She was a woman past her first youth, rather thin and dressed in black, with a pair of gray eyes that glittered curiously under the curls of her false fringe. Her step and her movements generally were light, not to say furtive, as of one who is in the habit of attending upon invalids or of executing secret orders.

'This way, Signor Conte.'

She preceded Andrea though the long flight of dimly-lighted rooms, the thick soft carpets deadening every sound; and even through the almost uncontrollable tumult of his soul, the young man was conscious of an instinctive feeling of repulsion against her, without being able to assign an adequate reason for it.

Arrived in front of a door concealed by two pieces of tapestry of the Medicean period, bordered with deep red velvet, she stopped.

'I will go first and announce you. Please to wait here.'

A voice from within, which he recognised as Elena's, called, 'Christina!'

At the sound of her voice coming thus unexpectedly, Andrea began to tremble so violently that he thought to himself—'I am sure I am going to faint.' He had a dim presentiment of some more than mortal happiness in store for him which should exceed his utmost expectations, his wildest dreams—almost beyond his powers to support. She was there—on the other side of that door. All perception of reality deserted him. It seemed to him that he had already imagined—in some picture, some poem—a similar adventure, under the self-same circumstances, with these identical surroundings and enveloped in the same mystery, but of which another—some fiction of his own brain—was the hero. And now, by some strange trick of the imagination, the fictitious was confounded with the real, causing him an indescribable sense of confusion and bewilderment. On each of the pieces of tapestry was a large symbolical figure—Silence and Slumber—two Genii, tall and slender, which might have been designed by Primaticcio of Bologna, guarding the door. And he—he himself—stood before the door waiting, and on the other side of it was his divine lady. He almost thought he could hear her breathe.

At last Mademoiselle returned. Holding back the heavy draperies she smiled, and in a low voice said:

'Please go in.'

She effaced herself, and Andrea entered the room.

He noticed first of all that the air was very hot, almost stifling, and that there was a strong odour of chloroform. Then, through the semi-darkness, he became aware of something red—the crimson of the wall paper and the curtains of the bed—and then he heard Elena's languid voice murmuring, 'Thank you so much for coming, Andrea—I feel better now.'

He made his way to her with some difficulty, being unable to distinguish things very clearly in the half light.

She smiled wanly at him from among the pillows out of the gloom. Across her forehead and round her face, like a nun's wimple, lay a band of white linen which was scarcely whiter than the cheeks it encircled, such was her extreme pallor. The outer angles of her eyelids were contracted by the pain of her inflamed nerves, the lower lids quivering spasmodically from time to time, and the eyes were dewy and infinitely melting as if veiled by a mist of unshed tears under the trembling lashes.

A flood of pity and tenderness swept over the young man's heart when he came close to her and could see her clearly. Very slowly she drew one hand from under the coverlet and held it out to him. He bent over it till he half knelt on the edge of the couch and rained kisses thick and fast upon that burning, fevered hand, and the white wrist with its hurrying pulse.

'Elena—Elena—my love!'

Elena had closed her eyes, as if to resign herself more wholly to the ecstasy that penetrated to the most hidden fibre of her being. Then she turned her hand over that she might feel those kisses on her palm, on each finger, all round her wrist, on every vein, in every pore.

'Enough!' she murmured at last, opening her eyes again, and passed her languid hand softly over Andrea's hair.

Her caress, though light, was so ineffably tender, that to the lover's soul it had the effect of a rose leaf falling into a full cup of water. His passion brimmed over. His lips trembled under a confused torrent of words which rose to them but which he could not express. He had the violent and divine sensation as of a new life spreading in widening circles round him beyond all physical perception.

'What bliss!' said Elena, repeating her fond gesture, and a tremor ran through her whole person, visible through the coverlet.

But when Andrea made as if to take her hand again—'No,' she entreated, 'do not move—stay as you are, I like to have you so.'

She gently pressed his head down till his cheek lay against her knee. She gazed at him a little, still with that caressing touch upon his head, and then in a voice that seemed to faint with ecstasy she murmured, lingering over the syllables—

'How I love you!'

There was an ineffable seduction in the way she pronounced the words—so liquid, so enthralling on a woman's lips.

'Again!' whispered her lover, whose senses were languishing with passion under the touch of those hands, the sound of that caressing voice. 'Say it again—go on speaking.'

'I love you,' repeated Elena, noticing that his eyes were fixed upon her lips, and being perhaps aware of the fascination that emanated from them while pronouncing the words.

With a sudden movement she raised herself from the pillows, and taking Andrea's head between her two hands, she drew him to her, and their lips met in a long and passionate kiss.

Afterwards she fell back again, and lying with her arms stretched straight along the coverlet at her sides, she gazed at Andrea with wide open eyes, while one by one the great tears gathered slowly, and silently rolled down her cheeks.

'What is it, Elena—tell me—What is it?' asked her lover, clasping her hands and leaning over her to kiss away the tears.

She clenched her teeth and bit her lips to keep back the sobs.

'Nothing—nothing—go now, leave me—please! You shall see me to-morrow—go now.'

Her voice and her look were so imploring that Andrea obeyed.

'Good-bye,' he said, and kissed her tenderly on the lips, carrying away upon his own the taste of her salt tears. 'Good-bye! Love me—and do not forget.'

As he crossed the threshold, he seemed to hear her break into sobs behind him. He went on a little unsteadily, like a man who is not sure of his sight. The odour of chloroform lingered in his nostrils like the fumes of an intoxicating vapour; but, with every step he took, some virtue seemed to go out of him, to be dissipated in the air. The rooms lay empty and silent before him. 'Mademoiselle' appeared at a door without any warning sound of steps or rustle of garments, like a ghost.

'This way Signor Conte, you will not be able to find your way.'

She smiled in an ambiguous and irritating manner, her gray eyes glittering with ill-concealed curiosity. Andrea did not speak. Once more the presence of this woman annoyed and disturbed him, arousing an undefined sense of repulsion and anger in him.

No sooner was he outside the door than he drew a deep breath like a man relieved from some heavy burden. The gentle splash of the fountain came through the trees, broken now and then by some clearer, louder sound; the whole firmament glittered with stars, veiled here and there by long trailing strips of cloud like tresses of pale hair; carriage lamps flitted rapidly hither and thither, the life of the great city sent up its breath into the keen air, bells were ringing far and near. At last, he had the full consciousness of his overwhelming felicity.



CHAPTER VI

Thus began for them a bliss that was full, frenzied, for ever changing and for ever new; a passion that wrapped them round and rendered them oblivious of all that did not minister immediately to their mutual delight.

'What a strange love!' Elena said once, recalling those first days—her illness, her rapid surrender—'My heart was yours from the first moment I saw you.'

She felt a certain pride in the fact.

'And when, on that evening, I heard my name announced immediately after yours,' her lover replied, 'I don't know why, but I suddenly had the firm conviction that my life was bound to yours—for ever!'

And they really believed what they said. Together they re-read Goethe's Roman elegy—Lass dich, Geliebte, nicht reu'n, dass du mir so schnell dich ergeben!—Have no regrets, my Beloved, that thou didst yield thee so soon—'Believe me, dearest, I do not attribute one base or impure thought to you. Cupid's darts have varying effects—some inflict but a slight scratch, and the poison they insinuate lingers for years before it really touches the heart, while others, well feathered and armed with a sharp and penetrating point, pierce to the heart's core at once and send the fever racing through the blood. In the old heroic days of the loves of the gods and goddesses desire followed upon sight. Think you that the goddess of Love considered long in the grove of Ida that day Anchises found favour in her eyes? And Luna?—had she hesitated, envious Aurora would soon have wakened her handsome shepherd.'

For them, as for Faustina's divine singer, Rome was illumined by a new light. Wherever their footsteps strayed they left a memory of love. The forgotten churches of the Aventine—Santa Sabina with its wonderful columns of Parian marble, the charming garden of Santa Maria del Priorata, the campanile of Santa Maria in Cosmedin piercing the azure with its slender rose-coloured spire grew to know them well. The villas of the cardinals and the princes—the Villa Pamfili mirrored in its fountains and its lakes, all sweetness and grace, where every shady grove seems to harbour some noble idyll; the Villa Albani, cold and silent as a church, with its avenues of sculptured marble and centenarian trees; where in the vestibules, under the porticos and between the granite pillars, Caryatides and Hermes, symbols of immobility, gaze at the immutable symmetry of the verdant lawns; and the Villa Medici—like a forest of emerald green spreading away in a fairy tale, and the Villa Ludovici—a little wild—redolent of violets, consecrated by the presence of that Juno adored by Goethe in the days when the plane-trees and the cypresses, that one might well have thought immortal, had already begun to tremble with the foreboding of sale and death—all the patrician villas, the crowning glory of Rome, became well acquainted with their love. The picture and sculpture galleries too—the room in the Borghese where, before Correggio's 'Danae' Elena smiled as at her own reflection; and the Mirror Room, where her image glided among the Cupids of Ciro Ferri and the garlands of Mario de' Fiori; the chamber of Heliodorus, where Raphael has succeeded in making the dull walls throb and palpitate with life; and the apartments of the Borgias, where the great fantasia of Penturicchio unfolds its marvellous web of history, fable, dreams, caprices and audacities; and the Galatea Room, through which is diffused an ineffable freshness, a perennial serenity of light and grace; and the room where the Hermaphrodite, that gentle monster, offspring of the loves of a nymph and a demi-god, extends his ambiguous form amidst the sparkle of polished stone—all these unfrequented abodes of Beauty were well acquainted with them.

They echoed fervently the sublime cry of the poet—Eine Welt zwar bist du, O Rom! Thou art a world in thyself, oh Rome! But as without love the world would not be the world, so Rome without love would not be Rome, and the stairway of the Trinita, glorified by the slow ascension of the Day, became the Stairway of Felicity by the ascent of Elena the Fair on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.

