Fantasy: A Novel by Matilde Serao - HTML preview

 

PART II.

I.

The green hue of the country disappeared under the heavy November rain. Caserta, down below, shrouded by the falling water as by a veil of mist, seemed but a large grey blot on a background of paler grey. The Tifata hills, that are tinged with so deep a violet during the long autumn twilights, had vanished behind the thick, opaque downpour. The small and aristocratic village of Centurano, entirely composed of lordly villas, separated from each other by narrow lanes and flowering hedges, held its peace.

At the corner of the high road that leads to Caserta, the fountain which Ferdinand of Bourbon had bestowed on Michelangiolo Viglia, his favourite barber, overflowed with rain-water. The long, melancholy, watery day was slowly dying, in a rainy twilight that seemed already evening. No sound was heard. The last lingerers among the villeganti kept within their houses, yawning, dozing, or gazing through closed windows at the drenched, denuded gardens, where the monthly roses hung their dishevelled heads, and the water trickled in little muddy rivulets among wasted flower-beds; while here and there the stalks of stocks and wallflowers showed like the bare bones of so many skeletons. Behind one window were visible the cadaverous old face and red velvet smoking-cap of Cavalier Scardamaglia, judge at the Court of Santa Maria; behind another, the aquiline nose and the long thin cheeks of Signora Magaloni, wife of the architect who was directing the repairs of the royal palace. The children of lawyer Farini were running after and shouting at each other on the covered terrace of their villa. Francesca, their nurse, sat in the arch of the window, knitting, without dreaming of scolding them. The water poured along the gutters and filled the pipes to bursting; the butts for the family washing overflowed; the walls were stained as with rust.

From behind her balcony windows, Caterina looked out upon the fountain that overflowed the road. She tried to see farther away, down the highway to Caserta, but in this the rain thwarted her. She looked back again at the fountain, and re-read the two first lines of its fatuous inscription:

DIEMMI DELL’ACQUA GIULIA
 UN RIVOLETTO IL RE.

But she soon wearied of this contemplation, and again applied herself to her sewing. She was seated on the broad window-sill: before her stood her work-table, covered with reels of cotton, a needle-case, a pincushion, scissors of all sizes, and bundles of tapes; near to her was a large basket of new ready-basted household linen, at which she was sewing. Just now she was hemming a fine Flanders tablecloth; four that she had finished were lying folded on the little table. She sewed deliberately, with a harmonious precision of movement. Whenever she cut her thread with her scissors, she turned to the road for a moment to see if any one was coming. Then she resumed her hem again, patiently and mechanically, passing her pink nail across it to make it even. Once a noise in the street caused her to start: she stopped to listen. It was the little covered cart in which the Avvocata Farini was returning from Nola, whither he had gone on some legal errand. The lawyer, as he alighted, made her a low bow.

Despite her disappointment, she responded with a pretty, gracious smile, and followed him with her eyes, to where his children welcomed him with shouts and outstretched arms. Once more the regular profile bent over the Flanders cloth, and the needle flew under her agile fingers. Caterina appeared to have grown bigger, although she still retained a certain girlish delicacy and a pretty minuteness of feature. The look in her grey eyes was more decided, the contour of her cheek was firmer, the chin had assumed a more energetic character. On the low brow, the bright chestnut hair was slightly waved; its thick plaits were gathered up at the nape by a light tortoiseshell comb. She wore a short indoor dress of ivory-white cashmere—a soft thick material that clung closely to her, especially at the waist—a relic of the coquetry of her school-days. Round her throat was a broad creamy lace tie, with a large bow, wherein the chin seemed to bury itself. It gave value to the delicate pink colouring of her face. There were full lace ruffles around her wrists; no jewels, except a plain gold ring on one finger. Her whole person breathed a serene simplicity, a delightful happy calm.

“Shall I bring the lights?” asked Cecchina, the maid, entering the room.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly six o’clock.”

“Wait a little longer.”

“And master not yet back!”

“He will come in good time.”

“The Lord knows how soaked he’ll be.”

“I hope not. Is his room quite ready?”

“Everything, Signora.”

“Then you needn’t wait.”

Cecchina left the room. Caterina did not return to her sewing, for it was nearly dark, and she wanted to believe that it was still early. Meanwhile, the lamplighter of Centurano was proceeding under cover of his waterproof and his umbrella to light the few petroleum lamps of the tiny village. Caterina folded and refolded her linen in the twilight. Cecchina, who was getting impatient, brought in two lamps.

“The cook says, 'What is he to do?’”

“He’s to wait.”

“Till what hour?”

“Till seven—like yesterday.”

But all at once a faint bark was audible down the lane.

“That is Fox,” said Caterina quietly. “Your master is coming.”

Immediately there was the noise of a great opening and shutting of doors; a rush of sound and movement. After that a lusty voice resounded in the courtyard.

“Here, Fox! Here, poor beast! Here, Diana! She’s as wet as a newly hatched chicken! Caterina, Caterina! Matteo, take care of the gun, it’s full of water! Caterina!”

“Here I am,” she said, leaning over the balustrade.

A big curly head and a green felt hat, then a herculean body, clothed in a velveteen jacket, leather breeches, and top-boots, appeared on the lower steps. With a great sound of clanking spur, and cracking whip, soaked from head to foot, but laughing heartily, Andrea seized his wife by the waist, and raised her like a child in his strong arms, while he kissed her eyes, lips, and throat, roughly and eagerly.

“Nini, Nini!” he cried, between each sounding kiss.

“You’re come ... you’re come!” she murmured, smiling; her hair loosened from its comb, and on her fair skin sundry red imprints left by his caresses.

“Oh! Nini, Nini!” he repeated, burying his big nose in the soft folds of her tie. Then he placed his wife on her feet again, drew a deep breath like a bellows, and stretched himself.

“How wet you are, Andrea!”

“From head to foot. Beastly weather! Yesterday capital sport, but to-day, perdio! this rascally rain! I’m soaked to the bone.”

Leaning out of the landing window, he called in to the courtyard: “Take care of the dogs, Matteo. Rub them down with warm straw.”

“And yourself, Andrea?”

“I will go and change my clothes. But I am not cold. I have walked so fast that I am quite warm. Is everything ready for me?”

“Everything.”

“And dinner? I’m dying of hunger.”

“Dinner is ready, Andrea.”

“Macaroni, eh?”

“Macaroni patties.”

“Hurrah!” he shouted, tossing his cap up to the ceiling. “Thou art a golden Nini.”

And he took her once more in his arms, like a small bundle.

“You are drenching me,” she murmured, without looking at all vexed.

“I’m a brute; right you are. Thy pretty white frock! what a lout I am!”

And he delicately shook out its folds. He took his handkerchief, and went down on his knees to dry her gown, while she said: “No, it was nothing, she would not let him tire himself.”

“Let me; do, do let me, I am a brute ... I am a brute!” he persisted. When he had finished, he turned her round and round like a child.

“Now you’re dry, Nini. What a sweet smell you have about you. Is it your lace tie or your skin? I’ll go and dress. Go and see if the macaroni patties will be done in time.”

She went away, but returned immediately to listen at his door, in case he should call her. She could hear him moving to and fro in his dressing-room, puffing and blowing and in the highest spirits. He was throwing his wet boots against the wall, tramping about like a horse, or halting to look at his clothes; singing the while to an air of his own composition:

“Where are the socks ... the socks ... the socks.... Here you are. Now I want a scarf to bind up my inexpressibles. Here’s the scarf.... Now where’s my necktie?”

Then there was silence.

“Have you found the necktie, Andrea? May I come in?” she asked shyly.

“Oh! you are there! And here is the necktie.... I’m ready. Call Cecchina to take away these wet things while we are at dinner.”

He opened the door and came out with a face red from much rubbing. He looked taller and broader in indoor dress. His curly leonine head, with its low forehead, blue eyes, and bushy auburn moustache, was firmly set on a full, massive, and very white throat. Round it he wore a white silk tie and no collar. His broad shoulders expanded under the dark blue cloth of his jacket, his mighty chest swelled under the fine linen of his shirt. The whole figure, ponderous in its strength, was redeemed from awkwardness by a certain high-bred ease and by the minute care of his person, visible in the cut of his hair and the polish of his well-tended nails.

“H’m, Caterina, are we going to dine to-day?”

“Dinner is on the table.”

The dining-room was bright with lighted candles, spotless linen, and shining silver. The centre-piece of fruit—grapes, apples, and pears—shone golden with autumn tints. Through the closed shutters the faintest patter of rain was perceptible. The light fell upon two huge oaken cupboards, whose glass doors revealed within various services of porcelain and crystal, and on the panels of which were carved birds, fish, and fruit. Two high-backed armchairs faced each other. The whole room was pervaded by a sense of peace and order. The macaroni pasty, copper-coloured within its paler crust, was smoking on the table. Andrea ate heartily and in silence; he had helped himself three times. Caterina, who had taken her share with the appetite of a healthy young woman, watched while he ate, with her chin in the air and a little smile on her face.

“Perdio! how good this pie is! Tell the cook, Caterina, to repeat it as often as he likes.”

“I will make a note of it in the household book. Will you have some more?”

“No, basta. Ring, please. Has it rained all day here?”

“Since last night.”

“At Santa Maria, too. Would you believe it? I went as far as Mazzoni, to the Torone, our farm over there.”

“Did you sleep there last night?”

“Yes; a good bed. Coarse but sweet-smelling sheets. But I was furious with the weather. Have some beef, Nini. There is no sport to be had now. Who has been here?”

“Pepe Guardini, one of the Nola tenants. He wants a reduction.”

“I’ve given him three reductions. He is a drunkard and too ready with his knife. He must pay.”

“He says he can’t.”

“He can’t, he can’t!” he roared; “then I’ll turn him out.”

She looked at him fixedly, but smiling. Andrea lowered his voice.

“I don’t know why I lose my temper,” he muttered. “I beg your pardon, Nini, but it annoys me when they come and bother you. What did you say to him?”

“That I would speak to you about it; that we should see.... Have your own way. Give me some wine. By-the-by, Giovanni has been here; the vats are opened; he says the wine promises well.”

“I will look in to-morrow. When that’s over, in a week we’ll leave for Naples. Are you impatient? No fowl! I assure you, it is excellent.”

“Tell the truth, ’tis you who want more.”

“I blush, but I say yes. So you pine for Naples?”

“And you?”

“I, too. Here there’s no sport, and dull neighbours. We are expected there. By-the-by, send for Cecchina and tell her that in the pocket of my shooting-jacket there is a letter for you. I found it at the post-office at Caserta.”

“Whose handwriting?” she queried, with a start.

“The writing of one who sends thee long letters in a scratchy hand, on transparent paper. Of one on whose seal is graven a death’s-head, with the motto, 'Nihil’. Of one whose paper is so heavily scented with musk, that my pocket reeks intolerably of it. Here’s a pear peeled for you, Nini. ’Tis thy lover who writes to thee.”

“It’s Lucia Altimare, is it not?”

“Yes” ... stretching himself with a sigh of satisfaction, as one who has dined well; “the Signorina Lucia Altimare, a skinny, ethereal creature, with pointed elbows, poseuse par excellence.”

“Andrea!”

“Do you mean to say that she is not a poseuse? Indulgent Nini! What is this under the table? Your foot, Nini! I hope I haven’t crushed it. But your friend is repugnant to me, at least she was so the only time I ever saw her.”

“I am so sorry, Andrea. I hope that when you see her again, you will alter your mind.”

“If you’re sorry, I hope I shall alter my mind. But why does she scent her letters so heavily? I recommend you this coffee, Caterina; it ought to be good.”

“Lucia is sickly and unhappy. One is so sorry for her. Do you think five teaspoonfuls of coffee will be sufficient?”

“Put six.... I see; ... to please you I will pity her. But don’t read her letter yet; for, to judge by the weight of it, it must be a very long one. Make the coffee first. If you don’t, I shall say that you care for Lucia more than for me,” murmured Andrea, with the vague tenderness induced by digestion.

“I will read it later.”

He leant back in his chair, breathing slowly and contentedly, with his necktie unfastened and his hands resting on the tablecloth, while he watched her making the coffee—to which she gave all her attention, intent on listening for the hiss of the machine. A calm lithe figure that neither fidgeted nor moved too often, absorbed by her occupation, she bent her whole mind to it.

“It’s ready,” she said, after a time.

“Let’s discuss it in the drawing-room,” he replied. “As a reward I will let you read my rival’s letter.”

A bright wood fire burned on the drawing-room hearth. With another sigh of satisfaction, Andrea sank into a broad, low, leathern armchair that was drawn up before it.

“If it were not for the shooting, I should get too fat. Now don’t begin to sew again, Caterina; sit down here and talk to me. Did you use to dance when you were at school?”

“The dancing-master came twice a week.”

“Did you like dancing?”

“Pretty well; do you?”

“Now, when we are at Naples we can dance as much as we like. We’ve got three invitations already.”

“Giovanna Casacalenda ... that’s one.”

“And my relations the Valgheras ... two.”

“And Passalancias ... three.”

“We’ll dance, Nini. If I didn’t dance I should get too fat. It will be capital exercise for me. Does your melancholy skeleton of a friend dance?”

“Lucia?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t dance much. She liked the lancers and the mazurka, I remember. The waltz tried her strength too much.”

“A woman who is always ill! who faints away in your arms at any moment! What a bore!”

“Oh, Andrea!”

“At least you are always well, Nini.”

“Always.”

“So much the better, come here and give me a kiss! Has the Pungolo arrived?”

“Here it is.”

“Caterina, I am going to bury myself in the newspaper. Read your letter. I won’t tease you any more.”

But while he lost himself in the political diatribes that filled the Pungolo, Caterina, notwithstanding the permission granted to her, did not begin to read. She kept the letter in her hand, looking at it and inhaling its scent. It was charged with the violent, luscious perfume of ambergris. Then she glanced shyly at her husband; he was falling gradually asleep, his head sinking towards his shoulder. In five minutes the paper fell from his hands. Caterina picked it up, and gently replaced it on the table. She turned down the lamp, to make a twilight in the room. Then she crept back to her chair, and knelt to read her letter by the light of the fire. For a long time, the only sound within the quiet room was the calm, regular breathing of Andrea, accompanied by the faint rustle of foreign letter-paper as Caterina turned the pages. She read carefully and attentively, as if weighing every word. From time to time an expression of trouble passed across her firelit face. When she had finished reading she looked at her husband; he slept on, like a great child, beautiful and gentle in his strength, an almost infantile sweetness and tenderness on his countenance. He lay there calm and still in the assurance of their mutual love, his tired muscles relaxed and at ease in the peace of his honest soul. She bent her head again towards the flame, and once more read the letter from beginning to end, with the same minute attention. When she had read it through for the second time, Caterina slipped it into her pocket, and leaving her hand half hidden in its depths, rested her head on the back of her low chair. Time passed, the quarter struck, then the half-hour, and another quarter, at the clock in the tower of Centurano: by degrees the fire burned out on the hearth. Andrea awoke with a start.

