter from the frost. You must admit that between the
sunny hermitage of St. Damian and the gloom of your Angevin convent the
difference is great. There will be no fire there, only a uniform grey
shadow where humility is powerless. What sort of humility is yours,
Massimilla? I think your desire for slavery is a very lofty one.”
She sat in silence, discouraged and gasping; and she was so sweet and
so miserable in her distress, that I should like to have taken her on
my knees.
“When you appeared to me the first day on the steps, you reminded me
directly of an ermine. Well, somehow it seems as if in our imagination
the whiteness of ermine could not be separated from the pride of
the purple, so much accustomed are we to see them together on royal
mantles. Perhaps you wear your mantle inside out, Massimilla, so that
the purple is invisible underneath. That is often the way with a
Montaga.”
“I don’t know,” she answered vaguely. “It seems as if everything you
say must be true.”
It was as if she was making a confession--
“I will be what you wish me to be.”
“If I were your husband, Massimilla,” I added, to soothe her little
trembling soul, “I would give you a house where the light should enter
through slabs of honey-coloured alabaster, or through windows painted
with legends; you should be served by ladies-in-waiting and mutes shod
with felt and dressed in quiet colours, who would pass by you like
great night-moths; and some of the rooms should have crystal walls
looking over immense pools of water, hidden from sight by curtains
which your hand could easily draw back whenever you felt the desire
of a dream voyage with open eyes over an ocean valley full of strange
rich forms of life; and round the house I would make you a garden
of trees which should strew flowers and weep spices, and it should
be peopled with gentle, graceful animals, such as gazelles, doves,
swans, peacocks. And there in harmony with everything around you, you
should live for me alone. And every day, after satisfying my desire of
rulership over men by some worthy act, I would come and breathe the
rarefied air of your silent love, I would come and live by your side
the pure life of my thoughts. And sometimes I would inspire you with a
vehement fever; and sometimes I would make you weep inexplicable tears;
and sometimes I would make you die and come to life again, so that I
might appear more than man in your eyes.”
Was she in the meantime preparing herself for departure, or was she
lingering, impatiently expecting that which for her henceforth was not
to be?
As I walked up the alley of old box-trees where Violante had first
appeared to me under the great archway, she came to meet me almost at
the same place, smiling a new smile.
“You look like an angel bringing good tidings to-day,” I said. “The
whole spirit of April is in you.”
She gave me her hand, which I took and held for a moment in my own.
“What have you got to tell me?” I asked, for I read in her eyes the
presence of something new which transfigured her.
My look embarrassed her; and once more her colour rose, seeming almost
violent in contrast to her pallor.
“Nothing,” she said.
“And yet,” I said, “your whole figure seems to express annunciation.
You shall tell me about it without speaking, if you will allow me
to walk beside you for a little. I have never felt your harmony so
perfect, Massimilla, as just now.”
She certainly thought I was speaking to her of love, she was so
confused. And there shone from her whole figure such a bright spirit of
gentleness, that I thought once more of those gentle ladies assembled
in the imagination of young Dante; from whose lips from time to time
fell words mingled with sighs, as falls “water mingled with beautiful
snow.” And because I loved her in a superhuman way, some of those
ancient words came back to my memory: “To what purpose dost thou love
thus? Tell us, for certain it is that the purpose of such love must be
quite new.”
We had left the central alley, and were now penetrating into the grassy
labyrinth. The bird guests of the cloister were singing, bright insects
buzzed around; but my ear was listening to the rustle of the hem of her
skirt as it bent down the heads of the long grass. At last Massimilla
confessed, in a shy voice--
“My departure has been put off.”
She added, as if to justify herself--
“So I shall be able to keep the last Easter with my own people.”
But to me it seemed as if she had suddenly fallen into my arms, and as
if her cheek were clinging to my breast so closely that to unclasp her
from me would be to hurt her.
Nevertheless I exclaimed--
“That is good news!”
And I said nothing else, for my emotion at the contact with that
throbbing life was so fierce that it prevented any pitiful feigning.
It was clear that she expected words of love and joy from me; that I
should take her hand and ask: “Will you renounce your vows for ever and
be mine entirely?” That was what she expected. And feeling her anguish
so close to me, feeling her longing to surrender herself and be happy
fanning my face almost like a flame, a shudder ran through me, such as
a man would feel if he were suddenly shown a great wound where the
most hidden intricacies of the living flesh were laid bare. There was
something of that horror in my suffering. Up to that time I had played
with the gentle soul, treating it like soft locks of hair through which
it was sweet to run one’s fingers with the knowledge that next day it
would be cut off. And now this soul was clinging to mine with its whole
anguish.
“I could make thee a creature of joy!” It was like a promise, it was
almost passion. Both promise and passion too had rung in my last words;
and indeed at that very hour my attentive ear had been able at times,
as I bent over that sweet soul, to discern some trace of the hidden
vein whence the beautiful sudden laughter had sprung one day. Ah, why
was I doomed to deceive such sorrowful hope, and to renounce crowning
my powers with that silent adoration?
We were alone, and it was a strange solitude in which I could almost
feel the emptiness of the airy space that the two other figures would
have occupied had they been beside us. And the restlessness which their
absence produced in my spirit was as painful as the stress of waiting.
“Where were Anatolia and Violante, what were they doing just then?
Were they also in the garden?” I saw them appearing at the turn of
every path, and imagined the expression of their first look as they met
us. And I thought of the strangeness of the behaviour of both during
the past few days, and sought to discover its true meaning. Anatolia
rose before me with her kind, heroic, martyr’s smile, resigned to
pour out her heart’s strength to the last drop that she might soothe
incurable ills; she rose before me with those pure eyes of hers, which
at times flashed invitingly like the waters of legendary lakes when
a sudden glitter reveals the existence of hidden treasures. Wrapped
in her apathy and disdain, Violante rose before me in an enigmatic
attitude which might almost be hostile, and inspired me with a kind
of discomfort such as gloomy presentiments are wont to produce; for
behind her in my imagination was her fatal rock, and the mystery of her
distant apartments clouded with deadly perfumes.
I should like to have asked her who was at my side: “Is there any
change in your beloved sisters’ voices when they speak to you or
to each other? Is there anything that hurts you sometimes in their
voices and their looks? And at times when you are sitting side by
side breathing the same air, does a heavy silence fall upon you, like
the silence before a storm? And then do you feel all your tenderness
dry up, and a bitterness like venom rise within you? And, tell me, do
your sisters weep apart? Or does it sometimes happen that you all weep
together?”
Thus would I fain have questioned the silent maiden, and with her have
suffered the pain of loving.
I looked at her. She was suffering and rejoicing. “You always carry a
book,” I said, for the sake of breaking the charm, “like a sibyl.”
She showed me the volume.
“It is the book I had that first day,” she said, with the indefinable
tone in her voice which betrays the moisture of tears.
“And the blade of grass?”
“Is burnt up.”
“Put in a red rose instead.”
But there was such humble grace in her emotion, she let her inward
ardour appear so ingenuously, that I could not leave her, nor resist
the sweetness of seeing her melt little by little.
“Let us sit down,” I said. “Let us read a few pages together. Do you
like this place?”
It was a little mound in the meadow, starred with anemones, and
peaceful; some pointed yew-trees near gave it something of the look
of a cemetery. In the centre, a caryatid, bent double so that her
breast touched her knees, supported the marble slab of a sundial. And
there, like seats at a table, were two benches for a couple of lovers
who might wish as they looked on the shadow of the dial to experience
the melancholy delight of perishing slowly and harmoniously together.
Carved in the marble under the figures of the hours, this legend was
still traceable--
ME LUMEN, VOS UMBRA REGIT.
“Let us sit down here,” I said. “It is a delicious place to enjoy the
April sunshine and feel life flowing on.”
A green lizard lying on the slab looked at us out of its small
glittering eyes quite fearlessly like a familiar spirit. When we sat
down, it disappeared. Then I laid my hand on the marble, which was very
hot.
“It is almost burning. Feel!”
Massimilla laid both her hands on it, white upon white, and kept them
there. The point of the shadow reached the tip of her ring-finger, and
the number of the hour was covered by her palm.
“See how the hand points to you as the hour of beatitude,” I said, for
I profoundly enjoyed the harmonious grace of her action, and I loved
her thus.
She half closed her eyes, and once more her little soul trembled on
her eyelashes like a tear, and I could have drunk it by merely bending
forward.
“The saint,” I added, touching the book, “has a divine verse for you
in the waves of her prose, a verse supremely sweet, sweeter than
those which rose in Dante’s mind before his exile. 'Stava quasi beata
dolorosa!’”
She felt surrounded by light and love, as perhaps she may have felt
before in her secret dreams; and she drank from my words and my
presence, and from her own illusions and the fresh springtime, an
intoxication of which the memory would perhaps fill her whole life. She
did not speak, she sat motionless in the attitude I had praised; but
I understood the ineffable things spoken by the eloquent blood in the
veins of her beautiful bare hands.
“Let me love her as long as she is of this world!” I repeated to
her sisters, while their sad eyes seemed to gaze at me through the
branches of the yew-trees. “Let me gather these anemones and strew them
on the hair which is so soon to be shaven!”
She sat there almost beatified, and her unconsciousness touched me, for
I loved her, and was saying to her: “I love thee, but on condition that
to-morrow thou diest. I give thee this flame that thou mayest carry it
with thee into thy grave. Such is the necessity which compels us.”
She sat up and pressed her hands over her face, and murmured--
“This sun is stupefying.”
“Would you like to go?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, with a faint smile. “According to your advice, I
ought to bathe myself in sunshine. Let us stay here a little longer.
You said you wanted to read a few pages.”
She seemed as exhausted as if she had just come out of a swoon.
“Read, there!” she begged, pushing the book towards me.
I took it, opened it, and turned over the leaves here and there,
running my eyes over a few lines. The flying shadow of a swallow passed
over the pages, and we heard the rustle of wings close by.
“How astonished I was,” she added, “when you repeated St. Catherine’s
exhortation to me that day! I was still full of her spirit, and you
were magician enough to speak to me of her.”
There was such perfect confidence and abandonment in her voice, that
she could not have signified to me more plainly: “Here am I, I am
thine; I belong entirely to thee as no other living creature can, as no
inanimate thing can belong to thee. I am thy slave and thy chattel.”
She really seemed to possess a supernatural quality, to abolish in
herself that law in love which denies to man the privilege of being the
giver and the perpetual and perfect possession of the other. She really
seemed in the full sunlight to be transfigured by my imagination into
some crystal fluid, to become a liquid essence for me to absorb, and
bathe myself in like a perfume.
“I think,” I said, “that sometimes when you read this book you must
feel your soul evaporate like a drop of water on burning iron. Do you
not? 'Fire and abyss of charity dissolve for ever the cloud of my
body!’ cries the Saint. And you have marked these words in the margin.
You have a continual aspiration to fade away.”
Her pale face smiled at me in the sunshine, looking almost transparent
against the whiteness of the marble.
“Here is another place marked: 'Soul intoxicated, tormented, and
burning with love.’ And here is another: 'Be thou a tree of love,
grafted into the tree of life.’ What eloquence of passion the virgin
has! She fascinates all the silent, because she speaks and cries aloud
for them. But that which makes the book precious to whoever loves life
is the abundance of life-blood flowing through it, for ever boiling and
flaming like a sacrificial altar on the day of great sacrifices. This
Dominican nun seems to have had a crimson view of the world. She sees
everything through a veil of burning blood. 'The memory is filled with
blood,’ she says. 'I shall find the blood and the living _creatures_,
and I shall drink their love and affection in blood.’ A kind of ruddy
madness assails her at times. 'Drown yourselves in blood,’ she cries;
'bathe yourselves in blood, intoxicate yourselves in blood, clothe
yourselves in blood, mourn for yourselves in blood, rejoice in blood,
grow and strengthen yourselves in blood!’ She knows the full value
of that sweet and terrible liquid, for she sees it not only in the
chalice, but bursting from the veins of mankind, she who has been
caught in the whirlwind of life, who has worn her veil in the midst
of the fierce hatred and violent passions which have made her century
beautiful. Here is that marvellous letter of hers to Brother Raimondo
of Capua. Have you ever been able to read it without trembling to your
very marrow? 'And his head lay on my breast. Then I felt a great joy
within me, and the odour of his blood rose up.’ What I perceive here
is not only the eucharistic ecstasy, but also real voluptuousness. I
can almost see the young woman’s delicate nostrils tremble and dilate.