'At times,' Elena said to him, 'my feeling for you is so delicate, so profound, that it becomes—how shall I describe it?—maternal almost!'

Andrea laughed, for she was his senior by barely three years.

'And at times,' he rejoined, 'I feel the communion of our spirits to be so chaste that I could call you sister while I kiss your hands.'

These fallacious ideas of purity and loftiness of sentiment were but the reaction after more carnal delights, when the soul experiences a vague yearning for the ideal. At such times too, the young man's aspirations towards the art he so much loved were apt to revive. The desire to give pleasure to his mistress by his literary or artistic efforts drove him to work. He accordingly wrote La Simona, and executed his two engravings: The Zodiac and Alexander's Bowl.

For the execution of his art, he chose by preference, the most difficult, exact, and incorruptible vehicles—verse and engraving; and he aimed at adhering strictly to, and reviving, the traditional Italian methods, by going back to the poets of the stil novo, and the painters who were precursors of the Renaissance. His tendencies were essentially towards form; his mind more occupied by the expression of his thought than the thought itself. Like Taine, he considered it a greater achievement to write three really fine lines, than to win a pitched battle. His Story of the Hermaphrodite imitated in its structure Poligiano's Story of Orpheus and contained lines of extraordinary delicacy, power and melody, particularly in the choruses of hybrid monsters—the Centaurs, Sirens and Sphinxes. His new tragedy, La Simona, of moderate length, possessed a most singular charm. Written and rhymed though it was, on the ancient Tuscan rules, it might have been conceived by an English poet of Elizabeth's time, after a story from the Decameron, and it breathed something of the strange and delicious charm of certain of the minor dramas of Shakespeare.

On the frontispiece of the single copy, the author had signed his work: A. S. CALCOGRAPHUS AQUA FORTI SIBI TIBI FECIT.

Copper had greater attractions for him than paper, nitric acid than ink, the graving-tool than the pen. One of his ancestors before him, Giusto Sperelli, had tried his hand at engraving. Certain plates of his, executed about 1520, showed distinct evidences of the influence of Antonio del Pollajuolo by the depth and acidity, so to speak, of the design. Andrea used the Rembrandt method a tratti liberi and the maniera nera so much affected by the English engravers of the school of Green, Dixon, and Earlom. He had formed himself on all models, had studied separately the effects sought after by each engraver, had schooled himself under Albrecht Duerer and Parmigianino, Marc' Antonio and Holbein, Hannibal Carracci, MacArdell, Guido, Toschi and Audran; but once his copper plate before him, his one aim was to light up, by Rembrandtesque effects, the elegance in design of the fifteenth-century Florentines of the second generation, such as Botticelli, Ghirlandajo and Filippino Lippi.

One of Andrea's most precious possessions was a bed-cover of finest silk in faded blue, round the border of which circled the twelve signs of the Zodiac, each with its appropriate legend: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces—in gothic characters. A flaming golden sun occupied the centre; the animal figures, drawn in somewhat archaic style, as one sees in mosaics, were extraordinarily brilliant. The whole thing was worthy to grace an Emperor's bed, and had, in fact, formed part of the trousseau of Bianca Maria Sforza, niece of Ludovico the Moor, when she espoused the Emperor Maximilian.

One of the engravings represented Elena asleep under this celestial counterpane. The rounded limbs appeared outlined under the silken folds, the head thrown carelessly back towards the edge of the couch, the hair rippling in a torrent to the floor, one arm hanging down, the other stretched along her side. The parts which were left uncovered, the face, the neck, the shoulders, and the arms, were extremely luminous, and the stile had reproduced most effectively the glitter of the embroidery in the half-light and the mysterious quality of the symbols. A tall white hound, Famulus, brother to the one which lays its head on the knee of the Countess of Arundel in Rubens' picture, stretched his muzzle towards the lady, guarding her slumbers, and was designed with much felicitous boldness of foreshortening. The background of the room was sumptuous and shadowy.

The other engraving referred to an immense silver basin which Elena had inherited from her aunt Flaminia.

This basin was historical, and was known as Alexander's Bowl. It had been given to the Princess of Bisenti by Caesar Borgia on his departure for France, when he went to carry the Papal Bill of divorce and dispensation to Louis XII. The design for the figures running round it and the two which rose over the edge at either side were attributed to Raphael.

It was called the Bowl of Alexander because it purported to be a reproduction of the prodigious vessel out of which the famous King of Macedonia was wont to drink at his splendid festivals. Groups of archers surrounded its base, their bows stretched, in the admirable attitudes of those painted by Raphael aiming their arrows at Hermes in the fresco of that room in the Borghese decorated by John of Bologna. They were in pursuit of a great Chimera, which emerged over the edge of the bowl in guise of a handle, while on the opposite side bounded the youthful Bellerophon, his bow at full stretch against the monster. The ornaments of the base and the edge were of rare elegance. The inside was gilded, the metal sonorous as a bell, and weighed three hundred pounds. Its shape was extremely harmonious.

Never had Andrea Sperelli experienced so intensely both the delight and the anxiety of the artist who watches the blind and irreparable action of the acid; never before had he brought so much patience to bear upon the delicate work of the dry point. The fact was, that like Lucas of Leyden, he was a born engraver, possessed of an admirable knowledge, or, more properly speaking, a rare instinct as to the most minute particularity of time and degree, which may aid in varying the efficacy of the acid on copper. It was not only practice, industry, and intelligence, but more especially this inborn, well-nigh infallible instinct which warned him of the exact instant at which the corrosion had proceeded far enough to give such and such a value to the shadows as, in the artist's intention, the engraving required. It was just this triumph of mind over matter, this power of infusing an aesthetic spirit into it, as it were, this mysterious correspondence between the throb of his pulses and the progressive gnawing of the acid that was his pride, his torment, and his joy.

In his dedication of these works to her, Elena felt herself deified by her lover as was Isotta di Rimini by the medals which Sigismondo Malatesta caused to be struck in her honour; and yet, on those days when Andrea was at work, she would become moody and taciturn, as if under the influence of some secret grief, or she would give way to such sudden bursts of tenderness, mingled with tears and half-suppressed sobs, that the young man was startled and, not understanding her, became suspicious.

One evening, they were returning on horseback from the Aventine down the Via di Santa Sabina, their eyes still filled with a vision of imperial palaces flaming under the setting sun that burned red through the cypresses and seemed to cover them with golden dust. They rode in silence, for Elena seemed out of spirits, and her depression had communicated itself to her lover. As they passed the church of Santa Sabina, Andrea reined up his horse.

'Do you remember?' he said.

Some fowls, picking about peacefully in the grass, skurried away at the barking of Famulus. The whole place was as quiet and unassuming as the purlieus of a village church, but the walls had that singular luminous glow which the buildings of Rome seem to give out at 'Titian's hour.'

Elena drew up beside him.

'That day—how long ago it seems now!' she said with a little tremor in her voice.

In truth, the memory of it had already dropped away into the gulf of time as if their love had endured for years. Elena's words raised that illusion in Andrea's mind, but, at the same time, a certain uneasiness. She began recalling the details of their visit to Santa Sabina one afternoon in January under a prematurely mild sun. She dwelt insistently upon the most trivial incidents, breaking off from time to time as if following a separate train of thought, distinct from the words she uttered. Andrea fancied he caught a note of regret in her voice. Yet, what had she to regret? Surely their love had many a sweeter day before it still—the Spring had come again to Rome. Doubting and perplexed, he ceased to listen to her. The horses went on down the hill at a walk, side by side, snorting noisily from time to time, and putting their heads together, as if exchanging confidences. Famulus sped on before, or bounded after them, perpetually on the gallop.

'Do you remember,' Elena went on, 'do you remember the Brother who came to open the gates for us when we rang the bell?'

'Yes—yes.'

'And how perfectly aghast he looked when he saw who it was? He was such a little, little red-faced man without any beard. When he went to get the keys of the church, he left us alone in the vestibule—and you kissed me—do you remember?'

'Yes.'

'And all those barrels in the vestibule! And the smell of wine while the Brother was explaining the legends carved on the cypress-wood door. And then about the Madonna of the Rosary—do you remember?—his explanation made you laugh, and I could not help laughing too, and the poor man was so put out, that he would not open his mouth again, not even to thank you at the last—'

There was a little pause. Then she began again.

'And at Sant' Alexio, where you would not let me look at the cupola through the keyhole. How we laughed then too!'

Renewed silence. Along the road towards them came a party of men carrying a coffin, and followed by a hired conveyance full of tearful relatives. They were on their way to the Jewish cemetery. It was a grim and silent funeral. The men with their hooked noses and rapacious eyes were all as like one another as brothers. The two horses separated to let the procession pass, keeping close to the wall on either side, and the lovers looked at each other across the dead, their spirits sinking lower with every moment.

When presently they rejoined one another, Andrea said—'Tell me—what is the matter? What is on your mind?'

She hesitated a moment before replying, keeping her eyes on her horse's neck and stroking it with the end of her riding whip, irresolute and very pale.

'You have something on your mind,' persisted the young man.

'Very well then—yes—and I had better tell you and get it over. I am going away next Wednesday. I do not know for how long—perhaps for a long time—perhaps for ever. I cannot say. We must break with one another. It is entirely my fault. But do not ask me why—do not ask me anything, I entreat you—I could not answer you.'

Andrea looked at her incredulously. The thing seemed to him so utterly impossible that it did not affect him painfully.

'Of course you are only joking, Elena?'

She shook her head; there was a lump in her throat, and she could not speak. She suddenly set her horse into a trot.