“Caterina, wake up.”

“I am not asleep, Andrea,” she replied placidly, with wide-open eyes.

“It’s late, Nini, very late; time for by-bye,” said the Colossus, as in loving jest he gathered her up in his arms like a child.

II.

The circular drawing-room had been transformed into a garden of camellias, on whose close, dense, dark-green background of foliage the flowers displayed their insolent waxen beauty, white or red, perfumeless, icily voluptuous, their full buds swelling as if to burst their green chalices. A luxuriant vegetation covered the walls and the very roof, lending them a silent enchantment. In the midst of the shrubbery a Musa paradisiaca reared its lofty head, spreading out its vivid green leaves like an umbrella. Round the Musa ran a rustic divan roughly wrought in wood. Here and there were low rustic stools. Massive branches of camellia nearly hid the two doors leading to this room. A faint diffuse light shone through its opaque rose-coloured shades.

Three or four times during the evening, in the intervals of the dances, this room had filled with guests. Ladies, young and old, uttered little cries of delight in the rustic effect, in the coolness and the repose of it, as compared with the hard white glare of the ball-room, its oppressive atmosphere and noisy orchestra. They assumed attitudes of graceful languor. The men looked round with an air of suppressed satisfaction, as if they too were far from insensible to the beauties of Nature. A few timidly culled buds were offered as gifts.... A young lady in pale yellow, with a shower of lilies of the valley in her dark hair, recited some verses in a low murmur. Quiet women fanned themselves gently with noiseless, winged fans of soft grey feathers; but hardly had the triumphant appeal of the first notes of a waltz or the plaintive melting strains of the mazurka reached their retreat, when one and all flung themselves into the whirl of the ball and every couple vanished. Once more the shrubbery was silent and deserted, the red camellias again opened their lips. What were they waiting for?

Giovanna Casacalenda, the daughter of the house, entered the shrubbery on the arm of a young man. Taller than her partner, she seemed to look down upon him from the height of her regal beauty. She was draped in the clinging folds of a long dress of ivory crape, that ended in a soft floating train. Wondrous to behold was the low bodice of crimson satin, fitting without a crease; her arms were bare to the shoulder. One row of pearls round the firm white throat. A wreath of damask roses, worn low on the forehead, crowned her dark hair, drawn up close from the nape of her neck. This audaciously simple costume was worn with the repose of conscious beauty, proof against any weakness on its own account. A smile just parted her curved lips while she listened to her companion, a meagre undersized youth, with a bilious complexion; there were lines about his eyes and the hair was scanty on the temples. He was correct, refined, and finnikin.

“But, Giovanna, I have your promise,” he protested, “thy promise.”

“You need not 'thou’ and 'thee’ me,” she observed.

“Forgive.... I beg your pardon, I am always betraying my feelings,” he murmured; “it’s very clear that you are casting me off, Giovanna....”

“If it is so clear, why trouble to talk about it?”

“Why do I...? That you may contradict me. What have I done to thee?”

“Nothing; treat me to you, if you please. Now go on, I am in a hurry.”

“Then it has been a dream?”

“Dream, caprice, folly; call it what you will. You must make up your mind to the fact that we cannot marry. You have an income of eight thousand lire; I shall have six thousand. What can one do with fourteen thousand lire a year?”

Smiling, she said these things, without changing her easy attitude; the arm that plied the fan was carefully rounded, and she looked at him with a little air of superiority.

“But if my uncle dies ...” whined her victim.

“Your uncle is not going to die just yet, I have observed him carefully; he’s solid.”

“You are positively malevolent, Giovanna ... remember....”

“What would you have me remember? Do try to be sensible. Let us go back.”

They went away, and those superb camellias that Giovanna so closely resembled told no tales, neither did they murmur among themselves.

“Very fine indeed!” said Andrea Lieti, admiring the general effect, while the divan creaked under his weight. “But give me Centurano.”

“Real country must always surpass in beauty its counterfeit presentment,” mumbled timid Galimberti, Professor of History. “But these Casacalendas have a fine, luxurious taste.”

“Bah! respected Professor, they want to marry their daughter, and they are sure to succeed.”

“Do you really think...?”

“I don’t blame them. So magnificent a creature is not meant to be kept at home. Was she so beautiful when she was at school?”

“Beautiful ... dangerously beautiful, even at school.... I remember ...” passing his hand across his forehead, as if he were talking to himself.

Andrea Lieti opened his big blue eyes in amazement. The Professor remained standing in an awkward attitude, stooping slightly, and ill at ease in his easy attire. His trousers were too long, and bagged at the knees. The collar of his old-fashioned dress-coat was too high. Instead of the regulation shirt, shining like a wall of marble, he wore an embroidered one, with large Roman mosaic studs, a view of the Colosseum, the Column of Trajan, the Piazza di San Pietro. There he stood, with hanging arms, with his hideous, pensive head. The brow appeared to have grown higher and yellower. His eyes had the old oblique look, at once absent and embarrassed.

“These balls must bore you fearfully, Professor,” cried Andrea, as he rose and walked to and fro, conspicuous for his fine proportions and well-bred ease.

“Well ... rather ... I feel somewhat isolated in a crowd like this,” said Galimberti, confusedly.

“And yet you don’t dislike it?”

“A.... Two or three of my pupils are so good as to invite me.... I go out for recreation.... I read too hard.”

Again that weary gesture, as if to ease his brow of its weight of thought, and the wandering glance seeming to seek something that was lost.

“You must come to us, too, Professor,” said Andrea, full of compassion for the wretched little dwarf. “Caterina often speaks of you.”

“She was a good creature ... such a good creature. So good and gentle and sensible. Yours was an excellent choice.”

“I believe you,” said Andrea, laughing heartily. “Is it true that you always reproached her with a lack of imagination?”

“Did she tell you that too? Yes—sometimes ... a certain dryness....”

“Well, Caterina isn’t troubled with sentimental vagaries. But I like her best as she is. Have you seen her to-night? She’s lovely. If she were not my wife, I should be dancing with her.”

“She is ... or was with her friend....”

“With Lucia Altimare, to be sure.”

“With the Signorina Altimare,” repeated the Professor, gulping down something with difficulty.

“There’s another of your pupils! She must have plagued you, no end, with her compositions, to judge from the tiresome fantastic letters she writes to my wife.”

“The Signorina Altimare wrote divinely,” said the Professor, dryly.

“Eh! maybe,” muttered Andrea, choosing a cigarette. “Have one? No? I assure you they are not bad. I was saying”—he resumed his seat on the couch, and blew the smoke upwards—“that she must have bored you to tears.”

“The Signorina Altimare is a suffering, interesting being. She is so very unhappy,” persisted the Professor, with his cravat all awry, in the heat of his defence.

Andrea gazed at him with curiosity; then a faint smile parted his lips.

“She goes to balls, however,” he replied, quietly enjoying the study of the Professor.

“She does. She is obliged to, and it changes the current of her thoughts. You see she never dances.”

“Bah! because nobody insists on her doing so. What do you bet that, if I go and ask her, she won’t dance the waltz with me?”

“Nothing would induce her to dance, she is subject to palpitations. It might make her faint.”

“Che! If I give her a turn, you’ll see how she’ll trot! No woman has ever fainted in my arms....” He stopped short from sheer pity. Galimberti, who had turned from yellow to red, and stood nervously clutching at his hat, looked at Andrea with so marked an expression of pain and anger, that he felt ashamed of tormenting him.

“But she is too thin, too angular; we’ll leave her alone. Or you try it, Professor; you dance with her.” With a friendly gesture he took him by the arm, to lead him away.

“I don’t dance,” mumbled Galimberti, and his big head sank on his breast. “I don’t know how to dance.”

Enter once more Giovanna Casacalenda, leaning this time with a certain abandon on the arm of a cavalry officer. Her arm nestled against his coat, her face was raised to his. He, strutting like a peacock in his new uniform, was smiling through his blonde moustache; an ornamental soldier, who had left his sword in the anteroom.

“Well, Giovanna, has the old boy made up his mind?”

“There is something brewing, but nothing settled,” she replied, wearily. “Indeed, it’s a sorry business.”

“All’s well that ends well. Courage, Giovanna; you are enchanting to-night.”

“Am I?” she murmured, looking in his face.

“More than ever ... when I think that old....”

“Don’t think about it, Roberto.... It must be,” she added seriously.

“I know that it must be; as if I hadn’t advised it! Of course your father would not give you to me: it’s no good thinking of it. Besides, he is a very presentable old fellow.”

“Oh! presentable....”

“Well, with the collar of his order under his coat, his bald head, and his white whiskers, he looks dignified enough for a husband, and....”

“It’s all so far off, Roberto,” she said, looking at him languidly but fixedly, with parted lips and sad eyes.

“Well, get it over; it rests with you....”

“You will never forget me, Roberto, my own Roberto?”

“Forget you, Giovanna, transcendent, fascinating as you are? Do you realise the extent of my sacrifice? I leave you to Gabrielli. Do you realise what I lose?”

“You do not lose all,” murmured Giovanna, with a catch in her breath. He bent down and imprinted a long kiss on her wrist. Her eyelids drooped, but she did not withdraw it; she was ready to fall into his arms, notwithstanding the nearness of the ball-room. The young officer, whose prudence was more than equal to his love, raised his head.

“It would be rash to loiter here,” he said; “the old boy might get jealous.”

“Dio mio, what a bore! Basta, for your sake.”

“Why do you not sing to-night?”

“Mamma won’t let me....” And they passed on.

The two friends were approaching the rustic seat: after carefully arranging their trains, they sat down together. Lucia Altimare sank as if from sheer fatigue. Her dress was of strange pale sea-green, almost neutral in tint; the skirt hung in plain ample folds, like a peplum. The bodice closely defined her small waist; her arms and shoulders were swathed in a pale veil, like a cloud in colour and texture. Some of her dark tresses were loosened on her shoulders, and, half buried in their waves, was a wreath of natural white flowers, fresh, but just beginning to fade. A bunch of the same flowers was dying in the folds of tulle that covered her bosom. The general effect was that of the fragile body of an Undine, surmounted by the head of a Sappho.

Next to her sat Caterina Lieti, radiantly serene and fresh, in her pretty pink ball-dress, wearing round her throat a dazzling rivière of diamonds, and in her hair a diamond aigrette that trembled as she leant over her friend, talking to her the while with animation. Lucia appeared to be lost in thought, or in the absence of it. She said, in her dragging tones, as if her very words weighed too heavily for her, “I knew I should meet you here. Besides, my father is so very youngish—it amuses him, he likes dancing. Why did you not answer my last letter?”

“I was on the eve of returning to Naples ... and so you see....”

“I hope,” said the other, with a somewhat contemptuous pout, “that you do not permit your husband to read my letters.”

Caterina, blushing, denied the impeachment.

“He is a good young man,” admitted Lucia, in an indulgent tone. “I think your husband suits you. You are pretty to-night: too many diamonds, though.”

“They were a present from Andrea,” proudly.

“I hate jewels; I shall never wear them.”

“If you were to marry, Lucia....”

“I marry? You know what I wrote you.”

“But listen; there is that Galimberti, who follows you everywhere; who admires you from a distance; who loves you without daring to tell his love. I am sorry for him.”

“Alas! ’tis no fault of mine, Caterina, sai.”

“You know; perhaps he is poor; perhaps his feelings are hurt in all these rich houses, where he follows you. You are good. Spare him. He looks so unhappy.”

“What can I do? He is, like myself, a victim of fate, of fatality.”

“Of what fatality?”

“He is ill-starred, he deserves to be wealthy and handsome, and that is just what he is not. I ought to have come into the world either as an ignorant peasant or as queen of a people to whose happiness I could have ministered. We console ourselves by a correspondence which gives vent to our souls.”

“But he will fall over head and ears in love.”

“I cannot love any one: it is not given to me to love;” and Lucia fell into a rigid, all but statuesque attitude, like a Greek heroine caught in the act of posing. Caterina neither asked her why nor wherefore. In Lucia’s presence she was under the spell that fantastic divagations sometimes exercise over calm reasonable beings.

“Caterina, I have begun to visit the poor in their homes. It is an interesting humanitarian occupation. It is the source of the sweetest emotion. Will you come with me?”

“I will ask Andrea.”

“Must you needs ask his permission for everything? Have you bartered your liberty so far as that?”

“Sai, a wife!”

“Tell me, Caterina, what is the happiness, the charm of married life?”

“I can’t explain it.”

“Tell me why is marriage the death of love.”

“I don’t know, Lucia.”

“Then marriage is to be the eternal mystery of life?”

“Who tells you these things, Lucia?”

“My own heart, Caterina,” replied the other, rising.

Then, assuming a solemn tone and raising her hand to swing it swordwise through the air—“One thing only exists for certain.”

“What?”

“Passion, it’s the only reality.”

“The favoured mortal is always a young man,” remarked the Commendatore Gabrielli, his mouth twitching with a nervous tic to which he was subject.

“But that is not my ideal,” replied the enchanting voice of Giovanna.... “I have always felt a tacit contempt for those idlers, deficient alike in character and talent, who waste their youth and their fortune on gambling and horses and other less worthy pursuits....” She pretended to blush behind her fan.

“Well, Signora Giovanna, you are perhaps right. But a reformed rake makes a good husband.”

“I do not think so, Commendatore; with all due deference, I am not of your opinion. Think of Angela Toraldo’s husband; what a pearl! I hear that if she weeps or complains he boxes her ears. A horror! These young husbands are brutes. Look at Andrea Lieti! how roughly he must treat that poor little Caterina...! While with a man of mature age....”

“Has this often occurred to you, Signora Giovanna?”

“Always.... A grave man who takes life seriously; who lives up to a political idea....”

“You would know how to grace a political salon,” he murmured, gazing at her.

She shut her fan and shrugged her beautiful shoulders, as if they were about to take leave of their crimson cuirasse. The Commendatore’s catlike eyes blazed behind his gold spectacles. Giovanna again plied her fan; it fluttered caressingly, humbly.

“Oh! I am not worthy such honour.... He would shine; and I should modestly reflect his light. We women love to be the secret inspirers of great men. Could you read our hearts....”