Hers too is that sentence I admire so much: 'Arming oneself with one’s
own sensuality.’ Her senses must have been very acute, for her whole
writings glow with lively images, strong in colour and movement, and
almost Dantesque in their vigour and audacity. Ah, sweet sister, she
is not the guide to lead you peacefully to the door of the cloister!
Her Dominican robe is full not only of the odour of blood, but of all
the odours of the proud life through which she moved unconquered. A
vast multitude clothed in sackcloth and in purple, in iron and in
gold, have swept her away like a whirlwind, with 'the fire of anger
and hatred,’ which burns just as fiercely as the fire of love. Friars,
nuns, hermits, light women, soldiers of fortune, princes, cardinals,
queens, popes, all the different temperaments of a hard and magnificent
century she deals with by her indefatigable will. She is powerful
in contemplation and in action. She calls Alberico of Balbiano her
'beloved brother,’ and the knights of the company of St. George her
'beloved sons.’ And she dares to write to Queen Joanna of Naples:
'Alas, one must weep over you as over one dead!’ And to Gregory XI.:
'Be a brave man and not a coward.’ And to the King of France she says:
'I will.’ That is why I admire her, Massimilla, and also because she
possesses a Garden, a House, and a Cell of self-knowledge; and because
this saying is hers: 'To eat and taste souls’; and lastly, because
it was she who wrote, before da Vinci: 'The intellect nourishes the
affections. Who knows most, loves most; and loving most, enjoys most.’
Lofty words, which are the rule of all beautiful inward life.”
As I was speaking, I could follow in Massimilla’s wide open, steady
eyes the slow rhythm of a wave which seemed to have some mysterious
musical relation with the sound of my voice; and this sensation was so
new and strange to me, that I prolonged what I was saying for fear of
interrupting it.
Indeed, hardly had I ceased speaking, when she bowed her head, and in
silence let two rivers of tears flow from her limpid eyes.
I did not ask her why she wept; but I took her hands, which were like
soft leaves burning with the midday heat. And under that glowing April
sky, beside that dazzling marble on which the shadow of the hand of
the dial seemed to have lain motionless for an indefinite time, amidst
those funereal yews and wreaths of anemones, I tasted a few moments of
unspeakable exultation. I _saw_ a spirit, not my own, suddenly reach
that part of life--and for a few seconds rest there--beyond which,
according to Dante’s words, none can pass with intent to return.
And it seemed to me that afterwards the rest of love and life could not
have any value for that spirit.
After this the blessed maiden seemed to resume the aspect of a figure
of Prayer, in which she had appeared to me the first day, as she sat
between her two brothers. Lifting her veil to look into the depth of
her eyes, I had seen a swift miracle worked under my gaze. The memory
of it dazzled me still, but the veil had fallen again, and for ever.
Once more she seemed to me like one who has “departed from this present
age.”
So much so, that when Oddo, one day, told me the pitiful story of her
engagement broken off by death, I listened as one listens to a legend
of ancient times, and felt then how strong and genuine my intellectual
detachment was.
She had been loved and asked in marriage by Simonetto Belprato two
years before; and, like Iphanea, had lost her betrothed almost on the
eve of the wedding.
“Già vicino alle sue nozze, beata
Le ghirlande apprestava; e le fu spento.”
Oddo recalled to my mind the faint memory of Simonetto, and described
to me the gentle youthful figure of the student, last heir of a noble
family of Trigento, living a retired life with his widowed mother in
the country, where he studied botany and died.
“Poor Simonetto!” said Oddo with brotherly regret, “I can see him
still in his botanising dress, his tin case slung over one shoulder,
his iron-shod stick and his green morocco pocket-book. He used to
spend almost his whole time botanising, or preparing and drying the
plants he had collected. His house was full of herbariums, and he might
well stamp his floreated coat-of-arms as an emblem on their covers.
You know what the Belprato arms are?--a shield divided by a bar of
gold, the upper half red with a silver lily, the lower green, strewn
with red flowers and golden leaves. Is it not a strange coincidence,
Claudio? That the last of the Belprato should be a botanist! I used
to prophesy to Massimilla in fun: 'You will end between two leaves
of grey paper.’ They were betrothed to each other in the garden over
his collecting, and they seemed made for each other. We were pleased
too, for Massimilla would have entered a good family, and would not
have lived very far away from us. (The Belprato, as you know, are of
very ancient nobility, though during the last few centuries they have
decayed. They came over from Spain to Naples with Alphonso of Aragon.)
Everything was ready for the wedding. I remember so well the day that
the wedding-dress, the kind gift of our aunt Sabrano, arrived from
Naples with its wreath of orange blossom. Massimilla tried it on; it
was delicious. Antonello and I wanted Anatolia and Violante to try it
on for luck; poor dear creatures! The wreath, I remember, got twisted
among Violante’s hair in such a strange way that it was impossible to
take it off without tearing out a few hairs clinging to the flowers.
One of the servants muttered that it was a bad omen. She was right.
Simonetto was, indeed, to fall a victim to his mania. It was autumn,
and he used often to go to Linturno to gather the water plants on
the stagnant river. There it was that he contracted the germs of the
poisonous fever which carried him off in two days. We had a funeral
instead of a wedding. Our usual bad fortune!”
We were in Antonello’s rooms; the blinds were drawn, and the place was
half dark, for outside the day was clouding over. I could not see the
sky out of the windows, yet I could feel the sensation of the gentle,
rather enervating, heat outside, and I felt sure that out of doors a
few drops of rain had begun to fall, some of those warm tears that are
so soft when they fall on face or hands. Antonello was lying motionless
on his bed without speaking. Every now and then a swallow could be
heard chattering.
“Perhaps,” I asked Oddo, “that is why Massimilla is going into the
convent?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” he replied. “It is a long time
ago now. But certainly life in this house must be more wearisome for
her than for the others. I always think she must feel as dried up and
extinguished as the plants in the herbariums Simonetto left her in his
will. Ah, that wedding-dress laid by in a cupboard like a relic! Think
of it! That white robe which by this time must be full of the odour of
dried plants! Think of it! Do you think that death can have any museum
in the world sadder than that of which Massimilla is the guardian?
Sometimes I am unjust; sometimes I cannot conceal the bitterness that
rises in my heart when I think that Massimilla is going away, is going
to forsake us. I feel as if her departure would bring about the final
dissolution. I feel as though a whirlwind would come to scatter and
destroy us all, like a heap of useless rags. And she in the meantime
is seeking to save herself. But I am unjust. She is perhaps the most
unhappy of all us here. What I used to say to her in jest has come
true. She believes herself to have become like the leaves and flowers
in a herbarium. To revive herself, to call up the illusion of living,
she forces herself into contact with living things. Have you not seen
her plunge her hands in the grass and hold them there, so as to feel
the caterpillars and insects among it run over her skin? Don’t you know
the hours and hours she spends in the garden looking for animals, and
making friends with them? In all this she is, as you said, a pattern of
Franciscan perfection. But what would you say if you knew that it is
really nothing but an anxious desire to realise life? I understand it;
I am perhaps the only one who understands....”
He said the last words in a low voice, almost as if he were talking
to himself; then he paused, possibly to contemplate within himself
the creation of his disturbed fancy. Was it only the dream of a sick
man? Or did the living Massimilla really correspond to this forsaken
guardian of dead plants? I did not linger over such doubts; for I
wished to absorb all the poetry which the strange fancies diffused
through the shadow of the room, where now the faint patter of the
rain reached us, and awakened in my nostrils the desire to inspire
the savour of the moist earth. I rose and opened the nearest window a
little; the smell of the earth floated in.
“During the first few months after Simonetto’s death,” Oddo resumed,
“she took great care of the herbariums. She used to pass long hours in
the room where they were kept, examining the plants and reading the
labels. And I used often to keep her company, for I was very sorry for
her. One day, I remember, I came upon her opening the cupboard in the
same room where her wedding-dress was kept. Another day, I remember, in
the springtime I saw her quite agitated because one of the narcissus
bulbs had flowered.... It was strange, wasn’t it, Claudio? I saw
that bulb come up again last spring. And this year? I have not asked
Massimilla.... Shall we go and see?”
He rose to his feet, seized with a feverish impatience, and took a
few steps towards the door. But Antonello, who was still lying on his
pillows, rose also with the same look--how well I remembered it!--as
had passed over his face when he warned us of the coming of the
gloomy sedan chair; and raising a finger to his lips to bid us keep
silence, he leant against the wall which formed a side of the loggia
and listened. Nothing was to be heard in the silence save the gentle
monotonous patter of the soft spring shower in the enclosed garden.
“Don’t go out!” whispered Antonello.
We did not ask why, for the cause of his terror was evident in his thin
contracted face. And as the sound of steps and voices reached us, Oddo
went up to the door, opened it a little, and peeped out. I went up to
it too, and, standing at his shoulder, I could see through the chink
Anatolia leading her mother along the covered loggia, with her arm in
hers, and one of the grey woman servants following. Princess Aldoina
walked with difficulty, leaning her whole weight upon her daughter.
She was strangely dressed in a grand gown with a long train, and was
decked out with false jewellery. She looked pale and enormous, with
her head raised and a little thrown back, her eyes half closed, and
an indescribable smile playing on her lips, as if the sound of the
rain on the pavement of the quadrangle had been a murmur of homage
from courtiers, through whose ranks she was passing, a queen on the
way to her throne. And the full light of sorrowful pity shone in the
daughter’s face as she leant over the mad woman.
As the apparition vanished, our souls for a few moments were full of
affectionate anguish. And while the echo of the sad footfalls was
still audible, the maiden’s figure in that attitude of pity and sorrow
which had revealed her to me in her true and supreme light rose before
me with extraordinary clearness. And my inmost soul felt an almost
religious awe, such as one feels in presence of a holy mystery; for
none of the previous actions wrought before my eyes by this pure spirit
of consolation seemed equal in value and significance to this action
performed by her, all unconscious of my hidden gaze. She rose suddenly
to a sublime height in my soul; she shone with the whole glory of
her moral beauty, supported by the whole force of her heroic will.
Contemplated thus, apart from any affinity to myself, in the secret of
her own life to which I was a stranger, in the absolute sincerity of
her feeling, she seemed to me a being of an ideal race; and my spirit
linked her with those noble creatures immortalised by the poets, divine
victims of a voluntary sacrifice. Antigone leading her blind father
by the hand, or prostrating herself to strew dust over her brother’s
corpse, was not more tender or stronger than she, had not a purer brow
nor a larger heart. In the midst of that sort of languid monotony,
in that enervating shadow where a sick man was sounding the depth of
his own ills, and a restless voice was calling up a vision of empty
misery from withered flowers, the _consoler_ appeared suddenly bringing
refreshment to my soul; and as a sudden light piercing a dark wall
makes the motionless sword glitter among the hanging trophies, so did
she strike a great flash out of my dormant will. There was strength in
her to produce miraculous fruit. Her substance might have nourished a
superhuman germ. She was indeed the “nourisher,” but such a one as the
virgin Antigone appeared to the blind Œdipus when he was exiled and
erring. Did not she alone, like the ancient heroine, keep alive in the
depths of her great heart the genial flame which had been extinguished
on the hearth of her failing race? Was not she alone the life of the
gloomy house? Massimilla in her barren garden, Violante in her cloud
of perfumes, paled before their sister as she walked along the path of
self-sacrifice with so firm a step, so sweet a smile.
And I thought of Him who was to come.