Behind them the bells of Santa Sabina and Santa Prisca began to ring through the twilight. They trotted on in silence, awakening the echoes under the arches and among the temples—all the solitary and desolate ruins on their way. They passed San Giorgio in Velabo on their left, which still retained a gleam of rosy light on its campanile; they passed the Roman Forum, the Forum of Nerva already full of blue shadow like that which hovers over the glaciers at night, and stopped at last at the Arco dei Pantani, where their grooms and carriages awaited them.

Hardly was Elena out of the saddle, than she held out her hand to Andrea without meeting his eyes. She seemed in a great hurry to be gone.

'Well?' said Andrea as he helped her into the carriage.

'To-morrow—not this evening—I cannot——'



CHAPTER VII

The Campagna stretched away before them under an ideal light, as a landscape seen in dreams, where the objects seem visible at a great distance by virtue of some inward irradiation which magnifies their outlines.

The closed carriage rolled along smoothly at a brisk trot; the walls of ancient patrician villas, grayish-white and dim, slid past the windows with a continuous and gentle motion. Great iron gateways came in view from time to time, through which you caught a glimpse of an avenue of lofty beech trees, or some verdant cloister inhabited by antique statues, or a long green arcade pierced here and there by a laughing ray of pale sunshine.

Wrapped in her ample furs, her veil drawn down, her hands encased in thick chamois leather gloves, Elena sat and mutely watched the passing landscape. Andrea breathed with delight the subtle perfume of heliotrope exhaled by the costly fur, while he felt Elena's arm warm against his own. They felt themselves far from the haunts of men—alone—although from time to time the black carriage of a priest would flit past them, or a drover on horseback, or a herd of cattle.

Just before they reached the bridge she said—'Let us get out here.'

Here in the open country the light was translucent and cold as the waters of a spring, and when the trees waved in the wind their undulation seemed to communicate itself to all the surrounding objects.

She clung close to his arm, stumbling a little on the uneven ground. 'I am going away this evening,' she said,—'this is the last time——'

There was a moment's silence; then in plaintive tones, and with frequent pauses in between, she began to speak of the necessity of her departure, the necessity of their rupture. The wind wrenched the words from her lips, but she continued in spite of it, till Andrea interrupted her by seizing her hand.

'Don't!' he cried—'be quiet.'

They walked on struggling against the fierce gusts of wind.

'Don't go—don't leave me! I want you—want you always.'

He had managed to unfasten her glove and laid hold of her bare wrist with a caressing insistent clasp that was full of tormenting desire.

She threw him one of those glances that intoxicate like wine. They were quite near the bridge now, all rosy under the setting sun. The river looked motionless and steely throughout its sinuous length. Reeds swayed and shivered on the banks, and some stakes, fixed in the clay of the river-bed to fasten nets, shook with the motion of the water.

He then endeavoured to move her by reminiscences. He recalled those first days—the ball at the Farnese palace, a certain hunting party out in the Campagna, their early morning meetings in the Piazza di Spagna in front of the jewellers' windows, or in the quiet and aristocratic Via Sistina when she came out of the Barberini palace followed by the flower girls offering her baskets of roses.

'Do you remember—do you remember?'

'Yes.'

'And that evening—quite at the beginning, when I brought in such a mass of flowers.—You were alone—beside the window—reading. You remember?'

'Yes—yes.'

'I came in. You scarcely turned your head and you spoke quite harshly to me—what was the matter?—I do not know. I laid the flowers upon the tables and waited. You spoke of trivial things at first, with indifference—without interest. I thought to myself bitterly—"She is tired of me already—she does not love me." But the scent of the flowers was very strong—the room was full of it. I can see you now—how you suddenly seized the whole mass in your two hands and buried your face in it, drinking in the perfume. When you lifted it again all the blood seemed to have left your face, and your eyes were swimming in a kind of ecstasy——'

'Go on—go on!' said Elena feverishly, as she leaned over the parapet fascinated by the rushing waters below.

'Afterwards, you remember on the sofa—I smothered you in flowers—your face, your bosom, your shoulders, and you raised yourself out of them every moment to offer me your lips, your throat, your half closed lids. And between your skin and my lips I felt the rose leaves soft and cool. I kissed your throat and a shiver ran through you, and you put out your hands to keep me away.—Oh, then—your head was sunk in the cushions, your breast hidden under the roses, your arms bare to the elbow—nothing in this world could be so dear and sweet as the little tremor of your white hands upon my temples—do you remember?'

'Yes—go on.'

He went on with ever-increasing fervour. Carried away by his own eloquence, he was hardly conscious of what he said. Elena, her back turned to the light, leaned nearer and nearer to him. Under them the river flowed cold and silent; long slender rushes, like strands of hair, bent with every gust and trailed on the surface of the water.

He had ceased to speak, but they were gazing into one another's eyes and their ears were filled with a low continuous murmur which seemed to carry away part of their life's being—as if something sonorous had escaped from their very brains and were spreading away in waves of sound till it filled the whole air about them.

Elena rose from her stooping posture. 'Let us go on,' she said. 'I am so thirsty—where can we get some water?' They crossed the bridge to a little inn on the other side, in front of which some carters were unharnessing their horses with much lively invective. The setting sun lit up the group of men and beasts vividly.

The people at the inn showed not the faintest sign of surprise at the entry of the two strangers. Two or three men shivering with ague, morose and jaundiced, were crouching round a square brazier. A red-haired bullock-driver was snoring in a corner, his empty pipe still between his teeth. A pair of haggard, ill-conditioned young vagabonds were playing at cards, fixing one another in the pauses with a look of tigerish eagerness. The woman of the inn, corpulent to obesity, carried in her arms a child which she rocked heavily to and fro.

While Elena drank the water out of a rude earthenware mug, the woman, with wails and plaints, drew her attention to the wretched infant.

'Look, signora mia—look at it!'

The poor little creature was wasted to a skeleton, its lips purple and broken out, the inside of its mouth coated with a white eruption. It looked as if life had abandoned the miserable little body, leaving but a little substance for fungoid growths to flourish in.

'Feel, dear lady,—its hands are icy cold. It cannot eat, it cannot drink—it does not sleep any more——'

The mother broke into loud sobs. The ague-stricken men looked on with eyes full of utter prostration, while the sound of the weeping only drew an impatient movement from the two youths.

'Come away—come away!' said Andrea, taking Elena by the arm and dragging her away, after throwing a piece of money on the table.

They returned over the bridge. The river was lighted up by the flames of the dying day, and in the distance the water looked smooth and glistening as if great spots of oil or bitumen were floating on it. The Campagna, stretching away like an ocean of ruins, was of a uniform violet tint. Nearer the town the sky flushed a deep crimson.

'Poor little thing!' murmured Elena in a tone of heartfelt compassion, and pressing closer to Andrea.

The wind had risen to a gale. A flock of crows swept across the burning heavens, very high up, croaking hoarsely.

A sudden passionate exaltation suddenly filled the souls of the two at sight of this vast solitude. Something tragic and heroic seemed to enter into their love and the hill-tops of their passion to catch the blaze of the stormy sunset. Elena stood still.

'I can go no further,' she gasped.

The carriage was still at some distance, standing motionless where they had left it.

'A little further, Elena, just a step or two! Shall I carry you?'

Then, seized with a sort of frenzy, he burst out again—Why was she going away? Why did she want to break with him? Surely their destinies were indissolubly knit together now? He could not live without her—without her eyes, her voice, the constant thought of her. He was saturated through and through with love of her—his whole blood was on fire as with some deadly poison. Why was she running away from him?—He would hold her fast—would suffocate her on his heart first——No—it could not, must not be—never!

Elena listened, with bent head to meet the blast, but she did not answer. Presently she raised her hand and beckoned to the coachman. The horses pawed and pranced as they started.

'Stop at the Porta Pia,' she called to the man, and entered the carriage with her lover. Then she turned and with a sudden gesture yielded herself to his desire, and he kissed her greedily—her lips, her brow, her hair, her eyes—rapidly, without giving himself time to breathe.

'Elena! Elena!'

A vivid gleam of crimson light reflected from the red brick houses penetrated the carriage. The ringing trot of several horses came nearer along the road.

Leaning against her lover's shoulder with ineffable tenderness she said—'Good-bye, dear love—good-bye—good-bye!'

As she raised herself again, ten or twelve red-coated horsemen passed to right and left of the carriage returning from a fox hunt. One of them, the Duke di Beffi, bent low over his saddle to peer in at the window as he rode by.

Andrea said no more. His whole soul was weighed down by hopeless depression. The first impulse of revolt over, the childish weakness of his nature almost led him to give way to tears. He wanted to cast himself at her feet, to humble himself, to beg and entreat, to move this woman to pity by his tears. He felt giddy and confused; a subtle sensation of cold seemed to grip the back of his head and penetrate to the roots of his hair.

'Good-bye,' repeated Elena for the last time, and the carriage stopped under the archway of the Porta Pia to let him get out.



CHAPTER VIII

Their final farewells au grand air, by Elena's desire, did nothing towards dissipating Andrea's suspicions. 'What could be her secret reasons for this abrupt departure?' He tried in vain to penetrate the mystery; he was oppressed with doubt and fear.

During the first days, the anguish of his loss was so cruelly poignant that he thought he must die of it. His jealousy, lulled to sleep by the persistent ardour of Elena's affection, awoke now with redoubled vigour, and the suspicion that a man was at the bottom of this enigmatical affair increased his sufferings a hundredfold. Sometimes he would be seized with sullen anger against the absent woman, a bitter rancour, almost a desire for revenge, as if she had mystified and duped him in order to give herself to another. Then again he would feel that he did not long for her, did not love her any more, had never loved her. But these fits of oblivion were but of short duration. The Spring had come again to Rome in a riot of colour and sunshine. The city of limestone and brick absorbed the light as a parched forest the rain, the papal fountains rose into a limpid sapphire sky, the Piazza di Spagna was fragrant as a rose-garden, and above the great flight of steps, alive with little children, the Trinita de' Monti shone in a blaze of gold.