And she leant on his arm, against his shoulder, smiling perpetually, smiling to the verge of weariness, while the bald head of the Commendatore shone with a crimson glow.

“What madness,” whispered Lucia Altimare, sinking on the divan. “Perfect madness, for which you are responsible. I ought not to have waltzed....”

“Pray forgive me,” said Andrea, apparently embarrassed, but really bored. He was standing before her in a deferential attitude.

“It is your fault,” she said, looking up at him through her lashes. “You are strong and robust, and an odd fancy came into your head. I ought to have refused.... At first it was all right, a delicious waltz.... You bore me along like a feather, then my head began to whirl.... The room swam round, the lights danced in my brain.... I lost my breath....”

“May I get you something to drink?”

“No,” she answered curtly at his interruption of her eloquence.

“A glass of punch? Punch is a capital remedy,” he continued hurriedly; “it warms, and it’s the best possible restorative. I am going to have some. Pray drink something, unless you mean to overwhelm me with remorse. All our ills come from the stomach. Shall I call Caterina to insist on your taking it?”

“Caterina did not see us come in here?”

“I think not, she was dancing with my brother-in-law, Federigo Passalancia. Caterina is looking her loveliest to-night, isn’t she?”

But Lucia Altimare made no answer; she turned extremely pale, breathed heavily, and then slipped off the divan on to the floor, in a dead faint.

Andrea swore inwardly, with more energy than politeness, against all women who waltz, and at the folly of men who waltz with them.

III.

Every morning, Lucia Altimare, draped in the folds of a red, yellow, and blue striped dressing-gown, fastened round her waist and kilted up on one side with gold cord, her sleeves tucked up over bare wrists, an immense white pocket-handkerchief in her hand as a duster, proceeded, after dismissing her maid, to dust her little apartment, a bedroom and a small sitting-room, within whose walls her father allowed her complete liberty. The dainty office, accomplished methodically and always at the same hour, after she had dressed and prayed, was a source of infinite delight to her. It appeared to her that the act of bending her great pride and her little strength to manual labour, was both pious and meritorious. When the moment for dusting the furniture came round, she would tell her maid, with a sense of condescension:

“You may go, Giulietta, I will do it myself.”

“But, Signorina....”

“No, no, let me do it myself.”

And she felt that she was kind and humane to Giulietta, sparing her the trouble of dusting, and at the same time proving that she did not disdain to share her humble labour.

“In God’s sight we are all equal. If my strength permitted, I would make my own bed, but I am so delicate! If I stoop too much, I get palpitations,” she thought, as she tied on her black apron and tucked up the train of her Turkish dressing-gown.

But the greatest pleasure, the pleasure that thrilled her every nerve, to which she owed her most exquisite sensations, was derived from dawdling over each separate object that had become part of her existence. A charm, wherewith to recall the past, to measure the future, to pass from one dream to another, whereon to weave a fantastic web.

The cold frigid aspect of Lucia’s bedroom reminded her of her old dream of becoming a nun, of falling sick of mysticism, of dying in the ecstasy of the Cross. The room was uncarpeted, and the bare floor, with its red tiles, had an icy polish. The bed, whose wrought-iron supports Lucia rubbed so indefatigably, had no curtains. Under its plain cover, with its single, meagre little pillow, it was the typical bed of ascetic maidenhood. Next to the bed, in a frame draped in black crape, hung a Byzantine Madonna and Child, painted on a background of gilded wood. She wore an indigo dress, a red mantle, and her eyes were strangely dilated, while one hand clutched the Infant Jesus: a picture expressive of the first stammerings of the alphabet of art. Lucia always kissed it before she dusted it; the lugubrious drapery made her dream of the mother she had hardly known, and from whom the Madonna came to her. Her lips would seek the traces of maternal kisses on the narrow, diaphanous, waxen-hued hand of the Virgin.

By the side of the bed, under the Madonna, stood a wooden prie-Dieu of mediæval workmanship, which Lucia had bought of a second-hand dealer. The family arms were effaced from its wooden escutcheon. Lucia, instead of replacing them by the alte onde in tempesta, the polar star and the azure field of Casa Altimare, had had it graven with a death’s-head and the motto “Nihil,” which she had adopted for her own seal. She had to kneel down on its red velvet cushion to polish it, and then mechanically she would say another prayer. She could hardly tear herself away from it. When she did so, it was to pass the handkerchief over the tiny chest of drawers that she had taken with her to school. That brought back some of her past life to her, the books hidden in the folds of the linen, the little images from Lourdes mixed up with the ribbons, the sweets that she did not eat. On the top of this chest of drawers were a red silk pincushion, covered with finest lace—which had been given to her by Ginevra Avigliana, the most patient needlewoman of them all—and Thomas à Kempis’s “Imitation,” its margin finely annotated in ink red as blood. When she passed the handkerchief over the book, she read a few words in it.

Her mind would run in another channel when she found herself in front of the large mirror in her wardrobe, where she could see herself from head to foot. She looked at herself, perceiving that her gown wrinkled about the bodice, and reflecting that she must have become much thinner lately. She joined her fingers round her narrow waist, remarking inwardly that had she chosen she might have made it as slender as a reed.... Then she posed in profile, with her train pushed on one side, and her head a little inclined towards the right shoulder. She had once seen the fantastic portrait of a thin unknown woman in white, in this attitude.... Lucia liked to imagine that the unknown lady had suffered much, then died; and that afterwards the unknown atom had joined the Great Unknown. The same fancies followed her to the oval mirror on her dressing-table. A thin white covering hung over it from the night before, put there because it is unlucky to look into an uncovered mirror the last thing at night. She threw the large white handkerchief, now no longer white, into a corner and supplied herself with another, with which she slowly rubbed the glass. She was tired, and sat gazing at her image—her forehead, her eyes, and her lips—intently, as if seeking to discover something in them. Every now and then she took up a bottle of musk from the table and sniffed it, looking at herself to mark the intense pallor and the tears induced by the pungent odour. In the drawer there was a little box of rouge and a hare’s foot to lay it on with; but she did not use it. One morning she had slightly tinted one cheek, it had disgusted her. She preferred her pallor, the warm pallor of ivory, that “white heat of passion,” as a rapturous poet, of unrecognised merit, had described it. A butterfly was pinned to the frame of the looking-glass. His wings were expanded, for he was a cotillon butterfly of blue and silver gauze, a memento of the first ball her father had taken her to last year. Every morning a puff of her breath caused his wings to flutter, while his little body stuck fast to the mirror. That motionless, artificial butterfly reminded her of certain artificial lives, full of noble aspirations, but lacking the energy, the power to rise. Then she wondered if she were very interesting or very ugly, when she looked sad; and she postured before the mirror in her most melancholy manner, calculating the effect of the white brow, half hidden beneath the wealth of wavy hair, the depth of sadness in her eyes, the dark colouring of the underlid which accentuated their expression, the straight line of the profile, the angle drawn by the bitter smile that sharpened the curves of her lips. A sigh of satisfaction escaped her. In her sad mood, she might inspire interest, if not love. Love she did not want. What would be the good of it? The capacity for loving was denied her.

Then came the turn of the bottles on the toilet-table. They contained, for the most part, those fantastic remedies which a quasi-romantic science has voted sovereign against the most modern of maladies, mock nevrose. In one bottle, chloral for insomnia, chloral to produce a sleep full of exquisite and painful hallucinations, the very disease of fantasy. In another, digitalis, wherewith to calm palpitations of the heart. In another, a beautiful one, enamelled, with a golden stopper, “English” salts wherewith to recall the fainting spirit. And at last, in one, a white limpid fluid—morphine. “For sleep ... sleep,” murmured Lucia, while she reviewed her little pharmacy.

After the toilet-table, she passed her handkerchief over the second wardrobe, the one containing her linen, and dusted the three chairs. Then having finished, she cast a look round, to assure herself that her cell, as she called it, had assumed the cold, spotless appearance she desired to give it. Her fantasy was assuaged; she addressed herself aloud to her room: “Peace, peace, sleep on, inert and inanimate, until to-night, when my tortured spirit will return to fill thy space with anguish.”

She passed into the sitting-room, her favourite resort, the room where her life was passed. The dark rosewood cabinet, containing five wide deep drawers, was her first stage. Her fancy transformed it into a bier. She delicately dusted the oxidised silver inkstand, representing a tiny boat, sinking in a lake of ink. Then the handkerchief was passed over the portrait frames with their hermetically sealed doors, so that no one might ever steal a glimpse of the portraits hidden within. In reality, they were empty, but the white cardboard backs, the void only known to herself, suggested an unknown lover, a mystic knight, that fair-haired Knight of the Holy Grail whom Elsa had not known how to love; whom she would have known how to keep by her side. Gently she brushed the dust off a small Egyptian idol with a tiny necklace of blue fragments: it was an upright copy of a mummy of the Cheops dynasty. It served as a talisman, for these Egyptian idols avert the evil of one’s destiny. Lucia touched the Bible, bound in black morocco, on whose fly-page she had inscribed certain memorable dates in her existence, with mysterious signs to denote the events to which they referred. With reverence she took up the diamond edition of Leopardi, on whose crimson binding was inscribed “Lucia,” in letters of silver. She read in both books, every day, kissing the Bible and Leopardi with equal fervour. The ivory penholder, with its gold pen; the sandal-wood paper-knife, on which was inscribed the Spanish word Nada; the agate seal, that bore the same motto as the prie-dieu; the letter-weight, upon which stood a porcelain child in its shift; the half-mourning pen-wiper of black cloth, embroidered in white; all the fantastic playthings she had accumulated on her writing-table, were objects of equal interest to her. She always spent half an hour at the writing-table, with fingers that dallied over their pastime, shoulders bent in contemplation, and an imagination that sped on wings to unknown heights.

Then, after the writing-table, came a photograph in a red frame, suspended against the wall, a portrait of Caterina. Underneath it hung a bénitier containing fresh flowers, which were changed every morning. Caterina contemplated her friend with kind serene eyes; the portrait had her own air of composure. Every morning, in passing the linen over the glass, Lucia greeted Caterina: “Blessed art thou, that dreamest not, blessed ... that will never dream.” Next came a small group in terra-cotta of Mephistopheles and Margaret. The guilty, enamoured girl was kneeling in a convulsed attitude, with rigid limbs. Her hands clasped the prayer-book that she could not open, her bosom heaved, her throat had sunk into her crouching shoulders, her face was contorted, her lips convulsed with the cry of horror that appeared to escape them. Mephistopheles, tall, meagre, diabolic, with a subtle, jeering smile, his hand in the act of making magnetic passes over her head, stood behind her; a great, splendid, crushing Mephistopheles. Whenever she looked at Margaret she felt herself blush with desire; whenever she looked at Mephistopheles, Lucia paled with fear: with vague indefinite desire of sin; with vague fear of punishment; a mysterious struggle that took place in the very depths of her being. It was Lucia’s hand that had carved in crooked, shaky characters, on the wooden pedestal, Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. When she came to the low table on which the albums stood, she sat down, for her fatigue grew upon her. She turned their leaves; there were a few portraits—girl friends, relations, three or four young men. Among the latter, by way of eccentricity, was a faded photograph of Petröfi Sandor, the Hungarian poet who fell in love with a dead maiden. Lucia never saw that portrait but through a haze of tears, when she pondered over a love so sad, so strange, and so funereal. Then she opened her book of “Confessions.” Its pages were scribbled over by Lucia herself, by the lady who taught her German, by the Professor of History, by Caterina, Giovanna Casacalenda, and others. There were in response to the wildest questions, the most irrelevant, silly, or eccentric answers. Giovanna’s was stupid, Lucia’s mad and fantastic, Caterina’s honest and collected, the Professor’s insane, the German teacher’s sentimental, Alberto Sanna’s fluctuating and uncertain. Lucia lingered here and there to read one of them. Then she put that album aside and opened another, her favourite, the dearest, the handsomest, the best beloved; a faded rose was gummed on the first page, underneath it was a line from Byron. On the next, a little wreath of violets; in their centre, a date and a line of notes of interrogation; farther on, the shadowy profile of a woman, barely sketched in, signed “Clara.” And pell-mell, dried flowers, verses, thoughts, landscapes, sketches, an American postage-stamp, a scarabæus crushed into the paper, two words written with gold ink.

She smiled, revelling in melancholy, as she turned these pages. Then she left the albums, and stroked the head of a bronze lizard that lay beside them on the table. She had a great fondness for lizards, snakes, and toads, thinking them beautiful and unfortunate.

The grand piano, littered with music, was a long business. When she passed the duster over the shining wood, she half closed her eyelids, as if she felt the caressing contact of satin; then she passed it over the keys, drawing from them a sort of formless, discordant music, in whose endless variations she revelled. Lucia neither played well, nor much; but when she met with a philharmonic friend, she would instal her at the piano, and herself in a Viennese rocking-chair, where she would close her eyes, beat time with her head and listen. Voiceless and spell-bound, she was one of the best and most ecstatic of listeners. Most of the music lying on the table was German; she specially affected the sacred harmonies of Bach and Haydn. But Aïda was always open on the reading-desk. Then there was the embroidery-frame, a stole for the church of the Madonna, her Madonna of the Bleeding Heart. Next to it stood a microscopic work-table, on which lay the beginning of a useless, spidery fabric. The chairs, the pouffs, the little armchairs, were all in different styles and colours, for she loathed uniformity. Her first prize for literature, a gold medal set in white satin, hung on the wall; underneath it was her first childish essay in writing. A bookshelf contained a few worn school-books, some novels, and the Lives of the Saints. And last of all came a large tea-rose with red marks, like blood-stains, on its petals, gummed into a velvet frame, the Rosa mystica. When she had finished, Lucia cast aside her duster, washed her hands, swallowed a few drops of syrup diluted with water to clear her throat of dust, returned to the sitting-room, threw herself down on her sofa, and let her fancies have free play.

IV.

Caterina Lieti entered, looking tiny in her furs; with her pink face peeping from under her fur cap.

“Make haste, dear; it’s late.”

“No, dear; it’s no good going to my poor people before four; it’s hardly two o’clock.”

“We are going elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere where we shall amuse ourselves.”

“I’m not going, I don’t want to amuse myself; I am more inclined to cry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.... I feel miserable.”

“Oh! poor, poor thing. Now listen to me, you’d better come with me and try to amuse yourself. You will injure your health by always staying in this dark room, in this perfumed atmosphere.”

“My health is gone, Caterina,” said the other in a comfortless tone; “every day I get thinner.”

“Because you do not eat, dear; you ought to eat; Andrea says so too.”

“What does Andrea say,” said Lucia, in a tone of indifference, which annoyed Caterina.