* * * * *
We were sitting, Prince Luzio and I, near an open balcony about the
hour in the afternoon when the fierce heat of that dying May was
beginning to be tempered, and the pilgrim clouds were throwing a few
deep blue shadows over the burning valley. The anniversary of King
Ferdinand’s death was approaching, so the loyal Prince, who always
celebrated it with mourning, was relating to me all the sorrows and
horrors of the long agony of the King; and against a background of
perfumes rising from the walled garden, the gloomy phantoms awakened
by the aged voice followed each other in long succession. The silent
journey over the heights of Ariano, and through the valley of Bovino
amid snowstorms; the fatal omens which occurred at every step; the
first signs of illness appearing one frosty evening when the King,
numb with cold, was toiling over the ice which covered the slope; his
anxious desire to continue on his road without any delays, as if
an inexorable destiny were urging him on; the fearful pallor which
suddenly came over him in presence of the crowd, amongst honours which
he felt to be the last he would receive; the cries which the attack
drew from him, but which were drowned by the clamour of the wedding
feast; the distress of the doctors who assembled round his bed to
consult under the hostile and suspicious eyes of the Queen; his burst
of tears when the Duchess of Calabria, a fresh, youthful figure,
entered the infected room where he lay aged and almost stupefied by
suffering; then his tragic good-bye to his own statue as the nurses
were carrying him into another room; then the embarcation on board
ship, a ceremony as sad as a funeral, and his mournful words as the
litter was carried down under the hatchways, which had been enlarged
by the strokes of hatchets; then the arrival at Caserta, the rapid
change for the worse, the putrid decay of his body on the great bed
surrounded by sacred images, miraculous relics, crucifixes, lamps, and
tapers; at the last the pomp of the Viaticum, the King sitting up among
the pillows quite unrecognisable, to the terror of those present; the
last words, the Christian serenity of his death, the dispute between
the Queen and the doctors about the embalming of the body, the band of
soldiers round the bier told off to cleanse incessantly the innumerable
terrible sores;--all these sorrows and all these horrors passed through
his recollection. And I listened and thought of the Duke of Calabria
sobbing in a corner like a girl. “Ah, what grand and beautiful
ambitions the odours of death might have nourished in his youthful
soul through those terrible spring weeks! In what proud intoxicating
meditations my soul would have been wrapped beneath the shadow of the
great trees, and how petty the eager agitation caused by the stirring
of the sap in their powerful trunks would have seemed in comparison
with mine!”
Prince Luzio told me how one day the Duke of Calabria, trembling and
aghast, suddenly entered his sick father’s room to tell him of the
expulsion of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and with what violent words the
King had condemned his relation’s timidity.
“Ah, if Ferdinand had not died!” exclaimed the old man, with an almost
threatening gesture. “A few hours before he expired he said: 'The crown
of Italy has been offered me....’ Don’t you think, Claudio, that a
Bourbon might have been wearing it now?”
“Perhaps,” I replied, very respectfully. “And if it were so, the
highest honours in the kingdom ought to be bestowed upon the Prince
of Castromitrano. Let me tell you how much I admire your dignity and
faith! You are one of the very few among our equals who have maintained
the sentiment of the virtue of race intact and intense. Rather than
renounce your privileges and take up an attitude unsuited to your
legitimate pride, rather than appear only a survival of yourself, you
retired from the world, but not until you had startled it with the
supreme splendour of your magnificence; and you have sought in solitude
to await the fortune which Fate may be reserving for your house.
Misfortune has treated you as a great man, for sorrow also has its
privileges, and yours have been fully acknowledged.”
The Prince’s fatherly face had become grave and attentive. The
veneration I felt in my soul for his beautiful white head was far
deeper than that expressed in my words; and added to it was a tender
feeling so pure that only a feminine presence could have inspired it.
The fact was that I felt the presence of Anatolia’s spirit. She had
appeared on the threshold of the door at the end of the room, had
passed silently along the wall, and had sat down in a shadowy corner,
looking white, mysterious, and propitious as a family genius.
“Far away from the world though you are,” I added, “and wrapped in such
a thick cloud of sadness, you have yet been able to nourish to this
day hope of the resurrection of that which is dead; and the prophecy
of your faith still rings in my ears. No doubt that which is dead
shall rise again, but it shall be changed. If you were to turn your
eyes for a single moment upon the spectacle which the world presents
to-day, you would feel your dream fall from your soul like a dry leaf,
and you would see that the recovery of his little state, and even the
acquisition of Italy, would be useless to Francis of Bourbon. Whether a
Bourbon or a Sabaudo be on the throne, the King is equally absent; for
that man cannot be called a king who has submitted to the will of the
many in accepting a prescribed and narrow office, and who then humbles
himself to fill it with all the diligence and modesty of a public
clerk who is perpetually spurred on by the fear of being dismissed.
Do I not speak truly? Nor would Francis be able to reign in any other
way. Directly after his father’s death he wrote out with his own hand
an edict to re-establish the results of the abolished constitution. And
it was Alessandro Nunziante who prevented its being published. Just
think of the lamentable proclamation of the 8th December, dated from
the guard-house at Gaeta. Was that the language of a king, and of a
vanquished king?”
Prince Luzio had listened in silence, with knitted brows, and now he
said, not without a shade of severity--
“One can see that you have the blood of Gian Paolo Cantelmo in your
veins.”
“The blood of all my ancestors is in my veins. Ah, dear father (let me
call you by that name!), I well know how painful it must be to you to
renounce an ideal of justice before which the flame of your loyalty
has burned for so many, many years; but I must tell you that for us
and our like there is no salvation unless we substitute energetic
purpose for empty hopes. Allow me to speak to you plainly and without
circumlocution. It is useless to hope that any heroic fire will
suddenly arise from the stagnant blood of Saint Louis. I have seen
the exile quite recently; he is full of placid resignation, given up
to good works and prayer; he remembers his short reign as a far-away,
painful dream. Your prophecy would call up a mild, incredulous smile
on his lips--that is all. If his spirit sometimes flies towards the
bay, not Capodimonte but the height of Camaldoli is its goal. He has
grown used to a quiet, pious life; the glitter of the crown no longer
disturbs his nights. Let us leave him to sleep peacefully!”
The head of the loyal prince had fallen on his breast, and I saw the
lines deepen on his bent brow like furrows full of thoughts.
“It is not for him alone that fate is dark. The twilight of kings is
ashy, blinded of all glory. Look even beyond the Latin countries.
Under the shadow of artificial thrones you will see false monarchs
fulfilling their public duties with the accuracy of automatons, or
giving their attention to the cultivation of their childish manias and
their petty vices. The most powerful of all, the lord of the hugest
multitudes, consumes away alone in his dark misanthropy, his herculean
muscles corroded by the moth of suspicion. He has not even the taste
for quenching the petty chemical formulas of his rebel subjects in
some magnificent massacre by the naked sword, such as might water and
fatten his barren lands. He has a truly royal soul, however, which
perhaps you may have been able to study near at hand, for he is of the
race of Maria Sophia. Wittelsbach attracts me by the immensity of his
pride and his melancholy. His efforts to make his life conformable to
his ideal are desperate in their violence. All human intercourse makes
him shudder with disgust and anger; all pleasure seems nauseous to him
unless it is what he himself has planned. Exempt from the venom of
love, hostile to all intruders, for years he has held intercourse with
no one, save the resplendent heroes which a creator of beauty has given
him as companions in super-terrestrial regions. In the depths of rivers
of music he slakes his anguished thirst for the divine, and then he
ascends to his solitary haunts, where, amidst the mystery of mountains
and lakes, his spirit creates the inviolable kingdom over which alone
he desires to reign. This profound feeling for solitude, this power
of breathing on the highest and loneliest summits, this consciousness
of being unique and unapproachable in life, makes Louis of Bavaria
truly a king, but king of himself and of his dreams. He is incapable
of stamping his will upon the multitude, and of bending it under the
yoke of his idea; he is incapable of reducing his inward power to
action. At the same moment he appears sublime and childish. When his
Bavarian troops were fighting the Prussians, he was far away from
the battlefield, hidden in one of his lake islands, where he forgot
his shame under one of those ridiculous disguises which he wears to
favour his visionary illusions. It would be better for him if, instead
of placing a screen between his majesty and his ministers, he could
attain to the marvellous nocturnal empire sung by his poet! It seems
incredible that he should not have left the world before now, carried
away by his flights of fancy....”
The Prince’s head was still bent in such a solemn attitude, that even
in the heat of speaking my heart smote me with the fear of having
wounded him; and a filial desire came over me to comfort him, to
lift up his grand white head, and to see the unwonted light of joy in
his eyes. Anatolia’s presence kindled a sort of generous fire in my
soul, and made me feel a great desire to reveal what was noblest and
strongest within me. She sat motionless and silent in the shadow like a
statue, but her attention shone on my soul like a flood of light.
“You see, my dear father,” I resumed, unable to control the tremor
throbbing in my voice--“you see how old legitimate monarchies are
everywhere declining, and how the Multitude stands by ready to swallow
them down its miry throat. Truly they deserve no other fate! And not
monarchies alone, but all great, and noble, and beautiful things,
all the sovereign ideals which once were the glory of struggling and
conquering Man, all are about to disappear under the immense flood
of corruption which is rising and swaying onwards. I will not tell
you how far the shame has gone, for I should have to use words which
would offend your ear; and afterwards it would seem as though the air
had to be purified with grains of incense. I came away from the city
choking with disgust, but now I think almost with rejoicing of the
general dissolution. When everything shall have been profaned, when
all the Altars of Thought and Beauty shall have been cast down, when
all the vessels containing ideal essences shall have been broken, when
ordinary life shall have reached such a pitch of degradation as seems
unsurpassable, when the last smoking torch shall have gone out in
the great darkness, then the Multitude will stop, suddenly seized by
a panic far exceeding any that has ever before shaken its miserable
soul; and, suddenly deprived of the frenzy which blinded it, will feel
itself astray in the desert strewn with ruins, without any path or
light to guide it. Then will the law of the need of heroes descend upon
it; and it will pray for the iron rod by which it must be disciplined
anew. And I believe, dear father, that these heroes, these new kings of
the earth, shall arise from our race, and that from this day all our
energies ought to be directed towards preparation for their earlier or
later advent. That is my faith.”
The Prince had lifted his head, and was looking at me with intent and
rather astonished eyes, as if I had appeared to him in an unexpected
light. But an unusual vivacity animating his whole person told me how
much he had been touched by my eagerness.
“I have lived for several years in Rome,” I continued, with greater
confidence, “that third Rome which was to have represented 'the
unconquerable love of the Latin race for the Latin soil,’ and whose
hills were to have shone with the marvellous light of a new ideal. I
have witnessed there the most shameful violations and the most obscene
connections which ever defiled a sacred spot. And I can understand
the lofty symbolism hidden in the act of the Asiatic conqueror, who
cast five myriads of human heads into the foundations of Samarkand,
when he wished to make it his capital. Don’t you think that the wise
tyrant meant to signify the necessity of severe pruning on the part
of those who are about to institute a really new order of things? It
was necessary to sacrifice and cast into the foundations of the third
Rome the men who were called liberators, and, according to the funeral
custom of the ancients, to place at their feet, at their sides, and in
the hands which freed their country the objects which they knew and
loved best, and then to dig out and drag down the heaviest granite
boulders from the mountain tops to close the deep sepulchre for all
eternity. But never were lives so tenacious and so pestiferous laid
in the earth! Quite lately, dear father, I heard the following in
Rome: 'The fleet of the Thousand only sailed from Quarto to obtain
state protection for the right of barter!’ And yet amidst the clatter
of traders I caught the sound of that remote mysterious voice which
lingers in every stone, and murmurs in every sea-shell; and the sublime
view of the Campagna consoled me for all my disgust. Ah, father, who
can ever despair of the fate of the world while Rome is still under
the heavens? When I think of her and worship her, I only see her as
she is figured on Nerva’s medal--with the rudder in her hand. When
I think of her and worship her, I can only describe her strength in
the words of Dante: 'In every generation of things, that is best
which is most perfectly One.’ And her principle of unity, as of old,
shall once more be the concentrating, ordering, and preserving force
of everything in the world that is good and amenable to order. The
Dantesque similes of the soil and the flames are well adapted to her,
because one can conceive the former as making a single base, and the
latter as united in a single and identical apex. I firmly believe that
the greatest height of power in the future will be that which shall
have its base and its apex in Rome; for I, a Latin, glory in having
set at the head of my faith the mystical truth expressed by the poet:
'It is certain that Nature disposed one place in the world to be
suitable for universal empire, and that that place is Rome.’ Now from
what mysterious union of races, what vast experience of culture, what
auspicious harmony of circumstances, shall the new King of Rome arise?”