Excited by the re-awakened beauty of Rome, all that still remained of Elena's fascination in his blood and his spirit revived and re-kindled. He was stirred to his very depths by sudden invincible pain, by implacable inward tumults, by indefinable languors, almost like some strange renewal of his adolescence.

Andrea's liaison with Elena Muti had been perfectly well known, as sooner or later every adventure and every flirtation becomes known in Roman society, or the society of any other city for the matter of that. Precautions are useless. To the initiated a look, a gesture, a smile suffices to betray the secret. Besides which, in every society there are certain persons who make it their business in life to ferret out and follow up the traces of a love affair with an assiduity only to be equalled by the hunter of rare game. They are ever on the watch, though not apparently so; never, by any chance, miss a murmured word, the faintest smile, a tremor, a blush, a lightning glance. At balls or any large gatherings, where there is more probability of imprudence, they are ubiquitous, with ear stretched to catch a fragment of dialogue, and eye keenly on the watch to note a stolen hand-clasp, a tremulous sigh, the nervous pressure of delicate fingers on a partner's shoulder.

One such terrible trapper, for example, was Don Filippo del Monte. But to tell the truth, Elena Muti did not trouble herself overmuch about what society said of her covering her every audacity with the mantle of her beauty, her wealth, and her ancient name; and she went on her way serenely, surrounded by adulation and homage, by reason of a certain good-natured tolerance which is one of the most pleasing qualities of Roman society, amounting almost to an article of faith.

In any case, Andrea's connection with the Duchess of Scerni had instantly raised him enormously in the estimation of the women. An atmosphere of favour surrounded him and his successes became astonishing. Moreover, he owed something to his reputation as a mysterious artist, and two sonnets which he wrote in the Princess di Ferentino's album became famous, in which, as in an ambiguous diptych, he lauded in turn a diabolical and an angelic mouth—the one that destroys souls and the other that sings 'Ave!'

He responded, without a moment's hesitation, to every advance. No longer restrained by Elena's complete dominion over him, his energies returned to their original state of disorder. He passed from one liaison to another with incredible frivolity, carrying on several at the same time, and weaving without scruple a great net of deceptions and lies, in which to catch as much prey as possible. The habit of duplicity undermined his conscience, but one instinct remained alive, implacably alive in him—the repugnance at all this which attracted without holding him captive. His will, as useless to him now as a sword of indifferently tempered steel, hung as if at the side of an inebriated or paralysed man.

One evening, at the Dolcebuonos', when he had outstayed the rest of the guests in the drawing-room, full of flowers and still vibrating with a Cachoucha of Raff's, he had spoken of love to Bianca. He did it almost without thinking, attracted instinctively by the reflected charm of her being a friend of Elena's. Maybe too, that the little germ of sympathy sown in his heart by her kindly championship at the dinner in the Doria palace was now bearing fruit. Who can say by what mysterious process some contact—whether spiritual or material—- between a man and a woman may generate and nourish in them a sentiment which, latent and unsuspected for long, may suddenly wake to life through unforeseen circumstances? It is the same phenomenon so often encountered in our mental world, when the germ of an idea or a shadowy fancy suddenly reappears before us after a long interval of unconscious development as a finished picture, a complex thought. The same law governs all the varying activities of our being; and the activities of which we are conscious form but a small part of the whole.

Donna Bianca Dolcebuono was the ideal type of Florentine beauty, such as Ghirlandajo has given us in the portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni at Santa Maria Novella. Her face was fair and oval, with a broad white brow, a sweet and expressive mouth, a nose a trifle retrousse and eyes of that deep hazel so dear to Firenzuola. She was fond of wearing her hair parted and arranged in full puffs half way over her cheeks in the quaint old style. Her name suited her admirably for into the artificial life of fashionable society she brought a great natural sweetness of temper, much indulgence for the failings of others, courtesy accorded impartially to high and low, and a most melodious voice.

On hearing Andrea's hackneyed phrases, she exclaimed in graceful surprise—

'What, have you forgotten Elena so soon?'

Then after a few days of engaging hesitation, it pleased her to yield to his solicitations, and she often spoke of Elena to the faithless young lover, but with perfect frankness and without jealousy.

'But why did she go away sooner than usual this year?' she asked him one day with a smile.

'I have no idea,' answered Andrea, not without a touch of impatience and bitterness.

'Then it is all over between you—quite over?'

'For pity's sake, Bianca, let us talk about ourselves,' he retorted sharply. The subject disturbed and irritated him.

She remained pensive for a moment, as if seeking to unravel some enigma, then she smiled and shook her head with a little fugitive shadow of melancholy in her eyes.

'Such is love!' she sighed, and returned Andrea's kisses.

In her he seemed to possess all those charming women of whom Lorenzo the Magnificent sang:

'And on every side we find, Absence, as men say, estranges, Fancy ranges as the eye ranges, Out of sight is out of mind.

Love departs and is not love: As from sight the eye departs Even so do hearts from hearts; And at other hands we prove Fancies love as the eyes rove, Parted pleasures come again.'

When the summer came, and she was on the point of leaving Rome, she said to him, without seeking to conceal her gentle emotion—

'When we meet again I know you will not love me any more. That is love. But think of me always as a friend.'

He did not love her, certainly; nevertheless during the heat and tedium of the days that followed, certain cadences of that dulcet voice returned to him like a haunting melody, suggesting visions of a garden, fresh with splashing fountains, where Bianca wandered in company with other fair women playing on the viol and singing as in a vignette of the 'Dream of Polyphilo.'

And Bianca passed and was succeeded by others—sometimes two at a time; but it was finally the little ivory Death's-head which had belonged to the Cardinal Immenraet, the funereal jewel dedicated to an unknown Ippolita, that suggested to him the caprice of tempting Donna Ippolita Albonico.



CHAPTER IX

Donna Ippolita Albonico had a great air of princely nobility in her whole person, and bore some resemblance to Maria Maddalena of Austria, wife of Cosimo II. of Medici, whose portrait by Suttermans is at Florence in the possession of the Corsinis. She affected a sumptuous style of dress—brocades, velvets, laces—and the high Medici collars which seemed the most appropriate setting to her superb and imperial head.

One day at the races, when seated beside her, Andrea was suddenly seized with the whim to get her to promise to come to the Palazzo Zuccari and receive the mysterious little clock dedicated to her namesake. Hearing his audacious words, she frowned, wavering between curiosity and prudence; but as he, nothing daunted, persevered in the attack, an irrepressible smile quivered on her lips. Under the shadow of her large hat with its white plumes, and with her lace-flounced parasol as a background, she was marvellously handsome.

'Tibi, Hippolyta! Then you will come? I shall be on the look-out for you all the afternoon, from two o'clock till evening—Is that settled?'

'You must be mad!'

'What have you to fear? I swear that I will not rob Your Majesty of so much as a glove. You shall remain seated as on a throne, as befits your regal state, and even in taking a cup of tea, you shall not lay aside the invisible sceptre you carry for ever in your imperial right hand. On these conditions is the grace accorded?'

'No.'

But she smiled nevertheless, flattered by this exaltation of the regal aspect of her beauty, wherein she gloried. And Sperelli continued to tempt her, always in a tone of banter or entreaty, but adding to the seduction of his voice a gaze so subtle, so penetrating and disturbing that, at length, Donna Ippolita, half offended and blushing faintly, said to him—

'I will not have you look at me like that.'

Few persons besides themselves remained upon the stand. Ladies and gentlemen strolled up and down across the grass, along the barrier, or surrounded the victorious horse or the yelling bookmakers, under the inconstant rays of the sun that came and went between the floating archipelago of clouds.

'Let us go down,' she said, unaware of Giannetto Rutolo leaning with watchful eyes upon the railing of the staircase.

As they passed him, Sperelli called back over his shoulder—

'Addio, Marchese—see you again soon. Our race is on directly.'

Rutolo bowed profoundly to Donna Ippolita, and a deep flush rose suddenly to his face. He seemed to have caught a touch of derision in Sperelli's greeting. Leaning on the railing, he followed the retreating couple with hungry eyes. He was obviously suffering.

'Rutolo, be on your guard!' said the Contessa di Lucoli with a malicious laugh as she passed down the stairs on the arm of Don Filippo del Monte.

The blow struck home. Donna Ippolita and the Conte d'Ugenta having penetrated as far as the umpire's stand were now retracing their steps. The lady held her sunshade over her shoulder, twirling the handle languidly in her fingers; the white cupola stood out round her head like a halo, and the lace frills rose and fluttered incessantly. Within this revolving circle, she laughed from time to time at what her companion said, and a delicate flush stained the noble pallor of her face. Sometimes they would both stand still.

Under pretext of examining the horses now entering the race-course, Giannetto turned his field-glass upon the two. His hands trembled visibly. Every smile, every movement, every glance of Ippolita's was a sword-thrust in his heart. When he dropped his glass, he was deadly pale. He had surprised a look in the eyes that met Sperelli's which he knew full well of old. Everything seemed crumbling to ruins around him. The love of years was over—irrevocably lost—slain by that glance. The sun was the sun no longer, life was not life any more.

The grand stand was rapidly refilling; the signal for the third race was about to be given. The ladies stood up on their seats. A murmur ran along the tiers like a breeze over a sloping garden. The bell rang. The horses started like a flight of arrows.