“That you should eat nutritious food, drink plenty of wine and eat underdone meat.”

“I am not a cannibal. That kind of diet does very well for muscular organisms, but not for fragile nerve-tissues like mine.”

“But Andrea says that nerves are cured by beefsteaks.”

“It’s no good trying; I couldn’t digest them; I can’t digest anything now.”

“Well, do dress, and come with me. The cold is quite reviving.”

“Where to?”

“I won’t tell you. Trust me!”

“I will trust you.... I am tempted by the unknown. I will drag this weary existence about wheresoever you please. Will you wait for me?”

She returned in half an hour, dressed in a short black dress, softened by lace accessories. A black hat, with a broad velvet brim, shaded her brow and eyes.

“Shall we walk?” asked Caterina.

“We will walk; if I get tired we can call a cab.”

They walked, entering the Toledo from Montesanto. The tramontana was blowing hard, but the sun flooded the streets with light. Men, with red noses and hands in their pockets, were walking quickly. Behind their short black veils the ladies’ eyes were full of tears and their lips were chapped by the wind. Caterina drew her furs closer to her.

“Are you cold, Lucia?”

“Strange to say, I am not cold.”

People turned to gaze at the two attractive-looking women, one small and rosy, with clear eyes and an expression of perfect composure, attired like a dainty Russian; the other, tall and slight, with marvellous eyes set in a waxen pallor.

A gentleman who passed them in a hired carriage, bowed profoundly to both.

“Galimberti ...” murmured Lucia, in a weary voice.

“Where can he be going at this hour?”

“I don’t know ... to his lesson ... I suppose.”

“Do you know what Cherubina Friscia told me, a few days ago?”

“Have you seen her again?”

“Yes, I went there, because I heard that the Directress was ill. Friscia told me that they were very dissatisfied with Galimberti. He is always late for his lesson now; he either leaves before the hour is up, or misses it altogether.”

“Does he...?” indifferently.

“Besides, he is not so good a teacher as he used to be. He takes no interest in his class, is careless in correcting the compositions, and has become prolix and hazy as an exponent.... In short, a mere ruin.”

“Poor Galimberti...! I told you that he was an unlucky creature. He’ll end badly.”

“Forgive me if I ask you ... not from curiosity, but for friendship’s sake ... does he still write to you?”

“Yes, every day; he writes me all his troubles.”

“And you to him?”

“I write him a long letter, every day.”

“And is it true that he comes to your house every day, to give you a lesson in history?”

“Yes, every day.”

“And does he stay long?”

“Yes, naturally. We don’t talk only of history, but of sentiment ... of the human affections ... of religion....”

“Of love?”

“Of love too.”

“Forgive me for importuning you. Galimberti is very much in love. Perhaps it is for the sake of going to you that he gets there so late; perhaps when he misses his lessons there altogether, it is because he stays so long with you. You who are so good, think what it means for him.”

“It’s nothing to do with me; if it is his destiny, it is fatal.”

“But does your father approve of these long interviews?”

“My father! He doesn’t care a pin for me, he is a heartless man.”

“Don’t say that, Lucia.”

“A heartless man! If my health is bad, he doesn’t care. He laughs at my piety.... Do you know how he describes me, when he speaks of me at all? 'That interesting poseuse, my daughter.’ You can’t get over that; it sums up my father.” Caterina made no reply. “That Galimberti will end by becoming a nuisance. Were he not so unhappy, I would send him about his business.”

“Sai, Lucia, a girl ought not to receive young men alone ... it is not nice ... it is playing with fire.”

“Nè fiamma d’esto incendio non m’assale,” she quoted.

They had arrived at the Café de l’Europe, where the wind was blowing furiously. Caterina, turning to protect herself against it, saw the cab in which Galimberti sat with the hood drawn up to hide him, following them step by step.

“Dio mio! now he is following us ... Galimberti.... What will people think...? Lucia, what shall we do?”

“Nothing, dear. I can’t prevent it; it is magnetism, you see.”

“Now he is missing his lesson for the sake of following us.”

“It is no good struggling against fate, Caterina.”

Caterina was silent, for she knew not what to say.

It was three o’clock when they entered the Samazzaro Theatre, all lit up by gas, as if for an evening entertainment. Nearly all the boxes were occupied, and a hum of suppressed chitchat arose towards the gilded ceiling. From time to time there was a peal of irrepressible laughter. People who, in groups of threes and fours, invaded the parterre were dazed by the artificial light. The gas was gruesome after the brilliant light of the streets. The ladies were all in dark morning costumes; most of them wore large hats, some were wrapped in furs. There was the click of cups in one box where the Duchess of Castrogiovanni and the Countess Filomarina were drinking tea, to warm themselves. Little Countess Vanderhoot hid her snub nose in her muff, trying to warm it by blowing as hard as she could. Smart Neapolitans, with their fur coats thrown back to show the gardenia in their button-hole, with dark gloves and light cravats, moved about the parterre and the stalls and began to pay a few visits in the boxes.

“What is going on here?” asked Lucia, as she took her seat in Box 1, first tier.

“You’ll see, you’ll see.”

“But what is that boarding for, which enlarges the stage, and entirely covers the place for the orchestra?”

“There’s a fencing tournament to-day.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Lucia, without much show of interest.

“Andrea is to have three assaults.”

“Ah!” repeated the other, in the same tone.

The maître d’armes seated himself at the end of the stage, next to a table, laden with foils and jackets. Every one in the parterre immediately resumed his seat, in profound silence. The theatre was crowded.

The maître d’armes was a Count Alberti, tall, powerfully built, bald, with bushy grey whiskers and serious mien. He was dressed in black, and wore his overcoat buttoned to the chin. His hand was resting on a foil.

“Look! what a fine type,” said Lucia; “a fine imposing figure.”

The first couple advanced to the front of the stage. They were the fencing-master, Giovanelli, and a Baron Mattei. The latter was tall and finely proportioned. His beard was trimmed to a short point, his cropped hair formed another point in the middle of his forehead; he wore a tight-fitting costume of maroon cloth, with a black scarf. He at once captured the ladies’ favour; there was a slight stir in the boxes.

“A Huguenot cavalier, that’s what he looks like,” murmured Lucia, who was becoming excited.

The fencers, after saluting the ladies and the general company, bowed to each other. Then the match began promptly and brilliantly. The fencing-master was short and stout, but uncommonly agile; the Baron, slight, cool, and admirable for ease and precision. They did not open their lips. After each thrust, Mattei fell into a sculpturesque attitude, which thrilled the company with admiration. He was touched twice. He touched his adversary four times. Then they shook hands, and laid down their foils. A burst of applause rang throughout the house.

“Do you like it?” whispered Caterina to Lucia.

“Oh, so much!” she answered, quite absorbed by the pleasure of it.

“There is Giovanna Casacalenda.”

“Where?”

“On the second tier, No. 3.”

“Ah! of course. Behind her is the Commendatore Gabrielli. Poor Giovanna.”

“The marriage is officially announced. But she does not look unhappy.”

“She dissembles.”

The second couple—Lieti, amateur, and Galeota, professional—appeared and placed themselves in position. Andrea was dressed in black cloth, with a yellow scarf and shoes, and chamois-leather gloves. His athletic figure showed to its utmost advantage in perfect vigour and harmony of form and line. He smiled up at the box, a second. Caterina had shrunk back a little out of sight, with eyes all but overflowing.

“Your husband is handsome to-day,” said Lucia, gravely. “He looks like a gladiator.”

Caterina nodded her thanks. Galeota, dark, slight and meagre, attacked slowly.

Andrea defended himself phlegmatically; motionless they gazed into each other’s eyes; now and again a cunning thrust, cunningly parried. The audience was absorbed in profound attention.

“Su, su, on, on,” Lucia cried, under her breath, trembling in her eagerness, and crushing her cambric handkerchief with nervous fingers.

The assault went on as calmly and scientifically as a game of chess, ending in two or three master-thrusts, miraculously parried. The two fencers, as they shook hands, smiled at each other. They were worthy antagonists. The applause which followed was wrung from the audience by the perfection of their method.

“Applaud your husband! Are you not proud of him?”

“Yes,” replied Caterina, blushing.

A visitor entered the box, it was Alberto Sanna, a cousin of Lucia’s.

“Good-morning, Signora Lieti. What a triumph for your lord and master!”

Caterina bowed and smiled. Lucia held out two fingers to her cousin, who kept them in his. He was a rather stunted little creature, slightly bent in his tight overcoat; his temples were hollow, his cheekbones high, and his moustache thin and scanty; yet he had the air of a gentleman. His appearance was sickly and his smile uncertain. He spoke slowly, hissing out his syllables as if his breath were short. He informed the ladies that cold was bad for him; that he could not get warm, even in his fur coat; that he had only looked in, just by a mere accident, to avoid the cold outside. He was fortunate in having met them. He entreated them, for charity’s sweet sake, not to send him away. He added:

“I met your Professor of History, Lucia. He was walking up and down, smoking. Why don’t he come in?”

“I don’t know. Probably because he doesn’t care to see the fencing.”

“Or because he hasn’t the money to pay for a ticket,” persisted Sanna, with the triumphant malevolence of morbid natures.

Lucia struck him with the lightning of her glance, but made no answer. Caterina was too embarrassed to say anything. She looked at the stage; the fencers were two professionals; they had coarse voices, and arms that mowed the air like the poles of the semaphore telegraph. The audience paid small heed. Giovanna Casacalenda talked to her Commendatore, who was standing behind her, while she cast oblique glances at Roberto Gentile, the young officer in the brand-new uniform, who occupied a fauteuil underneath her box.

“Do you not fence, Signor Sanna?” asked Caterina by way of conversation.

“Fence!” said Lucia, vivaciously, giving her cousin tit-for-tat. “Fence, indeed, when he hasn’t breath to say more than four words at a time!”

The Signora Lieti reddened and trembled, out of sheer pity for Sanna’s pallor.

The silence in the box was more embarrassing than ever; then as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Lucia separated a gardenia from the bunch in her waistband, and gave it to Alberto. A little colour suffused his thin cheeks, he coughed weakly.

“Are you not well, Alberto...?” laying her hand upon his arm.

“Not quite, it’s the cold,” said he, with the whine of a sickly child.

“Have a glass of punch, to warm you?”

“It’s bad for my chest.”

Caterina, pretending not to hear, gave her whole attention to the spectacle. Count Alberti had passed two foils: to Galeota, junior, the young fencing-master, and to Lieti. The interest of the audience was once more awakened. The younger Galeota was a beautiful, graceful youth, with fair, curly hair, shining blue eyes, a short wavy beard, and the complexion of a fair woman; a well-proportioned figure, habited in ultramarine, with a white scarf. Opposite him, stood Andrea Lieti, like a calm Colossus.

“Dio mio!” cried Lucia, “Galeota is like a picture of Our Lord! How sweet and gentle he looks! If only Andrea does not hurt him.” But Andrea did not hurt him. It was a furious attack, in which the foils bent and squeaked; at last Galeota’s foil broke off at the hilt. Alberti stayed both hands. The fencers raised their masks to breathe.

“How like Galeota is to Corradino of Alcardi!” exclaimed Lucia. “But your husband is a glorious Charles of Anjou.”

The assault began again; hotter and fiercer than ever. From time to time the deep sonorous voice of Andrea cried, Toccato! and above the din, the clear resonant tones of Galeota rang out, Toccato! The ladies became enthusiastic; they seized their opera-glasses and leant over the parapet of their boxes, while a thrill of delight moved the whole assembly. In Lucia’s excitement she closed her teeth over her handkerchief, and dug her nails into the red velvet upholstery. Caterina had again withdrawn into her shady corner.

“Bravo! bravo!” cried the audience with one voice, when the assault was over. Lucia leant out of the box and applauded; for the matter of that, many other ladies applauded. After all, it was a tournament. Lucia’s eyes dilated, her lips trembled; a nervous shiver shook her from time to time.

“Are you amusing yourself, Lucia?” said Caterina again.

“Immensely...!” closing her eyes in the flush of her enjoyment.

“Senti, Alberto; if it is not too cold, go down and send us up something from the buffet.”

“I don’t want anything,” protested Caterina.

“Yes, yes, you do; you shall drink a glass of Marsala, with a biscuit.”

“I will have anything to please you,” assented Caterina, to avoid discussion.

“Send an ice for me, Alberto.”

“In this cold weather? I shiver to think of it.”

“I am burning; feel my hand.” And she put the poor creature’s finger in the opening of her glove. “Now, go and send me an ice at once. Take care of draughts.... That poor Alberto is not long for this life,” she added, addressing Caterina, when he was gone.

“Why not?”

“He is threatened with consumption. His mother and two sisters died of it. Don’t you see how thin he is?”

“Then don’t be cruel to him.”

“I? Why, I’m devotedly attached to him. I sympathise with suffering of every kind. All the people about me are sickly creatures.”

“Andrea would say that such an atmosphere cannot but be injurious to your health.”

“Oh! how strong your Andrea is! That is what I call strength. You saw to-day that he was the strongest of them all. But he never comes to see me.”

“Sai, he never has a moment to spare. And he is afraid of talking too loudly—of making your head ache.”

“He is not fond of musk, I fancy?” And she smiled a strange smile.

“Perfumes send the blood to his head. I will tell him to call on you.”

“Senti, Caterina, strength like his is almost overwhelming. Does it not almost frighten you? Are you never afraid of him?”

Caterina looked astonished, as she replied: “Afraid...! I do not understand you.... Why should I be afraid?”

“I don’t know,” said the other, shrugging her shoulders crossly. “I must eat this ice, for here comes Alberto again.”

During this conversation the performance continued—alternately interesting and tiresome. Connoisseurs opined that the tournament was a great success, and the Neapolitan school had been worthily represented. The Filomarina averred, with the audacity of a Titianesque beauty, that Galeota was an Antinous. The Marchesa Leale, a great friend of Baron Mattei’s, was enraptured. She was seated quietly by her husband’s side; she wore a badge—a brooch representing two crossed foils—that the Baron had presented to her. On the latter’s scarf was embroidered a red rose, the Marchesa’s emblem.

In the excitement incidental to the clashing of swords and the triumph of physical strength, Giovanna Casacalenda, with flushed cheeks and moist lips, began to neglect her Commendatore, and to cast enthusiastic and incendiary glances at Roberto Gentile. Many ladies regretted having exchanged their fans for muffs in the increasingly heated atmosphere. By degrees a vapour ascended towards the roof, and excited fancy conjured up visions of duels, gleaming foils, shining swords, secret thrusts, and applauding beauty. A warlike ardour reigned in boxes and parterre.