The fine fever which had warmed my thoughts to intoxication in the
Latian desert again kindled in my veins; and the great phantoms created
by the sacred soil again took tumultuous possession of my spirit;
and all the hopes begotten by my violent pride in those solitudes
haunted by memories of the most bloody of human tragedies, rose again
and stirred vaguely, giving me a feeling of excitement which I could
scarcely endure. The venerable old man’s appearance assumed a graver
solemnity, for at that moment I looked upon him as the embodiment of
all those varied qualities which had expanded like flowers along the
stem of his ancient race under the warmth of the light of glory, and
had been manifested to the world in many magnificent characters; and
I was about to justify my ambitious dream to this man who was already
declining towards the grave, treating him as a judge to whom sorrow had
given insight; I was going to ask his good auspices as an omen, and to
propose to him as my equal the alliance which I desired.
My anxiety was heightened by the presence of the silent maiden in the
shadow, for she appeared to me in truth to be the one destined to
become through love “her who propagates and perpetuates the idealism
of a race favoured by Heaven.” I did not dare to turn towards her, so
sacred did the mystery of her virginity seem to me at that moment; but
I remembered the vague idea of hidden treasures, which the wonderful
light that shone in flashes from her transparent eyes had sometimes
awakened in me; and even without turning round I could feel a kind
of animated wealth throbbing in that strip of shadow, a living form
containing an inestimable prize, something infinitely grand and
mysterious, like the divine treasures guarded under veils in the holy
of holies of temples.
“You, as well as I, are convinced,” I added, “that every form of
excellence of the human type is the effect of an initial effort, which
by one selection after another reaches its highest intensity, and is
manifested in the race, modified by temporary circumstance. It is
not only our patrician pride which vaunts the virtue of Race, but it
is acknowledged also by the most exact science. The highest examples
of human conscience can only appear at the summit of a race which
has sprung up in time out of the continual accumulation of energies
and work; of a race in which during long periods of centuries the
fairest dreams, the most vigorous sentiments, the noblest thoughts,
the most lordly wills have been born and nourished. Now, take the
case of a race of remote royal origin, which is springing up under
the Latin sun in a happy land furrowed with the rivulets of a new
poetry. Transplanted into Italy, it flourishes with such vigour that
in a short time no other race can compare with it. 'Worthless is the
disciple who cannot outdo his master,’ da Vinci has pronounced. And
that race seems to have inscribed its greatness on an even bolder
motto: 'Worthless is the son who cannot outdo his father.’ Through
united and uninterrupted energies it goes on from one generation to
another, raising itself up to the higher manifestations of life. In
times of blind anger, when reason can trust to nothing but arms, it
seems already to understand 'that those men who above all others
possess strength of intellect are by nature lords over others.’ And
from the very beginning its discipline is of an intellectual nature,
and seems to have been dictated by Dante; for it consists in always
reducing to action the whole available power of intellect, first of
all by laying down theories, and then by working them out. In the most
important offices, as truly as on the bloodiest battle-fields and at
the most liberal banquets, this race excels: equally admirable whether
leading armies, governing states, conducting embassies, protecting
artists and sages, erecting palaces or churches. It mingles with
Italian life in all its most varied forms; it bathes itself in every
fresh fountain of culture. Living is to it the perpetual assertion and
increase of itself: living to it is ruling. The formidable instinct
of rulership is always driving it forward, while clear and steady
thought directs this lasting impulse. And always--like those careful
archers whom Machiavelli cites as examples--always it aims higher than
the mark. Its deeds are so illustrious that the greatest poets have
sung their renown, and the writers of history compare them to those of
the ancient generals, and quote them as the examples for the future.
Yet it seems that the strength of this race has not yet been fully
manifested, has not yet reached the unsurpassable height: it seems that
its accumulated energies must, either to-morrow, or in the course of a
century, or at some indefinite time, expand themselves in one supreme
manifestation....”
“_Cave, adsum!_” interrupted the Prince, with a grand smile. “Is not
that the motto of the race you are speaking of?”
“It might also bear the motto of the Montaga,” I replied readily, “_Sub
se omnia!_”
The Prince bowed with a gesture that served of itself to show that
my reply had not been a simple courtesy, but was indeed due to the
dignity of his great name. I saw him again before me with the figure
I remembered in my boyhood: a fine example of superior humanity,
every action revealing his distinction, his absolute separation from
the multitude, from common duties, and common virtues. It seemed
to me as if he had shaken the weight of sorrow that was crushing
him off his shoulders, and had risen up in all his manly strength,
his whole frame assuming that marvellous quality possessed by his
hands--those beautiful pure hands preserved unchanged as if they had
been embalmed--surviving ministers of a liberality which can only
be compared to the ancient “who for small services loved to reward
greatly.”
The last hour of daylight was fading away, and from the burning sky
the annunciation of summer came down on the patrician garden, where
amid the austere odour of centenarian box-trees, the statues--pale and
yet watchful, like memories in a faithful soul--called up by their
gestures the phantoms of past grandeur. But outside the cloister rose
the immense crown of rock fashioned by primeval fires, looking so harsh
and proud that it seemed worthy of supporting on each peak a Prometheus
Bound.
I had seen those same peaks on the first evening of my arrival, flaming
in the sky like rockets, shining with incredible radiance, the highest
of them standing out like a tongue of flame against the background of
general shadow, and cleaving the sky like a cry of hopeless passion.
I was alone then in that remote twilight, and the three mysterious
princesses were at hand in their walled garden, and my fate was still
apart from their fate. But now in the same conjunction of circumstances
the fate prophesied by that first agitation of my feelings was about to
be fulfilled: I was about to utter solemn and irrevocable words. Was
I indeed quite freed from perplexity? Had I at last chosen from those
three blessed ones, whom I had seen in fancy on that far away evening
receiving my spring gift with open arms, had I at last chosen out one
for the necessary union? And was I about to pronounce her name in her
father’s presence? Fresh uneasiness crept over me, and it seemed to
me as if Anatolia were no longer alone in the shadow, but as if her
sisters had come in silently and taken their places beside her, and as
if their eyes were fixed anxiously upon me.
As I turned round I saw the white motionless figure in the corner, and
everything else vanished, and all my vain restlessness was calmed.
She was the living symbol of security, the watcher and the guardian.
With her strength and her patience, lit up by her own smile, she had
turned sorrow into an adamantine armour which made her invincible.
She was made to guard, nourish, and defend to the death that which
was committed to her charge. And once again I saw her, in my dream,
watching, her pure brow radiant with prophecy over the son of my blood
and of my soul.
Then from the very roots of my being, where sleeps the indestructible
virtue of ancestors, there arose and went forth towards the Elect the
will to create that one to whom all the ideal riches of my race and my
own conquests and the maternal perfections were to be transmitted. And
deeper than ever grew the feeling of primary dependence which bound
my actual being to my remotest ancestors; and just as the summit of
the tree comprises in itself the whole life of the branching trunk
down to the deepest roots, so I felt the life of the whole race living
within me, that life which death could only destroy through its bodily
manifestations in the transitory forms taken by succeeding generations.
And the fulness and vehemence of that life seemed to overthrow the
limits of my natural powers.
“Not long ago you recognised in me, not without a shade of severity,
the descendant of Gian Paolo Cantelmo,” I said to the Prince, smiling.
“I must confess that in my house the examples of disobedience and
rebellion against kings are not rare. But the red Lion justifies
them; and you cannot be unaware of the patent which the Cantelmi
received from Charles II. of England. Being themselves of ancient
royal blood, they have never easily resigned themselves to treating
the king as other than their equal. It appears, too, that they never
fight any other adversary with such zeal as they fight the king. And
while Gian Paolo disturbed the slumbers of Ferdinand of Aragon, and
humbled Alphonso, James I. and Menappo defeated Manfred at Benevento,
James VIII. warred successfully against Ladislaus side by side with
Braccio di Montone and the Sforza, while Antonio opposed René of
Anjou. There is a natural tendency in every Cantelmo to form his own
party, to separate himself, and to define his own person and power
very clearly. It seems as if each of them founded his conception of
his own dignity upon the firm conviction 'that being one is the root
of being good, and that what is good is such, because it is one.’ I
joyfully acknowledge in this, one of the essential characteristics of
the ruler to come: of the Monarch, the Despot. But there is another
peculiarity which strengthens my faith, and that is the great number of
rulerships which have fallen into the hands of the Cantelmi on Latin
soil. It may be said that at different times and separately they have
held the government of all Italy. James I. is Ambassador for Peace to
the Republic of Genoa, Vicar in Lombardy, Captain-General in the March
of Ancona, Viceroy of the Abruzzi; James II. is Vicar and Podestà
of Florence; Bonaventura VIII., Viceroy of Sicily; Rostaino VII.,
Captain-General of the Serenissima, Senator of Rome.... Everywhere
they hold rule, and their experience of different peoples teaches
them to 'know well how men are to be gained or lost.’ Everywhere they
fight and lose their lives in the act of performing some prodigy of
valour: the 'good Cantelmo,’ immortalised in Tasso’s verse, stains
the walls of Jerusalem with his royal blood; James II. dies fighting
for the Florentines against Castruccio Castracane; Nicholas, first
Duke of Sora, dies with Constantine Paleologus in the defence of
Constantinople; Ascanio dies in the waters of Lepanto beside the
Archduke John of Austria; Bonaventura VIII. is deemed worthy by Charles
V. of the defence of the whole empire; and it is of him the Emperor
says that he would choose him for his champion had he to risk his
crown in a joust. The great Andrea is an extraordinary example of a
life spent entirely in ceaseless fighting from his earliest youth to
his latest breath.... He is indeed the most finished type which my
race has produced to this day. Andrea is one of the finest heroes of
will and strength. We need not reckon up the number of his exploits.
In Italy, Germany, Flanders, France, and Spain, innumerable are the
cities and fortresses acquired by him and added to the Catholic empire,
innumerable are the sieges he laid and sustained. He is the Poliorcetus
_par excellence_, a more fertile master of stratagem than any other,
at once eager and prudent; 'for in him we discover,’ says one of his
biographers, 'the union of all those gifts and qualities which in
other captains may be noticed separately.’ But what in my eyes raises
him above the heads of all others is the unheard-of severity of the
discipline he enforced on himself and his troops. Certain traits of
this rigour fill me with more enthusiasm than the sight of the banners
he took from the enemy. Though the troops he commanded are unpaid and
badly armed, he manages to have them as ready and obedient to his hand
as his own sword. No one ever understood better how to impress his own
personality on the conduct of others. Eloquent and nervous in speech he
yet always prefers the direct force of example to the power of words.
He always moves at the head of his troops, on foot when he leads the
infantry; he always sleeps in his clothes, eats and drinks nothing but
what his soldiers eat and drink, is always the first in assault, the
last in retreat; though covered with wounds, he refuses to take off
his armour; on the field of victory or in the conquered city he never
touches the booty. And in the war in Flanders he wins such terrible
renown, that mothers use his name to frighten their children into
obedience. Could any man determine his own likeness in clearer and more
vigorous outline? Was ever coined metal stamped with a prouder effigy?