'I shall ride in your honour, Donna Ippolita,' said Andrea Sperelli as he look leave of her to get ready for the next race, which was for gentlemen riders—'Tibi, Hippolyta, Semper!'

She pressed his hand warmly for luck, never remembering that Giannetto Rutolo was also among the competitors. When, a moment later, she noticed him going down the stairs, pale and alone, the unconcealed cruelty of indifference shone in her beautiful dark eyes. The old love had fallen away from her like a useless garment, and had given place to the new. This man was nothing to her, had no claims of any kind upon her now that she no longer loved him. It is inconceivable how quickly a woman regains entire possession of her own heart once she has ceased to love a man.

'He has stolen her from me!' he thought to himself, as he made his way to the Jockey Club tent, and the grass seemed to give beneath his feet like sand. At a little distance in front of him walked the other with a firm and elastic step. In his long gray overcoat his tall and shapely figure had that peculiar and inimitable air of elegance which only breeding can give. He was smoking, and Giannetto Rutolo, coming up behind him, caught the delicate aroma of the cigarette with every puff, causing him an intolerable nausea as if it had been poison.

The Duke di Beffi and Paolo Caligaro were at the entrance, already in racing dress. The duke was making gymnastic movements to test the elasticity of his leather breeches and the strength of his knees. Little Caligaro was execrating last night's rain, which had made the ground heavy.

'You have a very good chance with Miching Mallecho, I consider,' he remarked to Sperelli when he came up.

Giannetto Rutolo heard this forecast with a bitter pang. He had founded a vague hope on the event of his own victory. He represented to himself the advantage he might gain over his enemy by a victorious race and a successful duel. As he changed his clothes his every movement betrayed his preoccupation.

'Here is a man who before getting on horseback sees the grave open before him,' said the duke, laying his hand on the young man's shoulder with a serio-comic air—'Ecce homo novus.'

Andrea Sperelli, who felt in the best of spirits at that moment, gave vent to one of those frank bursts of laughter which were the most engaging trait of his youth.

'What are you laughing at?' demanded Rutolo, lividly pale, glaring at him from under frowning brows.

'It seems to me, my dear fellow,' returned Sperelli unmoved 'that you are a little out of temper——'

'And if I am?'

'You are at liberty to think what you like about my laughing.'

'Then I think it is idiotic.'

Sperelli bounded to his feet and made a stride forward with uplifted whip. By a miracle, Paolo Caligaro managed to catch his arm. Violent words followed. Don Marc Antonio Spada appeared upon the scene and heard the altercation.

'That's enough, boys—you both know what you have to do to-morrow—you've got to ride now.'

The two adversaries finished their dressing in silence and then went out. The news of the quarrel had already spread through the enclosure and up to the grand stand, increasing the excitement of the race. With a refinement of perfidy, the Contessa di Lucoli repeated it to Donna Ippolita.

The latter gave no sign of inward perturbation. 'I am sorry to hear that,' was her only comment, 'I thought they were friends.'

The crowd surged round the bookmakers. Miching Mallecho, the horse of the Conte d'Ugenta, and Brummel, that of the Marchese Rutolo, were the favourites; then came the Duke di Beffi's Satirist and Caligaro's Carbonilla. However, the best judges had not overmuch confidence in the two first, thinking that the nervous excitement of their riders must inevitably tell upon the racing.

But Andrea Sperelli was perfectly calm, not to say gay.

His sense of superiority over his rival gave him assurance; moreover, his romantic taste for any adventure savouring of peril, inherited from his Byronic father, shed a halo of glory round the situation, and all the inborn generosity of his young blood awoke at the prospect of danger.

With a beating heart, he went forward to meet his horse as to a friend who was bringing him the news of some great good fortune. He stroked its nose fondly, and the glances of the animal's eye, an eye that flashed with the inextinguishable fire of noblest breeding, intoxicated him like a woman's magnetic gaze.

'Mallecho,' he whispered as he caressed the horse, 'this is a great day—we must win!'

His trainer, a little red-faced man, who was engaged in scrutinising the other horses as they were led past by their grooms, answered in his rough husky voice,—'There's no doubt but you will!'

Miching Mallecho was a superb bay from the stables of the Baron de Soubeyran, and combined extreme elegance of build with extraordinary strength of muscle. His fine and shining coat, under which the tracery of veins was distinctly visible on chest and flank, seemed almost to exhale a fiery vapour, so intense was the creature's vitality. A splendid jumper, he had often carried his master in the hunting-field over every obstacle of the Roman countryside, irrespective of the nature of the ground, never refusing the highest gate, the most forbidding wall, for ever at the tail of the hounds. A word from his rider had more effect on him than the spur, a caress made him quiver with delight.

Before mounting, Andrea carefully examined every strap and buckle, then with a smile he vaulted into the saddle. As he watched his master move away the trainer expressed his confidence in an eloquent gesture.

A crowd of bettors pressed round the indicator. Andrea felt that every eye was upon him. Gazing eagerly at the stand to the right, he tried to catch sight of Ippolita Albonico, but could distinguish no one among the multitude of ladies. The Marchesa d'Ateleta, who had heard of the quarrel, made him a sign of reproof from afar.

'How is the betting on Mallecho?' he asked of Ludovico Barbarisi.

As he moved towards the starting-post, he reflected calmly on the means he would employ for winning, and considered his three rivals critically, calculating the strength and science of each of them. Paolo Caligaro was a tricky devil, as thoroughly versed in all the knavery of the stable as any jockey; but Carbonilla, although fast, had little staying power. The Duke di Beffi, a rider of the 'haute ecole' style, who had come off victorious in more than one race in England, was mounted on an animal of uncertain temper which would probably refuse some of the jumps. Giannetto Rutolo, on the contrary, was riding a well-bred and well-trained horse, but though he was a very capable rider he was too impetuous; moreover, this was the first time he had taken part in a public race. Besides, he must be in a terrible state of nervous irritation, as was apparent from numerous signs.

As he looked at him, Andrea thought to himself—'I have no doubt that my victory to-day would influence the course of the duel to-morrow. In both instances, he will lose his head—it behoves me to keep calm on both fields——' Then—'I wonder what Donna Ippolita feels about it?' There seemed to be an unusual silence round about him. With his eye he measured the distance that separated him from the first hurdle; he noticed a shining stone on the course; he observed that Rutolo was watching him, and a tremor ran through him from head to foot.

The bell gave the signal, but Brummel was off too soon and the start was no good. The second time too they made a false start, and again through Brummel's fault. Sperelli and the duke exchanged a furtive smile.

The third start was successful. Brummel instantly detached himself from the group and swept along by the palings. The other three horses followed abreast for a moment or so, and cleared the first hurdle and then the second very well. Each of the three riders played a different game. The Duke di Beffi tried to keep with the group, so that Satirist might be induced to follow the example of the other horses at the obstacles; Caligaro moderated Carbonilla's pace in order to save up her strength for the last five hundred yards. Sperelli increased his speed gradually with the intention of catching up with his adversary in the neighbourhood of the most difficult obstacle. In effect, Mallecho soon distanced his two companions and began to press Brummel very closely.

Rutolo heard the rapidly approaching hoof-thuds behind him and was seized with such nervousness that his sight seemed to fail him. Everything swam before his eyes as if he were on the point of swooning. He made a frightful effort to keep his spurs at his horse's sides, overcome by terror at the thought that his senses might leave him. There was a muffled roar in his ears, and through that roar he caught the hard, clear sound of Andrea Sperelli's 'Hi!'

More susceptible to the voice than any other mode of urging, Mallecho simply devoured the intervening space; he was not more than two or three lengths behind Brummel—was on the point of joining—of passing him.

'Hi!'

A high barrier intersected the course. Rutolo actually did not see it, having lost all sense of his surroundings, and only preserved a furious instinct to remain glued to his horse and force it along, never mind how. Brummel jumped, but receiving no aid from his rider, caught his hind legs against the barrier, and came down so awkwardly on the other side that the rider lost his stirrups, without, however, coming out of the saddle, and he continued to run. Andrea Sperelli now took the lead, Giannetto Rutolo, without having recovered his stirrups, being second, with Paolo Caligaro close upon his heels; the duke, retarded by a refusal from Satirist, came last. In this order they passed the grand stand. They heard a confused clamour but it soon died away.

The spectators held their breath in suspense. From time to time, somebody would remark aloud on the various incidents of the running. At every change in the order of the horses numerous exclamations sounded through the continuous murmur, and the ladies thrilled visibly. Donna Ippolita Albonico, mounted on a seat, with her hands on the shoulders of her husband who stood below her, watched the race with marvellous self-control and without a trace of apparent emotion, unless the over-tight compression of her lips and a scarcely perceptible furrow between her brows might have revealed the effort to an observant eye. At a certain moment, however, she drew her hands away from her husband's shoulder, fearful of betraying herself by some involuntary movement.

'Sperelli is down!' announced the Contessa di Lucoli in a loud voice.

Mallecho, in jumping, had slipped on the wet grass and come down on his knees, but recovered himself in an instant. Andrea had gone over his head, but was none the worse, and with lightning rapidity was back in the saddle as Rutolo and Caligaro came up with him. Brummel performed prodigies, in spite of the wounded leg, and showed the quality of his blood. Carbonilla was at last putting out all her speed, guided with consummate skill by her rider. There were still about eight hundred yards to the winning post.