“Has the ice refreshed you, Lucia?” inquired her cousin.

“No, I burn more than ever; there was fire in it.”

“Perhaps you would feel better outside.”

“It will be over in a few minutes,” observed Caterina. “There is to be a set-to between my husband and Mattei.”

The set-to proved to be the most interesting part of the performance. Lieti and Mattei, the two most powerful champions, stood facing each other. The audience held its breath. During five minutes the two fencers stood facing each other; they toyed with their foils, indulging in a flourish of salutes, feintes, thrusts, parries, and plastic attitudes—a perfect symphony, whose theme was the chivalric salutation. Applause without end; then again silence, for the assault-at-arms was about to begin. Not a word or sound was uttered by either fencer. They were equally agile, ready, scientific, and full of fire—parrying with unflagging audacity, and liberating their foils as in the turn of a ring. They were well matched. Lieti touched Mattei five times; Mattei touched Lieti four times. They divided the honours. In applauding the two champions the public broke through the cordon. A handkerchief fell at Andrea’s feet. He hesitated a moment; then, without raising his eyes, stuck it in the scarf round his waist. The ladies’ gloves were torn to shreds in the storm of applause.

When he joined them in the box, Andrea found the ladies standing up, waiting for him.

“Good evening, Signorina Altimare; good evening, Caterina. Shall we go?” He spoke curtly and crossly while he helped his wife, who looked confused, to put on her furs. Then he burst out:

“Caterina, why did you behave so ridiculously? It is so unlike you to be eccentric—to make a laughing-stock of yourself?”

She kept her hands in her muff and her eyes cast down, and made no reply.

“You, a sensible little woman? Are we living in the Middle Ages? Perdio, to expose oneself to ridicule!”

Caterina turned pale and bit her lip; she would not cry, and had no voice left to answer with. Lucia leant against the door-post, listening.

“You are talking about the handkerchief, Signor Andrea?” she put in, slowly.

“Just so.... The handkerchief. A pretty conjugal amenity!”

“It was I who threw the handkerchief, Signor Andrea, in my enthusiasm. You were wonderful to-day—the first champion of the tournament.”

Andrea had not a word to say. He calmed down at once, with a vague smile. Caterina breathed freely once more.

Alberto Sanna returned and offered his arm to Caterina; Andrea assisted Lucia in putting on her cloak. She, with face uplifted towards his, her eyes, through their long lashes, fixed on his, and a slight quiver in her nostrils, leant on him imperceptibly, just sufficiently to graze his shoulder, as she drew on her coat-sleeves.

V.

“Is it you, Galimberti? Pray come in.”

“Am I not disturbing you?” and, as usual, he stumbled over the rug, and then sat down, hat in hand, one glove off and the other on, but unbuttoned.

“You never disturb me.” Her tone was the cold, monotonous one of ill-humour.

“You were thinking?” ventured the dwarf, after a short silence.

“Yes, I was thinking ... but I don’t remember about what.”

“Have you been out to-day? It is a lovely morning.”

“And I’m so cold. I am always cold when the weather is warm, and vice versâ.”

“Strange creature!”

“Eh?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“And about yourself, Galimberti. Have you been to the College to-day to give your lesson?”

“Yes, I went there, although I felt so sad, and so disinclined to teach.”

“Very sad—and why?” But the tone was indifferent.

He stroked his forehead with his ungloved hand. She sat with her back to the window, but the light shone straight on his face, which looked yellow and faded. Occasionally there appeared to be a squint in his eyes.

“Yesterday ...” he began, “yesterday, you did not deign to write to me.”

“Yesterday.... What did I do yesterday...? Oh! I remember. Alberto Sanna came to see me.”

“He ... comes ... often ... to see you ... does he not?”

“He is my cousin,” she replied, coldly.

Another halt in the conversation. He went on, mechanically fingering the gloves he had not put on. Lucia unwound a cord of the silken fringe of the low chair in which, with face upturned, she was lying.

“Shall I give you your history lesson to-day?”

“No. History is useless, like everything else.”

“Are you too sad?”

“I’m not even sad—I’m indifferent. I do not care to think.”

“So that—forgive me for mentioning it—I must not hope for a letter from you to-morrow?”

“I don’t know ... I don’t think I shall be able to write.”

“But those letters were my only consolation,” lamented the dwarf.

“A fleeting consolation.”

“I am unhappy, so unhappy.”

“We’re all unhappy”—sententiously, and without looking at him.

“I fear that they no longer like me at the College,” he went on, as if talking to himself. “I always find myself confronted by such icy faces. That Cherubina Friscia hates me. She is a canting hypocrite, who weighs every word I speak. She makes a note in her handbook when I’m only a little late. I don’t know how it is, but sometimes I forget the hour. My memory is getting so weak.”

“So much the better for you. I can never forget.”

“And besides, the Tricolors of this year are lazy and insolent. They contradict me, refuse to write on the subjects I give them, and interrupt me with the most impertinent questions. Every now and then I lose the thread of my discourse, and then they giggle so that I can never find it again.... I’m done for, Signorina Lucia, I’m done for. I no longer enjoy teaching. I think ... I think there is intrigue at work against me at the College, a frightful, terrible, mysterious conspiracy that will end in my destruction.” He rolled his fierce, scared eyes, injected with blood and bile, as if he were taking stock of the enemies against whom he had to defend himself.

“The remedy, my dear Galimberti, is a simple one,” said Lucia with childlike candour.

“Speak, oh speak, you’re my good angel.... I will obey you in everything.”

“Shake the dust from off your sandals, and leave. Give them due warning.”

Galimberti was so much surprised that he hesitated.

“Is not liberty dear to you?” she continued. “Are you not nauseated by the stifling atmosphere you live in? There is a means of reasserting your independence.”

“True,” he murmured. He did not dare to confess to her that leaving the aristocratic College would mean ruin and starvation to him. Thence he derived the chief part of his income—through them he obtained a few private lessons at the houses of his old pupils, by means of which he augmented the mite on which he lived, he in Naples, and his mother and sister in his native province. Without this, there would only remain to him an evening class for labouring people, by which he gained sixty francs a month: not enough to keep three people from dying of hunger. He was already too much ashamed of appearing to her, ugly, old, and unfortunate, without owning to being poverty-stricken besides.

“True,” he repeated despairingly.

“Why don’t you write to the Directress? If there be a conspiracy, she ought to be informed of it.”

“There is a conspiracy.... I feel it in the air about me.... I will write ... yes ... in a day or two.”

Then there was silence. Lucia stroked the folds of her Turkish wrapper. She took up her favourite album and in it wrote these lines of Boïto:

L’ebete vita
 Vita che c’innamora
 Lunga che pare un secolo
 Breve che pare un ora.

She replaced the album on the table, and the gold pencil-case in her pocket.

“Will you believe in one thing, Signora Lucia?”

“Scarcely....”

“Oh! believe in this sacred truth; the only happy part of my life is the time I pass here.”

“Oh! indeed,” she said, without looking at him.

“I swear it. Before I arrive here, I am overwhelmed with anxiety, I seem to have so many important things to tell you. When I get to the door, I forget them all. I am afraid my brain is getting weak. Then time flies; you speak to me; I hear your voice; I am here with you, in the room in which you live. I am afraid I stay too long; why don’t you send me away? When I leave you, the first puff of wind on the threshold of the street-door takes all my ideas away with it, and empties my brain, without leaving me the power to hold on to my own thoughts.”

“Here is Signor Sanna, Signorina,” announced the maid Giulietta.

“I am going,” said the perturbed Professor, rising to take his leave.

“As you please.” She shrugged her shoulders.

But he did not go, not knowing how to do so, while Alberto Sanna entered. The latter, buttoned up to his chin in his overcoat, with a red silk handkerchief to protect his throat, held a bunch of violets in his hand. Lucia, rising from her seat, placed both her hands in his, and dragged him to the window, that she might see how he looked.

“How are you, Alberto; do you feel well to-day?”

“Always the same,” he said; “an unspeakable weakness in my limbs.”

“Did you sleep, last night?”

“Pretty well.”

“Without any fever?”

“I think so; at least I hadn’t those cold shivers or that horrid suffocation.”

“Let me feel your pulse. It is weak, but regular, sai.”

“I ate a light breakfast.”

“Then you ought to feel well.”

“Che! my stomach can’t digest anything.”

“Like mine, Alberto. What lovely violets!”

“I bought them for you. I think you are fond of them?”

“I hope you didn’t buy them of a flower-girl?”

“If I had, then I should not have offered them to you.”

This dialogue took place in the window, while Galimberti sat alone and forgotten in his armchair. He sat there without raising his eyes, holding an album of photographs in his awkwardly gloved hands. He took a long time turning pages which held the portraits of persons in whom he could not have felt any interest. At last Lucia returned to her rocking-chair, and Alberto dragged a stool close up to her.

“Alberto, you know the Professor?”

“I think I have the honour....”

“We have met before ...” the two then said in unison; the Professor in an undertone, the cousin curtly.

They sat staring at each other, bored by each other’s presence, conscious of being in love with the same woman; Galimberti not less conscious of the necessity of taking his leave. Only he did not know how to get up, or what the occasion demanded that he should say and do. Lucia appeared quite unconscious of what was passing in their minds. She sniffed at her violets, and sometimes vouchsafed a word or two, especially to her cousin. However, conversation did not flow easily. The Professor, when Lucia addressed him, replied in monosyllables, starting with the air of a person who answers by courtesy, without understanding what is said to him. Sanna never addressed Galimberti, so that by degrees the trio once more collapsed into a duet.

“I looked in at your father’s rooms before coming to you. He was going out. He wanted to persuade me to go with him.”

“He is always going out.... And why didn’t you go with him?”

“It rained this morning; and I feel a shrinking in my very bones from the damp. It’s so cosy here, I preferred staying with you.”

“Have you no fireplaces at home?”

“Sai; those Neapolitan fireplaces that are not meant for fire, a cardboard sort of affair. Besides, my servant never manages to make me comfortable. I shiver in my own room, although it is so thickly carpeted.”

“Do you light fires at home, Galimberti?”

“No, Signorina; indeed, I have no fireplace.”

“How can you study in the cold?”

“I don’t feel the cold when I study.”

“You, Alberto, when you have anything to do, bring it here. I will embroider, and you can work.”

“I never have any writing to do, Lucia. You know your father manages all my business. And writing is bad for my chest.”

“You could read.”

“Reading bores me; there’s nothing but rubbish in books.”

“Then we could chat.”

“That we could! You might tell me all your beautiful thoughts, which excite the unbounded admiration of every one who listens to you. Where do you get your strange thoughts from, Lucia?”

“From the land of dreams,” she said, with a smile.

“The land of dreams! A land of your own invention, surely! You ought to write these things, Lucia. You have the making of an authoress.”

“What would be the good of it; I have no vanity, have I, Professor? I never had any.”

“Never! An excessive modesty, united to rare talent....”

“Basta, I was not begging for compliments. I was thinking of how much I suffered from my usual sleeplessness, last night....”

“I hope you took no chloral?”

“I refrained from it to please you. I bore with insomnia for your sake.”

“Thank you, my angel.”

Galimberti sat listening to them, while they exchanged lover-like glances, gazing at the red frame which held Caterina’s portrait.

“I ought to go ... I must go ...” he kept thinking. He felt as if he were nailed to his chair; as if he had no strength to rise from it. He was miserable, for he had just discovered that there was mud on one of his boots. It appeared to him that Lucia was always looking at that boot. It was his martyrdom, yet he dared not withdraw from it.

“And so the thought came to me amid so many others, that you, Alberto, need a woman about you.”

“What sort of a woman—a housekeeper? They are selfish and odious, I can’t abide them.”

“Why, no, I mean a wife.”

“Do you think so...? How strange! I should never have thought of it.”

“But the woman whom you need is not like any other. You need an exceptional woman.”

“True, how true! I want an exceptional wife,” said Alberto, willing to be persuaded.

“An exceptional woman. Don’t you agree with me, Professor?”

He started in the greatest perturbation. What could she be wanting of him, now?

Without awaiting his reply, she continued:

“You are, dear Alberto, in a somewhat precarious state of health; or rather, your age is itself a pitfall, surrounded as you are with all the temptations of youth. What with balls, theatres, supper-parties....”

“I never go anywhere,” he mumbled; “I am too afraid of making myself ill.”

“You do well to be prudent. After all, they are but empty pleasures. But at home, in your cold, lonely house, you do indeed need a sweet affectionate companion, who would never weary of tending you, who would never be bored, never grudge you the most tender care. Think of it! what a flood of light, and love, and sweet friendship, within your own walls! Think of the whole life of such a woman, consecrated to you!”

“And where is such an angel to be met with, Lucia?” he said, in an enthusiasm caught from her words, in despair that no such paragon was within reach.

“Alas! Alberto, we are all straining after an impossible ideal. You, too, are among the multitude of dreamers.”

“I wish I could but meet my ideal,” he persisted, with the obstinacy of his weak, capricious nature.

“Seek,” said Lucia, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

“Lucia, do me a favour.”

“Tell me what it is...? I beg your pardon, Galimberti, would you pass me that peacock fan?”

“Do you feel the heat, Signorina Lucia?”

“It oppresses me; I think I am feverish. Do you know that peacock feathers are unlucky?”

“I never heard it before.”

“Yes, they are iettatrici, just as branches of heather are lucky. Could you get me some?”

“To-morrow....”

“I was about to say, Lucia,” persisted Alberto, holding on to his idea, “that there is a favour you could do me. Why not write me the beautiful thing you have just said down on paper? I listen to you with delight; you talk admirably. If you would but write these things on a scrap of paper, I would put it in this fold of my pocket book, and every time I opened it I should remember that I have to find my ideal—that’s a wife.”

“You are a dear, silly fellow,” said Lucia, in her good-natured manner. “I will give you something better than this fleeting idea; all these things, and more besides, that are quite unknown to you, I will write you in a letter.”

“When, when?”

“To-day, to-night, or to-morrow morning.”

“No, this evening,”

“Well, this evening; but don’t answer me.”

“I shall answer you.”

“No, Alberto, your chest is too weak; it’s bad for you to stoop. Positively I won’t allow it.”

And so the Professor was quite excluded from the intimacy of the little duet; he was evidently in the way.

“What am I doing here, what am I doing here, what am I here for?” he kept repeating to himself. By this time he had succeeded in awkwardly concealing his muddy boot; but he was tormented by a cruel suspicion that his cravat was on one side. He dared not raise his finger to it; and his mind was torn by two conflicting griefs: the letter Lucia was going to write to her cousin, and the possible crookedness of his cravat. The others continued to gaze at each other in silence. On Alberto’s contemptuous face there appeared to be a note of interrogation. He was inquiring tacitly of his cousin: “Is this bore going to stay for ever?” And her eyes made answer: “Patience, he will go some time; he bores me too.”