In his time Andrea was surnamed the new Epaminondas. Well, even in this
indefatigable warrior, the intellectual character of his race comes
out. He is not only learned in speech, a distinguished mathematician,
a master of military architecture, a writer on the science of war, but
also a good connoisseur and splendid patron of the liberal arts. Eritio
Puteano, in dedicating a Latin work to him, calls him _Armorum gloria,
Litterarum tutela_. Cornelius Schult of Antwerp, presenting him with a
book of fantastic designs, represents him as Eros cultivating elegance
in the midst of arms, _Heros inter arma elegantias colens_. Andrea in
this carries on the family tradition, the origin of which shines in the
wreathed figure of Fanetta Cantelmo, Lady of Romanino, who composed
poetry 'with a certain divine fury,’ among the laurels of Provence, in
one of the courts of love. And does not some of the wonderful aptitude
which raised Alessandro above the other disciples of Da Vinci at Milan
seem to have been transmitted to him? He thinks out new methods of
fortification, constructs the celebrated fort on the Meuse, named in
honour of its inventor Fort Cantelmo, makes strange weapons which
seem almost magical to his contemporaries.... Is there not something
Leonardesque in these inventions, something which recalls Alessandro?”
I had uttered the name of him who lived in continual communion with my
spirit, and whom I held to be the genius of the race, destined some day
to reappear higher up the surviving family tree in some manifestation
of sublime life. 'Oh thou, be what thou oughtest to be.’ My task had
been developed along definite lines under his gaze and his teaching;
and now at the moment when I was about to take a great resolve, he
stood by my side. I saw him alive before my eyes, as if his white
tyrannical hand were resting on the corner of the table beside me, and
as if the statuette of Pallas and the pomegranate with its pointed leaf
and flaming flower were there too. 'Oh thou, be what thou oughtest to
be.’ And another youthful figure, apparently his younger brother, clung
to him as closely as his shadow.
“Alessandro and Hercules! These were the two purple flowers so early
cut off, which Leonardo and Ludovico gathered up and transmuted into
imperishable essences. Andrea Cantelmo when he died had already
displayed all the energies he possessed, and death overtook him on the
verge of old age, covered with glory after that siege of Balaguer,
which was the greatest of his heroic enterprises. But these two, facing
life with their hands full of all the seeds of hope, had every great
possibility open to them. Their youthful heads seemed made to wear
the royal crown, that ancient crown which their fathers had already
worn. In one of them Da Vinci divined the future founder of a new
principality, the triumphant tyrant who was to lay upon the multitude
the yoke of that science and beauty into which the great master
had initiated his favourite disciple. But fate interfered with the
fulfilment of his prophecy. Both of them threw away their lives in the
first burst of their ardour, for they were devoured by too vehement
enthusiasm. Hercules perished in the sands of the Po, fighting against
the Sclavonians; Alessandro on the banks of the Taro in the battle of
Fornovo. Do you remember the verses in which Ariosto celebrates the
beautiful son of Sigismond Cantelmo?
'Il più ardilo garzon che di sua etade
Fosse da un polo a l’altro e da l’estremo
Lito de gli Indi a quello ove il Sole cade....’
“His death was too cruel! He was made prisoner in a rash inroad, and
his head was cut off before his father’s eyes on the ship’s deck,
which was used as a block. I can imagine the blood spurting from the
wound like a flame and scorching the side of the galley. Indeed, I do
not only imagine it, I see it. What a wonderful and terrible storm of
youthful courage it must have been which provoked him to set spurs to
his horse and rush furiously against the enemy’s entrenchments! Ah,
dear father, I have known those storms myself, and my horse knows them,
and so do the ruins of the Roman Campagna....
“No doubt at that moment Hercules felt worthy of bestriding the winged
horse born of the blood of Medusa. _Cave, adsum!_ Ariosto, as he sings
his praises, uses an expression which of itself lights him up with
glory, showing how the bold youth died to maintain the resolution which
every Cantelmo makes--that of remaining at the post he has taken, and
has thought to be the best, even in the face of the worst forms of
death. He had a companion at his side during the assault. When both had
rushed upon the enemy,
'Salvossi il Ferrufin, resto il Cantelmo.’
“He stayed, one against a thousand. And the divine Ludovico places
his beautiful bleeding figure at the beginning of a song telling how
Bradamante performed prodigies with his golden lance. But the death of
Alessandro is like that of a demi-god. At Fornovo in the hottest of
the battle a hurricane arises, and the Taro overflows its banks with
terrible violence. Alessandro suddenly disappears, like one of those
ancient Greek heroes, carried away from the earth in a whirlwind, and
supposed to be transported to heaven. His body was never found on
the field or anywhere else. But he lives, lives on through the ages,
with life more intense than our own. Not only his portrait has been
transmitted to me by da Vinci, but his life, his true life. Ah, dear
father, if you had once seen that picture, you would never be able to
forget it. It is impossible to forget. Nothing in the world is of such
value to me, and no treasure was ever guarded with such passionate
jealousy. Who gave me strength to bear such long solitude and such
hard discipline? Who poured into my spirit in the midst of the harshest
rigour of discipline that kind of sober intoxication which makes
all effort seem light? Who but Alessandro? He represents to me the
mysteriously significant power of style, inviolable in my own person by
any one, even by myself. All my life develops beneath his steady gaze;
and in truth, dear father, he who can stand the searching trial of that
fire is not degenerate. 'Oh thou, be what thou oughtest to be!’ that is
his daily precept. But while he thus urges me to keep my personality
entire, he also places before my eyes the vision of an existence
superior to my own in dignity and power. And I am always thinking of
Him who is to come.”
I stopped, for I felt my voice change, and I feared that the blood
filling my heart might of a sudden overflow. And the old man’s soul
was in such deep communication with mine, that at that moment he
involuntarily stretched out both hands to me.
“Since a double will is necessary for the creation of that one who is
to outstrip his creators,” I added in a low voice, bending towards him,
“I could aspire to no higher union than that which would give me the
right to call you father, as I am doing now....”
And overcome by emotion, I sat leaning forward with his trembling hands
in mine, while his lips touched my brow without a word being spoken.
But in the silence, between the throbbing of my heart and her father’s
quick breathing, I heard the light step of Anatolia gliding out of
the room. Was she going to weep by herself? Her form, which I had seen
motionless and white in the shadow, shone on my inner heaven like a
constellation of tears. Was she going to weep alone? Perhaps she would
meet her sisters on the way.... This doubt suddenly made me uneasy. My
eyes fell on the cameo that shone on the father’s hand.
And as the perfume of evening rose up from the walled garden, a dim
sentiment spread through my soul, like a spell deepening round me with
the slow falling of the twilight.
How in the meantime fared the heart of her who was about to depart? In
what manner was her mystical life disposing itself round the memory of
that supreme hour marked by the hand on the luminous dial?
“ME LUMEN, VOS UMBRA REGIT.”
Perhaps she may have returned more than once to the little cemetery
with the yew-trees and anemones, and may perhaps again have laid her
slender hands on the dial to feel its heat, and she may have remembered
my exhortation: “Warm your hands in the sun, bathe them in the sun,
poor hands, for soon you will carry them crossed on your breast or
hidden under the coarse brown woollen habit in the shadow....” And more
than once perhaps, with her palm laid over the figures indicating the
divine moment, she may have waited, quivering in the great silence, to
see the shadow of the hand reach the extremity of her ring-finger, as
it did on that day of dreams; and perhaps she may have wept that the
miracle of love had not been renewed.
“SINE SOLE SILEO.”
I connected the picture of the guardian of dried plants sketched for me
by Oddo with the picture of that sad soul wandering round the sundial
which had pointed out the hour of blessedness for her in vain. And I
thought: “If only I had power to fashion for thee a beautiful fate, as
the artist fashions the obedient wax, O thou who earnest towards me out
of a barren garden where a funereal vow had imprisoned thee Massimilla,
thus should I complete thy ideal figure with death, with timely death I
should complete thy perfection; for no other hour awaits thee in which
thou canst hope to find any value, now that thou hast once penetrated
into that part of life, beyond which none can go who intend to return.
Guided by that divine memory, I would have thee return to the place
where in dreams I gathered crown-like anemones, to strew them on thy
head; and there I would have thee fall again into the harmonious
attitude that once I praised, close to the marble sundial. And the
moment the point of the shadow reached the tip of thy ring-finger
should be the moment of thy death. Then beneath the stony gaze of the
crouching caryatid I should myself dig the grave for thy frail remains;
and I should lay thee out as the gentle ladies laid out Beatrice in
Dante’s vision, and should spread their veil over thy head. But I
should not set a cross over thy grave, nor any other pious symbol;
rather I should call upon the youngest of the sons of the Graces, a
native of Palestine, like thy celestial Spouse; I should call upon
Meleager of Gadara, the hyacinth-garlanded, the sweet flute-player,
the poet who sings the early death of maidens; and he should carve an
epitaph worthy of thy gentle grace. Oh Earth, universal Mother, all
hail to thee; be gentle to this maiden, who weighs so lightly upon
thee.”
Thus it pleased me to adorn the sentiment with which she inspired me,
and turn her sadness into poetry.
“Has the narcissus bulb in the herbarium sprouted for the third time?”
I asked her suddenly one day, as we were boating on the Saurgo near the
dead city.
She was quite disturbed, and looked at me with startled eyes.
“How do you know?”
I smiled and repeated--
“But has it sprouted?”
“No, not again!” she replied, looking down.
We were alone in a little skiff, which I was paddling myself with one
oar. Violante, Anatolia, and Oddo were in other boats rowed by the
boatmen. The river here was so wide and sluggish that it was almost
like a pond, and a dense flock of water-lilies covered it. The great
white flowers, shaped like roses, floated among their shining leaves,
diffusing a moist fragrance, which seemed to have the property of
slaking thirst.
It was here that Simonetto’s botanising had come to an end that fatal
autumn. I imagined the figure of the young botanist leaning over the
water exploring its slimy depths at the season when the water-lilies
are nearly over. His _hortus siccus_, no doubt, contained lifeless
specimens of all that aquatic flora which surrounded the ruins.
Massimilla’s eyes followed the movement of my oar as from time to time
it crushed a leaf or broke a stalk, and I said softly--
“Are you thinking of Simonetto?”
She started.
“How do you know?” she asked me again, much agitated, with flushing
cheeks.
“I know from Oddo....”
“Ah!” she said, without concealing her regret at this knowledge of
mine, which seemed to wound her. “Oddo told you....”
She relapsed into a silence which I felt to be a very painful one for
her. I stopped rowing for a few seconds, and the light boat rested
motionless amidst the wide extent of white blossoms.
“Did you love him very much?” I asked the silent maiden, with a
gentleness that reminded her perhaps of our earlier interviews.
“As I love Oddo, as I love Antonello,” she replied, with a tremble in
her voice, without raising her eyelids.
After a pause I asked her--
“Are you going into the convent to sacrifice yourself to his memory?”
“No, not for that. It would be too late now....”
“Why, then?”
She did not answer. But I looked at her hands, which she was clenching
as if she wanted to wring them, and I understood all the involuntary
cruelty of my useless question.
“Is it true that you have decided to go in a few days?” I added almost
timidly.
“It is true.”
Her lips trembled; they had turned white.
“Will Oddo and Anatolia go with you?”
She nodded her head in answer, and pressed her lips together to force
back a sob.
“Forgive me, Massimilla, if I have hurt you,” I said with deep emotion,
for I felt a weight of sadness suddenly fall on me.
“Be quiet, please!” she implored, in a voice I scarcely recognised.
“Don’t make me cry! What would my sisters think? I should not be able
to hide my tears.... And I am choking.”
Oddo’s voice was heard calling to us from the ruins. Anatolia and
Violante had already set foot in the dead city. One of the boatmen
came towards us with his skiff, thinking perhaps that our delay was
caused by my inexperience in guiding the boat through the tangle of
water-lilies.
“Ah, I shall always bear within me the regret of having lost thee!”