Sperelli saw victory escaping him and gathered up all his forces to grasp it again. Standing in the stirrups, bent low over his horse's neck, he uttered from time to time that short, sharp, ringing word which always acted so effectively upon the noble creature. While Brummel and Carbonilla, fatigued by the heaviness of the ground, began to lose the pace, Mallecho steadily increased the vehemence of his rush and had nearly reconquered his former position, scenting victory already with his fiery nostrils. Flying over the last obstacle, he passed Brummel—his head was level with Carbonilla's shoulder—a hundred yards from the post he skirted the barrier—on—on—leaving Caligaro's black mare ten lengths behind. The bell rang—a furious clapping of hands, like the pelting of hail-stones, and then a dull roar spread through the great crowd on the green sward under the flood of brilliant sunshine.

As he entered the enclosure, Andrea Sperelli thought to himself—'Fortune is with me to-day, but how will it be to-morrow?' And feeling the breath of triumph surge round him, a vague sense of resentment rose up in him against the possibilities of the morrow. He would have preferred to face it to-day and get it over, that he might enjoy a double victory and then taste the fruit offered to him by the hand of Ippolita Albonico. He was possessed, for the moment, by that inexplicable intoxication which results—with certain men of intellect—from the exercise of their physical powers, the experience of their courage and the revelation of their inherent brutality. The substratum of primitive ferocity which exists at the bottom of most of us rushes to the surface, on occasion, with curious vehemence, and under the skin-deep varnish of modern civilisation, our hearts swell sometimes with a nameless sanguinary fury, and visions of carnage rise up before us. Inhaling the hot and acrid exhalations of his horse, Andrea Sperelli felt that none of the delicate perfumes affected by him up till now, had ever afforded him such intense enjoyment.

He had scarcely quitted the saddle, before he found himself surrounded by friends of both sexes, eager to congratulate him. Mallecho, breathing hard, smoking and covered with foam, snorted and stretched his neck, shaking the bridle. His sides rose and fell with a deep continuous movement, as if they must burst; his muscles vibrated under skin like a bow-string after the shot; his eyes, dilated and bloodshot, had the cruel glare of those of a beast of prey; his coat, now showing great patches of darker colour, ran down with rivulets of perspiration. The incessant trembling of his whole body was pitiable to see, like the suffering of a human being.

'Poor fellow!' murmured one of the ladies.

Andrea examined his knees to see if he had taken any hurt from his fall. They were sound. Then patting him softly on the neck, he said in an indefinable tone of gentleness—'Go, Mallecho, go——'

And he followed him with his eyes till he disappeared.

Directly he had changed his clothes, he went in search of Ludovico Barbarisi and the Baron di Santa Margherita.

Both instantly accepted the office of arranging preliminaries with Rutolo. He begged them to hasten matters as much as possible.

'Fix it all by this evening. To-morrow by one o'clock I absolutely must be free. But let me sleep till nine to-morrow morning. I dine with the Ferentinos, then I shall look in at the Palazzo Giustiniani, and after that I shall go to the Club, but it will be late—You will know where to find me. Many thanks, my dear fellows, and a rividerci.'

He repaired to the grand stand, but avoided approaching Donna Ippolita at once. He smiled, feeling every feminine eye upon him. Many a fair hand was held out, many a sweet voice called him familiarly—'Andrea'—some of them even a little ostentatiously. The ladies who had bet upon his horses told him the amount of their winnings, others asked curiously if he were really going to fight.

It seemed to him that in one day he had reached the summit of adventurous glory. He had come out victor in a record race, had gained the graces of a new love, magnificent and serene as a Venetian Dogaressa, had provoked a man to mortal combat and now was passing calm and courteous—but neither more so nor less than usual—amid the openly adoring smiles of all these fair women.

'See the conquering hero comes!' cried Ippolita's husband with outstretched hand and pressing Andrea's with unusual warmth.

'Yes, indeed; quite a hero!' echoed Donna Ippolita in the superficial tone of necessary compliment, affecting ignorance of the real drama.

Sperelli bowed and passed on, feeling strangely embarrassed by Albonico's excessive friendliness. A suspicion crossed his mind that he was grateful to him for having provoked a quarrel with his wife's lover, and the cowardice of the man brought a supercilious smile to his lips.

Returning from the races on the Prince di Ferentino's mail coach, he espied Giannetto Rutolo tearing back to Rome in a little two-wheeled trap behind a great fast-trotting roan; bending forward with head down, a cigar between his teeth and utterly regardless of the injunctions of the police to keep in the line. Rome rose up before them, black against a band of saffron light, and in the violet sky above that light the statues on the Basilica of San Giovanni stood out exaggeratedly large. And Andrea then fully realised the pain he was inflicting on this man's soul.



CHAPTER X

At the Palazzo Giustiniani that evening, Andrea said to Ippolita Albonico, 'Well then, it is a fixed thing that I expect you to-morrow between two and five?'

She would like to have said: 'Then you are not going to fight to-morrow?' but she did not dare.

'I have promised,' she replied.

A minute or two afterwards, her husband came up to Andrea and taking his arm with much effusion, began asking particulars about the duel. He was a youngish man, slim, with very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and projecting teeth. He had a slight stammer.

'Well, well—so it is to come off to-morrow, is it?'

Andrea could not repress his disgust, and let his arm hang loosely at his side to show that he was in no mood for these familiarities. Seeing the Baron di Santa Margherita enter the room, he disengaged himself quickly.

'Excuse me, Count,' he said, 'I want to speak to Santa Margherita.'

The Baron met him with the assurance that all was in order. 'Very good—at what hour?'

'Half-past ten at the Villa Sciarra. Rapiers and fencing-gloves, a outrance.'

'Whom else have you got for seconds?'

'Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo de Souza. We settled everything as quickly as possible, avoiding formalities. Giannetto had got his seconds already. We arranged the proceedings at the Club without any fuss. Try not to be too late in going to bed—you must be dead tired.'

But, heedless of this good advice, on leaving the Palazzo Giustiniani, Andrea betook himself to the Club, where Santa Margherita came upon him at two o'clock in the morning, and, forcing him to leave the card-tables, bore him off on foot to the Palazzo Zuccari.

'My dear boy,' he said reproachfully as they walked along, 'you are really foolhardy. In a case like this, the smallest imprudence might lead to fatal results. To preserve his full strength and activity, a good swordsman should have as much care for his person as a tenor has for his voice. The wrist is as delicate an organ as the throat—the articulations of the legs as sensitive as the vocal chords. The mechanism suffers from the smallest disturbance; the instrument gets out of gear and will not answer to the player. After a night of play or drink, Camillo Agrippa himself could not thrust straight, and his parries were neither sure nor rapid. An error of a hair's breadth will suffice to let three inches of steel into one's body.' They were at the top of the Via Condotti, and in the distance they could see the Piazza di Spagna, lighted up by the full moon, the stairway bathed in silver, and the Trinita de' Monti rising into the soft blue.

'Certainly,' continued the Baron, 'you have great advantages over your adversary, amongst others, a cool head—also you have been out before. I saw you in Paris in your affair with Gauvaudan—you remember? A grand duel that! You fought like a god!'

Andrea laughed, much gratified. The praise of this unrivalled duellist made his heart swell with pride, and infused fresh vigour into his muscles. Instinctively, he grasped his walking stick, and repeated the famous pass which pierced the arm of the Marquis de Gauvaudan the previous winter.

'Yes,' he said, 'it was a direct return hit after a parry of "contre de tierce."'

'On the floor, Giannetto Rutolo is a skilful swordsman, but in the open he gets confused. He has only been out once before with my cousin Cassibile, and he came off badly. He does far too much of the one, two,—one, two, three business in attacking. Stop thrusts and hits with a half volte would be useful to you. It was just in that way that my cousin touched him in the second round. And those thrusts are your special forte. Keep a sharp look-out and try to keep your distance. And do not forget that you have to do with a man whom, as I hear, you have robbed of his mistress, and to whom you lifted your whip.'

They had reached the Piazza di Spagna. The Barcaccia splashed and gurgled softly, glistening under the moon that was mirrored in its waters. Four or five hackney carriages stood in a line with their lamps lighted. From the Via del Babuino came a tinkle of bells, and the dull tramp of hoofs, as of a herd in motion.

At the foot of the steps the Baron took leave of him.

'Good-bye then, till to-morrow. I shall be with you a little before nine with Ludovico. You must make a pass or so, just to unstiffen the muscles. We will see about the doctor. Off with you now and get a good sleep.'

Andrea mounted the steps. At the first broad landing, he stood still to listen to the tinkle of the approaching bells. In truth, he did feel rather tired, and even a little heartsick. Now that the excitement called up by the conversation on fencing, and the recollection of his former doughty deeds in that line had subsided, a sense of dissatisfaction had come upon him, confusedly, as yet, and mingled with doubt and regret. After being on the stretch throughout the violent feverish incidents of the day, his nerves relaxed under the balmy influences of the spring night. Why should he, without any excuse of passion, out of mere caprice, from pure vanity and arrogance, have taken pleasure in awakening the hatred, and deeply wounding the heart of a fellow man? The thought of the horrid pain that must be torturing his adversary filled him with a sort of compassion. Elena's image flashed before him, and he called to mind the anguish he had endured the year before, what time he had lost her—his jealousy, his anger, his nameless torments. Then, as now, the nights were serene and calm, and filled with perfume, and yet how they weighed upon his spirit! He inhaled the fragrant breath of the roses blooming in the little gardens about, and watched the flock of sheep passing through the Piazza below.

The mass of thick white fleece advanced with a continuous undulating motion, a compact and unbroken surface, like a muddy wave pouring over the pavement. A sharp quavering bleat would mingle with the tinkling bells to be answered by other voices, fainter and more timid; from time to time, the mounted shepherds, riding at either side or behind the flock, gave a sharp word of command, or used their long staves. The splendour of the moonlight lent to this passage of flocks through the midst of the slumbering city the mystery of things seen in a dream.