The strangest part of it all was that Galimberti had a vague consciousness of what was passing in their minds, and wanted to go, but had not the strength to rise. His spine felt as if it were bound to the back of the chair, and there was an unbearable weight in his head.

“Signorina, here is Signor Andrea Lieti,” said Giulietta.

“This is a miracle.”

“If you reproach me,” said Andrea, laughing, “I won’t even sit down. Good-morning, Alberto; good-morning, Galimberti!”

The room seemed to be filled with the strong man’s presence, by his hearty laugh, and his magnificent strength. Beside him, Galimberti, crooked, undersized and yellow; Sanna, meagre, worn, pale, consumptive-looking; Lucia, fragile, thin, and languishing, made up a picture of pitiable humanity. Galimberti shrank in his chair, bowing his head. Alberto Sanna contemplated Andrea from his feet upwards, with profound admiration, making himself as small as possible, like a weak being who craves the protection of a strong one. Lucia, on the contrary, threw herself back in her rocking-chair, attitudinising like a serpent in the folds of rich Turkish stuff, just showing the point of a golden embroidered slipper. The glance that filtered through her lids seemed to emit a spark at the corner of her eyes. All three were visibly impressed by this fine physical type; so admirable in the perfection of its development. The room appeared to have narrowed, and even its furniture to have dwindled to humbler proportions, since he entered it; all the minute bric-à-brac and curios with which Lucia had surrounded herself had become invisible, as if they had been absorbed. Andrea sat down against the piano, and it seemed to disappear behind him. He shook his curly head, and a healthy current leavened the morbid atmosphere of the room; his laugh was almost too hearty for it, it disturbed the melancholy silence, which until his arrival had only been broken by undertones.

“I come here as an ambassador, Signora Lucia. Shall I present my credentials to the reigning powers?”

“Here are your credentials,” she said, pointing to the portrait of Caterina.

“Yes, there’s Nini. My government told me to go and prosper, and be received with the honours due to the representative of a reigning power.”

“Did Caterina say all that?”

“Not all. It’s in honour of your imagination, Signora Lucia, that I embellish my wife’s few words with flowers of rhetoric.”

“So you reproach me with my imagination,” said the girl, in an aggrieved tone, casting a circular glance at her friends, as if in appeal against such injustice.

“By no means; mayn’t one venture a joke? In short, Caterina said to me, 'At three you are to go....’”

“Is it already three?” broke in Galimberti, inopportunely.

“Past three, as your watch will tell you, my dear Professor.”

“Mine has stopped,” he replied mendaciously, not caring to exhibit a huge silver family relic. “I must take my departure.”

“To your lesson, Galimberti?” inquired Lucia, indifferently.

“Indeed, I find the time for it has slipped by. I had no idea that it was so late. After all it’s no great loss to my pupils. Will you have your lesson to-morrow, Signorina?”

“To-morrow! I don’t think I can; I feel too fatigued. Not to-morrow.”

“Wednesday, then?”

“I will let you know,” she replied, bored.

When, with a brick-coloured flush on his yellow cheeks, Galimberti had left them, all three were conscious of a sense of discomfort.

“Poor devil!” exclaimed Andrea, at last.

“Yes, but he is a bore,” added Alberto.

“What’s to be done? These ladies, in their exquisite good-nature, forget that he is only a teacher; and he gets bewildered and forgets it too. He must suffer a good deal when he comes to his senses.”

“Oh! he is an unhappy creature; but when I am sick or sad, the poor thing becomes an incubus: I don’t know how to shake him off.”

“Is he learned in history?” inquired Alberto, with the childish curiosity of ignorance.

“So, so; don’t let us talk about him any more. This morning he has spoilt my day for me. What were you saying when he left, Signor Lieti?”

“What was I saying? I don’t remember....”

“You were saying that your wife had sent you here at three,” suggested Alberto, as if he were repeating a lesson.

“Ecco! Ah, to be sure.... And after breakfast I went to a shooting-gallery, then I had a talk with the Member for Caserta about the local Exhibition in September, and then I came on here, with weighty communications, Signora Lucia.”

“I’m off,” said Alberto.

“What, because of me? As for what I have to say, you may hear every word of it.”

“The reason is that now that the sun has come out, I want to take a turn in the Villa before it sets,” said Alberto, pensively. “It will do me good, I want to get an appetite for dinner.”

“Go, dear Alberto, go and take your walk. I wish I could come too! The sun must be glorious outside; salute it for me.”

“Remember your promise.”

“I remember, and will keep it.”

When he was gone, they looked at each other in silence. Andrea Lieti had an awkward feeling that it would have been right and proper for him to leave with her cousin. Lucia, on the contrary, settled herself more comfortably in her rocking-chair; she had hidden her slippered foot under the Turkish gown, whose heavy folds completely enveloped her person.

“Will you give me that Bible, on the table, Signor Lieti?”

“Has the hour struck for prayer, Signorina?” he asked in a jesting tone.

“No,” replied Lucia; “for I am always praying. But when something unusual, something very unusual happens to me, then I open the Bible haphazard, and I read the first verse that meets my eye. There is always counsel, guidance, presentiment or a fatality in the words.”

She did as she said. She read a verse several times over, under her breath, as if to herself and in amazement.... Then she read aloud: “I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me.”

He listened, surprised. This singular mysticism inspired him with a sort of anger. He held his tongue, with the good breeding of a man who would not willingly hurt a young lady’s feelings, but the episode struck him as a very ridiculous one.

“Did you hear, Signor Lieti?” she added, as if in defiance.

“I heard. It was very fine.... Love is always an interesting topic, whether in the Old or the New Testament, or elsewhere....”

“Signor Lieti!”

“I beg your pardon, I am talking nonsense. I am a rough fellow, Signorina Altimare. We who are in rude health are apt to regard these matters from a different standpoint. You must make allowances.”

“You are indeed the incarnation of health,” she said, sighing. “I shall never, never forget that waltz you made me dance. I shall never do it again.”

“Ma che! winter will come round again; there will be other balls, and we will dance like fun.”

“I have no strength for dancing.”

“If you are ill, it is your own fault. Why do you always keep your windows closed? The weather is mild and the heat of your room is suffocating; I’ll open them.”

“No,” she exclaimed, placing her hand upon his arm: at its light pressure he desisted: she smiled.

“Do you never dream, Signor Lieti?”

“Never. I sleep soundly, for eight hours, with closed fists, like a child.”

“But with open eyes?”

“Never.”

“Just like Caterina, then?”

“Oh! exactly like her.”

“You are two happy people.” Her accent was bitter.

He felt the pain in it. He looked at her, and was troubled. Perhaps, he had after all been hard upon the poor girl. What had she done to him? She was sickly and full of fancies. The more reason for pitying her. She was an ill-cared-for, unloved creature who was losing her way in life.

“Why don’t you marry?” he said, suddenly.

“Why?” ... in astonishment.

“Why? ... yes. Girls ought to marry, it cures them of their vagaries.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Lucia, and she hid her face in her hands.

“Now I suppose I have said something stupid again? I will give you Caterina’s message and be gone, before you turn me out.”

“No, Signor Lieti. Who knows but what your bourgeois common sense is right.”

He understood the hidden meaning of her phrase, and felt hurt by it. That skinny creature, with her ethereal airs and graces, knew how to sting, after all! She suddenly appeared to him under a new aspect. A slight fear of the woman, whose weakness was her only strength, overcame him. He began to feel ill at ease in the perfumed atmosphere; the room was so small that he could not stretch out his arms without coming to fisticuffs with the wall, the air so perfumed that it compressed his lungs; ill at ease with that long, lithe figure draped in a piece of Eastern stuff; a woman who had a mouth like a red rose, and eyes that shone as if they sometimes saw marvellous visions, and at others looked as if they were dying in an ecstasy of unknown longing. He felt a weight in his head like the beginning of a headache. He would like to have let in air by putting his fists through the window-panes, to have knocked down the walls by a push from his shoulders, to have taken up the piano and thrown it into the street; anything to shake off the torpor that was creeping over him. If he could only grasp that lithe figure in his arms, to hurt her, to hear her bones creak, to strangle her! The blood rushed to his head and it was getting heavier every minute. She was looking at him, examining him, while she waved the peacock-feather fan to and fro. Perhaps she divined it all, for without saying a word she rose and went to open the window, standing there a few minutes to watch the passers-by. When she returned, there was a faint flush on her face.

“Well,” she said, as if she were awaiting the end of a discourse.

“Well; your perfumes have given me a headache. It’s a wonder I did not faint; a thing that never yet happened to me, and that I should not like to happen. May I go? May I give you Caterina’s message?”

“I am listening to you. But are you better now?”

“I am quite well. I am not Alberto Sanna.”

“No, you are not Alberto Sanna,” she repeated, softly. “He is ill, I pity him. How do you feel now?”

“Why, very well indeed. It was a passing ailment, walking will set me up again. Caterina....”

“Do you love your wife as much as I love her?”

“Eh! what a question!”

“Don’t take any notice of it; it escaped me. I don’t believe in married love.”

“The worse for you!”

“You are irritated, Signor Lieti?” she said, smiling.

“No! I assure you I am not. Mine was a purely physical discomfort, I am not troubled by any moral qualms. I don’t believe in their existence. My wife....”

“Are you a materialist?”

“Signora Lucia, you will make me lose my temper,” he exclaimed, half in anger, half in jest. “You won’t let me speak.”

“I am listening to you.”

“Caterina wishes you to dine with us next Sunday. Her little cousin Giuditta is coming from school for the day. You two could drive her back in the evening.”

“I don’t know ...” she said, hesitatingly; “I don’t know whether I can....”

“I entreat you to, in Caterina’s name. She sent me here on purpose. Come, we have a capital cook. You won’t get a bad dinner.”

She shrugged her shoulders, and sat pondering as if she were gazing into futurity.

“You look like a sibyl, Signora Lucia. Via, make up your mind. A dinner is no very serious matter. I will order a crême méringue to please you, because it is light and snowy.”

“I will write to Caterina.”

“No, don’t write. Why write so much? She desired me to take no denial.”

“Well, I will come.”

And she placed her hand in his. He bent down chivalrously and imprinted a light kiss on it. She left her hand there and raised her eyes to his. By a singular optical illusion, she appeared to have grown taller than himself.

When he returned home, after a two hours’ walk about Naples, Andrea Lieti told his wife that Lucia Altimare was a false, rhetorical, antipathetic creature; that her house was suffocating enough to give one apoplexy; that she had a court of consumptives and rachitics—Galimberti, Sanna, and the Lord knows whom besides; that he would never put his foot into it again. He had done it to please her, but it had been a great sacrifice; he detested that poseuse, who received men’s visits as if she were a widow; he couldn’t imagine what men and women found to fall in love with, in that packet of bones in the shape of a cross. Of all this and more besides, he unburdened himself. He only stopped when he saw the pain on his wife’s face, who answered not a word and with difficulty restrained her tears. This strong antipathy between two persons she loved was her martyrdom.

“At least,” she stammered, “at least, she said she would dine with us on Sunday?”

“Just fancy, for your sake I had to entreat her as if I were praying to a saint. She wouldn’t, the stupid thing. At last, she accepted. But I give you due warning that on Sunday I shall not dine at home. I shall dine out and not return till midnight. Keep her to yourself, your poseuse.”

This time Caterina did burst into tears.

VI.

During the whole of the dinner in the Lietis’ apartment in Via Constantinopoli, a certain all-pervading embarrassment was perceptible, despite the care with which it was disguised. Caterina had not dared, for several days, to breathe Lucia’s name. But on Saturday, when she saw that Andrea had quite regained his good temper, she begged him not to go out on the morrow. He at first shrugged his shoulders, as if he did not care one way or the other, and then said, simply:

“I will stay at home: it would be too rude to go out.”

Yet Andrea’s manner was cold when he came in from his walk that day, and Lucia was very nervous, but beautiful, thought Caterina, in her clinging, cashmere gown, with a large bunch of violets under her chin. The talk was frigid. Caterina, who had been driving Giuditta all over the town, was troubled. She feared that Lucia would notice Andrea’s coldness, and was sorry she had invited her. She talked more than usual, addressing herself to Lucia, to Andrea, and to Giuditta, to keep the ball going, making strenuous efforts to put her beloved ones in good humour. For a moment she hoped that dinner would create a diversion, and breathed a sigh of relief when the servant announced, “The Signora is served.”

But even the bright warmth of the room was of no avail. Andrea, at whose side Lucia was seated, attended absently to her wants. He ate and drank a good deal, devouring his food in a silence unusual to him. Lucia hardly ate at all, but drank whole glasses of water just coloured with wine, a liquid of pale amethyst colour. When Andrea addressed her, she listened to him with intent eyes, which never lowered their gaze; his fell before it, and again he applied himself to his dinner. Caterina, who saw that their aversion was increasing, was terrified. She tried to draw Giuditta into the general conversation, but the child was possessed by the taciturn hunger of a school-girl, to whom good food is a delightful anomaly. Towards the end of dinner, there were slight signs of a thaw. Andrea began to chatter as fast as he could and with surprising volubility; talking to the two ladies, to the child, even to himself. Lucia deigned to smile assent two or three times. There was a passage of civilities when the crême méringue made its appearance. Lucia compared it to a flake of immaculate snow; Andrea pronounced the comparison to be as just as it was poetic. Caterina turned from pale to pink in the dawn of so good an understanding. She felt, however, that this was a bad evening for Lucia, one of those evenings that used to end so disastrously at school, in convulsions or a deluge of tears. She saw that her dark eyes were dilated, that her whole face quivered from time to time, and that the violets she wore rose and fell with the beating of her heart. Once or twice she asked her, as in their school-days, “What ails thee?”

“Nothing,” replied the other as curtly as she used to reply at school.

“Don’t you see that there is nothing the matter with her?” questioned Andrea. “Indeed, she looks better than usual. Signora Lucia, you are another person to-night, you have a colour.”

“I wish it were so.”

“Are you courageous?”

“Why do you ask?”

“To know.”

“Well, then, yes.”

“Then swallow a glass of cognac, at once.”

“No, Andrea, I won’t let her drink it. It would do her harm.”

“What fun! don’t you feel tempted, Signora Lucia?”

“I do ... rather....” after a little hesitation.

“Brava, brava! You too, Caterina, it doesn’t hurt you. And even Giuditta....”