I said in silence to her who was about to depart. “I should rather
behold thee laid out in the perfection of death than know thy soul to
be straitened in a life alien to that which my love and my art had
promised thee. And perhaps thou wouldest have led me to explore some
far-away region of my inner world, which without thee will remain
neglected and uncultivated....”
The boat was gliding lightly over the snowy flock; in its track
the leaves and blossoms rippled apart, and through the crystalline
clearness of the water the pale forest of stems was visible, pale and
languid, as if fed by the mud of Lethe. The ruins of Linturno embraced
by the water and the flowers looked, in their secular, stony apathy,
like a great collection of broken skeletons. Even the eyeballs of a
human skull are not so lifelessly empty as were the hollows of those
worn-out stones, bleached white like bones by the mists and the heat.
And I imagined that I was ferrying a dead maiden.
Everything after that bore the impress of my sadness on that cloudless
afternoon. For a long time we wandered about the ruins searching out
the traces of vanished life.
They were uncertain traces, which gave rise to all sorts of different
conjectures. Was the theory true of the band of youths crowned with
garlands descending to the parent river singing and dedicating their
unshorn, growing locks to him? Or was it rather a white procession of
catechumens like little children, fed on milk and honey, who descended
there to receive baptism? A dim legend of martyrs cast a sort of
mournful sanctity over the pagan remains. “_Martyris ossa jacent...._”
we read on the fragment of a sarcophagus; and here and there among
the few sculptured stones lying about we found emblems and symbols
of double meaning; Jove’s eagle and Cybele’s lion subdued to the
Evangelists; the vines of Dionysius twisted to express the parable of
the Saviour; Diana’s stag representing the thirsty soul. Now and then a
snake darted out from among the stones and roots, and vanished quickly
as an arrow. An invisible bird was making a strange imitation of the
rattles which announce the hours of silence on Good Friday.
“And where is your great Madonna?” asked Anatolia, recalling my words
of long ago. We sought among the fallen masonry for a path to lead us
to the ruined basilica, which stood at the extreme end of the island,
on the branch of the Saurgo nearest the rocks.
“Perhaps the water will prevent our getting there,” I said, as I
perceived the glittering reflections close to the wall.
The river had indeed flooded part of the sacred ruin, and a forest
of water weeds was growing there undisturbed. But we found a gap by
which we were able to enter the apse. Each of the three sisters as she
entered made the sign of the cross, amid a great whirring of wings.
Inside all was cool and damp, and the palpitating light took a greenish
hue. The apse and a few pillars of the central nave were left, and
formed a kind of cave, which the waters had invaded almost up to the
deserted altar steps; and a multitude of water-lilies, larger and
whiter even than those through which we had rowed, clustered as if in
adoration at the feet of the great Madonna in mosaic, who occupied
alone the concave heaven of gold which formed the apse. She did not
hold the Infant in her arms, but stood alone, wrapped in a mantle of
leaden hue like a shadow of mourning, and a deep mystery of sorrow lay
in her large, fixed eyes. High above the curve of the arch the swallows
had made a charming crown of nests, following the order of the words
written round it--
“QUASI PLATANUS EXALTATA SUM JUXTA AQUAS.”
And then the three maidens knelt down together and prayed.
“If we were to leave thee in this refuge with the water-lilies and the
swallows!” I thought, looking at Massimilla, who was bending lower and
lower as she prayed. “Thou wouldest live here like a hermit Naiad who
has forsaken Artemis to worship the new sorrowful divinity.” And I
pictured her metamorphosis: after completing her solitary rites amid
the choir of swallows, she would plunge into the water and descend to
the roots of the flowers....
But to my eyes nothing here surpassed the whiteness of a neck burdened
with a weight of hair thicker than the marble clusters of grapes that
decorated the front of the altar. For the first time I saw Violante
on her knees, and the attitude was so unsuited to the quality of her
beauty that it pained me like a discord; and I waited with strange
restlessness for her to rise from the place between the two symbolical
peacocks, who were spreading their feathers among the clusters of
grapes.
She rose before the others, with one of those magnificent movements
in which her beauty seemed to surpass itself, as a steady light seems
to wax larger before it suddenly breaks into sparks. _Exaltata juxta
aquas!_
When we returned she came with me on the river, sitting in the
little prow opposite me while I stood and paddled. I was overcome by
uncontrollable emotion as I remembered the hand beaded with blood and
the hill-slope covered with blossom. It was the first time since that
far-away hour that I had found myself alone with Violante face to face.
“I am so thirsty,” she said, leaning over the water with a movement
which, while expressive of her desire, seemed to identify her with the
liquid voluptuous element.
“Don’t drink that water!” I begged her, seeing that she bared her hands.
“Why?”
“Don’t drink it!”
Then she plunged in her bare hands, picked a water-lily, and bent over
it to breathe its fragrant moisture. It seemed as if a vague shiver
passed over the flowery covering around us. The sun had sunk behind
the rocks, and an almost imperceptible rosy reflection fell from the
evening sky on the innumerable white flowers.
“Look at the water-lilies!” I exclaimed, resting on my oar. “Don’t you
think they look marvellously alive just now?”
She plunged in her hands again up to the wrists, and held them in the
water like rosy floating flowers; and as her eyes wandered over the
trembling multitude, the smile on her lips was so divine that in my
soul I invested it with miraculous powers.
Truly she was worthy to work wonders, and to subdue the very soul of
things to her beauty. I dared not utter a word, so speaking was the
silence by her side. But as we bent over the water, the same spell
seemed to bind us to each other as had united us that first day in the
presence of the volcanic rock. The hawks were not screaming over our
heads, but round us the swallows were twittering as they flew by, and
something like a ray of light flashed from their white breasts as they
passed.
“Well; aren’t we going on? Have you no strength left?” she said,
turning round with an indefinable tone of derision in her voice, and
reading the very depths of my eyes. “Don’t you see that the other boats
are far ahead?”
I gazed at the little flotilla for a few moments with knitted brows.
“Anatolia is calling us,” she added. “Make haste!”
The Saurgo seemed to grow broader in the twilight, to vanish away
into infinite distance, then to regain the strength of its current,
to give promise of carrying us on into fairer lands. And that royal
creature, bending over the great soft, rosy stream in the eagerness of
her thirst, of her fierce desire for a liquid suited to her voluptuous
being, was full of such mystery, of beauty, and poetry that my soul
went out to her in the most fervent act of worship.
“Look!” then said the enchantress, pointing to the scene which she
seemed to have called up with a wave of her hand. “Look!”
All around us on the water, over which a slight shiver was passing, the
living calyxes were closing with a slow lip-like motion, hesitating a
few moments, withdrawing, sinking, disappearing under the leaves one by
one or in groups, as if some power of slumber were calling them below.
Wide spaces were left deserted, but here and there in the midst of them
a single belated lily would display the utmost of her grace in this
delay. A vague melancholy hovered over the water on each spot where one
of the lingerers disappeared. And then it seemed as if the dreams of
the submerged multitude rose up like a mist from the great soft rosy
stream.
* * * * *
But it was on the summit of Corace that the unexpected revelation took
place which finally decided our fate.
We had stopped at Scultro to visit the ancient abbey, where the remains
still exist of a sumptuous mausoleum, the work of Maestro Gualtiero of
Germany, built as a memorial of herself and her three sons by a lady of
the Cantelmo family--that magnificent _Domina Rita_, who as the wife of
Giovanni Antonio Caldora was mother of the great condottiere Jacopo.
And Anatolia and I had lingered behind in the mouldy chapel to gaze at
the recumbent figure of the young hero, clad to the throat in heavy
armour, with only the curly head uncovered, reposing so royally on the
marble pillow.
Then after a long climb on foot up a steep narrow path--for we had left
the mules behind on the level--we had reached the northern brow of
the extinct crater, now transformed into the lake to which Secli gives
its name. At our feet we had, on the one hand, the tawny valley of the
Saurgo; on the other, two high spurs sent out of the main range into
the plains below, beyond which lies the distant sea. Above our heads a
few clouds hung almost motionless in the vast expanse of crystalline
blue, and seemed compact and dazzling as heaps of snow.
Seated on some boulders, we gazed in silence. Violante and Massimilla
seemed tired, and Oddo had not yet succeeded in controlling his
nervousness. But Anatolia was moving about, gathering little flowers in
the crevices of the rocks.
A vague, confused restlessness stole over me, intensified at times to
the point of acute pain. I felt that at last the inevitable moment
of choice was hanging over me; that I dared linger no more among the
tormenting, delicious alternations of passion and perplexity, nor any
more strive to resolve the three noble rhythms into one harmony. That
day, for the last time, the three givers of happiness appeared to me in
unison beneath the light of the same heaven. How long a time had passed
since that first hour when, as I ascended the ancient steps, in the
voices and virginal shadows moving like forms of magic, surrounded by
the traces of neglect and decay, I had discovered the first music, and
wrought the first transformation? On the morrow the short-lived spell
would be broken, and for ever.
Now I felt compelled to say aloud to Anatolia the words I had already
silently addressed to the pure, mysterious shadow which had witnessed
my interview with her father. As we stood together shortly before
in the deserted chapel, looking on that tomb erected by the loyalty
of a brave woman, had we not both partaken of the same sentiment
and the same idea? Had I not said to her even then, without words:
“Thou too mightest become a mother of heroes, oh thou who sharest my
consciousness. I know that thou hast gathered up my wish, and hast laid
it within thy true heart, where it sparkles like a diamond. I know that
in a dream thou hast watched a whole night mysteriously over the sleep
of a child. While his body slept, breathing deeply, thou didst hold his
soul, tangible as a crystal ball, in thy hands, and thy bosom swelled
with marvellous intuitions.”
Now I felt the need of exchanging a binding promise with her before she
started off on her mournful journey with the novice and her brother.
But my anxiety was deepening into pain, as if some real danger were
hanging over me. And I could not fail to acknowledge the cause of the
emotion which Violante was perpetually stirring in me by her every
action.
The ruins of Linturno lay beneath us in the valley like a heap of white
stones, like a strip of dry shore, in the midst of the sweet dead
waters, where only yesterday by a double miracle she had cast a spell
over the water-lilies and over my soul. The spell was still upon me
whenever I looked at her. Seated on a boulder in the same attitude
as when seated that first day on the plinth, she looked like one of
the immortal statues. Once again I gazed at her, and noticed how,
although present, she was yet far away, as she had been that day; and
I thought again: “It is right she should remain untouched. Only by a
god could she be possessed without shame. Never shall her body bear the
disfiguring weight; never shall the flood of milk mar the pure outline
of her bosom....”
An inward impulse made me start to my feet as if to free myself from
a restraint, and turning to her who was gathering the little flowers
in the crevices of the rocks, I said: “As you are not tired, Anatolia,
will you come up to the top with me?”
“I am quite ready,” she assented in her clear cordial voice; and she
went up to Massimilla and laid the flowers in her lap.
Violante sat still in the same attitude, holding her veil between her
fingers--impassive as though she had not heard. But I felt that her
eyes were not looking at outward things, and I was troubled, as though
a ray of the fascination flowing from the mysterious depths on which
her gaze was fixed had penetrated me.
“Don’t be long in coming down!” Oddo begged in his imploring tones, his
pale face betraying the discomfort, the perpetual fear of giddiness
which he felt on those heights. “We shall wait for you.”
The peak of Corace rose up against the sky as bare and sharp as a
helmet, leaning over a little towards the west; and the path ascending
it ran along a steep rib as narrow as the edge of a precipice, dividing
the two slopes. The passage was so difficult and dangerous that I
offered Anatolia my hand for support, and, smiling, she laid hers
in mine as she stumbled over the rough rocks. We were out of sight
already, free and alone, monarchs of the vast space. Every breath
seemed to purify the blood in our veins and to lighten the weight of
the flesh. And the aromatic essences which the heat of the sun, like a
powerful chemical, pressed out of the rare Alpine plants, quickened the
rhythm of our life.