Andrea recalled one serene February night when, on coming away from a ball at the English Embassy, he and Elena had met a flock of sheep in the Via Venti Settembre which obliged their carriage to stop. Elena, her face pressed to the window, watched the sheep crowding against the carriage wheels, and pointed to the little lambs with childish delight; and he with his face close to hers, his eyes half closed, listened to the pattering hoofs, the bleating, the tinkling bells.

Why should these recollections of Elena come back to him just now?—He resumed his way slowly up the steps, his feet heavy with fatigue, his knees giving way beneath him. Suddenly the thought of death flashed across his mind. 'What if I were killed, or received such a wound as to maim me for life?' But his thirst for life and pleasure caused his whole being to revolt against such a sinister possibility. 'I must come off victorious!' he said to himself. And he began reviewing all the advantages that would fall to him from this second victory: the prestige of his success, the fame of his prowess, Ippolita's kisses, new loves, new pleasures, the gratification of new whims.

Presently, however, he bethought him of the necessary precautions for insuring his bodily vigour. He went to bed and slept soundly till he was awakened by the arrival of his seconds; took his customary shower-bath; had a strip of linoleum laid down and invited Santa Margherita and then Barbarisi to exchange a few passes with him, during which he executed with precision several stop thrusts.

'In capital form!' the Baron congratulated him.

Sperelli then took two cups of tea and some biscuits, donned a very easy pair of trousers, comfortable shoes with low heels and a very slightly starched shirt; he prepared his gloves by moistening the palm slightly and rubbing in powdered resin; arranged a leather strap for fastening the guard to his wrist; examined the blade and the point of both rapiers; omitted no precaution, no detail.

When all was to his satisfaction—'Let us be going now,' he said; 'better be on the ground before the others. What about the doctor?'

'He will be waiting for us there.'

On the way down stairs they met Grimiti, who had come on behalf of the Marchesa d'Ateleta.

'I shall follow you to the Villa and then bring the news as quickly as possible to Francesca,' said he.

They all went down together. The Duke jumped into his buggy and the others entered a closed carriage. Andrea made no show of indifference or good spirits—to make jokes before engaging in a serious duel seemed to him execrably bad taste—but he was perfectly calm. He smoked and listened composedly to Santa Margherita and Barbarisi, who were discussing—apropos of a recent case in France—whether it was legitimate or not to use the left hand against an adversary. Now and again, he leaned forward to look out of the window.

On this May morning Rome shone resplendent under the caressing sun. Here a fountain lit up with its silvery laughter a little piazzetta still plunged in shadow; there the open gates of a palace disclosed a vista of courtyard with a background of portico and statues; from the baroque architecture of a brick church hung the decorations for the month of Mary. Under the bridge, the Tiber gleamed and glistened as it hurried away between the gray-green houses towards the island of San Bartolomeo. After a short ascent, the whole city spread out before them, immense, imperial, radiant, bristling with spires and columns and obelisks, crowned with cupolas and rotundas, clean cut out of the blue like a citadel.

'Ave Roma, moriturus te salutat!' exclaimed Andrea Sperelli, throwing away the end of his cigarette. 'Though, to tell the truth, my dear fellows.' he added, 'a sword-thrust would decidedly inconvenience me this morning.'

They had reached the Villa Sciarra, already partially profaned by the builders of modern houses, and were passing through an avenue of tall and slender laurels bordered by hedges of roses. Santa Margherita, putting his head out of the window, caught sight of another carriage standing in the drive before the villa.

'They are waiting for us,' he said.

He consulted his watch—ten minutes yet to the hour agreed upon. He got out of the carriage and went across with the other seconds and the surgeons to the opponents. Andrea stayed behind in the avenue. He went over, in his own mind, certain points of attack and defence he hoped to employ successfully, but the miracles of light and shadow playing fitfully through the interlacing laurels distracted his attention. While his mind was occupied with the position of the wound he intended inflicting, his eyes were attracted by the reeds shivering in the morning breeze, and the trees, tender as the amorous allegories of Petrarch, sighed gently over a head that was wholly absorbed in plans of dealing a mortal blow.

Barbarisi came to call him.

'Everything is ready,' he said. 'The caretaker has opened the villa for us—we have the rooms on the ground floor at our disposal—most convenient. Come and undress.'

Andrea followed him. While he undressed, the two surgeons opened their surgical cases and displayed the array of glittering steel instruments within. One of them was a youngish man, pale, bald, and with feminine hands and a hard mouth, with a continual and visible contraction of the lower jaw, which was extraordinarily developed. The other was a thickset man of mature years with a freckled face, bushy red beard and the neck of an ox. The one seemed the antithesis of the other, and their disparity excited Sperelli's curiosity and attention. They set out upon a table bandages and carbolic acid for disinfecting the weapons. The smell of the acid diffused itself through the room.

As soon as Sperelli was ready, he went out accompanied by his second and the surgeons. Once again, the view of Rome seen through the laurels attracted his eyes and made his heart beat fast. He was full of impatience. He wished he could put himself on guard at that very instant, and hear the signal for the attack. He seemed to have the decisive thrust, the victory in his hand.

'Ready?' asked Santa Margherita advancing to meet him.

'Quite ready.'

The spot chosen for the encounter was a path at the side of the villa, in the shade, and covered with fine rolled gravel. Rutolo was already stationed there, at the further end, with Roberto Casteldieri and Carlo di Souza. Everybody wore a grave, not to say solemn, air. The two adversaries were placed opposite to one another and their eyes met. Santa Margherita, who had the direction of the combat, noticed that Rutolo's shirt was very stiffly starched and the collar too high. He remarked upon it to Casteldieri who exchanged a few words with his principal, and Sperelli saw the blood rush to his adversary's face while he proceeded resolutely to divest himself of his shirt. Andrea with cold composure followed his example. He then turned up his trousers and Santa Margherita handed him the glove, the strap and the rapier. He armed himself with scrupulous care, and shook his weapon slightly to see that he had it well in hand. The movement brought out the play of his biceps very visibly bearing witness to long practice of the arm and the strength it had thereby acquired.

When the two combatants measured their swords for the distance, that of Giannetto Rutolo shook convulsively. After the usual set phrases as to the honour and good faith of the combatants, Santa Margherita gave the word in a ringing powerful voice.

'Gentlemen—on guard!'

The duellists threw themselves on guard simultaneously; Rutolo, with a stamp of the foot, Sperelli, bending forward lightly. Rutolo was of medium height, very slender, all nerves, with an olive face, to which the curled moustaches and the little pointed beard a la Charles I. in Van Dyck's pictures lent a certain piquant and dashing air. Sperelli was taller, more dignified, admirable of attitude, calm and collected, perfectly balanced between grace and strength, his whole person proclaiming the grand seigneur. They looked each other full in the eye, and each experienced a curious internal thrill at the sight of the bare flesh against which he pointed his sharp blade. Through the silence came the fresh murmur of the fountain mingled with the rustle of the breeze among the climbing rose-bushes, where innumerable yellow and white roses nodded their fragrant heads.

'Play!' cried the Baron.

Andrea was prepared for an impetuous attack from Rutolo, but the latter did not move. For about a minute, they stood watching each other closely without ever crossing swords, almost motionless. Sperelli bending his knees still more, on guard with the point low, assumed the tierce guard and sought to provoke his adversary by the insolent challenge of his eyes and by stamping his foot. Rutolo made a step forward with a menace of straight thrust, accompanying it with a cry after the manner of certain Sicilian fencers. The duel began.

Sperelli avoided any decisive movement, restricting himself to parrying only, forcing his opponent to discover his intentions, to exhaust all his methods, to bring out his whole repertoire of sword-play. His parries were neat and rapid, never yielding a foot of ground, admirable in precision, as if he were taking part in a fencing match in the school with blunt foils; whereas Rutolo attacked him warmly, accompanying each thrust with a hoarse cry like that of the wood-cutters when they use their hatchets.

'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita, whose vigilant eye marked every flash of the blades.

He went up to Rutolo, 'You are touched, if I am not mistaken,' he said.

True, Rutolo had a scratch on the forearm, but so slight that there was no need even of sticking-plaster. Nevertheless, he was breathing hard, and his livid pallor bore witness to his suppressed anger.

'I know my man thoroughly now,' whispered Sperelli with a smile to Barbarisi. 'You watch the second round. I mean to pink him on the right breast.'

As he spoke, he absently rested the point of his rapier on the ground. The bald young surgeon with the strong jaw immediately came up to him with a sponge soaked in carbolic acid and proceeded to purify the weapon again.

'Good heavens!' Andrea exclaimed in a low voice to Barbarisi, 'he has all the air of a jettatore. This rapier is certain to break.'

A thrush began to sing somewhere in the trees. Here and there a rose scattered its petals on the breeze. Some low-lying fleecy clouds rose to meet the sun, broke up into airy flakes and gradually dispersed.

'On guard!'

Conscious of his inferiority, Rutolo determined to hamper his opponent's play, to attack him at close quarters and so break his continuity of action. For this he enjoyed the advantage of shorter stature and a frame which, being wiry, thin and flexible, offered but little mark to the other's weapon.

Andrea foresaw that Rutolo would adopt this plan. He stood on guard, bent like a taut bow, watching for the right moment.

'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita.

A streak of blood showed on Rutolo's breast. The rapier had penetrated, just under the right breast, almost to the rib. The surgeons hurried over, but the wounded man instantly turned to Casteldieri, and with a tremor of anger in his voice said roughly:—

'It is a mere scratch. I shall go on.'

He refused to go inside to have the wound-dressed. The bald doctor, after squeezing the small hole, which scarcely bled, and sponging it with antiseptic lotion, applied a simple piece of lint and said:—

'You may go on now.'

At Casteldieri's invitation, the Baron gave the word without delay for the third round.

'On guard!'