“No; it would intoxicate the child.”

“Ma che! Just a drop in the bottom of the glass.”

Lucia drank off hers without the slightest sign of perturbation, then she turned pale. Giuditta, after swallowing hers, blushed crimson, coughing and sneezing until her eyes filled with tears. Every one laughed, while Caterina beat her gently on the back.

“I think you are drinking too much to-night, Andrea,” she whispered in his ear.

“Right you are; I won’t drink any more.”

When they rose from table, Andrea offered his arm to Lucia, a courtesy he had omitted when they entered the room. Caterina said nothing. When she had installed them in the yellow drawing-room, one on the sofa and the other in a comfortable chair, she left them and went into an adjoining room to prepare the child for her return.

“Have you left off using musk, Signora Lucia?”

“Yes, Signor Lieti.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Allow me to congratulate you.”

“Thank you.”

“Those flowers become you better. Who gave them to you?”

“You are curious, Signor Lieti.”

He smiled at her with approving eyes. To him she appeared like one transformed, thanks, perhaps, to the soft folds of her white gown. In his good-natured after-dinner mood, the beatitude of repletion infused a certain tenderness into his voice.

“My name is Andrea,” he murmured.

“I know that,” was the curt reply.

“Call me Andrea. You call Caterina by her name. Caterina and I are one.”

“Not to me.”

“I see. But as Caterina is so very much your friend, you might admit me into the bond. Do you forbid me to become your friend?”

“Perhaps there is no such thing as friendship.”

“Yes, there is such a thing. Don’t be so pessimistic. Senta, cara Signorina, let me whisper a word in your ear....”

She bent forward until her cheek almost touched his lips. Then he said:

“There are in this house two people who care for you. Pray believe....”

Lucia fell back against her cushion and half closed her eyes.

“Surely,” thought Andrea, “it’s another woman, with that round white throat set in its frame of lace.”

“Andrea, Andrea,” cried Caterina, from the bedroom.

He started, and shrugged his shoulders, as if to shake off a weight, glanced at Lucia, who seemed to be dreaming with closed eyes, and went away. There was a short whispered discussion between husband and wife in the adjoining room. It was suddenly interrupted by Andrea, who was stifling his laughter, pouncing upon his wife and kissing her behind her ear. Caterina defended herself by pointing to Giuditta, who was putting on her hat before the glass.

“It all depends on her,” he said, in an undertone, as he re-entered the drawing-room.

“Signora Lucia, are you asleep?”

“No, I never sleep.”

“Caterina wants you a moment, in there.”

“What does she want?”

“I know, but have been ordered not to tell.”

“I will go to her.”

She went, followed by the serpentine folds of her white train. Andrea sat down, unconsciously rested his head where she had rested hers, and inhaled the lingering perfume of her hair. He rose and walked about the room to rid himself of the mists that seemed to be clouding his brain.

Caterina, in the other room, knew not how to break it to Lucia. The words refused to come, for the tall white-robed maiden, standing erect, without a quiver of her eyelid, intimidated her.

“I think ... I think it would bore you to have to come with me to the College.”

“What for?”

“To take Giuditta back.”

“I won’t go. You go alone. That College depresses me.”

“I would go, if it were not for leaving you alone. But I shall not be long; just the time to drive Giuditta there, and come back.”

“Go; I like being alone.”

“It’s ... that I should like to....”

“Take Andrea with you, of course.”

“No, no, on the contrary.”

“Leave him with me...? He will be bored.”

“What are you saying?”

“He will bore himself, Caterina.”

“’Tis he who doesn’t want to stay, for fear of boring you. If you don’t mind....”

“Really, was that all? I will stay alone, or with your husband, whatever you like. But don’t be away long.”

“Oh! no fear, dear.” And in her delight at having settled the important question, she raised herself on tiptoe to kiss her.

“Dress and go.”

When Caterina and Giuditta passed through the drawing-room they found Andrea and Lucia seated, as before, in silence.

“Go, Caterina. I will read a book, and your husband the Piccolo. Have you a Leopardi?”

“No. I am so sorry....”

“Well, I will amuse myself with my own thoughts. Go, dear, go.”

Andrea listened, without saying a word.

“You may go to sleep,” whispered his wife, as she bade him good-bye. They did not kiss each other in the presence of their visitors. She went away contented with having provided for everything. They followed her with their eyes. Then, without a word, Lucia offered the newspaper to Andrea, who unfolded it. While he pretended to read, he watched Lucia out of the corner of his eye. She was looking at him with so bewitching a smile, that again she appeared to him like a woman transformed—so placid and youthful in her white gown.

“Are you not bored, Signorina?”

“No; I am thinking.”

“Tell me what you are thinking of.”

“What can it matter to you? I am thinking of far-off things.”

“It is morbid to think too much. Sometimes, but not often, it happens to me, too, to think.”

“Are you thinking now, Signor Andrea?”

Her hand hung slack at her side. In jest he knitted his little finger for a moment in hers. There was a long silence.

“What were you thinking of just now?” asked Lucia, in her low tender tones.

“I do not wish to tell you. How white your hand is, and long and narrow! Look, what an enormous hand mine is!”

“That day at the tournament your hand did wonders.”

“Really...!” He reddened from pleasure.

Again they were silent. She drew her hand away and played with her violets. He half closed his eyes, but never took them off the pure pale face, with its delicate colouring, its superb magnetic eyes with pencilled brows, and the half-opened mouth that was as red as a pomegranate flower. He sank into a state of vague contemplation, in which a fascinating feminine figure was the only thing visible on a cloudy background.

“Say something to me, Signora Lucia?”

“Why?”

“I want to hear you speak; you have an enchanting voice.”

“Caterina said the same thing to me this evening.”

At that name he suddenly sprang to his feet, and took two or three turns about the room, like an unquiet lion. She pulled a chair in front of her, placed her feet upon it, and half closed her eyes.

“Are you going to sleep?” asked Andrea, standing still before Lucia.

“No, I am dreaming,” she replied, so gently that Andrea resumed his seat beside her.

“Tell me what you were thinking of just now?” she pleaded.

“I was thinking of something dreadful, but true.”

“About me?”

“About you, Lucia.”

“Say it.”

“No, it would displease you.”

“Not from you....”

“Permit me not to tell it you....”

“As you please.”

Lucia’s countenance became overclouded; every now and then she drew a long breath.

“What is the matter?”

“Nothing; I am very comfortable. And you, Signor Andrea?”

Was he? He did not answer. Now and again the delicious languor that was stealing over him cooled the current in his veins. He scarcely ventured to breathe. Lucia’s white gown appeared to him like a snowy precipice; a mad desire was on him to cast himself at this woman’s feet, to rest his head on her knees, and to close his eyes like a child.... Was he? when every now and then a savage longing came upon him to throw his arm around that slender waist, and press it so that he might feel it writhe and vibrate with tigerish flexibility? He strove not to think; that was all.

“What stuff is this, Signora Lucia?”

“It is wool.”

“A soft wool.”

“Cashmere.”

“It is so becoming to you. Why don’t you always wear it?”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes, I do.” He continued, unconsciously, to stroke her arm.

She leant over, quite close to him, and said:

“Have one made like it for Caterina.”

This time Andrea did not rise, but shuddered perceptibly. He passed his hand through his hair, to push it back.

“I was thinking just now,” he said, “that the man who fell in love with you would be a most unhappy fellow.”

Lucia sank back in frigid silence, her face hardened with anger.

“Now,” he said in a low tone of deprecation, “you are angry.”

“No,” in a whisper.

“Yes, you are angry; I am a brute.” As he said this, he tried to force open her clenched hand. But he was afraid of hurting her, and so he failed. He begged her not to drive her nails into the palm of her hand. The pain of doing so accentuated the angles at the corners of her lips; her head was turned away from him, resting against the cushioned back of the sofa.

“Lucia, Lucia ...” he murmured, “be good to one who is unworthy.” At last, with a sigh of triumph, he opened the hand which he held: four red marks disfigured its palm. Andrea looked at it, wishing but not daring to kiss it; he blew over it childishly.

“Bobo, gone!”

She vouchsafed a smile, but no reply. Andrea tried to pacify her, whispering nonsense to her. He mimicked the tone of a child, begging its mother’s pardon, promising “never to do so again,” if only it may not be sent to the dark room, where it is frightened. And the strong man’s voice assumed so infantile an expression, he imitated the whine, the grimaces, the feline movements of certain children to such perfection, that she could not restrain the fit of nervous laughter which overcame her, and throbbed in her white throat as she fell back in her cushions.

“Little mother, forgive?” he wound up with.

“Si, si,” and, still laughing, she gave him a little pat on the shoulder.

Again he fought down his desire to kiss her hand.

“Do you know that you are not so thin as usual to-night?”

“Do you think so?” she replied, as if weary with laughter.

“Certainly.”

“I suppose it’s the white dress.”

“Or yourself; you can work miracles, you can assume what appearance you choose.”

“What am I like to-night?” asked Lucia, languidly.

“You are like a sorceress,” replied Andrea, with an accent of profound conviction.

Her eyes questioned him, eager to know more.

“A witch ... a sorceress....” he repeated, as if in reply to an inner voice. The clock struck nine times, but neither of them paid heed to it. Stillness filled the room, which was lighted by a shaded lamp. No sound reached it. Nothing. Two people alone, looking at each other. The long pauses seemed to them full of a sweet significance; they could not resume their talk without an effort. They spoke in lowered tones and very slowly. He drew no nearer, neither did she withdraw her hand.

“What perfume do you use in your hair?”

“None.”

“Oh! but it is perfumed. I could smell it just now....”

“But I use no perfume.”

“Just now I smelt it, when I leant my head where yours had been.”

“None; smell!” she said, with unconscionable audacity, as she raised her head to his, that he might inhale the perfume of her hair.

Then he lost his head, seized Lucia by the waist, and kissed her throat madly and roughly. She freed herself like a viper, starting to her feet in a fury, scorching him with the flashing of her eyes. Not a word passed between them. Stunned and confused, he watched her moving about the room in search of her cloak, her gloves, her bonnet, and in such a tremor of rage that she could not find them for a long while. At last she slipped on her cloak, but her quivering hands could not tie the strings of her black bonnet. The white dress had disappeared; she was all in black now, lividly pale, with dark rings under her eyes.

“Where are you going now?”

“I am going away.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“No, rather than let you do that, I will go myself.” He made her a low bow and disappeared within the bedroom, shutting the door between them.

When Caterina returned, panting with haste, she found Lucia calmly stretched out on the sofa.

“Have I been too long...? And Andrea?”

“I don’t know. He is in there, I think.”

“What have you been doing with yourself all alone?”

“Sai, I have been praying with the lapis-lazuli rosary.”

Caterina entered the bedroom. A black form was lying prone across the bed with open arms, like one crucified.

“Andrea!” she called, tentatively.

“What is it?” was the curt reply.

“Are you sleeping?”

“I was bored, and I came in here. Let me sleep.”

“Lucia? Who is to take her back?”

“Thou. Leave me alone.”

VII.

One morning, before going out, Andrea kissed his wife, and said: “Have our boxes packed for to-night; we are going to Rome.”

“For how many days?” she asked, without surprise. She was accustomed to these sudden orders.

“A fortnight at least: plenty of linen and smart gowns. Leave the jewels at home.”

They left for Rome without announcing their departure to any one. It was like a second honeymoon. During their eighteen months of married life, neither had travelled farther than from Naples to Centurano. Caterina had all the artlessness and naïveté of a newly fledged bride; but she at once adapted herself to the change, like the well-balanced creature that she was. Andrea teased her delightedly, when he saw her head peeping out of the window at every station. He told her fabulous stories of every place they passed through; laughing heartily at her incredulity, offering her things to eat and drink, inviting her to take a turn up and down; and she parried his attacks like a child. He walked about the carriage, put his big head out of the window, bumped it against the roof, conversed with the railway officials, indulged in discussions with newsvendors, and impressed his fellow-travellers with his herculean stature. In a word, he was exuberant with health, noise, and jollity.

Caterina did not ever remember seeing him in such high spirits, especially since that inauspicious dinner. Oh! there had been a period of dreadful and furious ill-temper; the house had trembled from slamming of doors, pushing of chairs, and thumping of fists on writing-tables; to say nothing of the bursts of vociferation which had echoed throughout it,—a three days’ storm that she had succeeded in lulling by dint of silence, placidity, and submission. Then Andrea had calmed down, except for a certain nervous irritability and occasional bursts of anger, that became ever fewer and farther between. Still, he had not quite gone back to the old Andrea—the childlike, noisy, laughter-loving Andrea, overflowing with mirth and good temper—until they started on this journey. Caterina said nothing about it; but she felt as if her very heart were expanding, dilated with the pleasure of it.

In Rome, Andrea displayed a phenomenal activity. He woke early, with a smile for the rosy face that watched his awakening, and proceeded to call out his orders to all the waiters of the Hôtel de Rome; they drank their coffee in haste and went on a round of sight-seeing. Andrea was not devoted to antiquities and Caterina did not understand them; but it was a duty to see them all, if only by way of gaining an appetite for luncheon. So they continued to inspect everything, conscientiously, without neglecting a stone or sparing themselves a corner; exclaiming, with moderate enthusiasm: “Beautiful, beautiful, how beautiful!”