We stopped, both suddenly out of breath, and our hands, which had been
too tightly clasped, unloosed themselves. I looked in my companion’s
eyes, but she was no longer smiling. Her face became grave, almost sad,
as if overshadowed by a regret.
“Let us stop here,” she murmured, lowering her eyelids. “I cannot go
any further....”
“A little further,” I said, for a vehement desire to reach the summit
was spurring me on, “only a few steps more, and we shall be at the top!”
“I cannot go any further,” she repeated in an exhausted voice unlike
her own, and she passed her hands over her face as if to brush away
something that distressed her.
Then she tried to smile at me.
“What a strange illusion!” she added. “The top is a long way off yet.
We always seem about to reach it, and the higher one goes, the further
off it seems to be.”
Then after a pause, in which she seemed to be listening to her own deep
heart--
“And there are souls suffering down below!”
She turned her face, on which the shadow of some thought had fallen,
towards the place where her sisters were waiting.
“Let us go back, Claudio,” she added, in a tone that I cannot forget,
for never did human voice express so many wonderful things so briefly.
“Dear, dear Anatolia!” I broke out, seizing her hands, overcome by the
extraordinary feeling aroused in me by those simple words of hers,
which I took to be the unmistakable indication of an inward emotion
that was almost divine. “Let me first say to you what my silence has
told you more than once.... Where can I offer my love more worthily
than here on this height, to you who are the highest of created beings,
Anatolia?”
She turned very pale, not like one who hears tidings of joy long
waited and prayed for, but like one who receives an invisible blow
in a vital part; and though apparently motionless, in spirit she was
shaken towards me by some strange fearful shudder, by some instinctive
movement of horror; and this I saw, not with my eyes, but with one of
those unknown senses that sometimes manifest themselves in a momentary
vibration on the surface of the human nerves, and then disappear again
for ever, leaving the consciousness amazed.
She cast a look of indefinable anxiety around her.
“You speak as if we were alone,” she said vaguely, “as if I were alone
... as if I were alone....”
“Anatolia, what is the matter with you?” I asked, troubled by her
inexplicable distress, by the deep change in her face, the incoherence
of her words.
And a thought flashed across my uncertainty. Had she not been suddenly
assailed, she accustomed for so many years to her gloomy prison, she
the resigned martyr within the ancient walls, had she not perhaps been
suddenly assailed by that mysterious terror, that kind of panic which
reigns among the solitudes of stern and silent mountains? Yes; no doubt
she was a prey to this terrible fascination, and her spirit had gone
astray under it.
A savage scene lay at our feet on every side in the glaring light. The
chain of rocks, bare and clear in their desolate barrenness to their
remotest passes, stretched away like a mass of gigantic and monstrous
relics, left for the amazement of mankind as traces of some primeval
battle of the Titans. Ruined towers, broken walls, fallen citadels,
crumbled domes, tottering porches, mutilated colossi, prows of vessels,
backbones of monsters, bones of Titans, every kind of monstrosity was
simulated by the jutting peaks and dark ravines of this formidable
range. The distance was so transparent that I could distinguish every
outline as clearly as if my eyes were beholding, on an infinitely
larger scale, the rock which Violante had shown me from the window-sill
with that creative sweep of her hand. The most distant peaks were
engraved on the sky with the same precise sharpness of outline which
the sloping sides of the crater close at hand assumed in the reflected
rays of the sun. The vast mouth of the spherical crater gaped with a
kind of eddying vehemence in the expression of its curves; it was like
a whirlpool, although inert. In part grey like ashes, elsewhere red
like rust, it was crossed here and there by long white streaks that
sparkled like salt, and were reflected in the metallic calm of the
water which had gathered at the bottom. And opposite us, overhanging
the edge of the precipice like a petrified flock of sheep, was Secli,
the solitary hermit-like village, where from time immemorial a small
industrious population has busied itself in making strings for musical
instruments.
“You are tired,” I said to my dear companion, trying to draw her under
the shadow of a boulder, which I thought might screen her on one
side at least from the sight of the space below, and give her back a
sense of security. “You are tired, Anatolia; you are not used to such
fatigue, and perhaps this view is rather terrible.... Lean back here
and close your eyes for a little. I will stand beside you. Here is my
arm. I can take you back without any danger. Now close your eyes for a
little....”
Again she tried to smile at me.
“No, no,” she said; “don’t trouble, Claudio.”
Then after a pause, in a changed voice, and very low--
“It is not that.... If I closed my eyes, perhaps I should see....”
My heart was trembling like a leaf beneath a sudden breath of wind.
And though Anatolia’s face was composed again into an expression of
deep but calm sadness, and though a feeling of power over evil seemed
diffused through her whole person, vague analogies led me to think of
Antonello’s sudden attacks of distress, of that restlessness of his,
which was an infallible warning, and of the visions of the future which
lit up his pale eyes.
“Do you understand, Anatolia?” I asked, taking one of her hands, for
we stood side by side leaning against the rock. “Do you understand
that you, you alone, are the companion whose name my heart pronounced
that evening when your father kissed my forehead in sign of consent?
You rose and left the room softly like a spirit; and I, I don’t know
why, imagined that your face was bathed in tears.... Tell me if you
are weeping, Anatolia, and if my dream was dear to you!” She did not
answer; but as I held her hand, it seemed to me that her purest heart’s
blood flowed magnetically to the tips of her fingers.
“That evening,” I added, striving to intoxicate her with hope, “as I
went back to Rebursa, I saw a star shining over one of my old towers;
and your presence had filled my heart so full of faith, that what was
mere chance seemed to me like a divine omen! From that time two figures
have shone for me in that radiance.... You know whose the other is.
I can hear the first words you spoke to me there on the steps, words
which evoked the memory of 'immense kindness.’ All that day the figure
your words had called up clung to your side to show me whom she had
elected. She herself, on some future evening, will come with me into
the dwelling which once was full of her smile, and now is deserted....
Look, down there!”
She looked at the distant towers of Rebursa down in the deep hollow
where the hanging clouds were casting great circles of shadow; but
her gaze passed on to Trigento, and during the interval marks of an
inexpressible inward conflict passed over her face. She shook her head,
and drew her hand out of mine.
“Happiness is forbidden me,” she said in a firm but sorrowful voice,
keeping her eyes fixed on the garden of her agony, on the house of
her martyrdom. “I, like Massimilla, am dedicated; and my vow also is
irrevocable. And it is not only the action of my own will, Claudio. I
feel now that the sacrifice is necessary, that I cannot escape from
it. You heard the tone in my answer just now when you asked me to go
up to the top with you. You saw how easy it was for me to climb with
you, with the support of your hand. But now ... I have not been able
to go any further; we did not reach the top. See: here I am, nailed to
a rock. You make me an offer, the value of which you yourself cannot
know as I know it; and here I am, weighed down by grief so heavy that I
am afraid of being unable to bear it, I, who have never been afraid of
suffering!”
I dared not interrupt her nor touch her. A sort of religious awe filled
my soul. Overmastered by even stronger emotion than had overcome me on
that solemn evening, I could feel, without turning round, the throbbing
of something infinitely noble and mysterious at my side, something
resembling the divine mysteries guarded under veils in the Holy of
Holies in temples. Her voice was sounding close to my ear, yet it came
from an infinite distance. Her words were simple, but they came from
the summit of life, that pinnacle which the human soul can only reach
when about to be transfigured into Ideal Beauty.
“Look, down there! Look at the house where from the first day we
received you as a brother, where our father received you as a son,
where you found the memory of your beloved dead kept fresh. Look
how far away it seems! And yet I feel it bound to me by a thousand
invisible ties stronger than any chain. I feel that even here my life
mingles with the faint life suffering down there. Ah, perhaps you
cannot understand! But think, Claudio, of the atrocity of the fate that
hangs over us; think of that poor raving mother, of that broken-down
feeble old man, of that victim always hovering on the border of
madness, of that other, too, who is under the same sentence, and of
the horror of contagion, and the solitude, and the grief.... Ah, you
cannot understand! From the first day I feared to sadden you; I always
tried to put myself between you and our misfortune. Very seldom,
perhaps never, have you breathed the real sadness of our house. We met
you in the open air, among the flowers which we learned, for your sake
only, to love again; and in our neglected garden you have been able to
bring some things to life.... But think of the hidden anguish! You
cannot see; but I can see from here everything that goes on in there,
as much as if the walls were made of glass, and I were touching them
with my forehead. Life seems suspended; the father and son are shut up
in one room and dare not go out, and dare not breathe; they listen to
every sound, one increases the suffering of the other, and both are
helplessly waiting for my return, and listening eagerly, hoping to
catch the sound of my voice and my step. And _she_ is raving, searching
for me in all the passages, all the rooms, calling me aloud, stopping
before a closed door and listening or knocking, and my two poor souls
inside hear her breathing, and start at every knock, and can do nothing
but look in each other’s eyes, my God!”
She pressed her hands to her temples with an instinctive movement, as
if to force back some rebound of sorrow; and her whole body, leaving
the support of the boulder, leant over towards the distant scene of her
martyrdom. And for a few seconds, with the anguish she had communicated
to me clutching at my throat, I bent over in the same attitude, I hung
over the edge of the precipice, with my gaze fixed on the distant home
where those souls were suffering.
“Think,” she continued, in a broken voice now, “think, Claudio, what
would happen to them if I were not there, if I forsook them! Even when
I leave them for a short time, I feel such regret, such remorse as I
cannot describe to you. Every time I cross the threshold to go out, a
gloomy presentiment weighs on my heart; and it seems to me as if on my
return I should find the house full of shrieks and lamentations....”
An uncontrollable shudder was now shaking her whole figure, and her
eyes were dilated as if some cruel vision were filling her with horror.
“Antonello,” she stammered; and for a few seconds she could not utter
another word.
I looked at her with inexpressible anguish; and my soul suffered with
hers in each contraction of her dear lips. And the vision in her eyes
passed into mine; and I saw Antonello’s wasted, white face, and the
rapid quiver of his eyelids, and his painful smile and disordered
movements, and the waves of terror which used suddenly to sweep over
his long thin body, shaking it like a fragile reed.
“Antonello ... tried to kill himself.... Only I know of it.... Nobody
else knows it; not even Oddo. Alas!”
She trembled so much that she could not control herself as she leant
against the rock. “One evening God warned me, God sent me.... His name
be praised for ever!... I went into his room ... and I found him....”
She was choking, and her fingers wandered distractedly to her throat,
as if the noose were strangling her; she was trembling, overcome,
losing all courage at the recollection, she who had been able to
repress her cries of horror at the sight of the half-dead man, she who
had been able to call up the strength of a man in her wrists, to finish
her work without asking for help, to hide the horrible secret in her
own bosom, and then to live on from one fear to another, from one
anxiety to another, with this tragic vision haunting her soul! Thus she
revealed herself to me in her sublime truth, desperately devoted to an
affection which had its roots in the deepest and most sacred instincts
of her being. The voice of blood seemed to cry aloud in all her veins:
the ties of blood bound every fibre together. She was born to wear the
sweet powerful fetters till death. She was ready to burn herself as a
sacrifice that she might nourish the faint flame that flickered on the
household hearth. And therefore with what unspeakable love would she
have loved the child of her womb!
“You speak of forsaking,” I said, making a painful effort to speak, for
any expressions of mine seemed untimely and feeble after the grandeur
and beauty of the sentiment just revealed; “you speak of forsaking,
Anatolia; and you forget that from the very first day I found my
father, my sisters, and my brothers in your house; and you do not know
how full my heart is of filial and fraternal piety, not comparable
to yours, which is superhuman, but still worthy of serving it by
actions....”
She shook her head.
“Ah, Claudio,” she replied, with a sorrowful smile on her dry lips,
“your generosity deceives you. My soul is still dazzled by the flames
of your dream, and troubled by a sort of repressed violence and
dangerous ardour which from time to time flashes from you. You are
stirred by the longing for strife and power; and you are determined by
every means to force life to fulfil her promises to you. You are young
and proud of your lineage, and lord of your own powers, and confident
in your faith. Who shall set a limit to your conquests?”