Sperelli perceived his danger. Directly in front of him stood his adversary, his knees firmly bent, masked, as it were, behind his rapier, his whole strength resolutely collected for one supreme effort. His eyes had a singular glitter, and the calf of his left leg quivered perceptibly under the excessive tension of the muscles. This time, in order to avoid the shock of his opponent's impetus, Andrea determined to throw himself to one side and repeat the thrust which Cassibile had employed so successfully, the white patch of lint on Rutolo's breast serving him as a mark. It was there he proposed wounding him again, but, this time, the rapier should enter the intercostal space and not be deterred by the rib. The silence all about them deepened, the spectators felt the homicidal desire that animated the two men, and were seized with apprehension, their hearts sinking at the thought that doubtless they would have to carry away a dead or dying man. The sun, veiled by fleecy cloudlets, shed a milky light over the scene, the trees rustled fitfully, the thrush sang on invisible.

'Play!'

Rutolo charged his adversary with a double derobe. Sperelli parried and returned, giving way a step. Rutolo followed up furiously with a rush of rapid thrusts, nearly all in the low line, without uttering the usual cries. Sperelli, nothing daunted by this onslaught, and wishing to avoid an actual hand-to-hand fight, parried vigorously, and returned with such directness that he might, had he so wished, have run his adversary through the body each time. Rutolo's leg was bleeding near the groin.

'Halt!' cried Santa Margherita the moment he perceived it.

But in the same instant Sperelli, parrying low quarte and not encountering his adversary's blade, received a thrust full in the breast. He fell back into Barbarisi's arms and fainted.

'Wound penetrating the thorax through the fourth intercostal space on the right side with superficial wound of the lung,' pronounced the bull-necked surgeon, after his examination in the room to which they had conveyed the wounded man.



BOOK II



CHAPTER I

Convalescence is a purification, a new birth. Never is life so sweet as after the pangs of physical suffering, and never is the human soul so inclined towards purity and faith as after having had a glimpse into the abyss of death.

After his terrible wound, after a long, slow, agonising struggle, Andrea Sperelli came back to life renewed in body and spirit—like another man, like a creature risen out of the icy waters of death, with a mind swept bare of all that has gone before. The past had receded into the dim perspective, the troubled waters had calmed, the mud sunk to the bottom; his soul was cleansed. He returned to the bosom of Mother Nature, and he felt her re-inforce him maternally with goodness and with strength.

The guest of his cousin at her villa of Schifanoja, Andrea returned to life again in sight of the sea. The convalescent drew his breath in harmony with the deep, calm breath of the ocean; his mind was tranquillised by the serenity of the horizon. Little by little, in these hours of enforced idleness and retirement, his spirit expanded, bloomed out, erected itself slowly, like the grass trodden under foot on the pathway, and he returned to truth and simple faith, became natural and free of heart, open to the knowledge and disposed to the contemplation of pure things.

August was drawing to a close. An ecstatic serenity reigned over the sea; the waters were so transparent that they repeated every image with absolute fidelity, and their ultimate line melted so imperceptibly into the sky that the two elements seemed as one, impalpable and supernatural. The wide amphitheatre of hills, clothed with olives, oranges and pines and all the noblest forms of Italian vegetation, embraced the silent sea, and seemed not a multiplicity of things, but a single vast object under the all-pervading sunshine.

Lying on the grass, or sitting on a rock or under a tree, the young man felt the river of life flow within him; as in a trance, he seemed to feel the whole universe throb and palpitate in his breast; in a species of religious rapture, he felt that he possessed the infinite. That which he experienced was ineffable, divine. The vista before him opened out by degrees into a profound and long continued vision, the branches of the trees overhead supported the firmament, filling the blue, and shining like the garlands of immortal poets. And he gazed and listened and breathed with the sea and the earth, placid as a god.

Where were now all his vanities and his cruelties, his schemes and his duplicities? What had become of all his loves and his illusions, his disappointments and his disgusts, and the implacable reaction after pleasure? He remembered none of them. His spirit had renounced them all, and with the absence of desire, he had found peace.

Desire had abandoned its throne and intellect was free to follow its proper course, and reflect the objective world purely from the outside point of view; things appeared clearly and precisely under their true form, in their true colours, in all their real significance and beauty; every personal sentiment was in abeyance.

'Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht—Man freut sich ihrer Pracht.'

One desires not the stars, but rejoices in their splendour—and for the first time in his life the young man really recognised the poetic harmony of summer skies at night.

These were the last nights of August, and there was no moon. Innumerable in the deep starry vault, the constellations throbbed and palpitated with ardent life. The two Bears, Hercules, Cassiopeia, glittered with so rapid a palpitation that they seemed almost to approach the earth, to penetrate the terrestrial atmosphere. The Milky Way flowed wide like a regal aerian river, a confluence of the waters of Paradise, over a bed of crystal between starry banks. Brilliant meteors cleft the motionless air from time to time, gliding lightly and silently as a drop of water over a sheet of glass. The slow and solemn respiration of the sea sufficed to measure the peace of the night without disturbing it, and the pauses were almost sweeter than the music.

In every aspect of the things around him he beheld some analogy to his own inner life. The landscape became to him a symbol, an emblem, a sign to guide him through the labyrinthine passes of his own soul. He discovered secret affinities between the visible life around him and the intimate life of his desires and memories. 'To me, high mountains are a feeling'—and as the mountains were to Byron, so the sea was to him a sentiment.

Oh, that limpid September sea! Calm and guileless as a sleeping child, it lay outstretched beneath the pearly sky—now green, the delicate and precious green of malachite, the little red sails upon it like flickering tongues of fire, now intensely—almost one might call it heraldically—blue, and veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, with pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate, and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the background of a Giotto picture.

Forgotten sensations of early youth came back to him, that impression of freshness which the salt breath of the sea infuses into young blood, the indescribable effects produced by the changing lights and shadows, the tints, the smell of the salt water upon the unsullied soul. The sea was not only a delight to his eyes, but also an inexhaustible wellspring of peace, a magic fount of youth wherein his body regained health, and his spirit nobility. The ocean had for him the mysterious attraction of a mother country, and he abandoned himself to it with filial confidence, as a feeble child might sink into the arms of an omnipotent mother. And he received comfort and encouragement; for who ever confided his pain, his yearnings or his dreams to her in vain?

For him the sea had ever a profound word, some sudden revelation, some unlocked for enlightenment, some unexpected significance. She revealed to him, in the secret recesses of his soul, a wound still gaping though quiescent, and she made it bleed again, but only to heal it with balm that was doubly sweet. She re-awakened the dragon that slumbered within him, till he felt once more the terrible grip of its claws, and then she slew it once for all and buried it deep in his heart never to rise again. No corner of his being but lay open to the great Consolatrix.

But at times, under the continuous dominion of this influence, under the persistent tyranny of this fascination, the convalescent was conscious of a sort of bewilderment and fear, as if both the dominion and fascination were insupportable to his weak state. The incessant colloquy between him and the sea gave him a vague sense of prostration, as if the sublime language were beyond his restricted powers, so eager to grasp the meaning of the incomprehensible.

But this period of visions, of abstractions, of pure contemplativeness was of short duration. By degrees, he began to resume his attitude of self-consciousness, to recover the sensation of his personality, to return to his original frame of mind. One day at the hour of high noon, the vast and terrible silence when all life seems suspended, a sudden glimpse into his own heart revealed shuddering abysses, inextinguishable desires, ineffaceable memories, accumulations of suffering and regret—all the wretchedness he had gone through, all the inevitable scars of his vices, all the results of his passions. He seemed to be witnessing the shipwreck of his whole life. A thousand voices cried to him for succour, imploring aid, cursing death—voices that he knew, that he had listened to in days gone by. But they cried and implored and cursed in vain, feeling that they were perishing, choked by the hungry waves; then the voices grew faint, broken, irrecognisable—and died away into silence.

He was alone. Of all his youth, of all his boasted fulness of inner life, of all his ideality, not a vestige remained; within—a black and yawning abyss, around him—impassive nature, endless source of pain to solitary souls. Every hope was dead, every voice mute, every anchor gone—what use was life?

Suddenly the image of Elena rose up before him, then that of other women whom he had known and loved. Each of them smiled a hostile smile, and each one, as she vanished, seemed to carry away something of him—what, he could not definitely say. An unspeakable distress weighed upon him, an icy breath of age swept over him, a tragic, warning voice rang through his heart—Too late! Too late!

All his recent comfort and peace seemed now a vain delusion, a dream that had flown, a pleasure enjoyed by some other spirit. Every wound he had ruthlessly dealt to his soul's dignity bled afresh; every degradation he had inflicted upon his conscience started out and spread like a leprosy. Every violation he had committed upon his ideality roused an endless, despairing, terrible remorse in him. He had lied too flagrantly, had deceived, debased himself beyond all power of redress. He loathed himself and all his evil works—Shame! Shame! Nothing could wipe out those dishonouring stains, no balm could ever heal those wounds, he must for ever endure the torment of that self-loathing.—Shame!——

His eyes filled with tears, and dropping his head upon his arms he abandoned himself to the weight of his misery, prostrate as a man who has no hope of salvation.

With the new day, he awoke to new life, one of those awakenings, so fresh and limpid, that are only vouchsafed to adolescence in its triumphant springtide. It was a marvellous morning—only to breathe the air was pure delight. The whole earth rejoiced in the living light; the hills were wrapped about with a diaphanous silvery veil and seemed to quiver with life, the sea appeared to be traversed by rivulets of milk, by rivers of crystal and of emerald, by a thousand currents forming the rippling intricacies of a watery labyrinth. A sense of nuptial joy and religious grace emanated from the concord between earth and sky.