They amused themselves, all the same, because Caterina had never seen anything before, and because Andrea had a knack of imitating the guide’s nasal voice, pouring forth, the while, a jumble of rambling, explanatory description, in which Caterina corrected the erroneous Roman history. They returned to the hotel in a state of collapse, and dawdled through their luncheon. Then Andrea went out on important business. To-day, he had an appointment with the Under-Secretary of State; to-morrow, with a Cabinet Minister; the other day he had had matters to settle with the Director-General of the Agricultural Department. Sometimes he had two appointments on the same day; with the huge, muscular Member for Santa Maria, with the aristocratic Member for Capua, or with the hirsute Member for Teano. The conferences with the journalistic Member for Caserta—influential both as the editor of a Neapolitan paper of large circulation and as the intimate friend of the Prime Minister—were of infinite length. Then he would accompany his wife in her drive to the Villa Borghese or the Pincio, and leave her there; or to San Pietro, where there was always something to look at; and two or three times to the Ladies’ Gallery in the House of Parliament, where Caterina, who understood little or nothing of the subject under discussion, bored herself immensely, and suffered agonies of heat and thirst. She waited patiently for him to come and fetch her, with the resignation of a woman who would have waited for centuries, had she been bidden to wait. Andrea returned to her, red, hasty and flurried; blowing and puffing like a young bull, apologising for having kept her waiting so long, recounting to her all his experiences; the useless journeys to and fro, the inert functionaries, the diffident Secretary, the enthusiastic Cabinet Minister, the Members’ zeal for the honour of their constituencies. To all these details, Caterina listened with the attentiveness that delights a narrator, without a sign of weariness. And indeed the local Agricultural Exhibition was of supreme interest to them both. Andrea was President of the Committee of Promoters: he was to exhibit wheat, barley, wine, a special breed of fowls, and a new species of gourd, a modification of the pumpkin. The schools’ functions, of which Caterina was Lady Patroness, were fixed for the same epoch. There was to be a flower show for the delectation of the upper ten. The statue of Vanzitelli was to be unveiled, on the chief Piazza of Caserta, which means, in short, a universal fillip, the awakening of the entire province, splendid fêtes, special trains, &c. &c.: the tenth of September, in the height of the fine weather; already cool, you know, and still genial. It all hung upon whether or no permission to hold the fête in the Royal Palace could be obtained, that historic palace, beloved of the Bourbons. Caterina supported her husband in demanding the Reggia, in insisting on having the Reggia: what was the use of that empty, solemn Royal Palace? It would be splendid for the Exhibition. They must have the Reggia, at whatever the cost. When they had said and many times repeated these things, Andrea and Caterina would go here and there and everywhere to dine. They took a long time about it, and seriously studied the menu for the day; each of them ordering different dishes and tasting what the other had ordered; Andrea making friends with the waiter, and both of them relishing whatever they did with the capacity of young and healthy people for enjoyment. No one interfered with or otherwise vexed them. Rome is humane and maternal, ever smiling on those bridal couples who, under the shadow of her noble walls, under her canopy of heavenly blue, lead their loves through the maze of her uneven streets.

After a short halt at the Café du Parlement or the Café de Rome, then a short walk, and home to sleep. Andrea was tired, and had to rise early next morning. But often in those hours between luncheon and dinner, Caterina would beg him to leave her at home. She preferred staying there, in a tiny sitting-room that was next to her bedroom. Andrea would ask on his return what she had been doing. And she replied: “I have been helping my maid to arrange my grey dress. She didn’t know how to do it, so I showed her. I walked a little, as far as Pontecorvo, to choose presents for Naples....”

Sometimes she lowered her eyes and said, “I have been writing.”

“Who to, Nini?”

“To my aunt; to Giuditta, at school; to Giulietta, the maid at home; to Matteo, the caretaker at Centurano....”

“And to others?”

“To others besides.”

Without naming her, they instantly understood each other. They had lately avoided mentioning her. Caterina felt the profound antipathy of Andrea, but neither ventured to combat or complain of it. She had been to call on Lucia, alone. The latter had received her most warmly, smothering her with kisses, asking her loving questions, confusing her with those she read in her eyes: not a word of Andrea, to Caterina’s infinite relief. Inwardly, she suffered from the species of hatred which existed between the two persons she loved best. At last, one day when Andrea returned to the hotel, he found Caterina more preoccupied than usual. She heard the news that the Prime Minister would honour the Agricultural Exhibition with his presence, without excessive transport; she murmured a gentle but absent “Yes” to her husband’s suggestion that they should spend three days in Florence, returning thence to Naples.

“Ohé! Nini, what is the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t tell stories, little Nini. They are visible on your nose. There is one crawling, his legs are no longer than a spider’s, but he is black and ugly! What is it, Nini?”

“Nothing, nothing....” she said, in self-defence.

“Say it, Caterina.”

“I entreat you....”

“Bah, innocent witch, I know what it is.”

“What is it you know...?” blushing.

“I know why you are so preoccupied; it’s the Naples letter that upset you.”

Her timid eyes entreated his forgiveness for both of them.

“I am not vexed with you,” said he, slowly. “If I don’t like the girl, I respect your affection for her: she is the friend of your childhood. You don’t love her better than me, I hope?”

“No,” she said, simply.

“Well, that is all I care for. Don’t plague yourself about anything else. And ... is the letter interesting?”

“Very.”

“'Urgente’ was written outside it. Is it really urgent, or is it only fancy?”

“Really urgent.”

He took a turn in the room and glanced at the clock.

“Shall we go to dinner? It is rather early, I think.”

“True, it is early.”

“And what does she write you...?” without infusing much interest into his voice.

“It’s too long to tell.”

“I understand you, Nini; I understand you. You would like to read the letter to me.”

“No, no....”

“Yes, you are dying to read it to me. You have not the courage to say so; but I guess it. I’m a bear, I suppose. Do you wish it noised abroad that I am a tyrant?”

“Andrea!”

“Su! small victim of a barbarous husband: as we have an hour to spare before dinner, and because the success of our enterprise inclines us to clemency, you may even read us your letter. Unto us shall be brought vermouth and cigars, to help us to endure this new torment with befitting patience. Oh! Lord, consider the sufferings of your unhappy Andrea...!”

“Andrea, one more word, and I won’t read it.”

“Ma che! you are dying to read it! Su! up, intriguer; up, witch. We accord you our august attention.”

Caterina drew the hand that held the letter out of her pocket and read as follows:

“CATERINA MIA!

“This letter, which I am about to write to thee, will not be, like the others, laden with what my father calls vagaries. This is a serious letter. Caterina, collect all the sense, all the reason of which you can dispose; add to it all your experience, call to your help the whole height and depth of your friendship, and be helpful to me in counsel and support. Caterina, I have reached the most solemn moment of my life. A pilgrim and a wanderer, without a guide, I have come to the crossing of the roads. I must decide. I must reply to the dark question of the future, the mystic riddle will have its answer; it calls for a 'Yes,’ or a 'No’. Oh! Caterina, how have I dreaded this decisive moment! how have I halted and stumbled, as with waning strength I neared it! Behold, it has caught me up, it is upon me like an incubus. Listen to me patiently; I will try not to weary you. But I want to put my position clearly before you. Do you remember when we spoke of our future, on the College terrace? I told you then, that I should never marry; that I should seek to fulfil a lowly but noble mission, one to which I might consecrate my poor strength, the fervour of my soul, the impulses of a heart enamoured of sacrifice. I sought, and I had found—what human egoism has debarred me from: my father, my unloving father, has prevented me from becoming a Sister of Charity. He would not have them say, 'See, he had but one daughter, and he made her so unhappy that she has taken the veil!’ If this was my destiny, may God forgive him for not having permitted me to follow it. Other missions are either too arduous for my state of health, or too meagre to satisfy my passionate yearning.... My time was passed in prayer, almsgiving, in seeking to console the afflicted, but without any definite occupation or vocation. At last, one day, as it befell Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, a great light struck my eyes, and I fell down before the voice of the Lord. He has spoken to me: I have understood His words, and, lowliest among those lowly ones who dare to raise their eyes to the Virgin’s throne, I have to say in her words: 'Lord, behold thy servant, thy will be done!’

“Near to me, my own Caterina, was a mission to be accomplished, a sacrifice to be offered up. Near to me was a suffering being, condemned by the fatal atavism which has poisoned his blood, to an agonising death. The doctors do not, among themselves, disguise the fact that his will not be a long life. Carderelli has said, with brutal frankness: 'He may live some time, if every precaution is taken.’ But it is written that he will die the death. He has the germs of phthisis; he will die of consumption. You guess of whom I speak: my cousin, Alberto Sanna. He does not know the sad truth about himself, but we others do: he is condemned.

“Now picture to yourself the kind of life led by poor Alberto. He is very rich, but quite alone in the world, at the mercy of mercenary beings, in the hands of servants who neglect him, and have no love for him. Pleasure is always tempting him, but he may not, he dares not.... His friends are bad counsellors: for when he listens to them he loses the fruit of a month’s care. When he falls ill, he is alone, uncared for, utterly miserable; it is piteous, my sweet Caterina. As soon as he begins to recover, he leaves his bed, wraps himself up and comes to me for comfort and consolation. He is saddened because of his illness, because he has no one to love him, because he will never have a family of his own, because all happiness is denied to him, because at the banquet of life he may only appear for a moment, to disappear, like the patient of Gilbert. He needs a soul, a love of his own: one who will care for him, love him, who, if she cannot make the remaining years of his life happy ones, is at least content to pour out all her tenderness in them. He looks around and sees that he is alone in the crowd, of no interest to any one. Living, none to love him; dead, none to mourn him. Well, this creature, this soul, this woman, will I be to him.... Yes, Caterina, I shall marry Alberto Sanna. It will be a boundless sacrifice of my youth, my whole life, and every dream of joy and splendour. It will be a silent holocaust that I shall offer up to God. For the happiness of a suffering fellow-creature, I will give my whole happiness. I will cast my life away for the life of an afflicted being, whose smile will be my only reward. I am not in love with Alberto Sanna. You know that this earthly and carnal sentiment has never existed in me, nor will it ever exist. I am overwhelmed with pity, compassion, for an unhappy fellow-creature, and out of sheer compassion I wed him. He loves me with a blind, passionate, and childlike affection—and believes that mine for him is love—and I wish him to believe it. In some cases, deception is true piety. I will be to him a faithful wife, a compassionate sister, a watchful mother, an untiring nurse: he shall never read signs of weariness nor fatigue on my countenance. I will cut myself off from the society that he may not frequent. I will say good-bye to all worldly avocations; they shall not disturb our quiet household. I will forget my own sufferings, in alleviating his. If one of us must needs be unhappy, I will be that one. Mute, calm, smiling, I will bury deep in my heart whatever might pain poor Alberto. I will be his smile.... The future is a melancholy one. I know not how I shall bear it. May God give me strength where strength will be needed. For the sake of my poor dear, for my poor afflicted one, I must live. I hope I shall not fall ill. God would not lay upon me the burden of having to die before Alberto. God does not recall those who have a mission upon earth until it is accomplished. This thought so supports me that I feel as if triple strength had been given to me. On the other hand, Caterina, it is necessary that I should leave my home. My father cannot bear me near him. He would willingly have left me at the College, had it not been for regard to public opinion. I have already told you as much. He is an egotist, and indifferent to all human suffering. From morning till night he finds something to complain of in my attire, the furniture of my poor rooms, my friends, the time they stay with me, and what he is pleased to call my 'fatal’ attitude. Every day he wounds me cruelly. He says the most dreadful things to me: that his friends consider me eccentric; that my behaviour is mad; that I am the worst coquette of his acquaintance. How have I wept; how have I writhed; poor victim that I am, eternally held up to martyrdom by the Philistine! I bend my head without attempting to reply to him. I am an obstruction in my own house, Caterina. I have had to make a painful effort in asking Galimberti to discontinue his frequent visits; they were the subject of vulgar, scandalous gossip among the servants, who made a laughing-stock of him. Poor, beloved friend, I have been forced to sacrifice thee to the world; at the very moment when thou hadst need of the consolation of my friendship, just at the moment when the College authorities had, with barbarous injustice, turned thee away! I write to him from time to time, if only not to break off too suddenly. I fear that he is very miserable. I try, in my letters to him, to write the sweetest words that sympathy has ever inspired. Now you see what my father has done for me! The truth is that my presence casts a gloom over his house, where he would fain have mirth and laughter. The truth is that he is younger at forty-two than I am at twenty; that he wishes I were married, so that he may be free of me. The horrible truth is that he, who has been a widower for fifteen years, is waiting for the hour of deliverance, the hour of my marriage, to marry again himself.

“So that all and everything combines to draw me closer to Alberto. In marrying I please my father, I give happiness to my affianced husband, and peace to my conscience. I need not say to you, who know me, that no idea of self-interest influences me. Alberto is much better off than I am; but what are his riches to me? We shall not receive, we shall only keep two horses in our stable, for the invalid’s drives; I shall dress simply in black; mourning for a blighted existence.... We shall have but few servants, having so few wants.... Neither pomp, nor luxury, nor fêtes, nor balls; the state of Alberto’s health does not admit of them. I shall be content if he will give me something for my poor. I shall have to administer our fortune, for he cannot do so. I will bend my neck under this hard, dry, ungrateful yoke; I will drink the last drop in the bitter chalice I have prepared for myself....

“But tell me, Caterina, is not this beautiful? Tell me, my placid critic, if my self-imposed task is not a holy one? Is not my mission sublime? Is not the act I am about to perform all but a divine one? Do I not set the crown on my life, with this motto, which henceforward shall be mine: 'All for others, naught for self?’ Am I not giving to others a fine example of altruism? I will have no praise; I will accomplish it in all humility, as one unworthy, but chosen. Give me your opinion, clearly, sincerely, loyally, as you have ever given it me, in all vital moments of my life. To you I can repeat that none have been more vital than is this one. Write me on a scrap of paper: 'Right, Lucia;’ or only 'Lucia, wrong.’ And return, Caterina, return, to one who loves thee as surely no other friend was ever loved.

“LUCIA.”

The pure sonorous voice of the reader began to give way towards the last, and grew hoarse as if from fatigue. She folded up the transparent sheets, put them back in their envelope, and waited for her husband to speak. Andrea had sipped two glasses of vermouth, and left half of a third one; his cigar had gone out once or twice.

“What do you think of it, Nini?” he said at last, as if he were waking out of a trance.

“I? I don’t know; I have no ideas of my own. I never had any.”

“And what are you going to write her?”

“What you tell me.”

“I would have you observe,” he said, coldly, “that the Altimare did not tell you to read her letter to me, or to ask for my advice. She does not mention me.”

“But, you see ...” she began, deprecatingly.

“Yes, I see, and I don’t see. Anyhow, it appears to me to be an unfortunate marriage.”

“To me, too.”

“You are always of my opinion. That Alberto is such a wretched creature, he does not deserve a woman like Lucia.”

“True, I will write her ... that she is doing wrong.”

“Yes. Write to her. She won’t listen to you, but you will have warned her in time. Or rather ... wait until to-morrow to write.”

They said no more about it, but all that evening they were absent and preoccupied. They hardly spoke to each other. They went to the play, but did not stay for the last act. Andrea passed a disturbed night; between sleeping and waking, Caterina could hear him turn from side to side, drawing long breaths and tossing his coverings about. She called out sleepily to ask what was the matter with him.

“It’s the coffee! it was too strong,” he muttered.

Next morning, he took her aside out of her maid’s hearing, and made her the following short discourse:

“Listen, Nini. Don’t let us get entangled in other people’s affairs. We are not infallible, we mustn’t assume responsibilities that are too serious for us. Let the Altimare marry whom she will. She may be happy with Alberto. We have no charge of souls. We might give her bad advice. After all, no one can tell how a marriage may turn out. Write that it’s all right.”

She obeyed, for her whole business in life was to believe in the worth and wisdom of her husband.