As if suddenly inspired, she had thrown the whole virtue of her clear,
warm voice into these last words; and I understood by the thrill
they sent through me what a powerful stimulator of energy she would
have been, she who with all her kindness and patience possessed the
fundamental instincts of her imperious race.
“But imagine, Claudio, a conqueror dragging after him a cart full of
sick folk, and seeing their wasted faces and hearing their lamentations
as he prepared himself for battle! Can you imagine such a thing? If
life is cruel, he who is resolved to combat her must of necessity take
into account the strength of the enemy; and every hindrance will sooner
or later arouse his annoyance and his anger....”
She had succeeded in mastering the excess of her emotion; and once more
I beheld her brave firmness as she spoke on without a quiver in her
voice.
“And I, my very self, should I not at last be forgotten? Should I not
be carried away altogether on the stream of new affections, new cares,
by the intoxication of your hopes? The task you would assign to the
companion of your efforts is too great, Claudio.... Your words are
still in my memory.... Alas, it is not possible to feed two flames at
the same time! The new one would in a short time become so voracious
that I should have to sacrifice all the riches of my soul to it; and
the old one so feeble, that if I turned my head away it would go out.”
She was silent, and her head sank again. But with a sudden movement,
as if her former anxiety had returned, she looked up and around her,
and the working of her parched lips betrayed her thirst to me. Then she
turned upon me, and fixing her eyes on mine with a kind of impetuous
force, she asked--
“Is it true that your heart has chosen me? Have you examined your heart
to the depths? Or does some illusion hang over you like a veil?”
I was so much disturbed by her look, and these sudden doubts of hers,
that I felt myself turn pale as if she had accused me of falsehood.
“Anatolia, what do you mean?”
She left the support of the rock, and made a few faltering steps
forward; then she paused as if to listen, anxious and agitated.
“There is some soul suffering here on these paths,” she repeated, in
the same tone as before; for a few moments she stood perplexed, and her
hand went up to her brow with a vague gesture.
Then turning to me, rapidly, anxiously, as if she were being driven on,
and was afraid of not having time to say the words--
“To-morrow I am going away. I must go with Massimilla. I have not the
courage to let her start alone with Oddo. I must go with her to the
very door of her retreat. She is going to pray for us.... I know she
is not going there for consolation, but as to death; and so I must
help her. I shall stay away for several days. For several days one of
us will be alone at Trigento.... She is the eldest; she has almost the
right.... She is worthy.... I don’t know; your heart will tell you
something, perhaps the truth.... I swear to you, Claudio, that I will
pray with all the fervour I have in my soul that on coming back I may
find that everything has fallen out for the good of all.... Who knows?
Perhaps there is some great good in store for you. I believe in your
star, Claudio. But I am under a prohibition.... I can’t explain, I
can’t explain.... There is a shadow over my will.... Just now a strange
fear came over me, and then a sadness, a sadness I had never known
before....”
She stopped, gasping, confused, miserable, as if the feeling of the
infinite desolation spreading round us under the burning heat had swept
over her again.
“And you too, how you are suffering!” she murmured, without looking at
me.
And stretching out both her hands to me in one supreme effort--
“Now, good-bye! we must go back. Thank you, Claudio. Remember me always
as a devoted sister. You will never find my tenderness wanting....”
She turned away her face, for her eyes were filling with tears, and I
kissed both her hands.
“Good-bye,” she repeated, trying to get up and begin the descent; but
she tottered on the rock.
“I entreat you, Anatolia, stay a little longer!” I implored, as I held
her up. “Just stay a few minutes longer here in the shade, that you may
get back your strength.... The descent is very steep.”
“They are waiting for us! They are waiting for us!” she stammered,
almost beside herself, and her frenzied anxiety communicated itself to
me. “Let us go, Claudio! I will lean on you. If we stayed any longer,
I should feel worse, I should not be able to go one step.... Ah, this
horrible thirst!”
I could see well enough that her poor mouth was burning with thirst,
and such anguish of pity was I enduring that I would have opened a vein
to slake it. There was not a trace of water anywhere around. Nothing
but the waters of the lake looking like molten lead at the bottom of
the extinct crater. Rapid visions crossed my brain, as they do in the
delirium of fever; the great, rosy river covered with water-lilies,
Violante leaning over the edge of the boat, her face bending to breathe
the moisture of the flowers, the hardness of a sharp glance from under
her knitted brows....
But we both started, as a sudden wave of sound came rolling towards us,
we knew not whence. The silence in these lofty solitudes was so intense
as to seem inviolable, and the rough, sudden breaking of it struck
us, in the confused state of our senses, as an extraordinary event.
Anatolia clung to my arm, and questioned me with startled eyes.
“Secli,” I said, as I recognised the nature of the sound. “The bells of
Secli.”
And we listened, side by side, leaning towards the echoing crater, in
the shadow thrown over our heads by the boulder.
The empty crater, resonant as a gigantic drum, echoed back the waves
of sound sent by the quivering bells, and mingled them into one long
hollow rumble that repeated itself indefinitely through the solitudes
of light. All through those solitudes, where primary matter, petrified
into a thousand expressions of rage and sorrow, shone in its grandeur,
down the tawny valley furrowed by the winding river, through the Alpine
vegetation sloping away to the distant sea, everywhere the voice of
bronze, modulated by the terrible fiery mouth, went proclaiming its
mysterious message. Further and further it penetrated, and further
still again, through limitless space, away to shores beyond the
mountains and the sea, away to where my weary sight failed me, away
to where my thoughts, still unformed and uncontrolled, but instinct
with mysterious creative power, wandered like winds laden with pollen.
A grand, vague feeling, in which innumerable things of sorrow and
joy, past and future, of death and life, were mingled, troubled my
consciousness, and seemed tossing it to and fro as the storm tosses the
ocean.
Amazed, I looked down at the Tartarean lake, thick and stagnant like
the blind eye of a subterranean world; and I looked at the greedy
crater where the impetus of the primeval fire had been arrested, just
as the contracted expression of the last agony sometimes lingers on the
lips of corpses. And my gaze rested on the humble cottages of Secli,
on that fragile nest, hardly distinguishable from the rock on which
it hung. And I had a fantastic vision of that unconscious taciturn
race, busied from time immemorial in turning the entrails of lambs
into musical strings destined to express through the language of art
the highest inspirations of life, and to intoxicate myriads of unknown
souls in the world.
On and on rolled the sound, rumbling ceaselessly, monotonously, through
the scorching air. And seeing my companion motionless at my side, I
dared not speak, nor break the spell. But suddenly she turned round and
broke into sobs, as if she had just witnessed the end of a death agony.
Leaning against the rock with her face in her hands, she sobbed on
despairingly.
“Anatolia, Anatolia, what is the matter with you? Answer me, Anatolia!
Say one word to me.”
And unable to resist the pain, I was just going to take her wrists and
uncover her face.
I heard close by the sound of a swift step on the stones, the sound of
painful breathing; I saw a shadow.
“You, Violante?”
She came up the steep rock with something of the elastic stride of a
wild animal, something hostile and malevolent expressed in her whole
person. Her thick blue veil was wrapped round her head in such a way
that her whole face was hidden down to the chin, as if by a mask, and
her eyes glittered through the gauze.
She stopped near the boulder in a hostile attitude throwing back her
head like one who is suffocating, yet she did not loosen her veil.
The vehemence of her breathing made her bosom rise and fall, and the
veil flutter; an uncontrollable tremor shook her hands within the torn
gloves she wore, torn probably on the sharp rocks in some perilous fall.
“We waited for you,” she said at last in a broken voice that almost
hissed; “we waited for you a long time.... As you did not seem to be
coming back, I came up ... to meet you....”
I could trace the convulsive motion of her lips through her veil; I
could guess at the change in her face behind that suffocating blue mask
that she would not lift up. And I felt my inward emotion increase so
violently every minute, that it was impossible for me to open my lips.
But I felt that not on me alone the necessity for silence had fallen.
The rumble of the bronze bells reverberating in the crater passed
ceaselessly over our heads.
Anatolia had stopped sobbing, but the traces of tears were still on her
face, and the eyelids that she kept lowered were red. “Let us go,” she
said softly, without looking either at me or at her sister.
And in silence, under the desolation of the sunshine, we began the
descent, accompanied by the rumbling sound.
Miserable descent, which seemed as if it would never end! They walked
on, or lingered behind, according to the necessities of the path; and
I supported sometimes the one, and sometimes the other, when their
steps faltered. Every now and then my heart failed me with the fear
of seeing them succumb. When the bells of Secli ceased ringing we felt
a momentary relief; but we discovered immediately that the oppressive
irregularity of our breathing in the stillness of the air increased our
suffering, and we felt as though we could hear only too distinctly the
murmur of the blood in our veins.
With a savage pertinacity Violante persisted in braving suffocation
under her blue mask. No doubt her throat must be parched with a
horrible thirst, like mine, like her sister’s. When I took her hand
to help her down, I saw a little blood where the skin had been grazed
through the rents in her glove; and with deep emotion I remembered the
hill-slope covered with flowers.
* * * * *
Later on, when we reached the level ground, where my men were waiting
with the mules, and where we rested awhile parched with thirst and
exhausted by fatigue, I composed the beauty and the sorrow of the three
princesses, for the last time, into a harmony of infinite beauty and
pain.
They were not in their cloistered garden, yet a rocky cloister worthy
of their souls and their fate was surrounding them, for strange and
grand was the aspect of the scenery around. The rocks, standing round
in a circle of varying height, made one think of some amphitheatre
built by Cyclopean hands, worn away, indeed, by centuries and storms
without number, yet still remaining like stupendous ruins. Fragments
of unknown writing were traceable there, incomprehensible riddles of
Life and Death; the twisted veins of the stone were channels for the
essence of a divine thought; and the lines of the shapeless masses were
as full of meaning as the attitudes of perfect statues.
There we rested, there I caught their final harmony.
A field labourer--very like the one who had cut the branches of almond
blossom for us with his bill-hook--showed us the way to a spring hidden
in the hollow of a rock. The clear, icy water spurted out with a gentle
murmur, and on the pool beneath floated a rustic cup made of bark,
cracked and bottomless, like the useless husk of some fruit.
I offered Anatolia another cup, which the man had brought with him.
But Violante, without waiting, raised her veil, and bending over the
sparkling spring, drank in long draughts like a wild animal.
I saw the drops glistening on her mouth and chin when she rose, but she
turned away suddenly and drew down the edge of her veil. Thus veiled,
she sat down on the stone nearest to the mountain spring, whose song
was too gentle for her taste; and her attitude awakened in my soul
all the magic spell of her own fountains. Even in fatigue she did not
let her figure relax; for now she sat almost rigidly erect, sustained
by her silent angry pride. Once again everything around her seemed to
acknowledge the sovereignty of her presence; secret analogies bound up
the surrounding mysteries with her mystery. Once again she seemed to
drive back my spirit into the furthest distances of time, towards the
ancient ideas of Beauty and Sorrow. She was present, and yet far away.
And in the silence she seemed to be informing me, like the Princess
Dejanira: “I possess an ancient gift from an old centaur, hidden in a
vessel of bronze.”
Anatolia had sat down beside her pensive brother; she had thrown one
arm round his neck, and her brow seemed gradually to clear as if some
inner light were rising. Massimilla seemed to be listening to the
faint, unquenchable voice of the spring; sitting with the fingers of
her hands clasped together, holding within them the weary knee.
Over our heads the sky bore no traces of clouds, save a slight shadow
like the ashes of a burnt-out funeral pyre. The sun was scorching the
peaks all around, outlining their solemn features on the blue sky. A
great sadness and a great sweetness fell from above into the lonely
circle, like a magic draught into a rough goblet.
There the three sisters rested, there I caught their final harmony.
HERE ENDETH THE BOOK OF THE VIRGINS AND BEGINNETH THE BOOK OF GRACE.
* * * * *
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at the Edinburgh University Press
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